This paper examines the relationships between corporate governance and corporate sustainability by focusing on two main components of companies’ governance structure: boards of directors and investor relations officers. We propose an original empirical strategy based on the 120 biggest French capitalizations for the year 2013, allowing us to measure boards of directors’ independence and expertise, as well as investor relations officers’ convictions and communication on corporate sustainability. Our results show that corporate governance has an ambiguous impact on corporate sustainability because (...) of opposing forces: internal, external and intermediate forces. On the one hand, the higher the proportion of inside directors, the higher the company’s environmental and governance performance, while the higher the proportion of general experts in the board room, the lower the company’s governance performance. On the other hand, investor relations officers’ beliefs that corporate sustainability is primarily driven by investors’ ethical values appear negatively related to companies’ governance performance. In sum, corporate sustainability appears positively related to internal forces and negatively related to external forces. The results of this study demonstrate the need to carry out efforts to train BoDs and IROs to respond to corporate sustainability and to take more of a leadership role in this area. (shrink)

The epistolary exchanges of early modern natural history have long been of interest to historians of science, as they reflect the dynamic nature of the emergent discipline better than the printed volumes of natural history. Less attention, at least until recently, has been paid to the unfinished pieces, the cryptic marginalia, and the practical notes that more often than not accompanied letters. Lists of specimens sent or requested were among the new tools at the naturalist's disposal for dealing with a (...) scientific world increasingly populated by objects. This essay seeks to reconstruct the genealogy of specimen lists by focusing on little-known apothecaries in northern Italy: the individuals traditionally held to be social counterparts to these modest strings of words. It seems that the operations at the back of the shop and the literature generated by the centuries-old drug and spice trades may have been a more defining influence on early modern naturalists than the humanist practices of indexing and commonplacing that were concurrently embraced by Italian studiosi. (shrink)

Several theories propose that one of the core functions of inner speech (IS) is to support subjects in the completion of cognitively effortful tasks, especially those involving executive functions (EF). In this paper we focus on two populations who notoriously encounter difficulties in performing EF tasks, namely, people diagnosed with schizophrenia who experience auditory verbal hallucinations (Sz-AVH) and people within the Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). We focus on these two populations because they represent two different ways in which IS can (...) fail to help in EF tasks, which can be illustrative for other mental conditions. First, we review the main components of EF (Section 1). Then we explain the functions that IS is taken to perform in the domain of EF (Section 2) and review the evidence concerning problems about EF in the two populations of our study: Sz-AVH (Section 3) and ASC (Section 4). After this we further detail our account about what a properly functioning IS can do for both populations and how different IS profiles may impact EF performance: in the case of Sz-AVH, the uncontrolled and intrusive character of IS negatively affects EF performance, whereas in ASC, EF is not sufficiently supported by IS, given the tendency in this population to present a diminished use of IS (Section 5). We finally briefly discuss Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Developmental Language Disorders (DLD). (shrink)

A propósito de una reciente biblografía, este trabajo apunta algunas cuestiones esenciales de la teoría del derecho de Grocio, y en relación con ella algunos puntos importantes de la filosofía de Vico.Related with a recent bibliography, this paper arises some fundamental questions about Grocio's legal theory and the relationship it has with Vico's philosophy.

Poverty and inequality are not the sole sources of (global) injustices. And the latter are not only a matter of fair distribution. Identity and cultural asymmetries, often articulated along political and economic lines, relocate and reshape the struggle against subordination to include new areas of contestation, such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, religion and nationality.

