A central finding in experimental research identified with Embodied Cognition (EC) is that understanding actions involves their embodied simulation, i.e. executing some processes involved in performing these actions. Extending these findings, I argue that reenactment – the overt embodied simulation of actions and practices, including especially communicative actions and practices, within utterances – makes it possible to forge an integrated EC-based account of linguistic meaning. In particular, I argue: (a) that remote entities can be referred to by reenacting actions performed (...) with them; (b) that the use of grammatical constructions can be conceived of as the reenactment of linguistic action routines; (c) that complex enunciational structures (reported speech, irony, etc.) involve a separate level of reenactment, on which characters are presented as interacting with one another within the utterance; (d) that the segmentation of long utterances into shorter units involves the reenactment of brief audience interventions between units; and (e) that the overall meaning of an utterance can be stated in reenactment terms. The notion of reenactment provides a conceptual framework for accounting for aspects of language that are usually thought to be outside the reach of EC in an EC framework, thus supporting a view of meaning and linguistic content as thoroughly grounded in action and interaction. (shrink)

Conceptual congruency effects are biases induced by an irrelevant conceptual dimension of a task (e.g., location in vertical space) on the processing of another, relevant dimension (e.g., judging words’ emotional evaluation). Such effects are a central empirical pillar for recent views about how the mind/brain represents concepts. In the present paper, we show how attentional cueing (both exogenous and endogenous) to each conceptual dimension succeeds in modifying both the manifestation and the symmetry of the effect. The theoretical implications of this (...) finding are discussed. (shrink)

Metaphors in the new approach allow us to better understand ethics and bioethics due to their inherent capacities, such as highlighting and diversifying scripts from source domains. According to some, metaphors are not limited to conventional metaphors, not merely epistemological, but we need complex and unconventional metaphors for deep thinking and thoughtful cultural considerations. Stem cells, on the other hand, have extraordinary properties for the source domain in the unconventional and complex moral metaphor. Hence, the author has used the conceptual (...) metaphor of cell for ethics. The fundamental question of this quest is: What aspects of morality does the conceptual metaphor of cell in ethics highlight for us? The findings of this study are as follows: 1. The conceptual metaphor of cell for ethics, unlike most ethical metaphors that are simple and common metaphors and naturally have less power for ethics, is a powerful, unconventional and complex metaphor and can handle ethical analysis well; 2. The metaphor mentioned in ethics is formed by moral phenomena and recognizes the distinction between religion and mysticism; 3. In the light of the cellular metaphor of ethics, the difference between ethical performance in different moral situations and ethical agents is better explained; 4. This metaphor, unlike other metaphors, highlights the idiosyncrasy of ethics, not a feature or few ethical features. (shrink)

The paper investigates the epistemological and communicative competences the experts need to use and communicate evidence in the reasoning process leading to diagnosis. The diagnosis and diagnosis communication are presented as intertwined processes that should be jointly addressed in medical consultations, to empower patients’ compliance in illness management. The paper presents defeasible reasoning as specific to the diagnostic praxis, showing how this type of reasoning threatens effective diagnosis communication and entails that we should understand diagnostic evidence as defeasible as well. (...) It argues that metaphors might be effective communicative devices to let the patients understand the relevant defeasors in the diagnostic reasoning process, helping to improve effective diagnosis communication, and also encouraging a change in patients’ beliefs and attitudes on their own experience of illness and illness’ management. (shrink)

Section 1 discerns ambiguity in the word “truth”, observing that the term is used most naturally in reference to truth-bearers rather than truth-makers. Focusing on truths-as-truth-bearers, then, it would appear that alethic realism conflicts with metaphysical realism as naturalistically construed. Section 2 discerns ambiguity in the purporting of truth (as in assertion), conjecturing that all expressions, not just those found in traditionally recognized opaque contexts, can be read intensionally (as well, perhaps, as extensionally). For instance, we would not generally want (...) to say that “The Matterhorn is 4,500 m high” expresses the same truth as “The Matterhorn is 14763.7795276 feet high” (or that it is true in the same range of utterance contexts), even though the two are extensionally equivalent. The reason is that they express different intensions. (shrink)

