This volume concerns metarepresentation: the construction and use of representations that represent other representations. It collects studies on the subject by an interdisciplinary group of contributors.

This book is about the interrelationship between nature, semiosis, metarepresentation and (self-)consciousness, and the role played by metarepresentation in evolution. Representations must have emerged via self-organization from non-representational systems (found in physics, chemistry and biology). Major steps have been the evolution of molecules, macromolecules, life, and finally cultural and symbolic systems. Representations and signs are therefore parts of a huge, possibly branching «ladder of beings». Metarepresentations - images representing images, language about language and language-use, thoughts about thoughts - constitute a fascinating theme within such diverse areas of research as philosophy, literature, theology, anthropology and history, neuroscience, psychology and linguistics. The contributions to this book reflect this variety of different, but often interrelated perspectives on metarepresentation. They also exemplify the difficulties of a truly interdisciplinary discourse and show how one may start such a discourse in the field of semiotics, understood as a meta-discipline which brings together all scientific enterprises dealing with human mind and human culture.

Among the entities that can be mentally or linguistically represented are mental and linguistic representations themselves. That is, we can think and talk about speech and thought. This phenomenon is known as metarepresentation. An example is "Authors believe that people read books." In this book François Recanati discusses the structure of metarepresentation from a variety of perspectives. According to him, metarepresentations have a dual structure: their content includes the content of the object-representation (people reading books) as well as the "meta" part (the authors' belief). Rejecting the view that the object representation is mentioned rather than used, Recanati claims that since metarepresentations carry the content of the object representation, they must be about whatever the object representation is about. Metarepresentations are fundamentally transparent because they work by simulating the representation they are about. Topics covered in this wide-ranging work include the analysis of belief reports and talk about fiction, world shifting, opacity and substitutivity, quotation, the relation between direct and indirect discourse, context shifting, semantic pretense, and deference in language and thought.

Eun-Ju Noh's book provides a close look at linguistic metarepresentation showing how beliefs, utterances, and propositions are represented and how they are inferred. The author explains how metarepresentation works in various types of uses: quotations, negation, echo questions, and conditionals in terms of truth conditions and pragmatic enrichment. Ample examples are provided from the English language. The relevance-theory approach gives room for extralinguistic parameters to be considered, and suggestions are made for further research in cross-linguistic studies and metarepresentation.

The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics provides a state-of-the-art overview of the wide breadth of research in pragmatics. An introductory section outlines a brief history, the main issues and key approaches and perspectives in the field, followed by a thought-provoking introductory chapter on interdisciplinarity by Jacob L. Mey. A further thirty-eight chapters cover both traditional and newer areas of pragmatic research, divided into four sections: Methods and modalities Established fields Pragmatics across disciplines Applications of pragmatic research in today’s world. With accessible, refreshing descriptions and discussions, and with a look towards future directions, this Handbook is an essential resource for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in pragmatics within English language and linguistics and communication studies.

Maude is a language and system based on rewriting logic. In this comprehensive account, you’ll discover how Maude and its formal tool environment can be used in three mutually reinforcing ways: as a declarative programming language, as an executable formal specification language, and as a formal verification system. Examples used throughout the book illustrate key concepts, features, and the many practical uses of Maude.

Can we learn without knowing we are learning? To what extent is our behavior influenced by things we fail to perceive? What is the relationship between conscious and unconscious cognition? Implicit Learning: 50 Years On tackles these key questions, fifty years after the publication of Arthur Reber’s seminal text. Providing an overview of recent developments in the field, the volume considers questions about the computational foundations of learning, alongside phenomena including conditioning, memory formation and consolidation, associative learning, cognitive development, and language learning. Featuring contributions from international researchers, the book uniquely integrates ‘Western’ thinking on implicit learning with insights from a rich Russian research tradition. This approach offers an excellent opportunity to contrast perspectives, to introduce new experimental paradigms, and to contribute to ongoing debates about the very nature of implicit learning. Implicit Learning: 50 Years On is essential reading for students and researchers of consciousness, specifically those interested in implicit learning.