A set of approximately 500 words taken from the literature on emotion was examined. The overall goal was to develop a comprehensive taxonomy of the affective lexicon, with special attention being devoted to the isolation of terms that refer to emotions. Within the taxonomy we propose, the best examples of emotion terms appear to be those that (a) refer to internal, mental conditions as opposed to physical or external ones, (b) are clear cases of stares, and (c) have affect (...) as opposed to behavior or cognition as a predominant (rather than incidental) referential focus. Relaxing one or another of these constraints yields poorer examples or nonexamples of emotions; however, this gradedness is not taken as evidence that emotions necessarily defy classical definition. (shrink)

A perceptual learning experiment provides evidence that the mental lexicon cannot consist solely of detailed acoustic traces of recognition episodes. In a training lexical decision phase, listeners heard an ambiguous [f–s] fricative sound, replacing either [f] or [s] in words. In a test phase, listeners then made lexical decisions to visual targets following auditory primes. Critical materials were minimal pairs that could be a word with either [f] or [s] (cf. English knife–nice), none of which had been heard in (...) training. Listeners interpreted the minimal pair words differently in the second phase according to the training received in the first phase. Therefore, lexically mediated retuning of phoneme perception not only influences categorical decisions about fricatives (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003), but also benefits recognition of words outside the training set. The observed generalization across words suggests that this retuning occurs prelexically. Therefore, lexical processing involves sublexical phonological abstraction, not only accumulation of acoustic episodes. (shrink)

This study investigates the mental representation and processing of the two types of metaphorical senses in Russian polysemous verbs and adjectives using eye-tracking, sensicality judgment, and semantic clustering tasks. The metaphorical senses under study differ in their semantic proximity to the literal sense, with “proximal” metaphors (e.g. “raise prices”) retaining more semantic components, and “distal” metaphors being semantically bleached (e.g. “raise alarm”). Metaphors differed in their mental representations and processing patterns based on semantic proximity and part of speech. In semantic (...) clustering, proximal metaphors were miscategorized with literal senses more often than distal metaphors. Proximal metaphors in adjectives were more often miscategorized with literal senses, while in verbs they were miscategorized with distal metaphors. In sensicality judgment, verbs showed longer reaction times for proximal metaphors, while adjectives demonstrated higher accuracy for distal metaphors compared to literal senses. In eye-tracking, adjectival distal metaphors triggered more regressions on disambiguating nouns than literal senses. Our findings suggest that distal metaphors are stored and processed as distinct, non-compositional units, while proximal metaphors overlap with literal senses and are processed compositionally. Proximal metaphors in adjectives are closer to literal senses, while in verbs they are closer to distal metaphors, explained by different semantic derivation mechanisms. (shrink)

Before the end of the first year of life, infants begin to lose the ability to perceive distinctions between sounds that are not phonemic in their native language. It is typically assumed that this developmental change reflects the construction of language-specific phoneme categories, but how these categories are learned largely remains a mystery. Peperkamp, Le Calvez, Nadal, and Dupoux (2006) present an algorithm that can discover phonemes using the distributions of allophones as well as the phonetic properties of the allophones (...) and their contexts. We show that a third type of information source, the occurrence of pairs of minimally differing word forms in speech heard by the infant, is also useful for learning phonemic categories and is in fact more reliable than purely distributional information in data containing a large number of allophones. In our model, learners build an approximation of the lexicon consisting of the high-frequency n-grams present in their speech input, allowing them to take advantage of top-down lexical information without needing to learn words. This may explain how infants have already begun to exhibit sensitivity to phonemic categories before they have a large receptive lexicon. (shrink)

Visual phenomena such as shadows and reflections are lexicalized in idiosyncratic ways. In particular, we appear to master notions of certain types of shadows, at least notions that \are learnable and communicable, for which we do not have names. We also have many imprecise lexicalizations; so much so that in certain conditions notions that appear to be antonyms, such as that of shadows and of light, for example, even get applied to the same visual phenomena. Reflections offer another field of (...) study. I shall investigate whether constraints on lexicalization depend on particular cognitive advantages conferred upon objects or object-like entities. (shrink)

