Shepard's notion of “internalisation” is better interpreted as a simile than a metaphor. A fractal encoding model of visual perception is sketched, in which image elements are transformed in such a way as to maximise symmetry with the current input. This view, in which the transforming system embodies what has been internalised, resolves some problems raised by the metaphoric interpretation. [Hecht; Shepard].

(1993). Transformation of Morphomechanical constraints into generative rules of Organic Evolution. World Futures: Vol. 38, Theoretical Achievements and Practical Applications of General Evolutionary Theory, pp. 33-42.

A remarkable philosophical affinity may be observed between the intuitionistic conception of mathematics and the transformational generative approach to the study of language: both disciplines profess a mentalistic ontology, both posit an idealized subject, and both insist on their autonomy with respect to other disciplines. This philosophical parallel is formalized in terms of a generalization of the intuitionistic notion of creative subject; resulting are the foundations of a unified theory of mental acts based on intuitionistic logic — capturing, inter (...) alia, similarities between proof acts and speech acts. As an application of the theory, it is then shown how the notion of mental act may provide for an insightful formalization of various hypotheses pertaining to the linguistic dependence or relativity of mathematics. (shrink)

Various restrictions on transformational grammars have been investigated in order to reduce their generative power from recursively enumerable languages to recursive languages.It will be shown that any restriction on transformational grammars defining a recursively enumerable subset of the set of all transformational grammars, is either too weak (in the sense that there does not exist a general decision procedure for all languages generated under such a restriction) or too strong (in the sense that there exists a recursive language that (...) cannot be generated by any transformational grammar thus restricted). In addition, some related problems will be discussed. (shrink)

As if 2020 were not a peculiar enough year, its fifth month has seen the relatively quiet publication of a preprint describing the most powerful Natural Language Processing (NLP) system to date, GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer-3), by Silicon Valley research firm OpenAI. Though the software implementation of GPT-3 is still in its initial Beta release phase, and its full capabilities are still unknown as of the time of this writing, it has been shown that this Artificial Intelligence can comprehend (...) prompts in natural language, on virtually any topic, and generate relevant, original text content that is indistinguishable from human writing. Moreover, access to these capabilities, in a limited yet worrisome enough extent, is available to the general public as of the time of this writing. This paper presents select examples of original content generated by the author using GPT-3. These examples illustrate some of the capabilities of GPT-3 in comprehending prompts in natural language and generating convincing content in response. We use these examples to raise specific, fundamental questions pertaining to the intellectual property of this content and the potential use of GPT-3 to facilitate plagiarism. Our goal is to instigate not just a sense of urgency, but of a present tardiness on the part of the academic community in addressing these questions. (shrink)

As if 2020 was not a peculiar enough year, its fifth month saw the relatively quiet publication of a preprint describing the most powerful natural language processing (NLP) system to date—GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer-3)—created by the Silicon Valley research firm OpenAI. Though the software implementation of GPT-3 is still in its initial beta release phase, and its full capabilities are still unknown as of the time of this writing, it has been shown that this artificial intelligence can comprehend prompts (...) in natural language, on virtually any topic, and generate relevant original text content that is indistinguishable from human writing. Moreover, access to these capabilities, in a limited yet worrisome enough extent, is available to the general public. This paper presents examples of original content generated by the author using GPT-3. These examples illustrate some of the capabilities of GPT-3 in comprehending prompts in natural language and generating convincing content in response. I use these examples to raise specific fundamental questions pertaining to the intellectual property of this content and the potential use of GPT-3 to facilitate plagiarism. The goal is to instigate a sense of urgency, as well as a sense of present tardiness on the part of the academic community in addressing these questions. (shrink)

OpenAI’s Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT), Google’s Bard and other generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies can greatly enhance the capability of healthcare profess...

Written by two of the leading figures in the field, this is a lucid and systematic introduction to semantics as applied to transformational grammars of the ...

What comes after postmodernism and how will this affect educational theory and, I would add, educational practices? I will take up these challenging questions by interpreting present times as a period of transformation towards a new kind of awareness. Nietzsche—for some the father of postmodernity, for me a visionary thinker who ‘presenced’ what was coming—has already explored this transformation.

Mitte der fünfziger Jahre entsteht mit den Arbeiten der amerikanischen Linguisten Zellig S. Harris und Noam Chomsky die Theorie der generativen (Transformations-)Grammatiken a) Chomskys Grammatikmodell in den "Aspects" ... b) Entwicklung der Theorie ... nach 1965 ...

