Newly edited by Konrad Koerner (University of Ottawa), with an introduction by Clemens Knobloch (Universitat Siegen)The importance of Wegener's Untersuchungen uber die Grundfragen des Sprachlebens can only be compared to that of Karl Buhler's Sprachtheorie. Even now, however, Wegener's work remains virtually unknown to the English speaking world. Wegener's main work was published in 1885. It has its origin in two lectures given in 1883 and 1884 at school teacher meetings held in the Magdeburg area and it still recalls those (...) original occasions and maintains much of the oral style. Part of the volume treats the subject in a systematic and theoretical manner; other sections contain vivid examples and are characterized by a considerable didactic effort. The book is held together by leitmotif-questions, such as 'How do we understand language?' and 'How does language function as a means of everyday communication?'. We witness the experiences of the talented school teacher and the observations of the innovative dialect researcher combined, condensed, and conceptually ordered.In spite of the relatively unsystematic form of presentation, the book remains thoroughly consistent in thought and argument. In the Untersuchungen we have before us the outline of a communicative and functional view of language structure, of the analysis of speech, and of semantics. (shrink)

In the past decade, research on the dark triad of personality (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) has demonstrated a strong relationship to a number of socially aversive moral judgments such as sacrificial utilitarian decisions in moral dilemmas. This study widens the scope of this research program and investigates the association between dark triad personality traits and anti-natalist views, i.e., views holding that procreation is morally wrong. The results of this study indicate that the dark triad personality traits of Machiavellianism and psychopathy (...) are strongly associated with anti-natalist views. Further, depression is found to be both standing independently in a relationship with anti-natalist views as well as functioning as a mediator in the relationships between Machiavellianism/psychopathy and anti-natalist views. This pattern was replicated in a follow-up study. These findings add to the literature on dark triad personality traits and their relationship to moral judgments, suggesting that personality and mood play a substantive part in variation in anti-natalist views in a lay population. (shrink)

The Grand Challenges literature brings under its umbrella a wide variety of disjointed phenomena but runs the risk of reinventing the wheel as well as overlooking incremental progress and past work. To avert this, scholars need to (dis)connect (dis)similar issues, build on past research on these issues, and create opportunities for generalizability through theoretical examinations.

Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960) est considérée en Italie et à l’étranger comme une héroïne du féminisme italien, tant pour certains épisodes de sa vie personnelle que pour son activité de journaliste et de romancière. Si ce statut d’héroïne n’est pas usurpé, il doit néanmoins beaucoup à la pratique autobiographique de Sibilla Aleramo : en (ré)écrivant son histoire dans le roman Une femme (1906), elle a construit son propre mythe, se posant comme une figure héroïque du féminisme, valorisée notamment par les féministes (...) italiennes dans les années 1970. (shrink)

1. Signification de la métaphysique.--2. Significations de l'être.

Dumézil’s trifunctional theory applied to the only grail plot in Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte du Graal proves to be neither faithful nor worthy of credit. Philological, historical, cultural, cognitive and narratological arguments raise critical objections and question its artificial character. In fact, the incidental episode of the grail functions as a narrative drawer in a plot belonging to the global tale ATU 910B (Good precepts) relating to the part of the work regarding Perceval.

La naissance du CRI à Grenoble doit être replacée dans le contexte intellectuel de la nouvelle critique des années 1960. Les trois courants dominants du matérialisme historique, de la psychanalyse freudienne et du structuralisme ont alors été dépassés par le CRI au profit d’un « nouvel esprit anthropologique » qui privilégiait la réalité sensible des images au détriment des idéologies réductrices. Les intellectuels des villes ont perdu le lien charnel avec une civilisation rurale et un mode de vie ayant façonné (...) notre langue, nos croyances et nos fêtes, ainsi que des artisanats séculaires. Le médiéviste peut encore retrouver le lien avec cette mémoire du temps. Mais s’il n’a pas conservé une âme païenne et un esprit paysan, il est condamné à la posture post-moderne. Penser la culture occidentale en contournant ou ignorant le Moyen Âge n’est qu’une imposture. Un exemple de longue vie des images montre l’importance des relais culturels qui relativise toute théorie préconçue des archétypes. The birth of the CRI in Grenoble is replaced in the intellectual context of new criticism of the 1960s. The three mainstream have been overtaken by the CRI in favour of a “new anthropological spirit” that emphasizes the sensible reality of images at the expense of reducing ideologies. The modern scholars of the cities have lost the carnal connection with a rural civilization and a way of life that have shaped our language, our ancient beliefs and feasts and also centuries-old handicrafts. The medievalist can find the link with this memory of time. But if he has lost a pagan soul and a spirit of peasant, he is sentenced to a post-modern posture. Thinking Western culture in bypassing or ignoring the middle ages appears like a mere sham. An example of long-life images stresses the importance of cultural relays against all preconceived theory of the archetypes. (shrink)