As essentially an analysis of the various types of salience, this essay develops an original notion of structure as constituted by the interplay between the semantic and the pragmatic perspectives. The distinction drawn by the author between semasiology and onomasiology clarifies the difference between an analysis of salience conducted on the basis of words and one conducted on the basis of concepts. Since onomasiological research has largely concerned itself with lexical fields, Geeraerts’s analysis relates closely to Wildgen’s essay in the (...) book; while his discussion of semasiological salience — which involves the polysemy and vagueness pertinent to the problem of prototypicality — links with Violi’s treatment of the same topic. In many respects, in fact, the essays by Geeraerts and Viola represent two complementary approaches to the problem of conceptual universals. The emphasis placed by Geeraerts on the linkage between the naming function in onomasiology and perception relates to several aspects discussed in the essays by Albertazzi (the perception-based foundational approach to semantics), Croft and Wood, Wildgen (Gestalt aspects in imagery) and Peruzzi. (shrink)

Von Walchs Philosophischem Lexicon bis Zedlers Universal-Lexicon, von Diderots und D’Alemberts Encyclopédie bis zur Encyclopaedia Britannica: alle bedeutenden frühmodernen Wörterbücher und Enzyklopädien haben sich ziemlich viele Definitionen angeeignet, die der hugenottische Gelehrte Étienne Chauvin (1640 – 1725) in den beiden Ausgaben seines Lexicon philosophicum (1692 und 1713) bereits formuliert hatte. Chauvin verglich als erster die scholastische Tradition mit den Theorien der neuen Denker wie Descartes, Gassendi und deren Anhänger. Sein Werk befasst sich ausführlich mit der Naturphilosophie und (...) beschreibt naturwissenschaftliche Instrumente und Experimente. Erstaunlicherweise sind der komplexe Aufbau, die Quellen und die Nachwirkung von Chauvins Wörterbuch noch nie gründlich untersucht worden. Die vorliegende umfassende Studie über die Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie und Ideen wirft ein helles Licht auf die „République des lettres“ zwischen dem Ende des 17. und dem Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Sie behandelt Metaphysik, Logik, Ethik und anthropologische Themen sowie den Widerstreit zwischen alten und neuen Ansichten über die Natur. ---STIMMEN ZUM BUCH--- „Das Buch selbst bietet aber einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Aufklärungs- und Philosophie- bzw. Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Frühaufklärung sowie der Bildungsgeschichte Preußens. […] [Das Buch] bietet als solches auch aufschlußreiche Bausteine für das Projekt eines Vokabulars der europäischen Philosophien, dem man sich eben auch durch das Studium einschlägiger Lemmata alter Lexika nähern kann.“ (Till Kinzel, Informationsmittel (IFB), März 2017) From Walch’s Philosophisches Lexicon to Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon, from Diderot’s and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all major early modern dictionaries and encyclopedias incorporate some of the definitions given by the Huguenot savant Étienne Chauvin (1640 - 1725) in the two editions of his Lexicon philosophicum (1692 and 1713). For the first time, Chauvin placed the scholastic tradition side by side with the theories of new thinkers like Descartes, Gassendi and their followers. His work covers natural philosophy extensively, describing scientific instruments and experiments. Surprisingly enough, the complex architecture of Chauvin’s dictionary, its sources, and its fortune have never been thoroughly investigated before. The present, broad study in the history of philosophical terminology and ideas casts light on the culture of the “République des lettres” between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. It deals with metaphysics, logic, moral, and anthropological themes, and the clash between ancient and modern visions of nature. (shrink)

These are for entries for _The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon_, edited by Jon Mandle and David Reidy, on H.L.A. Hart, Charles Beitz, Sovereignty, and Citizen.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I present data involving the use of the Romanian slur ‘țigan’, consideration of which leads to the postulation of a sui-generis, irreducible type of use of slurs. This type of use is potentially problematic for extant theories of slurs. In addition, together with other well-established uses, it shows that there is more variation in the use of slurs than previously acknowledged. I explain this variation by construing slurs as polysemous. To implement this idea, I appeal to (...) a rich-lexicon account of polysemy. I show how such a theory can be applied to slurs and discuss several important issues that arise. (shrink)

Emoji have been ubiquitous in communication for over a decade, yet how they derive meaning remains underexplored. Here, we examine an aspect fundamental to linguistic meaning‐making: the degree to which emoji have conventional lexicalized meanings and whether that conventionalization affects processing in real‐time. Experiment 1 establishes a range of meaning agreement levels across emoji within a population; Experiment 2 measures accuracy and response times to word‐emoji pairings in a match/mismatch task. In this experiment, we found that accuracy and response time (...) both correlated significantly with the level of population‐wide meaning agreement from Experiment 1, suggesting that lexical access of single emoji may be comparable to that of words, even out of context. This is consistent with theories of a multimodal lexicon that stores links between meaning, structure, and modality in long‐term memory. Altogether, these findings suggest that emoji can allow a range of entrenched, lexicalized representations. (shrink)

