Lexical structure in parsing long-distance dependencies

We review a series of experiments investigating lexical influences in parsing sentences with long-distance dependencies. We report three primary results. First, gaps are posited and filled immediately following verbs that are typically used transitively, even when the filler is an implausible object of the verb. However, gaps are not posited after verbs that are typically used intransitively. Second, plausibility determines whether or not a filler is treated as the object of a verb when the verb is typically used with both a direct object and an infinitive complement. Finally, verb control information is used immediately in determining which noun phrase will be interpreted as the understood subject of an infinitive complement.     

Act Without Denial: Slavoj Žižek on Totalitarianism,Revolution and Political Act

iek's thinking departs from the Lacanian claim that we live in a symbolic order, not a real world, and that the Real is what we desire, but can never know or grasp. There is a fundamental virtuality of reality that points to the lie in every truth-claim, and there are two ways of dealing with this:repression and denial. An ideology, a system or a regime becomes totalitarian when it denies the virtual character of both its world and its subject (democracy represses truth's basic lie, which makes it possible for the repressed to return). iek's analysis of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, shows how a totalitarian system denies its subject, which, being desire for the Real, cannot act in the name of truth but must acknowledge the contingency of its action (a political act can fail to reach its goal), whereas an established system can no longer fail and has to deny its flaws. Any political act disrupts the (evolution of) the symbolic order and thus is revolutionary, creating an event ex nihilo. An act is a jump into the inconsistency of the symbolic order, i.e. into das Ding, a jump both into and out of the nihil in which our world is grounded. Politics therefore can never be Realpolitik. The realization that politics is a symbolic phenomenon, supported not by the real, but by signifiers, is the Lacanian foundation of iek's political theory.     

On Alan Turing's anticipation of connectionism

It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like elements connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turing called his networks unorganised machines. By the application of what he described as appropriate interference, mimicking education an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing machine can carry out, provided the number of neurons is sufficient. Turing proposed simulating both the behaviour of the network and the training process by means of a computer program. We outline Turing's connectionist project of 1948.In Memory of Robin Gandy     

Why You Can't Kick the Bucket as You Slowly Die: Verbs in Idiom Comprehension

Idiomatic phrases differ in their degree of analyzability. Some idioms are highly decomposable with their parts independently contributing to their overall figurative meaning (e.g. pop the question) while other idioms are nondecomposable with parts that do not contribute to their idiomatic meaning (e.g. kick the bucket). Nonetheless, even the parts of nondecomposable idioms might have a role in determining what they specifically mean. For example, the verb kick, in kick the bucket implies a quickness or suddenness to the death such that kick the bucket means to die suddenly rather than to die slowly. We report the findings of three experiments showing, in different ways, how the action of the verb contributes to the overall figurative meaning for some nondecomposable idioms. Together, these studies suggest that even nondecomposable idioms are not truly frozen as, at least, part of their overall figurative meanings are shaped by the particular verbs used in these phrases.     

Teach Your Students Well: The Seminary and a Hermeneutics of Suspicion

In Freud and Philosophy, Paul Ricoeur argues that religious believers must be willing to expose their faith to Freud's hermeneutics of suspicion. Believers will not, following the encounter, be the same people with the same faith, but, according to Ricoeur, the alternative of avoiding the encounter is not a viable option. However, a philosophy of total exposure to Freud, or anyone else issuing a challenge to religious faith, can be difficult for seminary faculty to apply, pedagogically. Indeed, seminaries are expected to graduate into ministry, not individuals experiencing a crisis of faith or meaning, but rather spiritually rock-solid men and women. The temptation, then, for seminary faculty is to go easy on their students, but this pedagogical strategy inevitably backfires. Seminarians who are sheltered from Ricoeur's challenge may be rock-solid at the persona or surface level of human personality, but this is not, necessarily, an indication that they are individuated or integrated people of faith.     

The unimportance of being random

This note fleshes in and generalizes an argument suggested by W. Salmon to the effect that the addition of a requirement of mathematical randomness to his requirement of physical homogeneity is unimportant for his ontic account of objective homogeneity. I consider an argument from measure theory as a plausible justification of Salmon's skepticism concerning the possibility that a physically homogeneous sequence might nonetheless be recursive and show that this argument does not succeed. However, I state a principle (the Generalized Salmon Thesis) that is intuitively plausible and reflects this skepticism. The principle entails that one should be just as certain that the limit of such an infinite sequence is irrational as one is certain that the sequence is not computable. But I claim that this consequence is acceptable.     