The purpose of this article is to identify how modern Russia can build good relationships between multiple Russian religions and the state. At present there are many obstacles standing in the way of achieving this goal. The article includes a great many statistics, and discusses political, social, and religious views of the issue.The working Russian Constitution provides major legal provisions for democratic relationships between religions and the state. The law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” (1997) clarified constitutional provisions. (...) It should not forgotten that Russia is a secular state claiming to respect all religions. No doubt the supremacy of Orthodoxy in Russia after 1721 and the extreme atheism that arose in the Soviet Union after 1917 influenced people’s minds greatly. While the countries in Western Europe were moving from religiosity to secularism, Russia was developing the other way around. But while respecting all religions, Russia should not forget to be mindful of extremism. Religious associations themselves are likewise uneasy about the danger presented by certain mystic, neo-pagan, and destructive sects. The author argues that the best compromise between religions and the modern Russian state canonly be achieved on the basis of equality and freedom. (shrink)

A substantial body of experimental evidence has demonstrated that labels have an impact on infant categorization processes. Yet little is known regarding the nature of the mechanisms by which this effect is achieved. We distinguish between two competing accounts: supervised name‐based categorization and unsupervised feature‐based categorization. We describe a neurocomputational model of infant visual categorization, based on self‐organizing maps, that implements the unsupervised feature‐based approach. The model successfully reproduces experiments demonstrating the impact of labeling on infant visual categorization reported in (...) Plunkett, Hu, and Cohen (2008). It mimics infant behavior in both the familiarization and testing phases of the procedure, using a training regime that involves only single presentations of each stimulus and using just 24 participant networks per experiment. The model predicts that the observed behavior in infants is due to a transient form of learning that might lead to the emergence of hierarchically organized categorical structure and that the impact of labels on categorization is influenced by the perceived similarity and the sequence in which the objects are presented. The results suggest that early in development, say before 12 months old, labels need not act as invitations to form categories nor highlight the commonalities between objects, but they may play a more mundane but nevertheless powerful role as additional features that are processed in the same fashion as other features that characterize objects and object categories. (shrink)

We tested the plausibility of a cognitive-emotional model to understand the effects of messages framed in terms of gain, non-loss, non-gain, and loss, and related to the health consequences of red/processed meat consumption. A total of 544 Italian participants reported their attitude toward reduced red/processed meat consumption and intention to eat red/processed meat. One week later, participants were randomly assigned to four different message conditions: gain messages focused on the positive health outcomes associated with low meat consumption; non-loss messages focused (...) on the avoided negative health outcomes associated with low meat consumption; non-gain messages focused on the missed positive health outcomes associated with high meat consumption; loss messages focused on the negative health outcomes associated with high meat consumption. After reading the messages, participants answered a series of questions regarding their emotional and cognitive reactions to the messages, their evaluation of the messages, and again their attitude and intention toward red/processed meat consumption. Comparing different multivariate linear models under the Bayesian approach, we selected the model with the highest plausibility conditioned to observed data. In this model, message-induced fear influenced systematic processing, which in turn positively influenced message evaluation and attitude, leading to reduced intention to consume red/processed meat. Vice versa, message-induced anger reduced systematic processing, which in turn negatively influenced message evaluation, and led to no effect on attitude and intention. The comparison among message conditions showed that gain and non-loss messages activated integrated emotional and cognitive processing of the health recommendation, while loss and non-gain messages mainly activated emotional shortcuts toward attitude and intention. Overall, these results advance our comprehension of the effects of message framing on receivers' attitudes and intentions. (shrink)

A model is computable if its domain is a computable set and its relations and functions are uniformly computable. Let be a computable model and let R be an extra relation on the domain of . That is, R is not named in the language of . We define to be the set of Turing degrees of the images f under all isomorphisms f from to computable models. We investigate conditions on and R which are sufficient and necessary for to (...) contain every Turing degree. These conditions imply that if every Turing degree 0″ can be realized in via an isomorphism of the same Turing degree as its image of R, then contains every Turing degree. We also discuss an example of and R whose coincides with the Turing degrees which are 0′. (shrink)

Is displacement possible without language? This question was addressed in a recent work by Liszkowski and colleagues . The authors carried out an experiment to demonstrate that 12-month-old prelinguistic infants can communicate about absent entities by using pointing gestures, while chimpanzees cannot. The main hypothesis of their study is that displacement does not depend on language but is, however, exclusively human and instead depends on species-specific social-cognitive human skills. Against this hypothesis, we will argue that a symbolic representation is needed (...) to intentionally communicate absence and that this symbolic representation is tied to language. Moreover, data on the expression of displacement in home-sign systems will be taken into consideration. In light of this data, and in opposition to Liszkowski et al.'s claim, this paper will argue that displacement gestures are not foundational to language. Instead, they predate and predict .. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 206 Seiten: 37-61.