Following the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, Japan passed laws that resulted in the dispatch of its Self-Defense Force to support military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This marked a major break from Japan's previous pacifist stance, which, as stated in Article 9 of the national constitution, did not allow for participation in war. This article examines editorials from four leading Japanese newspapers, Yomiuri, Asahi, Mainichi, and Sankei, to explore a connection between language usage in the (...) media and Japan's move towards militarism. More specifically, the analysis shows that the editorials employed a series of linguistic devices, including metaphors, a grammar of urgency, and the term ‘challenge’ to construct a strong sense of pressure on Japan to participate in the US-led military response, thereby leaving the Japanese public with little course to consider alternatives to military involvement. (shrink)

This article investigates the member units of sign systems used in contemporary Iranian advertising slogans according to the Organon Model introduced by Karl Bühler. In dealing with this subject, the writer introduces Bühler’s Organon Model and provides a short definition of the term advertising slogan. The next part of this article shows the three types of conative functions with regard to such slogans. The corpus of this study is the slogan of a hundred contemporary Iranian advertising messages used in Iranian (...) markets which have not been studied from a semiotic perspective. The result of this research shows the tendencies of Iranian advertising messages to lean towards the descriptive type of conative function. (shrink)

Researchers typically define animal signaling as morphology or behavior specialized for transmitting encoded information from a signaler to a perceiver. Although intuitively appealing, this conception is inherently metaphorical and leaves concepts of both information and encoding undefined. To justify relying on the information construct, theorists often appeal to Shannon and Weaver’s quantitative definition. The two approaches are, however, fundamentally at odds. The predominant definition of animal signaling is thus untenable, which has a number of undesirable consequences for both theory and (...) practice in the field. Theoretical problems include conceptual circularity and running afoul of fundamental evolutionary principles. Problems in empirical work include that research is often grounded in abstractions such as signal honesty and semanticity, and thereby distracted from more basic and concrete factors shaping communication. A revised definition is therefore proposed, making influence rather than transmission of encoded information the central function of animal signaling. This definition is conceptually sound, empirically testable, and inclusive, yet bounded. Implications are considered in both theoretical and empirical domains. (shrink)

There is a strong need of a reasoned defense of what was known as the “independence” position of the science–religion relationship but that more recently has been denigrated as the “accommodationist” position, namely that while there are parts of religion—fundamentalist Christianity in particular—that clash with modern science, the essential parts of religion do not and could not clash with science. A case for this position is made on the grounds of the essentially metaphorical nature of science. Modern science functions because (...) of its root metaphor of the machine: the world is seen in mechanical terms. As Thomas Kuhn insisted, metaphors function in part by ruling some questions outside their domain. In the case of modern science, four questions go unasked and hence unanswered: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the foundation of morality? What is mind and its relationship to matter? What is the meaning of it all? You can remain a nonreligious skeptic on these questions, but it is open for the Christian to offer his or her answers, so long as they are not scientific answers. Here then is a way that science and religion can coexist. (shrink)

Through autobiography, I explain why I cannot accept conventional Christianity or any other form of religious belief. I sketch how, through modern evolutionary theory, I try to find an alternative world‐picture, one which is, however, essentially agnostic about ultimate meanings. I characterize my position as being that of “David Hume brought up‐to‐date by Charles Darwin.” I express sad skepticism about ever realizing the hopes on which Zygon was founded.