Recent defenders of the cognitive significance of religious language have had to face opponents from two directions; from those who demand that religious language be capable of some form of empirical verification and from those who demand that for religious language to be meaningful it must be capable of being understood in ordinary language. Apologists who have taken the first challenge seriously have strained to show that religious statements can be verified by ‘religious experience’, or by an ‘odd discernment’ or (...) by an ‘eschatological verification’. Each of these responses raises further problems for the defender of religion, but in general they all are subject to their failure to provide an adequate criterion or standard by which they could be inter-subjectively tested. Facing in the other direction, theological apologists have attempted to justify religious expressions by showing that they could be subsumed under special categories of ordinary language; namely those of ‘convictional language’ and ‘performative language’. Although these defenders have shown that religious language has an ‘ordinary usage’, they have not shown that the cognitive elements of this usage can be reduced to the ‘use of ordinary language’. (shrink)

The theoretical debate in linguistics during the past half-century bears an uncanny parallel to the politics of the (now defunct) Communist Bloc. The parallels are not so much in the revolutionary nature of Chomsky's ideas as in the Bolshevik manner of his takeover of linguistics (Koerner 1994) and in the Trotskyist (“permanent revolution”) flavor of the subsequent development of the doctrine of Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) (Townsend & Bever 2001, pp. 37–40). By those standards, Jackendoff is quite a party (...) faithful (a Khrushchev or a Dubcek, rather than a Solzhenitsyn or a Sakharov) who questions some of the components of the dogma, yet stops far short of repudiating it. (shrink)

The theory of language must predict the possible thought—signal (or meaning—sound or sign) pairings of a language. We argue for a Meaning First architecture of language where a thought structure is generated first. The thought structure is then realized using language to communicate the thought, to memorize it, or perhaps with another purpose. Our view contrasts with the T-model architecture of mainstream generative grammar, according to which distinct phrase-structural representations—Phonetic Form (PF) for articulation, Logical Form (LF) for interpretation—are generated (...) within the grammar. At the same time, our view differs from early transformational grammar and generative semantics: We view the relationship between the thought structure and the corresponding signal as one of compression. We specify a formal sketch of compression as a choice between multiple possible pronounciations balancing the desire to transmit information against the effort of pronounciation. The Meaning First architecture allows a greater degree of independence between thought structures and the linguistic signal. We present three arguments favoring this type of independence. First we argue that scopal properties can be better explained if we only compare thought structures independent of the their realization as a sentence. Secondly, we argue that Meaning First architecture allows contentful late insertion, an idea that has been argued for in Distributed Morphology already, but as we argue is also motivated by the division of the logical and socio-emotive meaning content of language. Finally, we show that only the Meaning First architecture provides a satisfying account of the mixing of multiple languages by multilingual speakers, especially for cases of simultaneous articulation across two modalities in bimodal speakers. Our view of the structure of grammar leads to a reassessment of priorities in linguistic analyses: while current mainstream work is often focused on establishing one-to-one relationships between concepts and morphemes, our view makes it plausible that primitive concepts are frequently marked indirectly or unpronounced entirely. Our view therefore assigns great value to the understanding of logical primitives and of compression. (shrink)

In this paper we contrast bounded and ecological rationality with a proposed alternative, generative rationality. Ecological approaches to rationality build on the idea of humans as “intuitive statisticians” while we argue for a more generative conception of humans as “probing organisms.” We first highlight how ecological rationality’s focus on cues and statistics is problematic for two reasons: the problem of cue salience, and the problem of cue uncertainty. We highlight these problems by revisiting the statistical and cue-based logic (...) that underlies ecological rationality, which originate from the misapplication of concepts in psychophysics. We then work through the most popular experimental task in the ecological rationality literature—the city size task—to illustrate how psychophysical assumptions have informally been linked to ecological rationality. After highlighting these problems, we contrast ecological rationality with a proposed alternative, generative rationality. Generative rationality builds on biology—in contrast to ecological rationality’s focus on statistics. We argue that in uncertain environments cues are rarely given or available for statistical processing. Therefore we focus on the psychogenesis of awareness rather than psychophysics of cues. For any agent or organism, environments “teem” with indefinite cues, meanings and potential objects, the salience or relevance of which is scarcely obvious based on their statistical or physical properties. We focus on organism-specificity and the organism-directed probing that shapes awareness and perception. Cues in teeming environments are noticed when they serve as cues-for-something, requiring what might be called a “cue-to-clue” transformation. In this sense, awareness toward a cue or cues is actively “grown.” We thus argue that perception might more productively be seen as the presentation of cues and objects rather than their representation. This generative approach not only applies to relatively mundane organism interactions with their environments—as well as organism-object relationships and their embodied nature—but also has significant implications for understanding the emergence of novelty in economic settings. We conclude with a discussion of how our arguments link with—but modify—Herbert Simon’s popular “scissors” metaphor, as it applies to bounded rationality and its implications for decision making in uncertain, teeming environments. (shrink)