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Characterizations of autism include multiple references to rigid or inflexible features, but the notion of rigidity itself has received little systematic discussion. In this paper we shed some light on the notion of rigidity in autism by identifying different facets of this phenomenon as discussed in the literature, such as fixed interests, insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, black-and-white mentality, intolerance of uncertainty, ritualized patterns of verbal and non-verbal behavior, literalism, and discomfort with change. Rigidity is typically approached in (...) a disjointed fashion (i.e., facet by facet), although there are recent attempts at providing unifying explanations. Some of these attempts assume that the rigidity facets mainly relate to executive functioning: although such an approach is intuitively persuasive, we argue that there are equally plausible alternative explanations. We conclude by calling for more research on the different facets of rigidity and on how they cluster together in the autistic population, while suggesting some ways in which intervention could benefit from a finer-grained view of rigidity. (shrink)

The extent to which judges in the American federal system and in England and Wales respond to sanctions, in their codes of civil procedure, for non-compliance with those rules, varies according to which of two ‘philosophies of justice’ are prevalent in the judicial culture. Taking as a starting point the application of the ‘ultimate’ sanction, that of exclusion from the trial itself, in the two jurisdictions, the article first draws out the features of the two philosophies, finding them surprisingly similar (...) in both jurisdictions. The article thereafter proposes that the choice of philosophy ought not to rest with individual judges but with the system, as structured in rules, thus suggesting a limited formalist approach to civil procedure. (shrink)

We study the complexity of infinite chains and antichains in computable partial orderings. We show that there is a computable partial ordering which has an infinite chain but none that is ${\Sigma _{1}^{1}}$ or ${\Pi _{1}^{1}}$ , and also obtain the analogous result for antichains. On the other hand, we show that every computable partial ordering which has an infinite chain must have an infinite chain that is the difference of two ${\Pi _{1}^{1}}$ sets. Our main result is that there (...) is a computably axiomatizable theory K of partial orderings such that K has a computable model with arbitrarily long finite chains but no computable model with an infinite chain. We also prove the corresponding result for antichains. Finally, we prove that if a computable partial ordering ${\mathcal{A}}$ has the feature that for every ${\mathcal{B} \cong \mathcal{A}}$ , there is an infinite chain or antichain that is ${\Delta _{2}^{0}}$ relative to ${\mathcal{B}}$ , then we have uniform dichotomy: either for all copies ${\mathcal{B}}$ of ${\mathcal{A}}$ , there is an infinite chain that is ${\Delta _{2}^{0}}$ relative to ${\mathcal{B}}$ , or for all copies ${\mathcal{B}}$ of ${\mathcal{A}}$ , there is an infinite antichain that is ${\Delta _{2}^{0}}$ relative to ${\mathcal{B}}$. (shrink)

Les débats sur la technique voient s'affronter souvent des positions tranchées entre technophiles et technophobes. On avancerait sans doute en déplaçant la question de la valeur et des dangers des artefacts techniques vers une réflexion philosophique plus profonde sur la technicisation de la vie et du monde, qui mérite généalogie et archéologie. Cet ouvrage, qui réunit plusieurs philosophes réputés de la question, veut à cet égard convoquer au débat les pensées de Martin Heidegger et de Michel Foucault qui ont permis (...) à travers leurs usages de la terminologie du Gestell et du dispositif de renouveler la question de la technique. Même si M. Foucault a été marqué par les analyses heideggériennes, il s'agit d'aller bien au-delà de la question des influences. Les langues d'appartenance de ces termes, leurs traductions deviennent aussi l'occasion d'explorer à nouveaux frais la complexité de la question. (shrink)

