A mutualistic approach to morality
Baumard, N., André, J.B. and Sperber, D., (2013), Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36, 59-122.

Abstract
What makes humans moral beings ? This question can be understood either as a proximate “how” question or as an ultimate “why” question. The “how” question is about the mental and social mechanisms that produce moral judgments and interactions, and has been investigated by psychologists and social scientists. The “why” question is about the fitness consequences that explain why humans have morality, and has been discussed by evolutionary biologists in the context of the evolution of cooperation. Our goal here is to contribute to a fruitful articulation of such proximate and ultimate explanations of human morality. We develop an approach to morality as an adaptation to an environment in which individuals were in competition to be chosen and recruited in mutually advantageous cooperative interactions. In this environment, the best strategy is to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation equally. Those who offer less than others will be left out of cooperation ; conversely, those who offer more will be exploited by their partners. In line with this mutualistic approach, the study of a range of economic games involving property rights, collective actions, mutual help and punishment shows that participants’ distributions aim at sharing the costs and benefits of interactions in an impartial way. In particular, the distribution of resources is influenced by effort and talent, and the perception of each participant’s rights on the resources to be distributed.

Neurogenetics and auditory processing in developmental dyslexia.
Giraud, A. L. (Inserm U960, Département d’Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure / Department of Neuroscience, University of Geneva), & Ramus, F (Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, EHESS, CNRS). (2013). Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 23(1), 37-Volume 23, Issue 1, February 2013, Pages 37–42.

Dyslexia is a polygenic developmental reading disorder characterized by an auditory/phonological deficit. Based on the latest genetic and neurophysiological studies, we propose a tentative model in which phonological deficits could arise from genetic anomalies of the cortical micro-architecture in the temporal lobe.

Genericity
Alda Mari (IJN), Claire Beyssade (IJN), and Fabio Del Prete, Oxford University Press, 2012

Genericity is a key concept in the study of human cognition, as it reveals our capacity to organize the objects and events of our experience into classes and to detect regularities. In language, it manifests itself both at the level of nominal reference, where the notion of reference to kinds has been central, and at the level of verbal and sentential aspect, where one finds notions such as those of permanency, disposition, ability, habituality, and plurality. The book gathers original contributions from senior and young researchers reconsidering the notion of genericity in its different linguistic realizations. While pursuing the lines of inquiry traced by the influential Generic Book, the authors provide a new look the phenomena and reconsider previous views. The book also provides an up-to-date critical introduction to generics and it will appeal to both students and scholars in linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive sciences.

Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language
Friederike Moltmann, Oxford University Press, dec.2012

Abstract
Objects have been a central topic in philosophy since antiquity. Philosophers have defended various views about abstract objects by appealing to metaphysical considerations, considerations regarding mathematics or science, and, not infrequently, intuitions about natural language. This book pursues the question of how and whether natural language allows for reference to abstract objects in a fully systematic way. By making full use of contemporary linguistic semantics, it presents a much greater range of linguistic generalizations than has previously been taken into consideration in philosophical discussions, and it argues for an ontological picture is very different from that generally taken for granted by philosophers and semanticists a like. Reference to abstract objects such as properties, numbers, propositions, and degrees is considerably more marginal than generally held. Instead, natural language is rather generous in allowing reference to particularized properties (tropes), the use of nonreferential expressions in apparent referential position, and the use of 'nominalizing expressions', such as quantifiers like 'something'. Reference to abstract objects is achieved generally only by the use of 'reifying terms', such as 'the number eight'.

Reference to Numbers in Natural Language
Friederike Moltmann, Philosophical Studies 162.3, 2013, 499-536

Abstract
A common view is that natural language treats numbers as abstract objects, with expressions like the number of planets, eight, as well as the number eight acting as referential terms referring to numbers. In this paper I will argue that this view about reference to numbers in natural language is fundamentally mistaken. A more thorough look at natural language reveals a very different view of the ontological status of natural numbers. On this view, numbers are not primarily treated abstract objects, but rather ‘aspects’ of pluralities of ordinary objects, namely number tropes, a view that in fact appears to have been the Aristotelian view of numbers. Natural language moreover provides support for another view of the ontological status of numbers, on which natural numbers do not act as entities, but rather have the status of plural properties, the meaning of numerals when acting like adjectives. This view matches contemporary approaches in the philosophy of mathematics of what Dummett called the Adjectival Strategy, the view on which number terms in arithmetical sentences are not terms referring to numbers, but rather make contributions to generalizations about ordinary (and possible) objects. It is only with complex expressions somewhat at the periphery of language such as the number eight that reference to pure numbers is permitted.