This book explores the revolutionary intersection of Generative AI (GenAI) and cybersecurity. It presents a comprehensive guide that intertwines theories and practices, aiming to equip cybersecurity professionals, CISOs, AI researchers, developers, architects and college students with an understanding of GenAI’s profound impacts on cybersecurity. The scope of the book ranges from the foundations of GenAI, including underlying principles, advanced architectures, and cutting-edge research, to specific aspects of GenAI security such as data security, model security, application-level security, and the emerging (...) fields of LLMOps and DevSecOps. It explores AI regulations around the globe, ethical considerations, the threat landscape, and privacy preservation. Further, it assesses the transformative potential of GenAI in reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, the ethical implications of using advanced models, and the innovative strategies required to secure GenAI applications. Lastly, the book presents an in-depth analysis of the security challenges and potential solutions specific to GenAI, and a forward-looking view of how it can redefine cybersecurity practices. By addressing these topics, it provides answers to questions on how to secure GenAI applications, as well as vital support with understanding and navigating the complex and ever-evolving regulatory environments, and how to build a resilient GenAI security program. The book offers actionable insights and hands-on resources for anyone engaged in the rapidly evolving world of GenAI and cybersecurity. (shrink)

Does the material basis of conscious experience extend beyond the boundaries of the brain and central nervous system? In Clark 2009 I reviewed a number of ‘enactivist’ arguments for such a view and found none of them compelling. Ward (2012) rejects my analysis on the grounds that the enactivist deploys an essentially world-involving concept of experience that transforms the argumentative landscape in a way that makes the enactivist conclusion inescapable. I present an alternative (prediction-and-generative-model-based) account that neatly accommodates all (...) the positive evidence that Ward cites on behalf of this enactivist conception, and that (I argue) makes richer and more satisfying contact with the full sweep of human experience. (shrink)

Background:Policemen all over the world are tasked with the heavy work of maintaining social security. With the imbalance in mentality brought about by high population density and social transformation, the work of the Chinese police is particularly hard. As the window of demographic dividend is closing and the number of newborns is insufficient, China has started to adjust its established fertility policy to encourage a family to have two children. However, the results have not met the expectations of the policy (...) adjustment. It is generally believed that factors such as high work pressure, high parenting costs, and low levels of happiness may be the main reasons for low fertility intentions. Studying this typical population of police officers may explore the relationship between work stress, happiness, and reproductive concerns, and provide evidence of Chinese sample.Objectives:To explore the relations between job burnout, subjective well-being, and generativity concern in Chinese police officers.Methods:The study used a cross-sectional survey to collect data from 494 police officers from H city in China. The participants completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scale (FACESII), the Loyola Generativity Scale (LGS), and the Satisfaction with life scale (SWLS). Moderated mediation effect models assessed the association between job burnout, subjective well-being, and generativity concern.Results:Job burnout had a significant negative predictive effect on both subjective well-being and generativity concern, and subjective well-being played a mediating role between job burnout and generativity concern. In addition, family intimacy and adaptability had a significant negative moderating effect between subjective well-being and generativity concern. In a conclusion, there is a moderated mediating effect between job burnout and generativity concern.Conclusion:Subjective well-being played a mediating role between job burnout and generativity concern. (shrink)

Rosi Braidotti's contribution to the Deleuze Studies Conference 2016 held in Rome, later transcribed and then revised by the author, points firmly to the current need for an affirmative thinking approach, actively standing to the present, while assessing its becoming and imagining new configurations. Saying yes to the world, being worthy of it, does not entail passive acceptance but rather the activation of transformative and critical thinking. To this aim, Braidotti looks at Deleuze as well as at feminist theory. The (...) ontology of immanence turns into a materialist, collective, vital, embodied and relational ethics. (shrink)