Dans un monde global accéléré et violent, l’anthropologie du contemporain se donne les avenirs pour objet : pour tâcher de rendre ce monde plus intelligible, en tant que les avenirs – socialement situés, pluriels, conflictuels – font pleinement partie de ce qui le compose et de ce avec quoi nous le fabriquons. Il s’agit de regarder, dans le cadre d’une anthropologie politique pragmatique des espaces, comment les gens fabriquent ou contestent des espaces – pour faire des choses ensemble ou guerroyer. (...) Or, pour fabriquer des espaces, les gens mobilisent des temporalités qui sont elles-mêmes spatialisées. Pour faire un quartier, un pays, pour annexer une région, les gens mobilisent des passés pas passés ou pleinement disponibles et/ou des avenirs spatialisés, qui souvent se font écho. Les manières d’ancrer spatialement les temporalités sont prises dans des rapports de pouvoir, et sont des prises de position politique.Cet article se consacre donc aux moyens de décrire les politiques des spatialisations des temporalités avec lesquelles les gens fabriquent ou contestent des espaces dans le contexte russe : comment dresser la topographie plurielle, conflictuelle, des temporalités mobilisées dans la fabrique des espaces? Sa politique est de ne pas dessiner de frontières conceptuelles ou analytiques, ni de se contenter du pire-qui-est-toujours-probable, mais de laisser leur place à des descriptions ouvertes, et à des pratiques contre-hégémoniques de spatialisations de l’avenir : à d’autres possibles. (shrink)

Ariès traces Western man's attitudes toward mortality from the early medieval conception of death as the familiar collective destiny of the human race to the modern tendency, so pronounced in industrial societies, to hide death as if it were an embarrassing family secret.

The construct of locus of control of reinforcement has generated thousands of studies since its introduction as a psychological concept by Julian Rotter. Although evidence indicates its importance for a wide range of outcomes, comparatively little research has been directed toward identification of potential developmental antecedents of internal/external expectancies. A previous review of antecedent findings called for more research to be completed, particularly using observational and/or longitudinal methodologies. The current paper summarizes and evaluates antecedent research published in the intervening years (...) since Carton and Nowicki’s review. Results largely were consistent with expectations based on Rotter’s social learning theory, although there is still a need for researchers to use observational, rather than self-report methodologies, and to include data from non-western cultures. (shrink)

The left must confront the politics of removing carbon from the atmosphere – a topic rapidly making its way to the top of the climate agenda. We here examine the technology of direct air capture, tracing its intellectual origins and laying bare the political economy of its current manifestations. We find a space crowded with ideology-laden metaphors, ample fossil-capital entanglements and bold visions for a new, ethereal frontier of capital accumulation. These diversions must be cut short if a technology with (...) the capacity to help repair at least some climate damage is to be of any use. Only socialising the means of removal will allow this to happen. (shrink)

Par-dela les limites de la methode experimentale, tributaire des sens exterieurs, se deploie une experience toute spirituelle du monde suprasensible, royaume des choses morales et substances incorporelles, ainsi que du monde surnaturel, celui des arcanes de la grace et de la gloire. Meme dans le domaine des choses corporelles, ou l'experience sensible reste imparfaite, cette experience mystique qu'est l'illumination interieure est necessaire pour suppleer a l'insuffisance de l'experience des sens, simplement humaine et philosophique. Roger Bacon nous apparait a travers cet (...) ouvrage comme mystique, mais aussi comme humaniste et savant: cette harmonie dans sa personne n'est pas sans repondre a l'harmonie des choses ou le surnaturel s'ajoute a la nature pour la parfaire, puisque apres tout ces deux facons de connaitre le Createur et la creature peuvent bien eter la double manifestation d'un seul et meme gout imperieux pour l'experience. Roger Bacon peut bien s'eprnedre des donnees de la nature et des idees de la litterature profane sans pour autant se dejuger: s'il est vrai que c'est le meme Dieu qui a fait la Nature et l'Ecriture, c'est le meme Dieu qui nous illumine de l'illumination generale dans l'experience physique et de l'illumination interieure dans l'experience mystique. (shrink)