Elman (2009) proposed that the traditional role of the mental lexicon in language processing can largely be replaced by a theoretical model of schematic event knowledge founded on dynamic context-dependent variables. We evaluate Elman’s approach and propose an alternative view, based on dual coding theory and evidence that modality-specific cognitive representations contribute strongly to word meaning and language performance across diverse contexts which also have effects predictable from dual coding theory.

We believe with the publication of our Lexicon Spinozanum, that we are meeting a need in Spinoza historiography which has been pointed out by scholars, but has never before been satisfied. In the intro duction of his Spinozas philosophische Terminologie (Leipzig, 1913), G. T. Richter promised "a Spinozistic Lexicon in which the meaning of each term is set out on an historical basis in alphabetical order". In 1924, in the Report, i.e., Nachbericht, of his four volume edition of (...) the complete works of Spinoza (Heidelberg), C. Gebhardt promised a complementary volume comprising, among other things, a general index. However, neither the one nor the other were ever published. The hope of seeing this gap quickly filled has been reiterated recently by Di Vona: "The compilation of a Spinozistic index is a task of the history of philosophy, the execution of which would gratify all scholars". (Di V on a, Studi suIt' ontologia di Spinoza, Florence, 1960). We do not know how closely our Lexicon Spinozanum corresponds to what Richter and Gebhardt projected. We believe, however, that there are common requirements at the basis of works of this sort. In our procedure and in the delimitation of our scope, we have set for ourselves two main criteria: that of clarity and that of completeness. We hope we hav:e not deviated from them too much. (shrink)

This chapter explores the evolving vocabulary of longevity by distinguishing three key spheres: the scientific field, the business industry, and the global movement. It examines how terminology shapes our understanding in longevity science, merges biotechnology, healthcare innovation, and consumer wellness in the longevity economy, and blends personal health advocacy with broader societal goals in the movement. By analyzing the most commonly used terms in each sphere, I also trace four referential periods that reflect the evolution of the longevity language. This (...) chapter emphasizes the need for clarity in communication—critical in a multidisciplinary, high-stakes domain like longevity—where unambiguous language encourages alignment, reduces confusion, and bridges diverse fields of expertise. (shrink)

The present study examines the bilingual aging lexicon by comparing word association networks across four age groups of Chinese–English bilingual adults. Adopting network analysis with breadth‐first search‐based sampling, results showed that in L1 (Chinese) networks, global connectivity increases from early to mid‐adulthood, accompanied by reduced local clustering and enhanced global efficiency; the network remains relatively stable through midlife, followed by declining efficiency and progressively pronounced modular structure in late adulthood. The L2 (English) networks mirror L1 developmental trends in early (...) and mid‐adulthood but with substantially larger shifts; throughout adulthood, L2 exhibits lower global and local connectivity and weaker modularity compared to L1. These findings reveal distinct developmental trajectories for L1 and L2 semantic networks in bilinguals, underscoring greater structural stability in the dominant language (L1) across adulthood relative to the nondominant language (L2). This L1–L2 asymmetry points to differential impacts of aging on bilingual lexical organization. Results are discussed in relation to compensatory mechanisms and enrichment accounts of cognitive aging. (shrink)

The Lexicon cuts through the daunting profusion of scholarship on Spinoza by supplying compact entries that contextualize Spinoza's thought, elucidate crucial concepts, and point to the relevant scholarly debates and studies. A vital resource for novices and experts alike seeking to expand their knowledge of Spinoza.