This essay examines conceptual metaphors from Śaiva-Śākta traditions of Hindu tantra. It explores how conceptual metaphors associated with heterodox ritual exchanges between humans and fierce divinities were employed and used to transform other ideas to express a new kind of kinship or family that replaced or supplemented orthodox concepts. It then considers the combination or blending of these conceptual systems with other ideas about concentration and miniaturization. The resulting conceptual metaphors are then directly related to the way that tantric traditions (...) moved over time to semanticized, abstract, orthodox, and mystical expressions and concepts. There is a diverse body of scholarship that examines and interprets the historical traditions of Hindu tantra. This body of scholarship is seldom considered outside of conversations among area specialists. Some of this is due to the heterodox nature of some tantric practices, especially concepts or rituals that use sex or sexual symbolism. Tantric focus on these heterodox conceptual frameworks conflicts directly with purity-oriented conceptual systems of orthodox Hindu traditions. Through a kind of meta-analysis of some of these conceptual metaphors, this essay seeks to consider a kind of conceptual logic that makes their heterodox content more understandable and accessible to other areas of religious studies and philosophy. The study relies on certain insights drawn from metaphor theory to formulate the concepts it examines. (shrink)

This paper considers the epistemic role that embodiment plays in imagining. We focus on two aspects of embodied cognition understood in its strong sense: explicit motoric processes related to performance, and neuronal processes rooted in bodily and action processes, and describe their role in imagining. The paper argues that these two aspects of strongly embodied cognition can play distinctive and positive roles in constraining imagining, thereby complementing Amy Kind's argument for the epistemic relevance of imagination "under constraints" and Magdalena Balcerak (...) Jackson's argument for justification by imagination. (shrink)

Balance and common sense are commonplace concepts used to bring an audience to a place of shared understanding. These commonplaces also function as decision-making heuristics. I argue in this paper that the commonplaces ?balance? and ?common sense? are problematic because they suggest decision-making strategies that strip associated information of complexity and value. Through an examination of theory and responses to interviews conducted in relation to an ongoing project on environmental rhetoric, I problematize these concepts and consider how awareness of the (...) interaction of these commonplaces and heuristics can benefit rhetors and agencies seeking environmental change. (shrink)

Philosophy’s adversarial argumentation style is often noted as a factor contributing to the low numbers of women in philosophy. I argue that there is a level of adversariality peculiar to philosophy that merits specific feminist examination, yet doesn’t assume controversial gender differences claims. The dominance of the argument-as-war metaphor is not warranted, since this metaphor misconstrues the epistemic role of good argument as a tool of rational persuasion. This metaphor is entangled with the persisting narrative of embattled reason, which, in (...) turn, is linked to the sexism-informed narrative of the “man of reason” continually warding off or battling “feminine” unreason. (shrink)

Reason has regularly been portrayed and understood in terms of images and metaphors that involve the exclusion or denigration of some element-body, passion, nature, instinct-that is cast as "feminine." Drawing upon philosophical insight into metaphor, I examine the impact of this gendering of reason. I argue that our conceptions of mind, reason, unreason, female, and male have been distorted. The politics of "rational" discourse has been set up in ways that still subtly but powerfully inhibit the voice and agency of (...) women. (shrink)

This article argues that abstract knowledge in the form of formally developed theory plays an increasingly important role in the economy and in financial innovation in particular.knowledge is easily reified, and this is an aspect of knowledge work that is insufficiently researched. In this article, we problematize reification of abstract knowledge in financial innovation from wisdom, ethics, and social network analysis perspectives. This article, therefore, considers the composition and structures of financial innovation networks that help avoid reification by building ethicality (...) through social practice wisdom. Finally, we discuss future directions that empirical ethics research can take. (shrink)

It is a fact that novel metaphorical utterances appear in natural language argumentation. It seems, moreover, that these put forward metaphorical propositions that can have different roles (data, warrants or claims) in argument structure. There can even be good argumentation which is indispensably metaphorical. However, not all metaphor theories provide an explanation of metaphorical meaning compatible with these claims. In this article, we explain the three main views on metaphorical meaning and show, analysing some examples, their consequences for metaphorical argumentation. (...) Our analysis shows that only the cognitive view can explain that there are arguments which can only be generated using novel metaphors. (shrink)