The notions of at-risk and subthreshold conditions are increasingly discussed in psychiatry to describe mild, brief, or otherwise atypical syndromes that fail to meet the criteria for clinical relevance. However, the concept of vulnerability is still underexplored in philosophy of psychiatry. This article discusses psychiatric vulnerability to clarify some conceptual issues about the various factors contributing to vulnerability, the notions of risk and protection, and the idea that there are multiple ways of crossing the threshold to clinical relevance. My goal (...) is to lay the groundwork for a finer-grained discussion on psychiatric vulnerability that reflects the complex nature of mental conditions and illustrates the kind of thinking needed in clinical practice. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive analysis of the idea of libertas and its conflicting uses in the political struggles of the late Roman Republic. By reconstructing Roman political thinking about liberty against the background of Classical and Hellenistic thought, it excavates two distinct intellectual traditions on the means allowing for the preservation and the loss of libertas. Considering the interplay of these traditions in the political debates of the first century BC, Dr Arena offers a significant reinterpretation of the political struggles (...) of the time as well as a radical reappraisal of the role played by the idea of liberty in the practice of politics. She argues that, as a result of its uses in rhetorical debates, libertas underwent a form of conceptual change at the end of the Republic and came to legitimise a new course of politics, which led progressively to the transformation of the whole political system. (shrink)

This paper is a review essay of Ottavio Marzocca, Biopolitics for Beginners. Knowledge of Life and Government of People, Milan/Udine: Mimesis International, 2020. Pp. 457. ISBN: 9788869771781 (paperback). It focuses on Marzocca's investigations into biopolitics, a topic of which the author offers an original ecological reconfiguration. The proposed reflections, which address the recent pandemic crisis of COVID-19, are developed from the work of Foucault but are not limited to this thinker. In fact, they offer an articulate examination of the issue (...) by also taking into broad consideration the thought of authors such as Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, Roberto Esposito, Jacques Donzelot, Robert Castel, Pierre Rosanvallon, Nikolas Rose, Melinda Cooper and Gregory Bateson. (shrink)

Regulatory schema has shifted from government to governance-based systems. One particular form that has emerged at the international level is the multi-stakeholder voluntary code of conduct (MSVC). We argue that such codes are not only simply mechanisms by which various stakeholders attempt to govern the action of the corporation but also systems by which each stakeholder attempts to gain or retain some legitimacy goal. Each stakeholder is motivated by strategic legitimacy goal to join the code, and once a member, is (...) also required to assist in maintaining the institutional legitimacy of the code, resulting in “networked legitimacy.” We begin our analysis of these systems by first exploring the growth and structure of such MSVCs, and then building an analytical framework using strategic and institutional legitimacy as they apply to such MSVCs. We contribute to the codes of conduct literature by developing the construct of networked legitimacy from strategic and institutional legitimacy. We then apply our framework to the United Nations Global Compact, one of the predominant MSVCs today. In doing so, we: (1) demonstrate how different stakeholders are pursuing different types of legitimacy through their participation in the code, (2) examine the specific opportunities and risks in terms of what we have called “networked legitimacy” posed by the institutional design of actual MSVCs, and (3) create an argument for three pillars supporting the legitimacy of MSVCs. (shrink)

