Formal semantics is the study of linguistic meaning using precise mathematical characterizations; this chapter introduces formal semantics to scholars and students of natural-language processing. We give simple logical representations of English sentences, and show how meanings are composed in a grammar. We then consider two more advanced issues that arise in processing texts, anaphora and temporality, using Discourse Representation Theory. Finally we discuss the relationship between deep logic-based methods for semantic analysis and shallower distributional methods that have been used in (...) much recent NLP work, introducing some limitations of distributional methods, and hence motivating deeper or hybrid approaches. (shrink)

Most work in the epistemology of testimony is built upon a simple model of communication according to which, when the speaker asserts that p, the hearer must recover this very content, p. In this paper, I argue that this ‘Content Preservation Model’ of communication cannot bear the weight placed on it by contemporary work on testimony. It is popularly thought that testimonial exchanges are often successful such that we gain a great deal of knowledge through testimony. In addition, the testimonial (...) knowledge so gained is thought to be informative: it closes off epistemic possibilities for the agent. However, in the literature on truth-conditional content, there is no theory of content that can underpin both of these commitments simultaneously if the Content Preservation Model is true. There is a minimal notion of content, which is commonly preserved in communication, but which is typically uninformative; there is a maximal notion of content, which is often informative, but which is not often preserved in communication; and, although there are moderate positions between these two extremes, these views cannot strike the right balance between informativeness and shareability. Thus, an epistemology of testimony that endorses the Content Preservation Model faces a dilemma: on the first horn, testimonial exchanges are rarely successful; on the second horn, testimonial content is rarely informative. I suggest that this dilemma motivates further exploration of alternative communicative foundations for the epistemology of testimony. (shrink)

Many ameliorative projects aim at moral goods such as social equality. For example, the amelioration of the concept MARRIAGE forms part of efforts to achieve equal rights for the LGBT+ community. What does implementation of such an ameliorated concept consist in? In this paper, I argue that, for some ameliorated concepts, successful implementation requires that individuals eschew semantic deference, at least with respect to relevant dimensions of the concept. My argument appeals to consideration of the aims of conceptual engineers engaged (...) in this type of ameliorative project: they seek conceptual change in order to contribute to the dismantling of oppressive social structures, institutions, and systems of belief. I argue that, for such aims to be achieved, it must be the case that individuals who come to endorse the concept do so for the right reasons---because they have gained an understanding of why the ameliorated concept is morally preferable to its ancestor. Once they have acquired such reasons, however, they are no longer correctly described as semantically deferential; they will treat moral reasons to employ the concept as overriding of semantic considerations. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that content preservation is required for success in testimonial exchanges. Many content internalists, however, cannot endorse this assumption. They must claim instead that testimonial exchanges can often succeed when the content grasped by the hearer is not the content of the speaker’s testimony, p, but some merely similar content, p*. Goldberg (2007. Anti-Individualism: Mind and Language, Knowledge and Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) argues that this internalist approach is epistemically problematic: it cannot maintain certain features thought (...) to be characteristic of testimonial exchanges. I argue that, contrary to appearances, the internalist’s account is just as epistemically respectable as the traditional ‘same content’ approach favoured by externalists. (shrink)

In clinical medicine, the prevailing ethical and legal frameworks give primacy to individual autonomy and patient confidentiality. Genetic information is typically treated as belonging to the indiv...

Traditional accounts of disagreement require that different subjects can entertain the same propositional contents. For most views of mental content, this ‘shared content’ approach seems an obvious choice. However, for the radical holist, this framework is problematic: the holist claims that different subjects cannot, in practice, share thoughts. This paper has two aims. The first is to suggest an account of agreement and disagreement for the holist, which treats both agreement and disagreement as graded notions. The second aim is to (...) show that the structure of this account should be attractive to all philosophers who work on disagreement, regardless of their metasemantic commitments. I argue that there is an important variety of disagreement (and agreement) between subjects that cannot be adequately characterized by appeal to shared content. Instead, all parties to the debate should endorse accounts of these phenomena that appeal to a holistic notion of linguistic and conceptual understanding. (shrink)

Cappelen proposes a radically externalist framework for conceptual engineering. This approach embraces the following two theses. Firstly, the mechanisms that underlie conceptual engineering are inscrutable: they are too complex, unstable and non-systematic for us to grasp. Secondly, the process of conceptual engineering is largely beyond our control. One might think that these two theses are peculiar to the Austerity Framework, or to metasemantic externalism more generally. However, Cappelen argues that there is no reason to think that internalism avoids either commitment. (...) Cappelen argues that to do so she must provide arguments for 3 claims: there are inner states that are scrutable and within our control; concepts supervene on these inner states; and the determination relation from supervenience base to content is itself scrutable and within our control. In this paper, I argue that internalist conceptual role theories of content can meet Cappelen’s challenge. (shrink)