Torture porn has been vilified on grounds that are at best unconvincing and at worst incoherent. The subgenre’s remonstrators too often ignore the content of the films themselves, and fail to make sufficiently detailed connections between the subgenre and the cultural sphere. Reactions to torture porn rarely consider what values the films apparently contravene, and why, if the films are offensive, they are simultaneously so popular. The central derisive mechanism in operation is the ill-conceived combination of ‘torture’ and ‘porn’ itself. (...) The use of ‘porn’ as a label works to illegitimate torture porn and demand that body-horror retreat to its more ‘fitting’ position on the outskirts of the cultural radar. However, this approach is too busy pointing at violence, and fails to deal with the fact that sex is displaced. If violence is now pornographic, it is unclear what position sexual portrayals occupy, or whether they are still perceived as more offensive than violent representations. Furthermore, it is uncertain how we are to describe sexual images if that is the case, since the lexicon of offense has been waylaid. Torture porn’s critics commonly fail to account for the new context of ‘porn plus horror’, and what that combination says about visual representation and its limits. This chapter is a step towards rectifying that oversight. (shrink)

It is largely acknowledged that natural languages emerge not just from human brains but also from rich communities of interacting human brains (Senghas, ). Yet the precise role of such communities and such interaction in the emergence of core properties of language has largely gone uninvestigated in naturally emerging systems, leaving the few existing computational investigations of this issue at an artificial setting. Here, we take a step toward investigating the precise role of community structure in the emergence of linguistic (...) conventions with both naturalistic empirical data and computational modeling. We first show conventionalization of lexicons in two different classes of naturally emerging signed systems: (a) protolinguistic “homesigns” invented by linguistically isolated Deaf individuals, and (b) a natural sign language emerging in a recently formed rich Deaf community. We find that the latter conventionalized faster than the former. Second, we model conventionalization as a population of interacting individuals who adjust their probability of sign use in response to other individuals' actual sign use, following an independently motivated model of language learning (Yang, , ). Simulations suggest that a richer social network, like that of natural (signed) languages, conventionalizes faster than a sparser social network, like that of homesign systems. We discuss our behavioral and computational results in light of other work on language emergence, and other work of behavior on complex networks. (shrink)

A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament, being Grimm's Wilke's Clavis Novi Testamenti. Translated, Revised and Enlarged by Joseph Henry Thayer, D.D., Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Divinity School of Harvard University. Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark. 1886. 4to. pp. 726. 36s.Biblico Theological Lexicon to New Testament Greek. by Hermann Cremer, D.D., Professor of Theology in the University of Greifswald. Third English Edition. With Supplement. Translated from the latest German Edition by William (...) Uewick, M.A. Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark. 1886. 4to. pp. 943. 38s. (shrink)

This article is based on the corpus of Aramaic epigraphic cadastral documents published in Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, vol. 5 (University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2023). The lexicon and syntax of these texts present a number of intriguing phenomena, and the examination of these phenomena allows the clarification of the reality behind the words. In particular, this article discusses ellipsis, omissions, and the syntax of captions as part of scribal conventions, as well as (...) some technical terms and groups of lexemes that belong to the vocabulary of the land descriptions. (shrink)

A Maritime Lexicon: Arabic Nautical Terminology in the Indian Ocean. By Abdulrahman al Salimi and Eric Staples. Studies on Ibadism and Oman, vol. 11. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2019. Pp. 641, illus. €88.

Many authors writing on slurs think that they are lexically rich, in the sense that their lexical meaning comprises both a descriptive dimension and an expressive/evaluative one, the latter accounting for their derogatory character. However, more fine-grained theories of slurs have recently been proposed, drawing on frameworks from lexical semantics. My main aim in this paper is to compare three such fine-grained rich-lexicon theories – the one put forward by myself in previous work with two similar ones, Croom’s (2011, (...) 2013) and Neufeld’s (2019, 2022). While my primary aim is to underlie the commonalities and differences between the three views, I also aim at showing that the latter views have some issues that are easily avoided in the framework I propose. (shrink)

In this paper, I have been able to demonstrate that the so-called Lexicon Theeteti is an apographon of Pal. gr. 173, a well known Plato's manuscript of Xth century. The codex Laurentianus 57,24, which contains the lexicon, previously dated to XIV/XV century, was also backdated to the first half of XIVth century.

Α Ν 0 Ι Ε Ν Τ Α Ν ϋ Μ Ε Ο Ι Ε V Α Ι, ΡΗΙΙ,ΟδΟΡΗΥ ΠΕ \ν III, Ρ - Μ Α Ν 5 Ι Ο Ν ΟΕΝΤΒΕ 5βΠ88 1 II ιηεΐ (1ε δίβυη νβη Ιιοί Βοΐβίδοΐι λ'αΐίοηααΐ ΌΟΟΓ ...

