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This paper is a critical account of Antoni Gomila's book Verbal Minds (2012). Verbal Minds offers a complete exploration of contemporary theories about the cognitive role of language and the empirical evidence that refutes or supports them. The book has a descriptive and an evaluative element. In the descriptive element, Gomila successfully covers an extensive amount of ground, and the book makes a valuable contribution to research on language and thought. In the more debatable, evaluative element, Gomila argues that language plays a fundamental role in our cognition, to the extent that even the very propositionality of thought would be a linguistic inheritance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I summarise the main arguments of my book The Apology Ritual. I draw attention to three main lines of argument, taking them in reverse order to that in which they appear in the book. First, I look at the book's communicative-expressive justification of state punishment. Secondly, I look at the argument for the claim that feeling properly sorry involves a requirement to undertake some sort of penance. And thirdly, I look at the argument for the "right to be punished": as I interpret it, that there is an important status associated with being treated as a responsible agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific models are sophisticated representations elaborated through idealization, approximation or abstraction. However, some authors consider them as fictions. The paper analyzes some of those "fictionalist" proposals. My conclusion is that, in order to improve our understanding of how models actually work in science, it is questionable that a real progress can be made by equating models with fictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]