This paper puts Jane Bennett’s vital materialism into dialogue with Luce Irigaray’s ontology of sexuate difference. Together these thinkers challenge the image of dead or intrinsically inanimate matter that is bound up with both the instrumentalization of the earth and the disavowal of sexual difference and the maternal. In its place they seek to affirm a vital, generative materiality: an ‘active matter’ whose differential becomings no longer oppose activity to passivity, subject to object, or one body, self or entity (...) to its ‘other’. For both thinkers, displacing the hylomorphic conceptual structures that have tended to dominate western metaphysical thought is inseparable from critiquing the model of the individual subject as bounded, autonomous and self-identical. Such individualism is countered by the relational ontologies figured in Bennett’s ‘distributed agencies’ and Irigaray’s ‘placental economy’, and by a shared attentiveness to the capacities of the human body to bear others within. Nonetheless, this paper argues that each thinker renders this ‘other within’ in very different ways. On the one hand, Bennett’s approach complements and expands Irigaray’s notion of the elemental by affording a greater attentiveness to inorganic and non-sexuate matters. On the other, Irigaray’s conception of generative relationality and the ontological priority of the in-between allows us to think such material entanglements in ways that more fully displace the twinned logics of individualism and instrumentalization. Her project thereby affirms the relational and irreducible differences on which the ‘vitality’ of a vital materiality depends. If there is no more “earth” to press down/repress, to work, to represent, but also and always to desire, no opaque matter which in theory does not know herself, then what pedestal remains for the ex-sistence of the “subject”? If the earth turned and more especially turned upon herself, the erection of the subject might thereby be disconcerted and risk losing its elevation and penetration. For what would there be to rise up from and exercise his power over? And in? Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman Jane Bennett has recently argued that “the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption”, continuing that: “The figure of an intrinsically inanimate matter may be one of the impediments to the emergence of more ecological and more materially sustainable modes of production and consumption”.11J. Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010, ix. Henceforth VM. View all notes This insight is prefigured and re-affirmed by the work of Irigaray. Her sustained analysis of western thought and culture shows how its constitutive disavowal of sexual difference and the maternal is inextricably bound up with an equally deep-rooted disavowal of matter and corporeality. As the above passage from Speculum suggests,22L. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. G. Gill, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, 133. Henceforth S. View all notes Irigaray seeks to expose woman's reduction to an object for a subject and a maternal-material resource for man's speculations; but in disentangling woman from her symbolic identification with the earth, she also seeks to release the earth from its identification with a passive and manipulable matter. Her work thus bears directly on the revaluation required to transform human beings' relations to materiality: both their own, and that of the earth they inhabit. At the centre of this revaluation is Irigaray's work to displace the image of dead or intrinsically inanimate matter that Bennett also critiques, and to affirm instead a sexuate materiality that is both living and generative. Her consistent troubling of hylomorphism is as unsettling for the subject as her question: “But what if the ‘object’ started to speak?” This question is echoed in Bennett's concern with “the moment when the object becomes the Other, when the sardine can looks back, when the mute idol speaks”.33 VM, 2, citing W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2005, 157. View all notes As this passage indicates, Bennett's own project is more concerned with the agency of non-human materialities – including their role in the constitution of the human – than with specifically sexed bodies or a materiality inflected by sexual difference. It is these crucial differences in emphasis, I will suggest, that allow the work of these two thinkers to be brought together in productive dialogue. On the one hand, Bennett's approach affords a greater attentiveness to inorganic and non-sexuate matter; on the other, Irigaray's twinned ontology of sexual difference and maternal relation is better able to affirm the relational differences on which the “vitality” of a vital materiality depends. The paper begins by outlining several key elements of Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference to show how it leads necessarily to a rethinking of matter. This rethinking is especially helpful for shifting away from the hylomorphism that has been a dominant strand in western thought, informing an understanding of the earth as a fundamentally inert and ever-ready resource. As I will show, the figures through which Irigaray re-articulates female specificity also allow her to refigure the earth as active matter that “turns upon herself ” in generative flux. In the second section, I will situate Irigaray's re-thinking of matter in relation to Bennett's “vital materiality”.44Bennett can be aligned with a number of thinkers who have come to be grouped under the heading “new materialisms”. See S. Alaimo and S. Hekman, eds., Material Feminisms, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008; D. Coole and S. Frost, eds., New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. View all notes An advantage of this concept is that it refuses the separation between humans and matter still implicit in concepts such as “the environment”. By attending to “our own constitution as vital materiality”, as well as the ways our “own” bodies are never “fully or exclusively human”, Bennett adjusts the status of human actants while re-evaluating non-human bodies “as actants rather than as objects”. As I will show, her approach provides a constructive critical perspective on Irigaray's work by drawing attention to the specifically non-sexuate nature of the elemental. Equally, however, Irigaray's insistence on sexuate difference problematises any appeal to a generic notion of “the human”. This is especially helpful, I will suggest, in relation to contemporary descriptions of climate change as “anthropogenic”. By homogenising human beings, such descriptions make it more difficult to address the ways in which current ecological problems are inseparable from global patterns of social, political and economic inequity. For both thinkers, challenging hylomorphism needs to be matched with a critique of the dominant modern model of the subject as bounded, autonomous and self-identical. And for both, this model is displaced and undone by the capacity of the human body to bear others within, in ways that engender and sustain human life. Yet as I will discuss in the final two sections, each thinker renders this “other within” in very different ways, with significant implications for the ethics and politics of a “vital materiality”. In the end it is Irigaray's rendering of a distinctively female capacity to bear an other within, explored via the generative relationality of a placental economy, that more fully escapes the individualism of the One and the Same. Together, Irigaray and Bennett show that to take seriously the ecological crises that currently confront us means overcoming the disavowal of both human beings' own fundamental materiality and our dependency on the sustaining materialities of the earth. In contrast, a dominant strand in contemporary responses to these crises is an environmental politics of “enlightened self-interest”55I borrow this phrase from H. Kopnina's critical discussion in “Forsaking Nature? Contesting ‘Biodiversity’ Through Competing Discourses of Sustainability”, Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 7, no. 1 : 51–63. that precludes any serious re-evaluation of human beings' relations to matter and the earth. If human beings can be persuaded that current levels of environmental degradation are damaging to them, threatening perhaps their very survival, they are more likely to take decisive steps to alter their behaviour. Insofar as such approaches demand action only for the sake of human interests and ends, they are both anthropocentric and spring from the same instrumentalising rationality that has engendered the ecological crises we currently face. They may well be successful in prompting action. But by foregrounding the survival of “the human species” per se, such approaches foreclose discussion of whose interests are served if survival is all that is allowed to be at stake, and whose lives are thereby consigned to ongoing exploitation. Moreover, as I will argue below, the instrumental rationality that serves survival is at odds with an affirmation of life, as a becoming that depends on difference. With this in mind, I will problematise Bennett's proposed politics of “expanded self-interest”, while seeking to retain many of the insights her approach brings. To more fully displace the “rational” self-interest that has encouraged human exploitation of the earth, we might take up Bennett's “vital materiality” in ways informed by Irigaray's conception of generative difference and the relational space-time of the in-between. (shrink)