In the tradition of quantified modal logic, it was assumed that significantly different linguistic systems underlie reference to individuals, to times and to ‘possible worlds’. Various results from recent research in formal semantics suggest that this is not so, and that there is in fact apervasive symmetrybetween the linguistic means with which we refer to these three domains. Reference to individuals, times and worlds is uniformly effected through generalized quantifiers, definite descriptions, and pronouns, and in each domain grammatical features situate (...) the reference of terms as near, far or ‘further’ from the actual or from a reported speech act. We outline various directions in which a program ofontological symmetrycould be developed, and we offer in theAppendixa symmetric fragment developed in a logic that can be seen as a compromise between an extensional and an intensional system. (shrink)

This article presents the Arabic text of al-Q's short geometric treatise, The Book of the centres of the tangent circles on lines, by the method of analysis, with translation and a mathematical commentary. In this treatise al-Q solves by analysis an ordered set of eight problems where the goal is to locate, on a given line, the centre of a circle which is tangent to two given elements, which may be points, straight lines or circles. For example, in the first (...) problem he wanted to find the centre of a circle which contains two given points. In fact, al-Q establishes the locus of the solutions, and this locus can be a straight line or a conic. The treatise is reminiscent of one of the purposes of al-Q's work on the perfect compass, namely to assign to the conics the status of regular lines. (shrink)

The question of how inequality is generated and how it reproduces over time has been a major concern for social scientists for more than a century. Yet the relationship between inequality and the process of economic development is far from being well understood. These Raffaele Mattioli Lectures have brought together two of the world's leading economists, Professors Philippe Aghion and Jeffrey Williamson, to question the conventional wisdom on inequality and growth, and address its inability to explain recent economic experience. (...) Professor Aghion assesses the affects of inequality on growth, and asks whether inequality matters: if so why is excessive inequality bad for growth, and is it possible to reconcile aggregate findings with macroeconomic theories of incentives? In the second part Jeffrey Williamson discusses the Kuznets hypothesis, and focuses on the causes of the rise of wage and income inequality in developed economies. (shrink)

Welche Rolle spielt die Moral für unser wirtschaftliches Handeln und überhaupt in der Wirtschaft? Steht sie uns vielleicht sogar im Weg? Durch Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrisen ist das Misstrauen zwischen Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft weiter gestiegen. In Anbetracht dessen stellen die Herausgeber dieses Bandes die Frage, ob wir eine neue Wirtschaftsethik brauchen: eine Wirtschaftsethik, die den in der Wirtschaft tätigen Menschen eine wirkliche Orientierung gibt, statt sie dem Dilemma von leerem Moralismus und praktischen Zwängen der ökonomischen Welt zu überlassen; eine Wirtschaftsethik, die (...) dem Anspruch, einen realistischen ethischen Rahmen für das wirtschaftliche Handeln zu bieten, tatsächlich gerecht wird. Die Beiträge dieses Buches behandeln interdisziplinär und aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven die Schwierigkeiten mit der Moral und münden in der provokanten These, dass sich Wirtschaftsethik auch ausgezeichnet als Warnung vor der Moral eignet. (shrink)

It has long been recognized that productivity growth and the business cycle are closely interrelated. Yet, until recently, the two phenomena have been investigated separately in the economics literature. This book provides the first consistent attempt to analyze the effects of macroeconomic volatility on productivity growth, and also the reverse causality from growth to business cycles. The authors show that by looking at the economy through the lens of private entrepreneurs, who invest under credit constraints, one can go some way (...) towards explaining persistent macroeconomic volatility and the effects of volatility on growth. Beginning with an analysis of the effects of volatility on growth, the authors argue that the lower the level of financial development in a country the more detrimental the effect of volatility on growth. This prediction is confirmed by cross-country panel regressions. The data also suggests that a fixed exchange rate regime or more countercyclical budgetary policies are growth-enhancing in countries with a lower level of financial development. The former reduce aggregate volatility whereas the latter reduce the negative effects of volatility on long-term productivity-enhancing investment by firms. The book concludes with an investigation into how the interplay between credit constraints and pecuniary externalities is sufficient to generate persistent business cycles and to explain the occurrence of currency crises. (shrink)

