Of course, words aren’t magic. Neither are sextants, compasses, maps, slide rules and all the other paraphenelia which have accreted around the basic biological brains of homo sapiens. In the case of these other tools and props, however, it is transparently clear that they function so as to either carry out or to facilitate computational operations important to various human projects. The slide rule transforms complex mathematical problems (ones that would baffle or tax the unaided subject) into simple tasks (...) of perceptual recognition. The map provides geographical information in a format well-suited to aid complex planning and strategic military operations. The compass gathers and displays a kind of information that (most) unaided human subjects do not seem to command. These various tools and props thus act to generate information, or to store it, or to transform it, or some combination of the three. In so doing, they impact our individual and collective problem- solving capacities in much the same dramatic ways as various software packages impact the performance of a simple pc. (shrink)

It has been a common assumption that words are substances that instantiate or have properties. In this paper, I question the assumption that our ontology of words requires posting substances by outlining a bundle theory of words, wherein words are bundles of various sorts of properties (such as semantic, phonetic, orthographic, and grammatical properties). I argue that this view can better account for certain phenomena than substance theories, is ontologically more parsimonious, and coheres with claims in (...) linguistics. (shrink)

Linguistic interventions aim to change our linguistic practices. A commonly discussed type of linguistic intervention is meaning revision, which seeks to associate existing words with new or revised meanings. But why does retaining old words matter so much? Why not instead introduce new words to express the newly defined meanings? Drawing on relevant psycholinguistic research, this paper develops an empirically motivated, general, and practically useful pro tanto reason to retain rather than replace the original word during the (...) process of conceptual improvement. (shrink)

It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words--that they are the only things that fundamentally have meaning. Robert's Stainton's study interrogates this idea, drawing on a wide body of evidence to argue that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complex thoughts.

There are many mean and nasty things to say about mean and nasty talk, but I don't plan on saying any of them. There's a specific problem about slurring words that I want to address. This is a semantic problem. It's not very important compared to the real-world problems presented by bigotry, racism, discrimination, and worse. It's important only to linguistics and the philosophy of language.

We all know that speech can be harmful. But how? Mary Kate McGowan argues that speech constitutes harm when it enacts a norm that prescribes that harm. She investigates such harms as oppression, subordination, and discrimination in such forms of speech as sexist remarks, racist hate speech, pornography, verbal triggers, and micro-aggressions.

We developed a technique to examine the effects of emotional content and context on verbal memory. Two sets of sentences were devised: in the first, each sentence was emotionally arousing due to the inclusion of an emotional “target” word. In the second set, “targets” were replaced with well-matched neutral words. Subjects read aloud a selection of emotional and neutral sentences, and were then surprised with memory tasks after a range of time delays. Emotional target words were remembered significantly (...) better than neutral words in all experiments. Recognition of emotional words was relatively stable despite increasing delays between encoding and recognition testing, in contrast to memory for neutral words, which decayed over time. Memory for neutral non-target words was enhanced when words had been presented in an emotional context. The results confirm the phenomenon of emotional enhancement of memory at short and long delays and suggest that emotional context may be encoded independently of word meaning. (shrink)

Thinking Without Words provides a challenging new theory of the nature of non-linguistic thought. Jose Luis Bermudez offers a conceptual framework for treating human infants and non-human animals as genuine thinkers. The book is written with an interdisciplinary readership in mind and will appeal to philosophers, psychologists, and students of animal behavior.

With the aid of some results from current linguistic theory I examine a recent anti-Fregean line with respect to hybrid talk of numbers and ordinary things, such as ‘the number of moons of Jupiter is four’. I conclude that the anti-Fregean line with respect to these sentences is indefensible.

The vast expressive power of language is made possible by two principles: the arbitrary soundmeaning pairing underlying words, and the discrete combinatorial system underlying grammar. These principles implicate distinct cognitive mechanisms: associative memory and symbolmanipulating rules. The distinction may be seen in the difference between regular inflection (e.g., walk-walked), which is productive and open-ended and hence implicates a rule, and irregular inflection (e.g., come-came, which is idiosyncratic and closed and hence implicates individually memorized words. Nonetheless, two very different (...) theories have attempted to collapse the distinction; generative phonology invokes minor rules to generate irregular as well as regular forms, and connectionism invokes a pattern associator memory to store and retrieve regular as well as irregular forms. I present evidence from three disciplines that supports the traditional word/rule distinction, though with an enriched conception of lexical memory with some of the properties of a pattern-associator. Rules, nonetheless, are distinct from patternassociation, because a rule concatenates a suffix to a symbol for verbs, so it does not require access to memorized verbs or their sound patterns, but applies as the "default," whenever memory access fails. I present a dozen such circumstances, including novel, unusual-sounding, and rootless and headless derived words, in which people inflect the words regularly (explaining quirks like flied out, low-lifes, and Walkmans). A comparison of English to other languages shows that contrary to the connectionist account, default suffixation is not due to numerous regular words reinforcing a pattern in associative memory, but to a memory-independent, symbol-concatenating mental operation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The idea that two words can be instances of the same word is a central intuition in our conception of language. This fact underlies many of the claims that we make about how we communicate, and how we understand each other. Given this, irrespective of what we think words are, it is common to think that any putative ontology of words, must be able to explain this feature of language. That is, we need to provide criteria (...) of identity for word-types which allow us to individuate words such that it can be the case that two particular word-instances are instances of the same word-type. One solution, recently further developed by Irmak, holds that words are individuated by their history. In this paper, I argue that this view either fails to account for our intuitions about word identity, or is too vague to be a plausible answer to the problem of word individuation. (shrink)