Social externalism must allow that subjects can misunderstand the content of their own thoughts. I argue that we can exploit this commitment to create a dilemma for the view’s account of communication. To arrive at the first horn of the dilemma, I argue that, on social externalism, it is understanding which is the measure of communicative success. This would be a highly revisionary account of communication. The only way that the social externalist can salvage the claim that mental content is (...) central to explaining communicative success is by adopting an account which gives unacceptable diagnoses as to the success of communicative exchanges. This is the second horn of the dilemma. Contrastingly, certain internalist views of content, which deny that subjects share thought content, do not face the dilemma. I argue that, as such, we should prefer accounts of communication which deny that subjects speak the same language. (shrink)

How much linguistic understanding is required for testimonial knowledge acquisition? One answer is that, so long as we grasp the content expressed by the speaker, it does not matter if our understanding of it is poor. Call this the ‘Liberal View’ of testimony. This approach looks especially promising when combined with the thesis that we share a public language that makes it easy to grasp the right content. In this paper, I argue that this picture is epistemically problematic. Poor linguistic (...) understanding undermines our ability to recognise evidence and counterevidence for the testimonial content. Because of this, in many cases in which a hearer’s understanding is poor, her resultant testimonial belief will lack sufficient warrant to qualify as knowledge. Given that we often do not possess a sufficiently good understanding of the testimony we consume, I argue that we acquire far less knowledge through testimony than the Liberal View suggests. (shrink)

Holistic views of content claim that we each speak and think in distinct and idiosyncratic idiolects: although we may often entertain thoughts with similar contents, the content of our thoughts can...

Recent work in social epistemology has drawn attention to various problematic social epistemic phenomena that are common within online networks. Nguyen (2020) argues that it is important to distinguish epistemic bubbles from echo chambers. An epistemic bubble is an information structure that merely lacks information or sources that would be relevant or important to the user. An echo chamber is a structure in which dissenting opinions are, not necessarily absent, but actively undermined, for example by instilling attitudes of distrust towards (...) their adherents. Because of this, echo chambers are thought to be especially difficult to escape. In contrast, according to Nguyen, it is relatively easy to shatter an epistemic bubble: one simply introduces the missing information. In this paper, I argue that it is more difficult to shatter an epistemic bubble than has been recognised in the literature. The reason for this is the relationship between epistemic bubbles and interpretative resources. Despite their epistemic drawbacks, it is comparatively easy to gain knowledge from sources inside one's epistemic bubble because agents within a bubble share common ground. In contrast, it can be very difficult to gain knowledge from sources outside of one's bubble because interlocutors on the outside are less likely to have the shared context needed to facilitate communicative success. I argue that this problem suggests a different way to understand the nature of epistemic bubbles and our prospects for escaping them. (shrink)

Volume 26, Issue 5, May 2026, Page 30-33.

Traditional accounts of the conditions on communicative success are invariantist. For example, some authors claim that, for communication to succeed, a hearer must always grasp the very content that the speaker expressed with her utterance; others claim that success is always proportional to the degree to which the hearer understands this content. In this paper, I argue that these invariantist approaches cannot offer a comprehensive account of communicative success. When we attempt to communicate, it is usually with the intention to (...) secure some perlocutionary effect beyond the communicative exchange itself (for example, to get our interlocutor to pass the salt, or to convince her to form a particular belief). I argue that, relative to these intentions, it may not matter whether a hearer perfectly understands the speaker; it may not even matter if the hearer’s understanding is quite poor overall. In place of invariantist conditions (or perhaps, in addition), I propose an approach that is context-dependent in the following sense: holding fixed the content expressed by the speaker, differences in features of the broad context of the speech exchange can determine differences in the standards for communicative success. On this approach, success requires that the hearer understand the content expressed by the speaker in ways that are relevant to the speaker’s perlocutionary intentions. (shrink)

The first book of its kind that elucidates Sun Tzus Art of War in detail. All thirteen chapters of the original classic have been meticulously transliterated line by line, without losing the accuracy of its original meaning. Modern day business commentaries based on Joey Yaps personal experiences in business as a successful entrepreneur are also included, taking into account the perspective of Qi Men Dun Jia application in todays context. This book is intended to advance practitioners to a higher (...) level of understanding on the Art of War, and transform the knowledge into a Tool of War in business and in life. (shrink)