Les fouilles de Pompéi ont permis la découverte d’un vaste ensemble d’inscriptions électorales, les programmata, peintes sur les murs extérieurs des maisons, et par lesquelles un individu, le rogator (ou plusieurs), appelle à voter pour un ou des candidats aux élections locales. Une soixantaine de ces inscriptions comprend le nom d’une femme comme rogator. Qui furent ces femmes? Leur engagement obéissait-il à des modalités particulières? Peut-on déterminer quelles furent leurs raisons pour soutenir ces candidats? Comment expliquer, alors qu’elles n’avaient officiellement (...) aucun rôle politique, qu’elles prirent la parole publiquement pour s’adresser aux électeurs? Enfin, que nous disent en creux ces inscriptions sur les nécessités morales et narratives auxquelles se pliaient les sources littéraires et normatives du début de l’Empire? (shrink)

This paper concerns Aristotle's kind‐crossing prohibition. My aim is twofold. I argue that the traditional accounts of the prohibition are subject to serious internal difficulties and should be questioned. According to these accounts, Aristotle's prohibition is based on the individuation of scientific disciplines and the general kind that a discipline is about, and it says that scientific demonstrations must not cross from one discipline, and corresponding kind, to another. I propose a very different account of the prohibition. The prohibition is (...) based on Aristotle's scientific and metaphysical essentialism, according to which a scientific demonstration must take as its starting point a set of per se properties of a subject, if these make up a single, unitary definition. The subject of demonstration here is a kind, although not the general kind associated with a discipline, but rather the particular kind that the particular demonstration is about. (shrink)

This volume handles in various perspectives the concept of function and the nature of functional explanations, topics much discussed since two major and conflicting accounts have been raised by Larry Wright and Robert Cummins’s papers in the 1970s. Here, both Wright’s ”etiological theory of functions’ and Cummins’s ”systemic’ conception of functions are refined and elaborated in the light of current scientific practice, with papers showing how the ”etiological’ theory faces several objections and may in reply be revisited, while its counterpart (...) became ever more sophisticated, as researchers discovered fresh applications for it. Relying on a firm knowledge of the original positions and debates, this volume presents cutting-edge research evincing the complexities that today pertain in function theory in various sciences. Alongside original papers from authors central to the controversy, work by emerging researchers taking novel perspectives will add to the potential avenues to be followed in the future. Not only does the book adopt no a priori assumptions about the scope of functional explanations, it also incorporates material from several very different scientific domains, e.g. neurosciences, ecology, or technology. In general, functions are implemented in mechanisms; and functional explanations in biology have often an essential relation with natural selection. These two basic claims set the stage for this book’s coverage of investigations concerning both ”functional’ explanations, and the ”metaphysics’ of functions. It casts new light on these claims, by testing them through their confrontation with scientific developments in biology, psychology, and recent developments concerning the metaphysics of realization. Rather than debating a single theory of functions, this book presents the richness of philosophical issues raised by functional discourse throughout the various sciences.​ Content Level » Research Keywords » Causal role theory of functions - Determination of content - Ecosystem selection - Etiological theory of function - Evolutionary biology - Functional explanations - Historical concepts in biology - Larry Wright - Neurosciences - New mechanism - Selected effects functions - Systemic theory of functions - William Wimsatt Related subjects » Anthropology & Archaeology - Epistemology & Philosophy of Science - Evolutionary & Developmental Biology - Neuroscience - Philosophy TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction.- Section I. Biological functions and functional explanations: genes, cells, organisms and ecosystems.- Part 1.A. Functions, organization and development in life sciences.- Chapter 1. William C. Wimsatt. Evolution and the Stability of Functional Architectures.- Chapter 2. Denis M. Walsh. Teleological Emergence: The Autonomy of Evo-Devo.- Chapter 3. Jean Gayon. Does oxygen have a function, or: where should the regress of biological functions stop?.- Part 1.B. Functional pluralism for biologists? Chapter 4. Frédéric Bouchard. How ecosystem evolution strengthens the case for functional pluralism.- Chapter 5. Robert N. Brandon. A general case for functional pluralism.- Chapter 6. Philippe Huneman. Weak realism in the etiological theory of functions.- Section 2. Section II. Psychology, philosophy of mind and technology: Functions in a man’s world.- Part 2.A. 2A. Metaphysics, function and philosophy of mind.- Chapter 7. Carl Craver. Functions and Mechanisms in Contemporary Neuroscience.- Chapter 8. Carl Gillett. Understanding the sciences through the fog of ”functionalism.’.- 2.B. Philosophy of technology, design and functions.- Chapter 9. Fran¸ coise Longy. Artifacts and Organisms: A Case for a New Etiological Theory of Functions.- Chapter 10. Pieter Vermaas and Wybo Houkes. Functions as Epistemic Highlighters: An Engineering Account of Technical, Biological and Other Functions.- Epilogue.- Larry Wright. Revising teleological explanations: reflections three decades on. (shrink)