Martin Heidegger was one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century. His work has profoundly influenced philosophers including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Richard Rorty, Hubert Dreyfus, Stanley Cavell, Emmanuel Levinas, Alain Badiou, and Gilles Deleuze. His accounts of human existence and being and his critique of technology have inspired theorists in fields as diverse as theology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and the humanities. (...) This Lexicon provides a comprehensive and accessible guide to Heidegger's notoriously obscure vocabulary. Each entry clearly and concisely defines a key term and explores in depth the meaning of each concept, explaining how it fits into Heidegger's broader philosophical project. With over 220 entries written by the world's leading Heidegger experts, this landmark volume will be indispensable for any student or scholar of Heidegger's work. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is widely recognised as one of the most important Western philosophers since Aristotle. His thought has had, and continues to have, a profound effect on every branch of philosophy, including aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. This Lexicon contains detailed and original entries by 130 leading Kant scholars, covering Kant's most important concepts as well as each of his writings. Part I covers Kant's notoriously difficult philosophical concepts, providing entries on these individual 'trees' (...) of Kant's philosophical system. Part II, by contrast, provides an overview of the 'forest' of Kant's philosophy, with entries on each of his published works and on each of his sets of lectures and personal reflections. This part is arranged chronologically, revealing not only the broad sweep of Kant's thought but also its development over time. Professors, graduate students, and undergraduates will value this landmark volume. (shrink)

Lexicology is by nature full of metaphysical issues, because the social life that lexicon reflects is innately filled with all kinds of contradictions. The present is possible because of the past, but there is no past without the present. There is "real," "kind," and "beautiful"; hence, "false," "evil," and "ugly" also exist. If there were no false, evil, and ugly in the world, where would real, kind, and beautiful arise? In a study of lexicon, there must be no (...) room for metaphysics. Metaphysics does not match patterns of objective reality, and cannot stand the testing by objective reality. (shrink)

The German philosopher and philologist Friedrich Ast published this monumental lexicon in three volumes. A professor of classical literature at the University of Landshut and member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Ast wrote widely on the history of philosophy. He edited a complete edition of Plato with Latin translation, identifying spurious interpolations and false attributions, using this as a basis for his Lexicon. The entries give citations both from Plato and from later works that extensively quote Plato. (...) Though the Lexicon met with criticism for omissions of particles, prepositions and proper names, and the lack of systematic arrangement, it had a high reputation throughout the nineteenth century. It remains a milestone in Plato scholarship and is an indispensable resource for readers interested in the history of philology and methods in textual criticism. (shrink)

The German philosopher and philologist Friedrich Ast published this monumental lexicon in three volumes. A professor of classical literature at the University of Landshut and member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Ast wrote widely on the history of philosophy. He edited a complete edition of Plato with Latin translation, identifying spurious interpolations and false attributions, using this as a basis for his Lexicon. The work is arranged alphabetically, Volume 2 covering Theta to Omicron. The entries give citations (...) both from Plato and from later works that extensively quote Plato. Though the Lexicon met with criticism for omissions of particles, prepositions and proper names, and the lack of systematic arrangement, it had a high reputation throughout the nineteenth century. It remains a milestone in Plato scholarship and is an indispensable resource for readers interested in the history of philology and methods in textual criticism. (shrink)

The German philosopher and philologist Friedrich Ast published this monumental lexicon in three volumes. A professor of classical literature at the University of Landshut and member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Ast wrote widely on the history of philosophy. He edited a complete edition of Plato with Latin translation, identifying spurious interpolations and false attributions, using this as a basis for his Lexicon. The work is arranged alphabetically, Volume 3 covering Pi to Omega. The entries give citations (...) both from Plato and from later works that extensively quote Plato. Though the Lexicon met with criticism for omissions of particles, prepositions and proper names, and the lack of systematic arrangement, it had a high reputation throughout the nineteenth century. It remains a milestone in Plato scholarship and is an indispensable resource for readers interested in the history of philology and methods in textual criticism. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the study of words, and how we use words to create meaning. It offers an accessible description of the main properties of words and the organizational principles of the lexicon, based on theoretical accounts and extensive empirical data.