Theory in sociology is constructed as a canon, a very short list of social theorists who have been endowed with suprahistorical status. Drawing on the feminist analysis of gendered consciousness, the author argues that social theory is organized exactly as it should be if one were thinking like a White male capitalist. The perceptual frameworks it employs—a hierarchy of the social, logical dichotomies, decontextualized abstraction, an individualist approach—resonate well with descriptions of hegemonic masculine consciousness. As a result, social theory has (...) not just distorted social perception, it is becoming functionally irrelevant in contemporary social life. The author argues that reasonable understandings are more likely if we are developing via an epistemology of connection, moving from thinking of theory as a holy text to organizing theory to create bridges between diverse standpoints, across disciplinary boundaries, and between knowing and doing. (shrink)

Whether pitch in language and music is governed by domain-specific or domain-general cognitive mechanisms is contentiously debated. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether mechanisms governing pitch contour perception operate differently when pitch information is interpreted as either speech or music. By modulating listening mode, this study aspired to demonstrate that pitch contour perception relies on domain-specific cognitive mechanisms, which are regulated by top-down influences from language and music. Three groups of participants (Mandarin speakers, Dutch speaking non-musicians, (...) and Dutch musicians) were exposed to identical pitch contours, and tested on their ability to identify these contours in a language and musical context. Stimuli consisted of disyllabic words spoken in Mandarin, and melodic tonal analogues, embedded in a linguistic and melodic carrier phrase, respectively. Participants classified identical pitch contours as significantly different depending on listening mode. Top-down influences from language appeared to alter the perception of pitch contour in speakers of Mandarin. This was not the case for non-musician speakers of Dutch. Moreover, this effect was lacking in Dutch speaking musicians. The classification patterns of pitch contours in language and music seem to suggest that domain-specific categorization is modulated by top-down influences from language and music. (shrink)

It is widely believed that gendered expectations are communicated to children in the process of socialization. However, there is reason to ask whether and how gender is constructed in Black families. An early perspective that still continues to inform some contemporary research is assimilationism, which assumes that Black people embrace and pass on to their children the gender norms of the dominant white society. The Afrocentric perspective challenges this view, maintaining that the unique historical experiences of Blacks have militated against (...) an emphasis on rigid gender distinctions, and that relative gender neutrality exists in Black families' child-rearing practices. The development of multicultural feminist theory, which argues that the impact of race on gender varies by social class, implies that both assimilationism and Afrocentrism may be overgeneralizations. Yet, little systematic research has been done on whether race makes a difference in how parents view gender. The authors use data from surveys completed by a nonrandom sample of parents in 202 African American and 204 white families in two large metropolitan school districts to examine the impact of gender, race, and class on parents' self-reports of their immediate priorities and long-term goals for their children, their view of the parenting role, and their discipline strategies. The findings are consistent with multicultural feminist theory: Race and social class interact to shape the intergenerational construction of gender in families. (shrink)

From early in childhood, humans exhibit sophisticated intuitions about how to share knowledge efficiently in simple controlled studies. Yet, untrained adults often fail to teach effectively in real‐world situations. Here, we explored what causes adults to struggle in informal pedagogical exchanges. In Experiment 1, we first showed evidence of this effect, finding that adult participants failed to communicate their knowledge to naïve learners in a simple teaching task, despite reporting high confidence that they taught effectively. Using a computational model of (...) rational teaching, we found that adults assigned to our teaching condition provided highly informative examples but failed to teach effectively because their examples were tailored to learners who were only considering a small set of possible explanations. In Experiment 2, we then found experimental evidence for this possibility, showing that knowledgeable participants systematically misunderstand the beliefs of naïve participants. Specifically, knowledgeable participants assumed naïve agents would primarily consider hypotheses close to the correct one. Finally, in Experiment 3, we aligned learners’ beliefs to knowledgeable agents’ expectations and showed learners the same examples selected by participants assigned to teach in Experiment 1. We found that these same examples were significantly more informative once learners’ hypothesis spaces were constrained to match teachers’ expectations. Our findings show that, in informal settings, adult pedagogical failures result from an inaccurate representation of what naïve learners believe is plausible and not an inability to select informative data in a rational way. (shrink)