Distribution of the feature [+animate] in the lexicon of the child

Piaget suggests that animistic thinking is a pervasive feature of children's cognition. To test this notion, 4- to 8-year-old children were shown several inanimate objects and asked to pick those which perform activities characteristic of living organisms. These activities were typified by six verbs: eat, sleep, breathe, grow, die,, and be alive. Fifty percent of the younger children responded animistically, by misattributing life processes to inanimate objects, but only 18% of their total responses were animistic. Twenty percent of the older children responded animistically, but only 20% of their responses were animistic. In Experiment II, children were shown drawings singly and asked if the object could perform activities named by one of the six verbs. Results were similar to those of Experiment I but with somewhat less animism. Experiment III required children to spontaneously name things that are alive. There were no animistic responses. It was concluded that animistic thinking is not a genuine phenomenon but linguistic confusion elicited by novel objects and unfamiliar words.This work was supported by NSF Grant GB 23083.A portion of the data of Experiment I constituted a Bachelor Honors Thesis conducted by the first author under the direction of the second and submitted to Florida State University. These data were presented at the meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, New Orleans, April 1973.     

The two faces of Quine's naturalism

Quine's naturalized epistemology is ambivalent between a modest naturalism according to which epistemology is an a posteriori discipline, an integral part of the web of empirical belief, and a scientistic naturalism according to which epistemology is to be conducted wholly within the natural sciences. This ambivalence is encouraged by Quine's ambiguous use of science, to mean sometimes, broadly, our presumed empirical knowledge and sometimes, narrowly, the natural sciences. Quine's modest naturalism is reformist, tackling the traditional epistemological problems in a novel way; his scientistic naturalism is revolutionary, requiring restriction and reconceptualization of epistemological problems. In particular, his scientistic naturalism trivializes the question of the epistemic standing of the natural sciences, whereas modest naturalism takes it seriously, and can offer a plausible answer.Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Moral Sciences Club, Cambridge, U.K., Temple University, and the University of Miami. I wish to thank those who made helpful comments on these occasions, and Dirk Koppelberg for helpful correspondence.     

Naturalism, scientism and the independence of epistemology

Naturalists seek continuity between epistemology and science. Critics argue this illegitimately expands science into epistemology and commits the fallacy of scientism. Must naturalists commit this fallacy? I defend a conception of naturalized epistemology which upholds the non-identity of epistemic ends, norms, and concepts with scientific evidential ends, norms, and concepts. I argue it enables naturalists to avoid three leading scientistic fallacies: dogmatism, one dimensionalism, and granting science an epistemic monopoly.     

The use of chaining in rational-emotive therapy

The focus of this paper is on the concept of chaining in rationalemotive therapy. Four types of chains are discussed and illustrated: (a) inference chains; (b) inference-evaluative belief chains; (c) disturbance about disturbance chains and (d) complex chains.Windy Dryden Ph.D. is a Lecturer in Psychology at Goldsmiths' College, University of London.     

John Nash's Postdelusional Period: A Case of Transformed Narcissism

This article concludes the psychoanalytic study of mathematical genius John Nash begun in previous articles (Capps 2003a, 2003b) by focusing on his recovery from paranoid schizophrenia after more than a decade of being under control of his delusions. I develop the idea that Nash was a highly narcissistic personality, the primary focus of which was his beautiful mind, in the years preceding his mental breakdown. I attribute his recovery primarily to the transformation of his narcissistic personality and support this attribution by means of Heinz Kohut's identification of five major expressions of transformed narcissism in his classic essay on the forms and transformations of narcissism.     

Hare on utilitarianism and intuitive morality

InMoral Thinking R. M. Hare offers a very influential defense of utilitarianism against intuitive objections. Hare's argument is roughly that utilitarianism conflicts with defensible moral intuitions only in unusual cases and that, in such cases, even defensible moral intuitions are unreliable. This paper reconstructs Hare's arguments and argues that they presuppose the success of his problematic proof of utilitarianism. Contrary to what many have thought, Hare's negative defense of utilitarianism against intuitive objections is not separable from his proof. In the second part of the paper I argue that Hare does not succeed in defending utilitarianism against the objection that it is too demanding. The final section of the paper sketches a substantially revised version of Hare's reply to intuitive objections. So revised, the argument is independent of Hare's proof and affords a plausible answer to the objection that utilitarianism is too demanding.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Loyola University and Saint Olaf College. I am greatly indebted to my colleague Harry Gensler for helpful comments on numerous drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Michael Gorr, Brad Hooker, Shelly Kagan, Heidi Malm, Richard Hare, Peter Singer, Onora O'Neill, George Trey, Joe Sullivan, and an anonymous referee. This paper developed out of a series of discussions with Mark Overvold. I dedicate the paper to his memory. I would also like to thank Loyola University for a paid leave of absence which enabled me to write the paper.     

Partially-Ordered (Branching) Generalized Quantifiers: A General Definition

Following Henkins discovery of partially-ordered (branching) quantification (POQ) with standard quantifiers in 1959, philosophers of language have attempted to extend his definition to POQ with generalized quantifiers. In this paper I propose a general definition of POQ with 1-place generalized quantifiers of the simplest kind: namely, predicative, or cardinality quantifiers, e.g., most, few, finitely many, exactly , where is any cardinal, etc. The definition is obtained in a series of generalizations, extending the original, Henkin definition first to a general definition of monotone-increasing (M) POQ and then to a general definition of generalized POQ, regardless of monotonicity. The extension is based on (i) Barwises 1979 analysis of the basic case of M POQ and (ii) my 1990 analysis of the basic case of generalized POQ. POQ is a non-compositional 1st-order structure, hence the problem of extending the definition of the basic case to a general definition is not trivial. The paper concludes with a sample of applications to natural and mathematical languages.     