This paper provides a comprehensive exploration of the transformative role of generative AI models, specifically Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), in the realm of medical diagnosis. Drawing from the philosophy of medicine and epidemiology, the paper examines the technical, ethical, and philosophical dimensions of integrating generative models into healthcare. A case study featuring Emily underscores the pivotal support generative AI can offer in complex medical diagnoses. The discussion extends to the application of GANs (...) and VAEs in medical imaging, emphasizing their potential in improving diagnostics, treatment planning, and medical research. The paper further delves into challenges and controversies, addressing issues of anatomical accuracy, biases in training data, interpretability of AI-generated medical images, and ethical considerations, for example, the phenomenon of "Dr. Google" and its implications for self-diagnosis, particularly in the context of the increasing role of generative AI models in healthcare. The concluding section emphasizes the need for health literacy, responsible use of online information, and collaborative decision-making between patients and healthcare providers. We advocate for interdisciplinary collaborations to establish ethical guidelines and ensure responsible AI use in healthcare. (shrink)

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform many aspects of scholarly publishing. Authors, peer reviewers, and editors might use AI in a variety of ways, and those uses might augment their existing work or might instead be intended to replace it. We are editors of bioethics and humanities journals who have been contemplating the implications of this ongoing transformation. We believe that generative AI may pose a threat to the goals that animate our work but could (...) also be valuable for achieving those goals. In the interests of fostering a wider conversation about how generative AI may be used, we have developed a preliminary set of recommendations for its use in scholarly publishing. We hope that the recommendations and rationales set out here will help the scholarly community navigate toward a deeper understanding of the strengths, limits, and challenges of AI for responsible scholarly work. (shrink)

Homology continues to be a concept of central importance in the study of phylogenetic relations, but its relation to ontogenetic processes remains problematical. A definition of homology in terms of equivalent morphogenetic processes is defined and applied to the comparative study of tetrapod limbs. This allows for a consistent treatment of relations of similarity and difference of appendage structure in vertebrates, and the distinction between fishes fins and tetrapod limbs in terms of the concept of equivalence is described. The role (...) of genes can also be clarified in this context, in particular the influence of the Hox 4 complex in determining digit character and the homeotic transformations that arise from changes in their expression patterns. It is argued that these observations are not compatible with the notion of homology between individual digits (I, II, III, etc.) across the tetrapods, and that homology cannot be consistently identified with gene action. The relations between homology and the properties of the morphogenetic limb field are discussed. (shrink)

This article endeavours to prove that there were creation myths of human beings or certain things, but there were seldom creation myths of ontological cosmology in ancient China. This will be warranted through the distinction between the concepts of ‘to create’ and ‘to beget’, the distinction between ‘Cosmology I of creationism’ and ‘Cosmology II of begetting’, and the relationship between the One and Many. The only exception is the myth of Nüwa 女娲 as the creator of human beings, but not (...) the creator of the cosmos. Therefore, in ancient Chinese tradition, there were mainly myths of begetting rather than myths of complete creation in the sense similar to creatio ex nihilo.Contribution: Previous research frequently underscores the profound differences between ‘Cosmology I of creationism’ and ‘Cosmology II of begetting’. Based on the discussion of concepts of ‘to create’ [zao 造] and ‘to beget’ [sheng 生], this article argues that, there were mainly myths of begetting rather than myths of complete creation in the sense similar to creatio ex nihilo. (shrink)

Gender transition may be figured as part of a broader creaturely process of being partners in our own becoming. Gender transition is explored through the lenses of transformation (including comparisons with theosis and with religious conversion) and neurodiversity. Humans are transformative creatures; trans and gender-variant people, like others, have the power to curate their own identities and are on a journey toward perfection. Our nature as humans, including our sexed and gendered nature, is not over-and-done-with. In this sense, our active (...) building and shaping of our identities and body-stories is not a rejection of a divine blueprint for human existence, nor an exercise of illegitimate human hubris, but rather a licit creaturely form of generativity. (shrink)

The new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and especially the large language models (LLMs) of which ChatGPT is the most prominent example, have the potential to transform many aspects o...