The OpenNotes (ON) mandate in the 21st Century Cures Act requires that patients or their legally authorized representatives be able to access their medical information in their electronic medical record (EMR) in real time. Ethics notes fall under the domain of this policy. We argue that ethics notes are unique from other clinical documentation in a number of ways: they lack best-practice guidelines, are written in the context of common misconceptions surrounding the purpose of ethics consultation, and often answer questions (...) of a different nature than other documentation. Thus, we believe the clinical ethics community would benefit from clarification on when the withholding of ethics notes is justified. We provide recommendations for excluding information from ethics documentation based on the likelihood and magnitude of harm that may occur with particular disclosures and suggest approaches to decrease the potential harms that may occur. We define and explain six types of reasons to exclude information from ethics notes based on significant harms that are not addressed in the ON policy: (1) harmful revelations from a protected chart note; (2) negative emotional effects on patients or families; (3) the purpose of the consultation is undermined by harmful consequences; (4) avoidable negative impact on interpersonal dynamics; (5) inappropriate labeling or disclosure of medical, social, or financial information; and (6) inclusion of biasing or otherwise unfair information. We also suggest approaches to mitigate harm when excluding, including, reframing, or delaying release of information that is perceived to be relevant to an ethics case. Overall, we hope our analysis and recommendations will initiate a much-needed discussion about the impact of the ON mandate on clinical ethics documentation. (shrink)

The spreading of reputational information about group members through gossip represents a widespread, efficient, and low-cost form of punishment. Research shows that negative arousal states motivate individuals to gossip about the transgressions of group members. By sharing information in this way groups are better able to promote cooperation and maintain social control and order.

Although pride has been central to philosophical and religious discussions of emotion for thousands of years, it has largely been neglected by psychologists. However, in the past decade a growing body of psychological research on pride has emerged; new theory and findings suggest that pride is a psychologically important and evolutionarily adaptive emotion. In this article we review this accumulated body of research and argue for a naturalist account of pride, which presumes that pride emerged by way of natural selection. (...) In this view, pride is prevalent in human life because of the functional and adaptive role it has played in the attainment, maintenance, and communication of social status throughout our evolutionary history. (shrink)

Reflecting the dangers of irresponsible science and technology, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein quickly became a mythic story that still feels fresh and relevant in the twenty-first century. The unique framework of the Frankenstein myth has permeated the public discourse about science and knowledge, creating various misconceptions around and negative expectations for scientists and for scientific enterprises more generally. Using the Frankenstein myth as an imaginative tool, we interviewed twelve scientists to explore how this science narrative shapes their views and perceptions of (...) science. Our results yielded two main conclusions. First, the Frankenstein myth may help scientists identify popular concerns about their work and offer a framework for constructing a more positive narrative. Second, finding optimistic science narratives may allow scientists to build a better relationship with the public. We argue that by showing the ethical principles and social dimensions of their work, scientists could replace a negative Frankenstein narrative with a more optimistic one. (shrink)

As one of the best known science narratives about the consequences of creating life, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an enduring tale that people know and understand with an almost instinctive familiarity. It has become a myth reflecting people’s ambivalent feelings about emerging science: they are curious about science, but they are also afraid of what science can do to them. In this essay, we argue that the Frankenstein myth has evolved into a stigma attached to scientists (...) that focalizes the public’s as well as the scientific community’s negative reactions towards certain sciences and scientific practices. This stigma produces ambivalent reactions towards scientific artifacts and it leads to negative connotations because it implies that some sciences are dangerous and harmful. We argue that understanding the Frankenstein stigma can empower scientists by helping them revisit their own biases as well as responding effectively to people’s expectations for, and attitudes towards, scientists and scientific artifacts. Debunking the Frankenstein stigma could also allow scientists to reshape their professional identities so they can better show the public what ethical and moral values guide their research enterprises. (shrink)

This article explores Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as an “object of care” for use in examining the relationship between creativity and responsibility in the sciences and beyond. Through three short sketches from different disciplinary lenses—literature, science and technology studies, and feminist studies—readers get a sense of the different ways scholars might consider Shelley’s text as an object of care. Through an analysis and synthesis of these three sketches, the authors illustrate the value of such an object in thinking about broad cultural (...) issues. The article acts as a kind of boundary object by creating distinct, yet overlapping narratives from an object that is owned by many social worlds. The three sketches reveal Frankenstein as a thoughtful consideration about what it means to care for, or fail to care for, one’s creation, rather than as a cautionary tale about the evils of scientific hubris. Although infrastructures at universities often prevent interdisciplinary dialogue, the article concludes that purposeful boundary objects created around objects of care like Frankenstein can help build bridges and create shared meanings for new interdisciplinary spaces. (shrink)