Two Kinds of First-Person-Oriented Content
Friederike Moltmann, Synthese, numéro spécial édité par Philippe de Brabanter et Mikhail Kissine, 184.2, 2012, 157-177.

In this paper, I will argue that two kinds of first-person oriented content are distinguished in more ways than usually thought and I propose an account that will shed new light on the distinction. The first kind consists of contents of attitudes de se (in a broad sense); the second kind consists of contents that give rise to intuitions of relative truth. I will present new data concerning the two kinds of first-person-oriented content together with a novel account of propositional content in general, namely based on the notion of an attitudinal object. That notion solves two major problems for Lewis' account of contents of attitudes de se and clarifies the difference between contents of attitudes de se and contents that give rise to intuitions of relative truth. I will propose an analysis of contents of the second kind in terms of what I call first-person-based genericity, a form of genericity most explicitly expressed by sentences with generic one. I show how the overall account explains the particular semantic properties of sentences giving rise to intuitions of relative truth that distinguish them from sentences with expressions interpreted de se. I will start by introducing Lewis' account of attitudes de se and the problems and go along with that account. Introducing the notion of an attitudinal object, will extend the account by a account of the truth conditions of the content of attitudes de se. I then discuss the second kind of first-person-oriented content, which is associated with intuitions of relative truth, and give an account of such contents on the basis of an analysis of generic one. Again making use of attitudinal objects, I will make clear what exactly distinguishes those contents frol firstperson- oriented contents of the first sort.

Music in Our Ears: The Biological Bases of Musical Timbre Perception
Kailash Patil, Daniel Pressnitzer (Equipe Audition, IEC, ENS), Shihab Shamma(Equipe Audition, IEC, ENS), Mounya Elhilali. PLoS Comput Biol 8(11), November 1, 2012

Abstract
Timbre is the attribute of sound that allows humans and other animals to distinguish among different sound sources. Studies based on psychophysical judgments of musical timbre, ecological analyses of sound's physical characteristics as well as machine learning approaches have all suggested that timbre is a multifaceted attribute that invokes both spectral and temporal sound features. Here, we explored the neural underpinnings of musical timbre. We used a neuro-computational framework based on spectro-temporal receptive fields, recorded from over a thousand neurons in the mammalian primary auditory cortex as well as from simulated cortical neurons, augmented with a nonlinear classifier. The model was able to perform robust instrument classification irrespective of pitch and playing style, with an accuracy of 98.7%. Using the same front end, the model was also able to reproduce perceptual distance judgments between timbres as perceived by human listeners. The study demonstrates that joint spectro-temporal features, such as those observed in the mammalian primary auditory cortex, are critical to provide the rich-enough representation necessary to account for perceptual judgments of timbre by human listeners, as well as recognition of musical instruments.

Two dimensions of visibility revealed by multidimensional scaling of metacontrast.
Jérome Sackur (Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, EHESS/CNRS/DEC-ENS, Institut d’Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure). Cognition Volume 126, Issue 2, February 2013, Pages 173–180.

Abstract
An increasing number of studies use subjective reports of visibility, so as to delineate the domain of perceptual awareness. It is generally assumed that degrees of visibility can be ordered on a single unidimensional scale. Here, I put this assumption to test with metacontrast, one of the most studied visual masking paradigms. By means of multidimensional scaling, I show that even though metacontrast stimuli only differ along the dimension of time, the perceptual space they generate unfolds in three dimensions: time and two kinds of visibilities, that are confounded when projected onto a unitary visibility scale. I argue that metacontrast creates multidimensional complex percepts, a property that may run counter to its use as a simple modulator of visibility. More broadly the results cast doubt on the use of visibility scales that ignore the qualities of the percepts.

