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This text is a short intellectual biography written in memory of Per Aage Brandt (1944–2021). I present some of the main tenets of his scientific endeavor, artistic practice, and scholarly entrepreneurship.

The present work is an attempt to bring meaning to the fore of not only empirical aesthetics but also experimental aesthetics. We have addressed meaning in terms of attention-grabbing perceptual structure, doing so in the strong sense of structure; i.e., structure understood as a pure spatial relation between shapes, independently of what objects these shapes represent. The structures we investigate are the so-called non-generic configurations that obtain between objects seen from a unique vantage point. In the paper, we first introduce the notion of non-genericity, in general, and its use in visual art in particular, where it is claimed to affect the visual brain as an attention grabber. We then present an experiment we have designed to test the effect of such a relation on the visual brain, and we give evidence to the effect that non-generic configurations in pictures do attract attention significantly more than their generic counterparts. Non-genericity can therefore be considered as one among other pictorial techniques artists dispose of to construct perceptual meaning in vision.

This article has a double scope. First, we consider the dynamics inherent in the emergence of genres. Our view is that genres emerge relative to two sets of constraints, which we aim to capture in our double feedback loop model for the dynamics of genres. On the one hand, (text) genres, or text types, as we will interchangeably call them, emerge as a variation of already existing text types. On the other hand, genres develop as a response to the negative constraints or positive affordances of given situations: that is, either the “exigencies” of the situation or the new resources available in a situation. Accordingly, Section 1is mainly devoted to a characterization of situations and of the dynamic relation between situational constraints/affordances and genres. Our main claim is that situations and genres stand in a relation of mutual scaffolding to each other so that the existence of a text type is not simply caused by the exigencies present in a given situation, but, once emerged, also feeds back into the situation, further stabilizing or consolidating it: hence, the use of the term “feedback loop.” Section 2is a more detailed discussion of the dynamics of genres with a particular focus on the first feedback loop: the way genres develop as deviations from existing text types and then stabilize as text types proper with a normative import. The second scope of this article consists in developing a typological apparatus consistent with the dynamic approach to the emergence of genres. This is our parameter theory of genres presented in Section 3. Here we consider genres as governed by parameters external to them and intrinsic to the situations they are dynamically related to. Genres should thus be understood not simply in terms of inherent textual or formal traits, but also relative to a certain set of situational parameters and relative to the degree to which they are governed by them.

This article assesses two objections directed at Conceptual Metaphor Theory: (1) it is circular in that it only provides linguistic evidence for the psychological reality of cross-domain mappings, intended to explain the empirical reality of metaphorical expressions in language; (2) it does not support the conclusion that the massive existence of metaphorical expressions in language reflects the metaphorical structuring of abstract concepts. It is my aim to disentangle these objections. Evidence abounds that makes the first objection obsolete, proving the psychological reality of cross-domain mappings. However, this does not imply that abstract concepts are metaphorically structured: experiments that prove objection (1) wrong cannot be invoked to reject objection (2). Some even tend to justify it.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory is by and large a theory of what (abstract) concepts are, how they are structured, and how this structure is acquired — i.e., by mapping of structure from one more concrete or sensory-motor specific domain to another more abstract domain. Conceptual metaphors therefore rest on “cross-domain mappings.” The claims to the effect that our abstract concepts are metaphorically structured and that cross-domain mappings constitute one of the fundamental cognitive meaning-making processes are empirical and can therefore be put to the test. In this paper, I will critically assess Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a theory of concepts in light of recent experimental findings. Many such findings provide evidence for the psychological reality of cross-domain mappings, i.e., that structure activated in one domain actually can perform cognitive tasks carried out in another domain. They do not, however, support the claim that the structure of our (abstract) concepts is still metaphorical, as Lakoff and Johnson claim — that is to say, that our mind actually does perform cross-domain mappings when we process conventional conceptual metaphors such as “Death is Rest” or “Love is a Journey.” Two conclusions can be drawn from this: (1) it is necessary to distinguish between cross-domain mappings (which are psychologically real) and the metaphoric structure of our concepts (which is not, in the sense that such concepts do not any longer activate cross-domain mappings when processed); (2) Conceptual Metaphor Theory is not an adequate theory of concepts. I will therefore sketch another more viable theory of concepts where the structure of our concepts is defined as the full ecologyof their situations of use, which includes the kind of situations (objects, agents, interactions) they apply to and the kind of emotional, cognitive, bodily, and behavioral responses they elicit. On this view, the contents of our concepts are to be considered as vague predicates, with vague extensions, which take on a specific form in their situation of use.

Female-to-male transsexual persons (transsexual men) undergo ovariectomy and are on lifelong testosterone substitution therapy, which produces extreme hormonal changes. A number of studies on bone mass reported that, during the first 2 years of cross-sex hormonal therapy, testosterone could prevent possible bone loss due to estrogen deficiency. Previous studies in transsexual men assessed bone mass with dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, which measures areal bone mineral density. The 2-dimensional view with areal bone mineral density has limitations in assessing bone geometry, and bone mineral density of larger bones may be overestimated. No studies have assessed volumetric bone mineral density using peripheral quantitative computed tomography in a sizable group of transsexual men.