Substantial research examines the follower consequences of leader alignment of words and deeds, but no research has quantitatively reviewed these effects. This study examines extant research on behavioral integrity and contrasts it with two other constructs that focus on alignment: moral integrity and psychological contract breaches. We compare effect sizes between the three constructs, and find that BI has stronger effects on trust, in-role task performance and citizenship behavior than moral integrity and stronger effects on commitment and OCB than (...) psychological contract breach. These stronger attitudinal consequences run counter to our initial expectations, but they provide evidence of important conceptual distinctions and mechanisms that we articulate. BI theory suggests that BI’s greater performance impact is due to the notion that BI affects communication clarity in addition to attitudes. Results of meta-analytic structural equation modeling are consistent with this proposed dual path of BI’s impact. We highlight avenues for future research on BI and discuss how our findings inform the broader research on leader alignment. (shrink)

He has an astonishing range, and in this book he expands it still further. More than a mere introduction, Made with Words offers a coherent and well-argued picture of most of the main components of Hobbes's wide-ranging philosophy.

The Exchange of Words is a philosophical exploration of human testimony, specifically as a form of intersubjective understanding in which speakers communicate by making themselves accountable for the truth of what they say. This account weaves together themes from philosophy of language, moral psychology, action theory, and epistemology, for a new approach to this basic human phenomenon.

ABSTRACTThe present study examined relationships between attention to negative words and daily rumination and daily adjustment in a sample of clinically depressed individuals. We recorded eye movements of 43 individuals diagnosed with major depression while they were freely viewing dysphoric, threat-related, neutral, and positive words. Then, each day for one week, participants provided measures of their daily rumination and psychological adjustment. Multilevel analyses found that attention to dysphoric and threat-related words was positively related to daily rumination and (...) attention to threat-related words was negatively related to daily adjustment. These findings suggest that the impaired ability to disengage from negative words is positively related to rumination in daily life and is negatively related to well-being, as defined in terms of Beck’s Triad. (shrink)

Putnam and others have argued that semantic externalism extends to artifactual kind words such as “pencil” or “doorstop”. I first show that, even with natural kinds, externalism applies to words for ground level kinds. The issue then arises of which categories of artifacts should be identified as kinds in the relevant, restricted sense. I argue that, though there are natural taxonomies of artifactual categories at least some of which have well-defined ground levels, even words for such kinds (...) do not appear to have externalist semantics, as they do not support ignorance or error arguments. Some think that membership to any kind is determined by objective features. Against this, I argue that the makers’ productive intentions are often crucial in selecting which pattern of features counts as constitutive of a kind. Though externalists may insist that membership to a kind is ultimately determined by sharing objective features, the resulting version of externalism can hardly be distinguished from internalism. (shrink)

Finding a powerful ally in Bertrand Russell, who provided the foreword for this book, Gellner embarked on the project that was to put him on the intellectual ...

Over the last five decades, philosophers of language have looked into the mechanisms for doing things with words. The same attention has not been devoted to how to undo those things, once they have been done. This paper identifies and examines three strategies to make one’s speech acts undone—namely, Annulment, Retraction, and Amendment. In annulling an act, a speaker brings to light its fatal flaws. Annulment amounts to recognizing an act as null, whereas retraction and amendment amount to making (...) it null. Speakers employ retraction to cancel the deontic updates engendered by a given act. They instead use amendment to adjust its degree of strength. I will argue that annulling, retracting, and amending are second-order speech acts, whose felicity conditions vary with the type of illocution they operate on. Undoing is therefore conceived of as a form of doing. Furthermore, I claim that, in calling off our acts, we undo the conventional or illocutionary effects of our words while leaving intact their past causal or perlocutionary outcomes. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell isn't the first to arrive at philosophy through a life with music. Nor is he the first whose philosophical practice bears the marks of that life. Much of Cavell's life with music is confirmed for the world in his philosophical autobiography Little Did I Know. A central moment in that book is Cavell's describing the realization that he was to leave his musical career behind – for what exactly, he did not yet know. He connects the memory-shock of (...) this leaving with "the work of mourning." How does such a life out of music inform Cavell's philosophical sensibility? The thought I follow in this essay is that Cavell's distinctive orientation in philosophy – call this his lifelong coming to terms with his abandoning a life in music – is guided in part by an interest in those moments in experience where words seem to run out, or veer toward nonsense, leaving in their wake touchstones of ecstasy. I explore this idea by summarizing my exchange with Stanley Cavell years ago when I asked him whether certain passages from his essay "Music Discomposed" are depictions of the unsayable. Cavell's response is elaborated, or qualified, by considering a pair of moments in Little Did I Know where words appear to run out. I conclude by discussing culminating thoughts on the burden borne by words and their failure that appear in Cavell's late essay on music, "Impressions of Revolution.". (shrink)