This article discusses Sven Ove Hansson’s corpus model for the influence of values (in particular, non-epistemic ones) in the hypothesis acceptance/rejection phase of scientific inquiry. This corpus model is based on Hansson’s concepts of scientific corpus and science ‘in the large sense’. I first present Hansson’s corpus model of value influence with some introductory comments about its origins, a detailed presentation of the model with a new terminology, an analysis of its limits, and an appreciation of its handling of controversial (...) non-epistemic values. I conclude that it is a very good candidate for managing value influence, because contrary to other models in the literature it is fairly simple, it provides a universal and systematic procedure for dealing with values, and it syste- matically preserves the epistemic integrity of science. I then study some difficulties associated with the model’s central feature of taking the maximum level of evidence required by the applications of a claim in order for the latter to enter the scientific corpus: the difficulty to identify this maximum requirement; the non-optimality of this requirement with respect to other less demanding requirements; the potentially detrimental consequences of the preference for false negatives over false positives on which it relies; and the issue of whether there can nevertheless be requirements higher than this maximum. I show that these issues may potentially challenge the corpus model. Finally, I call for empirical work (in particular, an investigation of scientists’ and engineers’ own normative views) in order to better assess these issues. (shrink)

In contemporary human brain mapping, it is commonly assumed that the “mind is what the brain does”. Based on that assumption, task-based imaging studies of the last three decades measured differences in brain activity that are thought to reflect the exercise of human mental capacities (e.g., perception, attention, memory). With the advancement of resting state studies, tractography and graph theory in the last decade, however, it became possible to study human brain connectivity without relying on cognitive tasks or constructs. It (...) therefore is currently an open question whether the assumption that “the mind is what the brain does” is an indispensable working hypothesis in human brain mapping. This paper argues that the hypothesis is, in fact, dispensable. If it is dropped, researchers can “meet the brain on its own terms” by searching for new, more adequate concepts to describe human brain organization. Neuroscientists can establish such concepts by conducting exploratory experiments that do not test particular cognitive hypotheses. The paper provides a systematic account of exploratory neuroscientific research that would allow researchers to form new concepts and formulate general principles of brain connectivity, and to combine connectivity studies with manipulation methods to identify neural entities in the brain. These research strategies would be most fruitful if applied to the mesoscopic scale of neuronal assemblies, since the organizational principles at this scale are currently largely unknown. This could help researchers to link microscopic and macroscopic evidence to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the human brain. The paper concludes by comparing this account of exploratory neuroscientific experiments to recent proposals for large-scale, discovery-based studies of human brain connectivity. (shrink)

Kant’s analysis of the concept of natural purpose in the Critique of judgment captured several features of organisms that he argued warranted making them the objects of a special field of study, in need of a special regulative teleological principle. By showing that organisms have to be conceived as self-organizing wholes, epigenetically built according to the idea of a whole that we must presuppose, Kant accounted for three features of organisms conflated in the biological sciences of the period: adaptation, functionality (...) and conservation of forms..Kant’s unitary concept of natural purpose was subsequently split in two directions: first by Cuvier’s comparative anatomy, that would draw on the idea of adaptative functions as a regulative principle for understanding in reconstituting and classifying organisms; and then by Goethe’s and Geoffroy’s morphology, a science of the general transformations of living forms. However, such general transformations in nature, objects of an alleged ‘archaeology of nature’, were thought impossible by Kant in the §80 of the Critique of judgment. Goethe made this ‘adventure of reason’ possible by changing the sense of ‘explanation’: scientific explanation was shifted from the investigation of the mechanical processes of generation of individual organisms to the unveiling of some ideal transformations of types instantiated by those organisms. (shrink)