Since its first publication in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has transcended genres and cultures to become a foundational myth about science and technology across a multitude of media forms and adaptations. Following in the footsteps of the brilliant yet troubled Victor Frankenstein, professionals and practitioners have been debating the scientific ethics of creating life for decades, never before have powerful tools for doing so been so widely available. This paper investigates how engaging with the Frankenstein myth (...) may help scientists gain a more accurate understanding of their own beliefs and opinions about the social and ethical aspects of their profession and their work. The paper presents findings from phenomenological interviews with twelve scientists working on biotechnology, robotics, or artificial intelligence projects. The results suggest that the Frankenstein myth, and the figure of Victor Frankenstein in particular, establishes norms for scientists about what is considered unethical and dangerous in scientific work. The Frankenstein myth both serves as a social and ethical reference for scientists and a mediator between scientists and the society. Grappling with the cultural ubiquity of the Frankenstein myth prepares scientists to face their ethical dilemmas and create a more transparent research agenda. Meanwhile, by focusing on the differences between real scientists and the imaginary figure of Victor Frankenstein, scientists may avoid being labeled as dangerous individuals, and could better conceptualize the potential societal and ethical perceptions and implications of their research. (shrink)

Williams and DeSteno (2010) and Gladkova (2010) question the validity, utility, and theoretical support for the bifurcation of pride into hubristic and authentic facets. Though these commentators highlight unanswered questions and important directions for future research, we argue that the broad, evolutionarily informed framework for the two facets, presented in our target article nonetheless provides the best fit and explanation for the existing pattern of evidence. We offer several empirical suggestions for future studies addressing the questions raised by the commentators, (...) and emphasize the need for emotion researchers to hew closely to empirical data in developing theoretical accounts. (shrink)

In Clark’s thoughtful analysis of the evolution of the two facets of pride, he suggests that the concurrent existence of hubristic and authentic pride in humans represents a “persistence problem,” wherein the vestigial trait (hubristic pride) continues to exist alongside the derived trait (authentic pride). In our view, evidence for the two facets does not pose a persistence problem; rather, hubristic and authentic pride both likely evolved as higher-order cognitive emotions that solve uniquely human—but distinct— evolutionary problems. Instead of being (...) conceptualized as serial homologues, with one the vestigial form of the other, we argue that hubristic and authentic pride are both derived homologues of a vestigial proto-pride emotion that existed in our shared ancestry with other primates. (shrink)

We occupy a fascinating moment in time when the trajectory of technological development is throwing into doubt the certainty of understandings of the boundary between the human and the technological. Perhaps one of the key contributions that industrial designers have made to humankind has been the way in which they have made the extraordinary potentiality of technology seem utterly ordinary: they call it the humanisation of technology (ICSID 2008). Designers, however, seem to be in something of an intellectual spin; they (...) have done little to mollify the projection of these times as extraordinary and without precedent in the trajectory of the human species. Rather than adding to the many who call for discontinuity, a speculative design scenario is presented taking impetus from the opportunity for designers to reconsider the essential principles that underpin their intellectual community. The scenarios explore how it will be necessary to find a means to analyse the human and the technological without seeking closure through outmoded forms of material and representational analysis. If designers can reveal borders and epistemic heterogeneity to be matters of conceptual and rhetorical convenience, then they might act upon a strategy that understands materiality to be tied to a new form of intellectual complexity in keeping with these times. In that way, it will become possible again for industrial designers to lead the discussion of humanity and technology in a single and productive conversation. (shrink)

En 1959, la revue Scientific American publie l’une des premières études consacrées à des œuvres d’art réalisées par une personne explicitement décrite comme « autiste » : un dénommé Joey[1]. L’auteur de cette étude de cas, Bruno Bettelheim, s’est avéré par la suite être un charlatan, sa pratique a été discréditée et aujourd’hui, ses méthodes sont généralement – et à juste titre – considérées comme abusives. Néanmoins, son travail a joué un rôle important dans la création du débat autour (...) de l’autisme aux États-Unis au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.[2] Ses recherches psychanalytiques concernant l’autisme ont été par la suite rassemblées dans son livre, La forteresse vide (1967). Si celui-ci est dorénavant un texte discrédité, il s’agit cependant d’une archive essentielle concernant la situation difficile des personnes autistes et la manière dont la vie et le travail de Joey ont perturbé les compréhensions dominantes de la différence humaine. (shrink)