Maximize Presupposition and Gricean reasoning
Schlenker, Philippe: 2012. Natural Language Semantics 20, 4: 391-429

Abstract
Recent semantic research has made increasing use of a principle, Maximize Presupposition, which requires that under certain circumstances the strongest possible presupposition be marked. This principle is generally taken to be irreducible to standard Gricean reasoning because the forms that are in competition have the same assertive content. We suggest, however, that Maximize Presupposition might be reducible to the theory of scalar implicatures. (i)First, we consider a special case: the speaker utters a sentence with a presupposition p which is not initially taken for granted by the addressee, but the latter takes the speaker to be an authority on the matter. Signaling the presupposition provides new information to the addressee; but it also follows from the logic of presupposition qua common belief that the presupposition is thereby satisfied (Stalnaker, Ling Philos 25(5–6):701–721, 2002). (ii) Second, we generalize this solution to other cases. We assume that even when p is common belief, there is a very small chance that the addressee might forget it (‘Fallibility’); in such cases, marking a presupposition will turn out to generate new information by re-establishing part of the original context. We also adopt from Raj Singh (Nat Lang Semantics 19(2):149–168, 2011) the hypothesis that presupposition maximization is computed relative to local contexts—and we assume that these too are subject to Fallibility; this accounts for cases in which the information that justifies the presupposition is linguistically provided. (iii) Finally, we suggest that our assumptions have benefits in the domain of implicatures: they make it possible to reinterpret Magri’s ‘blind’ (i.e. context-insensitive) implicatures as context-sensitive implicatures which just happen to be misleading.


Temporal and modal anaphora in sign language (ASL)
Schlenker, Philippe. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory February 2013, Volume 31, Issue 1, pp 207-234

Abstract
We suggest that data from American Sign Language (ASL) provide overt evidence for Partee’s and Stone’s claim that natural language has anaphoric constructions in the temporal and modal domains (Partee 1973; Stone 1997). We provide four arguments. (i) Like nominal and locative expressions, temporal and modal constructions can establish loci that can then be indexed by later pronouns. (ii) As is the case in the nominal and locative domains, anaphoric constructions can involve singular, dual, trial, and plural pronouns. (iii) When the antecedent is existential, patterns of inference obtain which are characteristic of E-type anaphora. (iv) Finally, temporal and modal anaphora give rise to patterns of ‘locative shift’ which are also found with geographical locations. The last observation suggests that temporal and modal reference is particularly similar to locative reference.

Cueing Attention after the Stimulus Is Gone Can Retrospectively Trigger Conscious Perception.
Claire Sergent (LPP, UMR 8158, CNRS/Université Paris Descartes), Valentin Wyart (LNC, INSERM U960, IEC , ENS), Mariana Babo-Rebelo(LNC, INSERM U960, IEC , ENS), Laurent Cohen (Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, CRICM, UMRS 975), Lionel Naccache (Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, CRICM, UMRS 975), Catherine Tallon-baudry(LNC, INSERM U960, IEC , ENS). Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 2, 150-155, 13 December 2012

Summary
Is our perceptual experience of a stimulus entirely determined during the early buildup of the sensory representation, within 100 to 150 ms following stimulation [1,2]? Or can later influences, such as sensory reactivation, still determine whether we become conscious of a stimulus [3,4]? Late visual reactivation can be experimentally induced by postcueing attention after visual stimulus offset [5]. In a contrary approach from previous work on postcued attention and visual short-term memory, which used multiple item displays [6,7], we tested the influence of postcued attention on perception, using a single visual stimulus (Gabor patch) at threshold contrast. We showed that attracting attention to the stimulus location 100 to 400 ms after presentation still drastically improved the viewers’ objective capacity to detect its presence and to discriminate its orientation, along with drastic increase in subjective visibility. This retroperception effect demonstrates that postcued attention can retrospectively trigger the conscious perception of a stimulus that would otherwise have escaped consciousness. It was known that poststimulus events could either suppress consciousness, as in masking, or alter conscious content, as in the flash-lag illusion. Our results show that conscious perception can also be triggered by an external event several hundred ms after stimulus offset, underlining unsuspected temporal flexibility in conscious perception.

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