As is well known, A. C. Haddon visited Torres Straits for the first time in the\nsummer of 1888 with the purpose of studying, as a marine biologist, the fauna\nand the structure and mode of formation of the coral reefs in Torres Straits. There\nbegan Haddon’s ’conversion’ from zoology to anthropology.’ It seems that\nHaddon felt an urgent need to collect ethnographic information on the islanders\nbecause he saw they were changing and diminishing in number very quickly, and\ntherefore their customs were vanishing.\nVery soon after (...) my arrival in the Straits I found that the natives of the\nislands had of late years been greatly reduced in number, and that, with the\nexception of but one or two individuals, none of the white residents knew\nanything about the customs of the natives, and not a single person cared\nabout them personally. When I began to question the natives I discovered\nthat the young men had a very imperfect acquaintance with the old habits\nand beliefs, and that only from the older men was reliable information to be\nobtained. So it was made clear to me that if I neglected to avail myself of the\npresent opportunity of collecting information on the ethnography of the\nislanders, it was extremely probable that that knowledge would never be\ngleaned - for if no one interested himself in the matter meanwhile, it was\nalmost certain that no trustworthy information could be collected in, say, ten years’ time. This being my opinion, I felt it my duty to fill up all the\ntime not actually employed in my zoological researches in anthropological\nstudies. (shrink)

The distinction between bottom-up and top-down control of action has been central in cognitive psychology, and, subsequently, in functional neuroimaging. While the model has proven successful in describing central mechanisms in cognitive experiments, it has serious shortcomings in explaining how top-down control is established. In particular, questions as to what is at the top in top-down control lead us to a controlling homunculus located in a mythical brain region with outputs and no inputs. Based on a discussion of recent brain (...) imaging experiments, we argue for the need to factor the interaction between the experimenter and the experimental participant into a realistic understanding of top-down control. We suggest these interactions involve a ‘sharing of scripts’ for perception and action that may be described as ‘top-top processes.’ We thereby expand the understanding of the homunculus to include elements of social cognition. This conceptual reconfiguration may grant some sort of asylum for a—not very omnipotent—homunculus. (shrink)

If educators presuppose that brain and mind are synonymous, perhaps it is out of necessity. Such an equivalency might be required in order for mind to be accessible, knowable and a ‘thing’ like the brain is. Such a presupposition, that mind is a thing which we can understand nonetheless rests on an insecure foundation. As suggested by philosopher John Searle in the opening quotation, this might explain the historical and present day interest in metaphors of mind, where comparisons to unlike (...) things are used to help philosophers, psychologists, and educators more securely understand how mind really ‘works.’ Educators have an enormous investment in explicating how mind works, as they are required to observe and measure what is going on in the minds of students. In practice, mind has to be a thing for how does one reasonably talk about accomplishing such requirements if mind is merely some philosophical abstraction? This article will explore two metaphors of mind suggesting that embedded within each are presuppositions of epistemological and pedagogical significance. (shrink)

Changing images of work in discourse both portray and co-constitute the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial economy. Specifically, work metaphors appear in extra-scientific and intra-scientific discourse on workers and work structures in the natural and social world. An analysis of the entomological discourse from the late nineteenth century to the present shows changes in these metaphors that overlap with the discourse of change in human work and organizational structures. For instance, the metaphor of a busy bee within an (...) efficient hive had traditionally evoked a comparison to the modern industrial workplace. The discourse on the hive currently more closely resembles a postindustrial conception of work. Discourse analysis can illustrate the role of language in co-constructing shared changes in image of work. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 220 Seiten: 123-153.

