Reified theories have been used widely in knowledge representation. From an ontological perspective, reification involve populating the ontology with event or property types and tokens. While type reification has been used in many works, it has been criticized as being philosophically unsound, and token reification has been advocated in its place by Galton. In this paper, we take the position o...

This article shows how language processing is intimately tuned to input frequency. Examples are given of frequency effects in the processing of phonology, phonotactics, reading, spelling, lexis, morphosyntax, formulaic language, language comprehension, grammaticality, sentence production, and syntax. The implications of these effects for the representations and developmental sequence of SLA are...

Abstract According to the pragmatic hypothesis testing theory, how much evidence we require before believe something varies depending on expected costs of falsely believing and disbelieving it. This theory has been used in self-deception debate explain our tendencies towards self-deceptive belief formation. article argues that application this overlooked distinction between acceptance, all like...

This paper tackles two basic problems of quantitative linguistics: firstly the “word length” and secondly the text length in terms of type and token numbers. It has to be shown that these two basic properties of a text are directly related. The interrelation between word length and text length can be captured by an appropriate mathematical model; hence a law-like status of the interrelation bet...

This paper examines behavioral economics’ use of the positive-normative distinction in its critique of standard rational choice theory as normative, and argues that it departs from Robbins’ understanding of that distinction in ways that suggest behavioral economists themselves do not observe that distinction. One implication of this is that behavioral economists generally do not recognize Putna...

Probability is a central concept in utilitarian moral theory, almost impossible to do without. I attempt to clarify the role of probability, so that we can be clear about what we are aiming for when we apply utilitarian theory to real cases. I point out the close relationship between utilitarianism and expected-utility theory, a normative standard for individual decision-making. I then argue th...

The possible empirical bases for the semantic-episodic distinction are examined. Two kinds of results are particularly relevant. The first concerns whether the same functional laws can be demonstrated for semantic as for episodic memory. Failure to demonstrate such generalities argues for the distinction, whereas success at demonstrating generalities argues against the need for such a distincti...

Appealing to Albert Einstein’s distinction between principle and constructive theories, Harvey Brown has argued for an interpretation of the theory of relativity as a dynamic and constructive theory. Brown’s view has been challenged by Michel Janssen and in this paper I investigate their dispute. I argue that their disagreement appears larger than it actually is due to the two frameworks used b...