According to one productive and influential approach to cognition, categorization, object recognition, and higher level cognitive processes operate on a set of fixed features, which are the output of lower level perceptual processes. In many situations, however, it is the higher level cognitive process being executed that influences the lower level features that are created. Rather than viewing the repertoire of features as being fixed by low-level processes, we present a theory in which people create features to subserve the representation (...) and categorization of objects. Two types of category learning should be distinguished. Fixed space category learning occurs when new categorizations are representable with the available feature set. Flexible space category learning occurs when new categorizations cannot be represented with the features available. Whether fixed or flexible, learning depends on the featural contrasts and similarities between the new category to be represented and the individual's existing concepts. Fixed feature approaches face one of two problems with tasks that call for new features: If the fixed features are fairly high level and directly useful for categorization, then they will not be flexible enough to represent all objects that might be relevant for a new task. If the fixed features are small, subsymbolic fragments (such as pixels), then regularities at the level of the functional features required to accomplish categorizations will not be captured by these primitives. We present evidence of flexible perceptual changes arising from category learning and theoretical arguments for the importance of this flexibility. We describe conditions that promote feature creation and argue against interpreting them in terms of fixed features. Finally, we discuss the implications of functional features for object categorization, conceptual development, chunking, constructive induction, and formal models of dimensionality reduction. Key Words: concept learning; conceptual development; features; perceptual learning; stimulus encoding. (shrink)

William Alston’s argument against the deontological conception of epistemic justification is a classic—and much debated—piece of contemporary epistemology. At the heart of Alston’s argument, however, lies a very simple mistake which, surprisingly, appears to have gone unnoticed in the vast literature now devoted to the argument. After having shown why some of the standard responses to Alston’s argument don’t work, we elucidate the mistake and offer a hypothesis as to why it has escaped attention.

Polysemous concepts with multiple related meanings pervade natural languages, yet some philosophers argue that we should eliminate them to avoid miscommunication and pointless debates in scientific discourse. This paper defends the legitimacy of polysemous concepts in science against this eliminativist challenge. My approach analyses such concepts as patchworks with multiple scale-dependent, technique-involving, domain-specific and property-targeting uses (patches). I demonstrate the generality of my approach by applying it to "hardness" in materials science, "homology" in evolutionary biology, "gold" in chemistry and "cortical (...) column" in neuroscience. Such patchwork concepts are legitimate if the techniques used to apply them produce reliable results, the domains to which they are applied are homogenous, and the properties they refer to are significant to describe, classify or explain the behavior of entities in the extension of the concept. By following these normative constraints, researchers can avoid miscommunication and pointless debates without having to eliminate polysemous patchwork concepts in scientific discourse. (shrink)

Translates an important 1932 work by Austrian physicist-turned- philosopher Frank (1884-1966). Among the topics he discusses are the Laplacean determinism of global causal laws of nature; the loss of causal simplicity with the establishment of field concepts; cause and chance in classical, statistical-mechanical, and quantum physics; conservation in laws and causal laws; the seeming irreversibility of natural processes; extremal principles; vitalist explanations as also causal; miracles and theological explanations; and lawfulness in the phenomena of life. First published by Springer-Verlag as (...) Das Kauselgesetz und seine Grenzen. No subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

: In the 1980s, the analysis of presupposition projection contributed to a ‘dynamic turn’ in semantics: the classical notion of meanings as truth conditions was replaced with a dynamic notion of meanings as Context Change Potentials. We argue that this move was misguided, and we offer an alternative in which presupposition projection follows from the combination of a fully classical semantics and a new pragmatic principle, which we call Be Articulate. This principle requires that a meaning pp’ conceptualized as involving (...) a pre-condition p should be articulated as … … rather than as … pp’ …, unless the full conjunction is ruled out because the first or the second conjunct is semantically idle. In particular, … … is infelicitous - and hence … pp’ … is acceptable - if one can determine as soon as p and is uttered that no matter how the sentence ends these words could be eliminated without affecting its contextual meaning. An equivalence theorem guarantees that this condition suffices to derive Heim’s results in almost all cases. Extensions of the condition lead to several new predictions, in particular concerning some ‘symmetric readings’, as well as presupposition projection in quantified structures, which displays a complex interaction between the nature of the trigger and the monotonicity of the quantifier. (shrink)