This book provides an introduction to the study of words, their main properties and how we use them to create meaning. It offers a detailed description of the organizational principles of the lexicon, and of the categories used to classify various lexical phenomena, including polysemy, meaning variation, behaviour in composition, and the interface with pragmatics. Elisabetta Ježek uses empirical data from digitalized corpora and speakers' judgements, combined with the formalisms developed in the field of general and theoretical linguistics, to (...) propose representations for each of these phenomena. The book's clear structure and accessible approach make it an ideal textbook for all students of linguistics and a valuable resource for scholars and students of language in the fields of cognitive science and philosophy. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the study of words, their main properties and how we use them to create meaning. It offers a detailed description of the organizational principles of the lexicon, and of the categories used to classify various lexical phenomena, including polysemy, meaning variation, behaviour in composition, and the interface with pragmatics. Elisabetta Ježek uses empirical data from digitalized corpora and speakers' judgements, combined with the formalisms developed in the field of general and theoretical linguistics, to (...) propose representations for each of these phenomena. The book's clear structure and accessible approach make it an ideal textbook for all students of linguistics and a valuable resource for scholars and students of language in the fields of cognitive science and philosophy. (shrink)

In our discussions around the theme of solid fluids, we often resort to everyday words, many of them of ancient derivation and rich in association. We have decided to make a list of some of the words that come up most often – barring those that already figure as the principal characters of individual contributions – and to distribute among ourselves the task of writing a sort of mini-biography for each. The resulting lexicon with 19 entries, ranging from ‘cloud’ (...) and ‘concrete’ to ‘wave’ and ‘wood’, serves as a conclusion to the collection as a whole. (shrink)

A fundamental principle of all truth-conditional approaches to semantics is that the meanings of sentences of natural language can be compositionally specified in terms of truth conditions, where the meanings of the sentences’ parts are specified in terms of the contribution they make to such conditions their host sentences possess. Thus, meanings of words fit the meanings of sentences at least to the extent that the stability of what a sentence might mean as specified in a theory is in accord (...) with the stability of what a word might mean as similarly specified. In this paper, I shall be concerned with Ludlow’s idea that, in fact, there need be no such sympathy between words and sentences. He proposes that we can square what he calls a dynamic lexicon, where word meaning is not stable at all, with a traditional truth-conditional approach of the kind indicated, where sentence meaning is delivered via ‘absolute truth conditions’. I share Ludlow’s aspiration to accommodate dynamic features of word meaning with a truth conditional approach, but not his belief that the marriage is an easy deal. Thus, I shall present a problem for Ludlow’s position and show how resolving this problem leads to an alternative picture of how the meaning of a sentence may be truth-conditionally specified with all relevant dynamic features of the lexicon retained. (shrink)

Over a career spanning nearly seven decades, Jürgen Habermas - one of the most important European philosophers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries - has produced a prodigious and influential body of work. In this Lexicon, authored by an international team of scholars, over 200 entries define and explain the key concepts, categories, philosophemes, themes, debates, and names associated with the entire constellation of Habermas's thought. The entries explore the historical, philosophical and social-theoretic roots of these terms and concepts, (...) as well as their intellectual and disciplinary contexts, to build a broad but detailed picture of the development and trajectory of Habermas as a thinker. The volume will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Habermas, as well as for other readers in political philosophy, political science, sociology, international relations, cultural studies, and law. (shrink)

The discriminative lexicon is introduced as a mathematical and computational model of the mental lexicon. This novel theory is inspired by word and paradigm morphology but operationalizes the concept of proportional analogy using the mathematics of linear algebra. It embraces the discriminative perspective on language, rejecting the idea that words’ meanings are compositional in the sense of Frege and Russell and arguing instead that the relation between form and meaning is fundamentally discriminative. The discriminative lexicon also incorporates (...) the insight from machine learning that end-to-end modeling is much more effective than working with a cascade of models targeting individual subtasks. The computational engine at the heart of the discriminative lexicon is linear discriminative learning: simple linear networks are used for mapping form onto meaning and meaning onto form, without requiring the hierarchies of post-Bloomfieldian ‘hidden’ constructs such as phonemes, morphemes, and stems. We show that this novel model meets the criteria of accuracy (it properly recognizes words and produces words correctly), productivity (the model is remarkably successful in understanding and producing novel complex words), and predictivity (it correctly predicts a wide array of experimental phenomena in lexical processing). The discriminative lexicon does not make use of static representations that are stored in memory and that have to be accessed in comprehension and production. It replaces static representations by states of the cognitive system that arise dynamically as a consequence of external or internal stimuli. The discriminative lexicon brings together visual and auditory comprehension as well as speech production into an integrated dynamic system of coupled linear networks. (shrink)