A standard account of creativity is that it is a process in which the form of a thing or event is altered—restructured or reinterpreted—in a way that changes fundamentally that thing’s or event’s meaning, its nature or function, its intrinsic or instrumental value. What is created in this manner, however, is only a variation of the initial form. Such processes are creative in a weak sense; the strong sense requires that the old form be replaced by a quite different one, (...) as in reconstructions or metaphors. But creative substitution is not haphazard, not a matter of insight, genius, luck, or divine assistance. It utilizes the generative rules governing a formal structure to make or discover new forms that are transformations, not variations, of the original form. These procedures are teachable and not mysterious, although the possible transforms of the structure are never predictable. (shrink)

Understanding how impactful scientific articles were funded informs future funding decisions. The structural significance of articles is broken down into two submeasures: citation count and “generativity”. Generativity is an attempt to provide a quantitative operationalization of transformativeness, a concept often used as a funding criterion despite not being a well-defined construct. This report identifies highly impactful and generative publications indexed in the subject area of psychology in the Web of Science in the year 2002. Publications that reported funding sources (...) were found to be more generative than those that did not, and research that was privately funded was found to be more generative than publicly funded research. This analysis is exploratory, and hopefully contributes to a foundation for future empirical investigations into the structure and nature of transformative science that granting agencies would want to fund. (shrink)

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform many aspects of scholarly publishing. Authors, peer reviewers, and editors might use AI in a variety of ways, and those uses might augment their existing work or might instead be intended to replace it. We are editors of bioethics and humanities journals who have been contemplating the implications of this ongoing transformation. We believe that generative AI may pose a threat to the goals that animate our work but could (...) also be valuable for achieving those goals. In the interests of fostering a wider conversation about how generative AI may be used, we have developed a preliminary set of recommendations for its use in scholarly publishing. We hope that the recommendations and rationales set out here will help the scholarly community navigate toward a deeper understanding of the strengths, limits, and challenges of AI for responsible scholarly work. (shrink)

The new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and especially the large language models (LLMs) of which ChatGPT is the most prominent example, have the potential to transform many aspects o...

This paper investigates the transformative influence of generative AI on the arts, connecting it with Walter Benjamin's insights regarding the aura of art in the mechanical reproduction era. It scrutinizes how generative AI not only redefines art's traditional aura but also introduces a dynamic interplay between technological liberation and dependency. The analysis extends to the democratization of artistic expression and its broader societal impacts, highlighting a shift in art creation, perception, and interpretation in the digital age. This research (...) encapsulates the evolving nature of authenticity, creativity, and human–machine collaboration, marking a significant paradigm shift in art's conception and its role in society. (shrink)

In this monograph the author attempts to explain what speakers say in using language and how what they say is understood by developing a generative theory of illocutions. Such a theory consists of a finite set of rules and a finite vocabulary structured together in such a way that there is one and only one description produced of what is said by a speaker in each and every case in which what is said can be understood differently. The theory (...) is to mark all features of the utterance situation that produce these differences. In more conventional terms, Travis presents a kind of pragmatic theory for language use in which sentence-tokens can have characteristics in specific circumstances which are not features that belong to their sentence-types. In developing this model the author exploits features of transformational linguistic theory—specifically the notion of a generative description and the requirement that an adequate theory provides one and only one description of each distinct linguistic form. However, the author would not accept transformational theory itself as sufficient for a theory of illocutions because the former does not take into account contextual and nonlinguistic elements. (shrink)

This article explores the challenges surrounding generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in public administrations and its impact on human‒machine interactions within the public sector. First, it aims to deconstruct the reasons for distrust in GenAI in public administrations. The risks currently linked to GenAI in the public sector are often similar to those of conventional AI. However, while some risks remain pertinent, others are less so because GenAI has limited explainability, which, in return, limits its uses in public administrations. Confidentiality, (...) marking of GenAI outputs and errors are specific matters for which responses should be technical as well as cultural, as they are pushing the boundaries of our instrumental conceptions of machines. Second, this article proposes some paradigm shifts in the perspective of using GenAI in public administrations due to the radical change caused by its language-based nature. GenAI represents a profound break from the “numerical” nature of AI systems implemented in public administrations to date. The transformative impact of GenAI on the intellectual production of the state raises fears of the replacement, or rather enslavement, of civil servants to machines. The article argues for the development of critical thinking as a specific skill for civil servants who have become highly specialized and will have to think with a machine that is eclectic by nature. It anticipates a transformation in the political nature of public administrations, which should lead to more considerations for the strategic stake related to training corpus and for our conceptualization of the neutrality of AI. (shrink)

The 21st-century university is a contested site of neoliberal transformation. Its role is moving away from that of a hub of culture, knowledge and critique to that of a provider of skills and employability for the market. The move towards a lean business model in the management of knowledge production is not an isolated phenomenon, but integral to the shifting economic, political and moral landscapes of global capitalism and the knowledge society. The literature discussing the changes in higher education, which (...) could be collectively termed "critical studies of academia", remains fragmented and is yet to yield tangible resistance or envision viable alternative models of academic governance. This article discusses the possibility of generating constructive critique of "the new spirit of academic capitalism" from within. French Convention Theory is employed as a conceptual toolbox for unpacking the worlds of worth, conventions and justifications which operate beneath the surface of the marketisation, acceleration and casualisation of scientific labour - and suggested as a potential tool for building a generative sociology of critique. (shrink)