We examine whether a taxpayer’s decision to choose a taxpayer-favorable characterization of income is associated with contextual and individual dimensions of that decision. Using a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design, we manipulate the prevailing social norm on whether there is a general belief that a specific form of income should be characterized as a capital gain or as ordinary income, and the group affiliation on whether the individual is making a tax characterization decision as a sole proprietor or as (...) a member of a group practice. Moreover, we measure participants’ fairness perception of characterizing the income as capital gains versus ordinary. We study the decisions of 180 graduate business and accounting students from two US business schools to explore these dimensions using a tax-ambiguous income situation. Results indicate that both contextual and individual dimensions impact taxpayer decisions. Specifically, the social norm and fairness perception of characterizing income as capital gains affects the likelihood of choosing such a characterization. Being a sole proprietor or a member of a group practice does not have any significant main effect. However, relative to all other conditions, taxpayers are most likely to characterize income as capital gains when both the social norms are for capital gains characterization and when the taxpayer is a member of a group practice. Results remain largely robust to a variety of alternative explanations. We conclude the paper with a discussion of our findings and their implications for tax policy, enforcement, and research. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of imaginative resistance in science, that is, why and under what circumstances imagination sometimes resists certain scenarios. In the first part, the paper presents and discusses two accounts concerning the problem and relevant for the main thesis of this study. The first position is that of Gendler (Journal of Philosophy 97:55–81, 2000), (Gendler, in: Nichols (ed) The Architecture of the Imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility and fiction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006a), (Gendler & (...) Liao, in: Gibson, Carroll (eds) The routledge companion to philosophy of literature, Routledge, New York, 2016), according to which imaginative resistance mainly concerns evaluative scenarios, presenting deviant moral attitudes. The second account examined is that of Kim et al. (in: Cova, Réhault (eds) Advances in experimental philosophy of aesthetics, Bloomsbury, London, 2018), who insisted on the link between imaginative resistance on the one hand and counterfactual and counterdescriptive scenarios on the other. In the light of both theories, this paper discusses the importance of addressing the problem of imaginative resistance in the scientific enterprise in the light of some mechanisms of embodied simulation, based on the activity of mirror neurons and investigated within the framework of the Embodied Simulation Theory. (shrink)

The implementation of online technologies to promote wellbeing is increasingly becoming a worldwide priority. This study includes secondary analyses of data and examined drop-out rates in an online guided self-help intervention for patients with anorexia nervosa. Specifically, rates of drop-out at end of treatment (i.e. six-week assessment), as well as intervention adherence (minimum of four of six online guided sessions) and differences between completers and drop-outs were examined. Motivation to change and associated patient variables were assessed as predictors of drop-out (...) using structural equation modelling. Ninety-nine patients were randomised to the intervention arm of the trial. Data were available for 82 individuals, 67 of whom completed the six-week assessment and attended a minimum of four online sessions. No significant differences were found between completers and drop-outs at baseline. At the end of the first week of participation, drop-outs from the six-week assessment or the intervention reported less satisfaction with their work with the mentor delivering online guidance. Greater confidence in own ability to change and higher controlled motivation (willingness to change due to pressure from others) predicted lower drop-out rates from the six-week assessment. Stronger alliance with the therapist at the treatment centre and lower psychological distress were associated with greater autonomous motivation (self-directed motivation) and importance and ability to change. Data demonstrate that a novel online guided self-help intervention for patients with anorexia nervosa is feasible. Early satisfaction with the program and external pressure to change have a protective role against drop-out rates. (shrink)

The article focuses on the prose works of several modern writers. All these works are united by the image of the musician and the motive of listening to the music. Thus, the music in the article is considered as an universal.First of all - problems of life and death, the main values of life, the opposition “sacred - infernal”. The purpose of the article is to investigate how the era of postmodern influenced the author's concept of music. In each of (...) the works the form of the narrative is subjective. As a rule, the reader gets acquainted with the act of self-reflection of the personage who is looking for a way out of the mazes of everyday life. Therefore, the impression of an author's absence is created. However, the picture of the personage’s inner life at the moment of experiencing his encounter with music helps to understand what the author's conception of the world is like. In each of the works - the tragic idea of the world as chaos, the unpredictability of reality dominates, so death is perceived as liberation. And on the boundary between “here” and “there”, “life” and “death” the person is accompanied by music. The authors of the article draw on such categories of narratology as the “point of view”, the “subject plan”, “elf-reflection”, as well as on analysis of the structure of the discourse and the structure of the narrative in it. (shrink)

A study on the complex relationship between Platonism and the East, and on the Neoplatonic interpretations of some eastern cults in the Roman world, including Isis, Magna Mater, Mithras, and Sol Invictus.