In his mature works, Kuhn abandons the concept of a paradigm and becomes more interested in the analysis of the conceptual structure of scientific theories. These changes are interpreted as resulting from a ‘linguistic turn’ that Kuhn underwent sometimes around the 1980s. Much of the philosophical discussions about Kuhn’s post-‘linguistic turn’ philosophy revolves around his views on taxonomic concepts. Apart from taxonomy, however, the mature Kuhn introduces other concepts, such as conceptual networks and lexicons. This article distinguishes these three concepts (...) and shows that adopting each one of them has different impacts on Kuhn’s model of science. After distinguishing and assessing the concepts of taxonomy, network, and lexicon, it will be argued that the latter not only fits the Kuhnian model of science better, but it also helps capture the wide sense of Kuhn’s early concept of a paradigm. (shrink)

Surprisingly, although the term “Anthropocene” belongs to a geological taxonomy, it was categorically rejected by the scientific community of geologists. Their verdict was that we cannot grant the human species a geological force. However, the wider group of Earth Sciences has proposed a conceptual scheme starting from the “Anthropocene” as a keyword and several narratives have been developed, the best known being that of climate change as an effect of human activities. But the new lexicon of the Anthropocene has (...) been developed spectacularly in the humanities, so we can already talk about an environmental humanities focused on this topic. My goal in this paper is to clarify the epistemologically distinct ways in which these three frameworks of thought work narratively. (shrink)

The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon is the definitive reference source on René Descartes, 'the father of modern philosophy' and arguably among the most important philosophers of all time. Examining the full range of Descartes' achievements and legacy, it includes 256 in-depth entries that explain key concepts relating to his thought. Cumulatively they uncover interpretative disputes, trace his influences, and explain how his work was received by critics and developed by followers. There are entries on topics such as certainty, cogito ergo (...) sum, doubt, dualism, free will, God, geometry, happiness, human being, knowledge, Meditations on First Philosophy, mind, passion, physics, and virtue, which are written by the largest and most distinguished team of Cartesian scholars ever assembled for a collaborative research project - 91 contributors from 12 countries. (shrink)

A certain metaphysical thesis about meaning that we'll call Informational Role Semantics (IRS) is accepted practically universally in linguistics, philosophy and the cognitive sciences: the meaning (or content, or `sense') of a linguistic expression1 is constituted, at least in part, by at least some of its inferential relations. This idea is hard to state precisely, both because notions like metaphysical constitution are moot and, more importantly, because different versions of IRS take different views on whether there are constituents of meaning (...) other than inferential role, and on which of the inferences an expression occurs in are meaning constitutive. Some of these issues will presently concern us; but for now it will do just to gesture towards such familiar claims as that: it's part and parcel of dog meaning dog2 that the inference from x is a dog to x is an animal is valid; it's part and parcel of boil meaning boil that the inference from x boiled y to y boiled is valid; it's part and parcel of kill meaning kill that the inference from x killed y to y died is valid; and so on. (See Cruse, Ch. 1 and passim.) IRS brings in its train a constellation of ancillary doctrines. Presumably, for example, if an inference is constitutive of the meaning of a word, then learning the word involves learning that the inference holds. If dog means dog because dog ---> animal is valid, then knowing that dog ---> animal is valid is part and parcel of knowing what the word dog means; and, similarly, learning that x boiled y ---> y boiled is part and parcel of learning what boil means, and so forth. IRS constrains grammatical theories. The semantic lexicon of a language is supposed to make explicit whatever one has to know to understand the lexical expressions of the language, so IRS implies that meaning constitutive inferences are part of the semantic lexical entries for items that have them. Lexical entries are thus typically complex objects (`bundles of inferences') according to standard interpretations of IRS.. (shrink)

This article tries to create a bridge of understanding between cognitive scientists and phenomenologists who work on attention. In light of a phenomenology of attention and current psychological and neuropsychological literature on attention, I translate and interpret into phenomenological terms 20 key cognitive science concepts as examined in the laboratory and used in leading journals. As a preface to the lexicon, I outline a phenomenology of attention, especially as a dynamic three-part structure, which I have freely amended from the (...) work of phenomenologist and Gestalt philosopher Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973). As a conclusion, I discuss the nature of subjectivity in attention and attention research, and whether attention might be the same as consciousness. (shrink)