Three long papers are collected here which constitute Chomsky’s major theoretical work on syntax and semantics subsequent to the "standard theory" of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Since 1965, transformational-generative linguists have suggested various changes in "standard theory," centering on the relationship between the syntactic and semantic components in natural language grammars. In these papers Chomsky explains several specific problems that require the extension of standard theory and he criticizes the proposals and arguments of the generative semanticists, (...) attempting to show that many of the specific features of language that are claimed to support the generativist position are as well or better explained by extended standard theory, and emphasizing that most of the generativist’s proposals turn out to be mere "notational variants," evidentially indistinguishable from extended standard theory. Aside from appealing to particular data favoring his "lexicalist" defense of syntactic deep structure, Chomsky makes a Popperean appeal that his position is preferable because it is more constraining and more falsifiable. (shrink)

This article engages new histories of the black frontline communities of the Underground Railroad to rethink both fugitive democracy and the transformative possibilities of sanctuary as its constitutive twin. We analyze the ways that communities of free blacks and fugitives in the border zones between the Antebellum US North and South crafted themselves as magnetic spaces of creative refuge that suggest we reconceive sanctuary as the generative twin of fugitivity. This insight enables us to theorize new ethical and political (...) dimensions of Sheldon Wolin’s concept fugitive democracy by illuminating how fugitivity as flight away from danger can be interwoven with sanctuary as flight into and toward alternatives. Specifically, we theorize three dimensions of fugitive democracy/transformative sanctuary—sanctuary tending, dramatic sanctuary, and disruptive hospitality. While some theorists have considered key motifs in Wolin’s fugitive democracy to be opposed to vital themes disclosed in contemporary theories of black fugitivity, we argue that the power of black frontline communities stemmed precisely from their capacities to dynamically entangle political approaches taken to be at odds. For example, we suggest a theory and practice of tending involving both nurturing care and militantly defensive action, dramatic sanctuary performances that amplify public power by oscillating between tricky concealment and flagrant publicity, and disruptive hospitality that interweaves law-breaking harbor with strategies for juridical and institutional change. These insights open onto an alternative imaginary that can also provide a toolbox for building grassroots democratic power today, particularly in the face of emergent neofascism and escalating displacement worldwide. (shrink)

La distribution des pronoms anaphoriques est un enjeu central dans un ensemble de travaux en grammaire générative transformationnelle classique, les contraintes sur les pronoms anaphoriques étant un des thèmes centraux de la théorie du gouvernement et du liage. Les pronoms non anaphoriques n’ont pas fait l’objet d’un traitement aussi systématique, mais leur analyse repose sur des concepts centraux à l’analyse transformationnelle. D’une part cette analyse implique une réflexion sur le mouvement et motive la distinction entre structure de surface et structure (...) profonde. L’étude des différents pronoms wh- appelle par ailleurs un questionnement sur le fonctionnement des constituants en wh-. D’autre part l’analyse des pronoms explétifs exige une réflexion sur l’autonomie de la syntaxe, ou les décalages éventuels entre syntaxe et sémantique. (shrink)

David Brown (b. 1948) is a Scottish Episcopal priest and theologian whose work covers a vast terrain spanning methodological divisions between philosophy, Christian theology, religious studies, the arts and culture. Early work on the Trinity and Incarnation led to a Newman-inspired articulation of Scripture as tradition, and, related to this, the exploration of tradition as revelation with reference to a wide range of human experience. Moving from materially-mediated divine presence to culturally-mediated revelation, Brown's phenomenology of religious experience amounts to a (...) transformed natural religion along sacramental lines. Essays in this volume consider Brown's wide ranging and generative contributions in three parts: 1) Butler & Newman, 2) Incarnation & Trinity, and 3) Sacramentality & the Arts, with a concluding response from Brown himself that addresses 'religious experience and revelation', as well as 'secular culture and religious distinctiveness'. (shrink)

A theory of human origins that is one-half Charles Darwin and one-half Cain and Abel is bound to entail a lot of rethinking of traditional themes. Rene Girard's thesis of original human violence and the Bible's power to reveal it has been around for more than a generation, but its consequences for Christian theology are still only slowly being unpacked. Anthony Bartlett's book makes a signal contribution, representing an astonishing leap forward in understanding what a biblical disclosure of founding violence (...) means for Christian thought and life. If human language arose directly out of the primal experience of murder, then semiotics becomes a core area for theological examination. Tracing the discipline of semiotics through postmodern thinkers, then back through its birth in the Latin era, Bartlett shows how Girard's thought is itself a semiotic emergence, beyond standard Christian metaphysics. Above all, Girardian theory of human signs demands we see the generative impact of violence in our language and thought, and then, conversely, that the Word of God, crucified without retaliation and risen in the same identity, brings a totally new sign and relation into history, offering a thoroughgoing transformation of human life and meaning. (shrink)

