The relationship between story and game, and related questions of electronic writing and play, examined through a series of discussions among new media creators and theorists.

Originally published in 1966. This book considers the perceived asymmetries between the self and others, or between self and things. An in-depth analysis of scepticism, dualism, belief, knowledge and semantics. A topic which is central to both epistemology but also the whole of contemporary philosophy.

The “Natural Problem of Consciousness” is the problem of understanding why there are presently conscious beings at all. Given a non-reductive naturalist framework taking consciousness as an ontologically subjective biological phenomenon, how can we rationally explain the fact that the actual world has turned out to be one where there are presently living beings that can feel, rather than having developed as a zombie-world in which there would be no conscious experiences of any kind? This book introduces the Natural Problem by relating it to central problems in the philosophy of mind (metaphysical mind-body problem, Hard Problem of consciousness) and emphasizing the distinctive interest of its diachronic dimension. Ranging from philosophy to biology and neuroscience, it offers a thorough analysis aimed at better understanding what could explain why phenomenal consciousness has been preserved throughout evolution by natural selection. This is an original, engaging, and thought provoking philosophical study of a neglected but fundamental question regarding the nature and origin of consciousness.

Amidst a revival of interest in the novels of the abb Pr vost, this study addresses some of the interpretive issues that are being raised concerning his work, namely what intellectual, moral and aesthetic meaning should we seek in works that were designed as entertainments, and should we persist in rating Manon Lescaut more highly than the rest of Pr vost's output? The narrative strategies and types of distortion inherent in each of Pr vost's narrators are examined. More general observations are made on the mechanics of Pr vost's narration such as the deceptive rhetorical devices of juxtaposing different accounts of the same event by two or more narrators and the use of the double registre or separation of narrator from protagonist. Other aspects of Pr vost's fictional technique are considered - for example, the extent to which he drew upon contemporary traditions in the novel. Another important theme is the relationship between Pr vost's fictional world and the real world in which topics such as other-portrayal and the handing of time reflect the degree of unreliability of the narrator's vision. Parallel episodes and interpolations are also used to illuminate subtly the work's central themes. The latter part of this study is dedicated to the moral dilemmas raised in Pr vost's work in which the world - and the author's heroes - appear to be governed by three complex and often conflicting codes of behaviour - those of religion, honour, and 'love' or 'sensibility'. In particular, the problems of women are represented as well as the failure of the heroic ideal amongst the aristocracy. In religious matters, Pr vost is revealed as a man of tolerance, ultimately concerned with human nature. The Pr vost who emerges from this study combines a high degree of technical mastery with a serious moral interest in the human heart. His demystification of the ideal of heroism and his fragmented vision of the human personality are likely to appeal to the modern reader. The powerful dramatisation of moral conflict, familiar in Manon Lescaut, is indeed to be found throughout his work.

Theatre is an interpretive art based upon a director's emotional reaction to reading a play and imagining a production of that play. Before the audience experiences the production, the director must go through a process, part art and part craft, to create it. This book is intended to introduce undergraduate students with a solid theatre background to that process. Stevens includes chapters covering theatre and art, the interpretation of the script, composition and movement, working with actors, and matters of style. Each chapter contains exercises in order for students to consolidate what they have learned. The complete text of John Millington Synge's "Riders to the Sea" is included as an example and study text, and Stevens relates many examples from his own rich directing background. Twenty production photos, two sample floor plans, and numerous diagrams round out the text. The study of directing is a life-long project, and in this book Stevens provides a basis for that study.

Imposters are third person DPs that are used to refer to the speaker/writer or addressee, such as : (i) Your humble servant finds the time before our next encounter very long. (ii) This reporter thinks that the current developments are extraordinary. (iii) Daddy will be back before too long. (iv) The present author finds the logic of the reply faulty. This volume explores verbal and pronominal agreement with imposters from a cross-linguistic perspective. The central questions for any given language are: (a) How do singular and plural imposters agree with the verb? (b) When a pronoun has an imposter antecedent, what are the phi-features of the pronoun? The volume reveals a remarkable degree of variation in the answers to these questions, but also reveals some underlying generalizations. The contributions describe imposters in Bangla, Spanish, Albanian, Indonesian, Italian, French, Romanian, Mandarin and Icelandic.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union. Current grammatical knowledge about particular sign languages is fragmentary and of varying reliability, and it appears scattered in scientific publications where the description is often intertwined with the analysis. In general, comprehensive grammars are a rarity. The SignGram Blueprint is an innovative tool for the grammar writer: a full-fledged guide to describing all components of the grammars of sign languages in a thorough and systematic way, and with the highest scientific standards. The work builds on the existing knowledge in Descriptive Linguistics, but also on the insights from Theoretical Linguistics. It consists of two main parts running in parallel: the Checklist with all the grammatical features and phenomena the grammar writer can address, and the accompanying Manual with the relevant background information (definitions, methodological caveats, representative examples, tests, pointers to elicitation materials and bibliographical references). The areas covered are Phonology, Morphology, Lexicon, Syntax and Meaning. The Manual is endowed with hyperlinks that connect information across the work and with a pop-up glossary. The SignGram Blueprint will be a landmark for the description of sign language grammars in terms of quality and quantity.

“A remarkable book capable of reshaping what one takes philosophy to be.” —Cora Diamond, Kenan Professor of Philosophy Emerita, University of Virginia Could there be a logical alien—a being whose ways of talking, inferring, and contradicting exhibit an entirely different logical shape than ours, yet who nonetheless is thinking? Could someone, contrary to the most basic rules of logic, think that two contradictory statements are both true at the same time? Such questions may seem outlandish, but they serve to highlight a fundamental philosophical question: is our logical form of thought merely one among many, or must it be the form of thought as such? From Descartes and Kant to Frege and Wittgenstein, philosophers have wrestled with variants of this question, and with a range of competing answers. A seminal 1991 paper, James Conant’s “The Search for Logically Alien Thought,” placed that question at the forefront of contemporary philosophical inquiry. The Logical Alien, edited by Sofia Miguens, gathers Conant’s original article with reflections on it by eight distinguished philosophers—Jocelyn Benoist, Matthew Boyle, Martin Gustafsson, Arata Hamawaki, Adrian Moore, Barry Stroud, Peter Sullivan, and Charles Travis. Conant follows with a wide-ranging response that places the philosophical discussion in historical context, critiques his original paper, addresses the exegetical and systematic issues raised by others, and presents an alternative account. The Logical Alien challenges contemporary conceptions of how logical and philosophical form must each relate to their content. This monumental volume offers the possibility of a new direction in philosophy.

This book constitutes the refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 5th IAPR TC9 Workshop on Pattern Recognition of Social Signals in Human-Computer-Interaction, MPRSS 2018, held in Beijing, China, in August 2018. The 10 revised papers presented in this book focus on pattern recognition, machine learning and information fusion methods with applications in social signal processing, including multimodal emotion recognition and pain intensity estimation, especially the question how to distinguish between human emotions from pain or stress induced by pain is discussed.