A note on the equivalence of the graded response model and the sequential model

This paper concerns items that consist of several item steps to be responded to sequentially. The item scoreX is defined as the number of correct responses until the first failure. Samejima's graded response model states that each steph=1,...,m is characterized by a parameterb _h , and, for a subject with ability, Pr(Xh; )=F(–b _h ). Tutz's general sequential model associates with each step a parameterdh, and it states that Pr(Xh;)= _r ^=1h G(–d _r ). Tutz's (1991, 1997) conjectures that the models are equivalent if and only ifF(x)=G(x) is an extreme value distribution. This paper presents a proof for this conjecture.     

The responsive order: A new empiricism

The uniqueness of logic is upheld and contrasted with twenty roles of a wider responsive order that includes us and our procedures. Empirical responses are precise, but different in different approaches. Procedures and findings are independent of (not separable from) their concepts. Two-way feedback obviates a top-down derivation of findings from assumptions, hypotheses, history, or language. The postmodern problems of interpretation, conditions of appearances and relativism involve the ancient error of making perception the model-instance of experience. Instead, bodily interaction functions in language and precedes perception and interpretation. Logic, space time locations and individuated referents involve positional relations derived from comparing. Beyond Kuhn, Feyerabend, Newton and Einstein, if we can give interaction priority over comparing, the responsive objectivity of both can be upheld. A new empiricism, neither naive nor constructivist, uses the words order, explication, truth, and exactly to build on Wittgenstein and on Dilthey's hermeneutic. Natural language is metaphor-like, originally crossed. Logic must ignore its assumptions. It must render everything as a machine and drop humans and animals out. A new discipline is proposed, to move between the logical and the responsive orders, to deal with the machine/human interface and the social uses of science such as bioengineering.     

Difficult Patients in Group Analysis: The Personification of (ba) I:A/M

Following a discussion of the treatment of difficult patients in group analysis, two theories are proposed concerning a fourth basic assumption in the unconscious life of groups, called Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification or (ba) I:A/M and the personification of basic assumption processes, in particular that of (ba) I:A/M by difficult patients. These theories are illustrated with clinical data. Special attention is given to crustacean and amoeboid forms of encapsulation as a defence against the fear of annihilation within the context of the traumatogenic process. It is suggested that for difficult patients the treatment of choice is dyadic psychotherapy/psychoanalysis followed by group analysis.     

Inverses for Normal Modal Operators

Given a 1-ary sentence operator , we describe L - another 1-ary operator - as as a left inverse of in a given logic if in that logic every formula is provably equivalent to L. Similarly R is a right inverse of if is always provably equivalent to R. We investigate the behaviour of left and right inverses for taken as the operator of various normal modal logics, paying particular attention to the conditions under which these logics are conservatively extended by the addition of such inverses, as well as to the question of when, in such extensions, the inverses behave as normal modal operators in their own right.     

The artist as transgressor in Mandel'štam's poetry

In Mandel'tam's writing, artistic creativity is described as based on the indispensable yet contradictory modes of compliance and deviation. The artist, by his artistic nature, must be an obedient disciple to the tradition that inspires him, and, at the same time, a violator who renders what inspires him in an individual form. Thus, art implies iterability through novelty. In the totalitarian state, this double nature of art acquires a sinister context and brings the artist to an unavoidable conflict with the state. He has a choice between a servile compliance with the state's command and artistic independence. If the artist complies, he loses his ingenuity; if, on the other hand, he has the courage to break away from the established order, his fate is martyrdom. The criteria of truth and falsehood, the issue of loyalty, of compromise and collaboration or resistance become most relevant. Such words as outcast or non-contemporary acquire the meaning of non-collaborationist or enemy of the people. In the totalitarian state a genuine artist is viewed as a law-breaker, and his art leads him to crime. The notions of compliance and deviation cease being merely aesthetic terms and assume in Mandel'tam's poetry complex, subtle and tragic overtones.I would like to express my gratitude to John Barnstead, Thomas Blakeley, James Doull, Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Gregory Glazov, Leonard Kazdan, Peter Kussmaul, Malcolm Ross, Detlev Steffen, and Ieva Vitins for their valuable criticism, suggestions, and revisions of my English.     

Micro-economic models of problem choice in basic science

This paper describes the way in which a certain representation of basic scientific knowledge can be coupled with traditional microeconomic analysis to provide an analysis of rational research planning or agenda setting in basic science. Research planning is conceived as a resource allocation decision in which resources are being allocated to activities directed towards the solution of basic scientific problems. A structuralist representation of scientific knowledge is employed to provide a relatively precise characterization of a basic scientific problem.The research reported here was partially supported by a grant from the EXXON Foundation.