The review essay critically evaluates, synoptically presents, and admiringly celebrates Chung-ying Cheng latest work, The Primary Way: Philosophy of Yijing. It sees the book’s publication as an emblem of an intellectual jubilee – a half-centenary of scholarly lucubration and achievement in Chinese and comparative philosophy by Cheng, who was trained at Harvard in American pragmatism and analytic philosophy. The essay reveals why Cheng returns to the Yijing time and again. The principal reason is that this ancient classic, to his way (...) of thinking, offers us “the primary Way,” the anchoring normative criteria, perspectives, and values in a nutshell, whereby reality may be deciphered, discerned, and distinguished. To put it in metaphoric terms, the Yijing is the fount of Chinese philosophy. Whether interpreting Chinese thoughts in general or reading the Yijing in particular, Cheng brings western theoretical perspectives to bear on the understanding of the Chinese texts, which are, in and of themselves, replete with deep philosophical meanings. Cheng appropriates the Yijing for his own primary end, which is to disclose, via his onto-hermeneutic reading, a living, transformative ethico-moral philosophy that is onto-cosmologically alive and onto-generatively fecund: the primary Way. In doing so, he not only offers us innovative scholarship on the ancient classic but also opens up a theoretical and methodological frontier, an onto-hermeneutic one, where Chinese thought and philosophy may be explored anew. (shrink)

Die Buchreihe Linguistische Arbeiten hat mit über 500 Bänden zur linguistischen Theoriebildung der letzten Jahrzehnte in Deutschland und international wesentlich beigetragen. Die Reihe wird auch weiterhin neue Impulse für die Forschung setzen und die zentrale Einsicht der Sprachwissenschaft präsentieren, dass Fortschritt in der Erforschung der menschlichen Sprachen nur durch die enge Verbindung von empirischen und theoretischen Analysen sowohl diachron wie synchron möglich ist. Daher laden wir hochwertige linguistische Arbeiten aus allen zentralen Teilgebieten der allgemeinen und einzelsprachlichen Linguistik ein, die aktuelle (...) Fragestellungen bearbeiten, neue Daten diskutieren und die Theorieentwicklung vorantreiben. (shrink)

After the exposition of I. Kant's theory of nature as a mechanism, we turn to Kant's idea that organisms are an exception and cannot be explained through the mechanism of nature. Organisms are characterized through a circular causality. The idea of the whole, an idea of the thinking subject, causes the functioning of organisms. F.W.J.Schelling takes up Kant's conception that the organism is characterized through the interaction of the parts, but he dispenses with the idea of the whole as a (...) causal agent. The part has a generative power to produce the whole. With this, Schelling's Naturphilosophie suggests that mind depends on matter. (shrink)

The ambition and proposal for data modeling of myths presented in this paper is to link contemporary technical affordances to some canonical projects developed in structural anthropology. To articulate the theoretical promise and innovation of this proposal, we present a discrete-event system specification modeling and simulation approach in order to perform a generative analysis and a dynamic visualization of selected narratives, aimed at validating and revitalizing the transformational and morphodynamic theory and methodology proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his structural (...) analysis of myth. After an analysis of Lévi-Strauss’s transformational methodology, we describe in detail how discrete-event system specification models are implemented and developed in the framework of a DEVSimPy software environment. The validation of the method involves a discrete-event system specification simulation based on the extension of discrete-event system specification models dedicated to provide a dynamic Google Earth visualization of the selected myth. Future work around the discrete-event system specification formalism in anthropology is described as well as future applications regarding the impact of computational models to new contemporary anthropological domains. (shrink)

Focusing on Kentucky’s immense and world-famous Mammoth Cave, this essay considers contexts from across the nineteenth century in which subterranean darkness was envisaged as a driving force in the transformation of living things. In fact, the cave was the stage for several allied discourses of “dark degeneracy” that conjured images of both generative and destructive mutability, from the generation of animals without eyes to the apparent disintegration of some kinds of human bodies and minds through exposure to the darkness. (...) In elucidating several parallel discourses of dark degeneracy, the essay offers a distinct contribution to several bodies of scholarship by highlighting an important and hitherto neglected manifestation of an intensifying nineteenth-century focus on the how of natural processes and a growing sense of the transformative significance of the apparent cohesion of malleable bodies with their wider environments. At the same time, it evidences the influence of Mammoth Cave in forging and contributing to late nineteenth-century debates about degeneration and shows how dominant sensory hierarchies framed both popular and scientific understandings of life in the deep darkness. (shrink)

With the expansion of people’s needs, the translation performance of traditional models is increasingly unable to meet current demands. This article mainly studied the Transformer model. First, the structure and principle of the Transformer model were briefly introduced. Then, the model was improved by a generative adversarial network to improve the translation effect of the model. Finally, experiments were carried out on the linguistic data consortium dataset. It was found that the average Bilingual Evaluation Understudy value of the improved (...) Transformer model improved by 0.49, and the average perplexity value reduced by 10.06 compared with the Transformer model, but the computation speed was not greatly affected. The translation results of the two example sentences showed that the translation of the improved Transformer model was closer to the results of human translation. The experimental results verify that the improved Transformer model can improve the translation quality and be further promoted and applied in practice to further improve the English translation and meet application needs in real life. (shrink)