Aspects of phronetic social science and phronetic organization research have been much debated over the recent years. So far, the visual aspects of communicating phronesis have gained little attention. Still organizations try to convey a desirable image of respectability and success, both internally and externally to the public. A channel for such information is corporate reporting, and particularly CSR reporting embrace values like fairness, goodness, and sustainability. This study explores how visual portrayals of supposedly wise and discerning values (phronesis) are (...) used to reinforce the verbal features of CSR reporting. The two propositions underlying this study is (1) that visual images form some of the major parts of the structures of contemporary corporate reporting (particularly CSR reporting) and (2) that phronetic action in organizations is subjected not only to textual documentation, but also to visual expressions. This study also discusses how the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can be linked to contemporary concerns about responsibility, and how this is visually represented in CSR reporting. Finally, this study addresses the symbolic and contextual signification of images in corporate accounts of wisdom and responsibility. (shrink)

This article seeks to provide a theoretical exploration of Prandi's model of conceptual conflicts in metaphors (2017) and to highlight the advantages such model presents in its applications to translation and the text analysis preceding and preparing translation. Such advantages are mainly identified in the model aptness to meet the pragmatic requirements of translation, seen as a practice-based, goal-oriented and context-driven activity. These advantages also distinctly emerge from a comparison with the main tenets of the cognitive tradition. The theoretical basis (...) for an understanding of conceptual conflict and its applications to translation are illustrated through the analysis of three brief excerpts from literary texts in English and their Italian translation. (shrink)

We agree with Müller's epigenetic view of evolution and ontogeny and applaud his multilevel perspective. With him, we stress the importance in ontogeny of progressive specialisation rather than prewired structures. However, we argue that he slips from “speech” to “language” and that, in seeking homologies, these two levels need to be kept separate in the analysis of evolution and ontogeny.

Examining Metaphors in Biopolitical Discourse This essay argues that common metaphors and metaphoric phrases used in biopolitical discourse limit how meanings are constructed by framing messages narrowly: so much so, that alternate readings are delimited, resulting in less opportunity for cognitive scrutiny of such messages. We moor our discussion of metaphors in cognitive linguistics, building on three decades of research by scholars including Sam Glucksberg, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and Ray Gibbs, Jr., demonstrating how research in framing effects bolsters (...) our claims of limited entailments resulting from message construction. By situating our discussion of framing in biopolitics we make a case that metaphors including Frankenfood, designer baby, vegetative state and death tax address how life and death are "managed" in discourse. In this essay we demonstrate ways in which the framing of some metaphors in social discourse slip under readers' and viewers' cognitive radars, and thus become "under-the-radar metaphors.". (shrink)

The emerging field of synthetic biology aims to engineer novel biological entities. The envisioned future bio-based economy builds largely on “cell factories”: organisms that have been metabolically engineered to sustainably produce substances for human ends. In this paper, we argue that synthetic biology’s goal of creating efficient production vessels for industrial applications implies a set of ontological assumptions according to which living organisms are machines. Traditionally, a machine is understood as a technological, isolated and controllable production unit consisting of parts. (...) But modified organisms, or hybrids, require us to think beyond the machine paradigm and its associated dichotomies between artificial and natural, organisms and artefacts. We ask: How may we conceptualise hybrids beyond limiting ontological categories? Our main claim is that the hybrids created by synthetic biology should be considered not as machines but as metabolic systems. We shall show how the philosophical account of metabolism can inform an ontology of hybrids that moves beyond what we call the “machine ontology”, considering that metabolism enables thinking beyond the dominant dichotomies and allows us to understand and design lifeforms in a bio-based economy. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, to develop the philosophical ontology of hybrids, and second, to move synthetic biology beyond the problematically limiting view of hybrids. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the affinities between current theories of North American Indigenous trickster narratives and continental philosophy where they are both concerned with the question of responsibility in subject formations. Taking up the work of Judith Butler, Franz Kafka and Gerald Vizenor, the author works to show how both continental and Indigenous intellectual traditions work against any assumed stability for the ‘I’ in the narration of the self, yet toward responsible relationality. Such affinities, however, emerge from differing socio‐cultural (...) and linguistic horizons that are not reducible one to the other. This is particularly so with regard to the natural world and the ways in which Indigenous narratives are developed to foster responsible subjects to a larger biotic environment. Through discussion of such affinities and differences, the author seeks to broaden and multiculturalize contemporary debates in philosophy. (shrink)

