Perception and Testimony as Data Providers

Assuming that the sceptical challenge might be either bypassed or answered, this still leaves unspecified how high-quality information about the external world is acquired. In this paper, I will argue that, if knowledge is accounted information, then when we apply this definition to the analysis of perceptual knowledge and knowledge by testimony (the only two sources of information about the external world), the result is that both qualify as data providers.Peer reviewe

The *subjectivity* of subjective experience - A representationalist analysis of the first-person perspective

This is a brief and accessible English summary of the "Self-model Theory of Subjectivity" (SMT), which is only available as German book in this archive. It introduces two new theoretical entities, the "phenomenal self-model" (PSM) and the "phenomenal model of the intentionality-relation" PMIR. A representationalist analysis of the phenomenal first-person persepctive is offered. This is a revised version, including two pictures

Multimodal Grounding for Language Processing

This survey discusses how recent developments in multimodal processing facilitate conceptual grounding of language. We categorize the information flow in multimodal processing with respect to cognitive models of human information processing and analyze different methods for combining multimodal representations. Based on this methodological inventory, we discuss the benefit of multimodal grounding for a variety of language processing tasks and the challenges that arise. We particularly focus on multimodal grounding of verbs which play a crucial role for the compositional power of language.Comment: The paper has been published in the Proceedings of the 27 Conference of Computational Linguistics. Please refer to this version for citations: https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/papers/C/C18/C18-1197

Knowledge politics and new converging technologies: a social epistemological perspective

The “new converging technologies” refers to the prospect of advancing the human condition by the integrated study and application of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and the cognitive sciences - or “NBIC”. In recent years, it has loomed large, albeit with somewhat different emphases, in national science policy agendas throughout the world. This article considers the political and intellectual sources - both historical and contemporary - of the converging technologies agenda. Underlying it is a fluid conception of humanity that is captured by the ethically challenging notion of “enhancing evolution”

Subordination in Italian and English: implications for second language acquisition

Our study focuses on morpho-syntactic complexity, trying to identify the specific subordinated modalities of organizing and packaging information in a narration. This purpose will be achieved by combining the morpho-syntactic analysis with the type of contents that subordinate clauses convey with respect to the informational flux of textual structure (foreground vs. background alternation). A functionalist and enunciative framework is adopted. The following questions will be addressed: (1) which types of morpho-syntactic structures – main or subordinated, finite or non finite – are exploited to convey the subordinated contents selected? (2) do the informants tend to hierarchize the expressed contents? (3) which types of semantic and/or logical components (temporality, causality, etc.) are selected to be narrated and highlighted through subordination? We shall demonstrate that only the interaction of several factors – core morphological facts, interactional and discourse habits – can exhaustively explain the textual perspectives observed in our L1 and L2 data, with interesting consequences for second language acquisition