This paper examines whether Giordano Bruno’s philosophy should be considered pantheist or immanentist—two philosophies that scholars regard as partly equivalent. However, this paper distinguishes them and argues that Bruno either identified the whole of nature with God or recognized a primary principle that is immanent, yet distinguishable, from matter. In terms of Bruno’s interpretation of the Aristotelian notions of form and matter, the difference between an immanentist view and a pantheist one lies in the role that form (or act) assumes (...) with regard to matter (or potency). This paper maintains that Bruno interpreted and adapted Aristotle’s philosophy to find his own immanentist metaphysics, which is built on the traditional Aristotelian system. This argument was based on the reconstruction of how he used Aristotelian thought as an instrument to subvert Aristotelianism. In particular, Bruno attested that intellect exists within nature, but it is not co-extensive with the whole nature. Finally, the paper highlights how Bruno applied Aristotle’s language, method, and themes to criticize the fundamentals of Aristotelian philosophy and the related traditions. (shrink)

We tested the plausibility of a persuasion model to understand the effects of messages framed in terms of gain, non-loss, loss, and non-gain, and related to the physical, mental and social consequences of doing physical activity at home during the lockdown restrictions. 272 Italian participants responded to a questionnaire on their attitude and intention at Time 1, frequency of past behavior, and self-efficacy related to exercising at home. Then, participants were randomly assigned to four different message conditions: gain messages focused (...) on the positive outcomes associated with doing physical activity at home; non-loss messages focused on the avoided negative outcomes associated with doing physical activity at home; loss messages focused on the negative outcomes associated with not doing physical activity at home; non-gain messages focused on the missed positive outcomes associated with not doing physical activity at home. After reading the messages, participants answered a series of questions regarding their perception of threat and fear, their evaluation of the messages, and their attitude and intention toward exercising at home at Time 2. Using multigroup structural equation modeling, we compared message conditions, and tested whether the effects of the messages on attitude and intention at Time 2 were mediated by message-induced threat, message-induced fear, and message evaluation. Results showed that the perception of the messages as not threatening was the key point to activate a positive evaluation of the recommendation. The highest persuasive effect was observed in the case of the non-loss frame, which did not threaten the receivers, triggered a moderated fear and, in turn, activated a positive evaluation of the recommendation, as well as higher attitude and intention to do home-based physical activity at Time 2. Overall, these results advance our comprehension of the effects of message framing on receivers' attitudes and intentions toward home-based physical activity. (shrink)

We consider a recursive model and an additional recursive relation R on its domain, such that there are uncountably many different images of R under isomorphisms from to some recursive model isomorphic to . We study properties of the set of Turing degrees of all these isomorphic images of R on the domain of.

Despite several criticisms surrounding the DSM classification in psychiatry, a significant bulk of research on mental conditions still operates according to two core assumptions: a) homogeneity, that is the idea that mental conditions are sufficiently homogeneous to justify generalization; b) additive comorbidity, that is the idea that the coexistence of multiple conditions in the same individual can be interpreted as additive. In this paper we take autism research as a case study to show that, despite a plethora of criticism, psychiatric (...) research often continues to operate in accordance with this model. Then we argue that such a model runs into problems once facts about comorbidity are taken into account. Finally, we offer some suggestions on how to tackle the challenge raised by comorbidity and its impact on heterogeneity. To do so, we explore transdiagnostic stratification accounts and network models to show that combining these approaches can move us in the right direction. (shrink)