This article is interdisciplinary in its claims. Evolving around the ecological concept of affordance, it brings together pragmatics and ecological psychology. Starting from the theoretical writings of Peirce, Dewey and James, the biosemiotic claims of von Uexküll, Gibson’s ecological approach to perception and some empirical evidence from recent neurobiological research, it elaborates on the concepts of experiential and enactive cognition as applied to music. In order to provide an operational description of this approach, it introduces some conceptual tools from the (...) domain of cybernetics with a major focus on the concept of circularity, which links perception to action in a continuous process of sense-making and interaction with the environment. As such, it is closely related to some pragmatic, biosemiotic and ecosemiotic claims which can be subsumed under the general notion of functional significance. An attempt is made to apply this conceptual framework to the process of musical sense-making which involves the realisation of systemic cognition in the context of epistemic interactions that are grounded in our biology and possibilities for adaptive control. Central in this approach is the concept of coping with the environment, or, in musical terms, to perceive the sounding music in terms of what it affords for the consummation of musical behaviour. (shrink)

In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article "Studies in the Logic of Explanation"([1948], 1970) Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse's approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse's approach to scientific explanation formulated in the (...) 1960s and argues that rereading Hesse's account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen's. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine. (shrink)

The present paper proposes a definition for the complex polysemic concepts of consciousness and awareness (in humans as well as in other species), and puts forward the idea of a progressive ontological development of consciousness from a state of ‘childhood’ awareness, in order to explain that humans are not only able to manipulate objects, but also their mental representations. The paper builds on the idea of qualia intended as entities posing regular invariant requests to neural processes, trough the permanence of (...) different properties. The concept of semantic differential introduces the properties of metaphorical qualia as an exclusively human ability. Furthermore this paper proposes a classification of qualia, according to the models–with different levels of abstraction–they are implied in, in a taxonomic perspective. This, in turn, becomes a source of categorization of divergent representations, sign systems, and forms of intentionality, relying always on biological criteria. New emerging image-of-the-world-devices are proposed, whose qualia are likely to be only accessible to humans: emotional qualia, where emotion accounts for the invariant and dominant property; and the qualic self where continuity, combined with the oneness of the self, accounts for the invariant and dominant property. The concept of congruence between different domains in a metaphor introduces the possibility of a general evaluation of truth and falsity of all kinds of metaphorical constructs, while the work of Matte Blanco enables us to classify conscious versus unconscious metaphors, both in individuals and in social organizations. (shrink)

This paper uses examples of conversational understandings, misunderstandings and non-understandings to explore the role of prototypes and schemata in conversational understanding. An investigation of the procedures by which we make sense of lexical items in utterances by fitting prototypes into schemata is followed by an examination of how schemata are instantiated across conversational sequences by means of topics. In interaction, conflicts over meaning illuminate the decisive role of social and cultural factors in understanding. Overall, understanding is seen to be critically (...) dependent on principles of categorisation and contrast, which form the basis of both cognitive and sociocultural means of organisation. (shrink)

Extending work of Wittgenstein, Lakoff and Johnson I suggest that it is the metaphors we rely on in order to conceptualise time that provide an illusory space for time-travel-talk. For example, in the “Moving Time” spatialisation of time, “objects” move past the agent from the future to the past. The objects all move in the same direction – this is mapped to time always moving in the same direction. But then it is easy to imagine suspending this rule, and asking (...) why the objects should not start moving in the opposite direction. This is one way of generating the idea of time-travel “back” into the past. Time-travel-talk essentially involves the unaware projection of fragments of our time-talk – taken from powerful conceptual metaphors – onto the nature of reality itself. Understanding this dissolves away the charm and attractions of such talk. (shrink)

The goal of forming a science of intentional behavior requires a more richly detailed account of symbolic systems than is assumed by the authors. Cultural systems are not simply the equivalent in the ideational domain of culture of the purported Baldwin Effect in the genetic domain. © 2014 Cambridge University Press.

This study applies evolution theory to visual ethics and argues that social comparison theory favored by scholars of eating disorders is actually a Darwinian maladaptation to the media's widespread digital manipulation of women's bodies creating the thin ideal. An evolutionary perspective suggests how the media is enmeshed and why social comparison of the mediated ?mono-body? will continue. This study has three sections: 1) evolution theory and morality; 2) social comparison, biology of the social gaze, and anthropological evidence of Western media's (...) role in the global rise of eating disorders; and 3) rethinking visual ethics to expand Newton's (2001) mass interpersonal relationship. (shrink)

Many in the international development community have embraced the randomized controlled field experiment, akin to a biomedical clinical trial for social interventions, as the new “gold evidential standard” in program impact evaluation. In response, critics have called upon the method’s advocates to consider the moral dimensions of randomization, leading to a debate about the method’s ethics. My research intervenes in this debate by empirically investigating how researchers manage the perception of randomization in the field. Without the possibility of a placebo, (...) researchers rhetorically and materially frame the experiment differently for the control and treatment groups. Three technologies allow for this differential framing: geographic separation, temporal delay, and public randomization ceremonies. Geographic separation is a “technology of opacity” designed to obscure unequal resource distribution by disentangling the intervention and research components of the experiment for the control group. The latter two are technologies of transparency designed to expose the element of randomization but downplay conditions that may affect participant buy in. All three technologies work to preclude collective definitions of fair resource allocation, yet they are not fully successful in preventing modes of confrontation and resistance that lie outside of the experiment’s framing. (shrink)

Whether it pertains to what is not considered, what cannot be determined, what is not allowed to be known, or what is deliberately concealed, absences figure as the constant shadows of what is made present by social research. This article explores the relation between what is presented and what is not by treating it first as a vexing conundrum for representation and then as a vehicle for understanding. The matters under examination include what is written about the social world as (...) well as the methods of writing employed. This article seeks an orientation toward both aspects that attends to the binds, contradictions, and possibilities of depicting what is missing. That involves addressing how authors labor to render absences present, the criteria for assessment, as well as the metaphors that guide activities. (shrink)

: The semantic fields and root metaphors of "fate" in Classical Greece and pre-Buddhist China are surveyed here. The Chinese material focuses on the Warring States, the Han, and the reinvention of the earlier lexicon in contemporary Chinese terms for such concepts as risk, randomness, and (statistical) chance. The Greek study focuses on Homer, Parmenides, the problem of fate and necessity, Platonic daimons, and the "On Fate" topos in Hellenistic Greece. The study ends with a brief comparative metaphorology of metaphors (...) for the action of fate including command, division or allotment, and wheel or cycles of change. (shrink)

A response to a recent critique by Cem Bozşahin of the theory of syntactic semantics as it applies to Helen Keller, and some applications of the theory to the philosophy of computer science.

Empirical studies indicate that analogy consists of two main processes: retrieval and mapping. While current theories and models of analogy have revealed much about the mainly structural constraints that govern the mapping process, the similarities that underpin the correspondences between individual representational elements and drive retrieval are understood in less detail. In existing models symbol similarities are externally defined but neither empirically grounded nor theoretically justified. This paper introduces a new model (EMMA: the environmental model of analogy) which relies on (...) co‐occurrence information provided by LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis; Landauer & Dumais, 1997) to ground the relations between the symbolic elements aligned in analogy. LSA calculates a contextual distribution for each word encountered in a corpus by counting the frequency with which it co‐occurs with other words. This information is used to define a model that locates each word encountered in a high‐dimensional space, with relations between elements in this space representing contextual similarities between words. A series of simulation experiments demonstrate that the environmental approach to semantics embodied in LSA can produce appropriate patterns of analogical retrieval, but that this semantic measure is not sufficient to model analogical mapping. The implications of these findings, both for theories of representation in analogy research and more general theories of semantics in cognition, are explored. (shrink)