This article intends to focus on some of the possibilities for analysis and reflection that emerge from the reading of I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, my brother: a 1973 text, edited by Foucault, which develops from the recognition of the potency inherent in the act of speech by the speechless. Pierre Rivière is in fact considered the one who, through but also beyond his terrible deed, has the (entirely political) ability to take the risk of “challenging (...) power.” It is precisely by means of this act that he undertakes a process of desubjection and subjectivation, imposing disruptive and scandalous truths and discourses against other truths and discourses recognized as dominant and more authoritative. Pierre Rivière's Memoir cannot therefore be investigated as a confession; rather, it has to do with parrhēsia, anticipating many of the Foucauldian reflections on the subject, which would not be developed until several years later. Moreover, it does not really concern an isolated individual. The subject Rivière speaks of is one who not only rises up for his own part but also paves the way for the many without a part, thus outlining the possibilities of constructing a collective “we” that aims to conquer a political space. From here the question arises: “Who, in our present, might the Pierre Rivières be?” A question that has nothing to do with the tragic facts of the parricide but which allows us to explore what Pierre Rivière enables us to think and say today. (shrink)

We propose a simple computational model that describes potential mechanisms underlying the organization and development of the lexical-semantic system in 18-month-old infants. We focus on two independent aspects: (i) on potential mechanisms underlying the development of taxonomic and associative priming, and (ii) on potential mechanisms underlying the effect of Inter Stimulus Interval on these priming effects. Our model explains taxonomic priming between words by semantic feature overlap, whereas associative priming between words is explained by Hebbian links between semantic representations derived (...) from co-occurrence relations between words (or their referents). From a developmental perspective, any delay in the emergence of taxonomic priming compared to associative priming during infancy seems paradoxical since feature overlap per se need not be learned. We address this paradox in the model by showing that feature overlap itself is an emergent process. The model successfully replicates infant data related to Inter Stimulus Interval effects in priming experiments and makes testable predictions. (shrink)

Although ontogeny cannot recapitulate phylogeny, a two-level model of the acquisition of language will be here proposed and its implication for the evolution of the faculty of language will be discussed. It is here proposed that the identification of the cognitive requirements of language during ontogeny could help us in the task of identifying the phylogenetic achievements that concurred, at some point, to the acquisition of language during phylogeny. In this model speaking will be considered as a complex ability that (...) arises in two different steps. The first step of competence widely relies on a bodily-based format of knowledge. The second step relies on more abstract meta-representations and implies high-level socio-cognitive skills. It is hypothesized that in order to reach the second level of language competence, symbolic communication and interaction with a cultural community are needed. Hence, the origins of species-specific human complex language and cognition are in both the brain and culture. Moreover, in this model, data from the embodied language research will be discussed in the light of a usage-based account of language. (shrink)

In, the author proposes a survey of Zalta’s Object Theory and, more specifically, of the Modal Axiom of Encoding. MAE claims that if something x possibly encodes a property F, then x necessarily encodes F. According to Bourgeois-Gironde, MAE fails to account for intentional phenomena which occur in conceivability-contexts. His solution is based on the notion of quasi-encoding: x quasi-encodes F iff x possibly encodes F. In this paper, I show that Bourgeois-Gironde’s concern is misguided and that Zalta’s framework captures (...) the conceivability-phenomena at issue by modeling Husserl’s notion of Noemata. I then argue that his solution is superior to Bourgeois-Gironde’s. The philosophical significance of such a discussion nonetheless goes well beyond the debate between these two authors. Indeed, Zalta’s theory of Noemata is only sketched and needs to be further explored to see, on the one hand, whether and how Object Theory successfully describes the behavior of objects in conceivability-contexts, and, on the other hand, to test the efficacy of its primitive notions that are – as the contemporary debate on Neomeinongianism largely shows – anything but uncontroversial. (shrink)