Can what we know change what we see? Does language affect cognition and perception? The last few years have seen increased attention to these seemingly disparate questions, but with little theoretical advance. We argue that substantial clarity can be gained by considering these questions through the lens of predictive processing, a framework in which mental representations—from the perceptual to the cognitive—reflect an interplay between downward-flowing predictions and upward-flowing sensory signals. This framework provides a parsimonious account of how what we know (...) ought to change what we see and helps us understand how a putatively high-level trait such as language can impact putatively low-level processes such as perception. Within this framework, language begins to take on a surprisingly central role in cognition by providing a uniquely focused and flexible means of constructing predictions against which sensory signals can be evaluated. Predictive processing thus provides a plausible mechanism for many of the reported effects of language on perception, thought, and action, and new insights on how and when speakers of different languages construct the same “reality” in alternate ways. (shrink)

Recent work in supersemantics and in the semantic interpretation of prosody has showed that non-words (gestural, prosodic an iconic elements) can make truth conditional contributions. This paper contends that the way that they make their contributions—the way that they are integrated into semantic representations—calls into question foundational assumptions about how semantics works. I explore the case of a prosodic contour that can act as an intensifier (a word like ‘very’ or ‘really’) and argue that its compositional behaviour indicates that (...) it is integrated into sentence meaning in a secondary, dependent way and that this reveals a novel form of layering in semantic interpretation. (shrink)

At least since Locke, philosophers and psychologists have usually held that concepts arise out of sensory perceptions, thoughts are built from concepts, and language enables speakers to convey their thoughts to hearers. Christopher Gauker holds that this tradition is mistaken about both concepts and language. The mind cannot abstract the building blocks of thoughts from perceptual representations. More generally, we have no account of the origin of concepts that grants them the requisite independence from language. Gauker's alternative is to show (...) that much of cognition consists in thinking by means of mental imagery, without the help of concepts, and that language is a tool by which interlocutors coordinate their actions in pursuit of shared goals. Imagistic cognition supports the acquisition and use of this tool, and when the use of this tool is internalized, it becomes the very medium of conceptual thought. (shrink)

Words are indispensable linguistic tools for beings like us. However, there is not much philosophical work done about what words really are. In this paper, I develop a new ontology for words. I argue that words are abstract artifacts that are created to fulfill various kinds of purposes, and words are abstract in the sense that they are not located in space but they have a beginning and may have an end in time given that (...) certain conditions are met. What follows from this two-fold argument is that words, from an ontological point of view, are more like musical works, fictional characters or computer programs, than numbers or sets. (shrink)

Eighty‐two participants listened to sentences and then judged whether two sequentially presented visual objects were the same. On critical trials, participants heard a sentence describe the motion of a ball toward or away from the observer (e.g., “The pitcher hurled the softball to you”). Seven hundred and fifty milliseconds after the offset of the sentence, a picture of an object was presented for 500 ms, followed by another picture. On critical trials, the two pictures depicted the kind of ball mentioned (...) in the sentence. The second picture was displayed 175 ms after the first. Crucially, it was either slightly larger or smaller than the first picture, thus suggesting movement of the ball toward or away from the observer. Participants responded more quickly when the implied movement of the balls matched the movement described in the sentence. This result provides support for the viewthat language comprehension involves dynamic perceptual simulations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Index to Volume Fifty-SixArticlesBernier, Bernard, National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, 1 : 84-105Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, Chai-sik Chung, 2 : 253-280Buxton, Nicholas, The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, 3 : 392-408Chan, Sin Yee, The Confucian Notion of Jing (Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : (...) 229-252Chong, Kim-chong, Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, 3 : 370-391Chung, Chai-sik, Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, 2 : 253-280The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, Chenyang Li, 4 : 583-603The Confucian Notion of Jing.(Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : 229-252The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? Jay L. Garfield, 2 : 201-228The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'āmirī, Paul L. Heck, 1 : 106-135The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, Nicholas Buxton, 3 : 392-408De Reu, Wim, Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, 2 : 281-300The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhaga-vadgītā, Christopher Framarin, 4 : 604-617Framarin, Christopher, The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhagavadgītā, 4 : 604-617Garfield, Jay L., The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? 2 : 201-228Heck, Paul L., The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'ā mirī, 1 : 106-135Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel, 4 : 519-566Ho, Chien-hsing, Saying the Unsayable, 3 : 409-427Kantor, Hans-Rudolf, Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538-597) Tiantai Buddhism, 1 : 16-68Lai, Karyn, Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, 1 : 69-83Li, Chenyang, The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, 4 : 583-603Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, Karyn Lai, 1 : 69-83Ma, Lin, and Jaap van Brakel, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, Bernard Bernier, 1 : 84-105Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538- 597) Tiantai Buddhism, Hans-Rudolf Kantor, 1 : 16-68Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, Wim De Reu, 2 : 281-300The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, Jinmei Yuan, 1 : 136-152Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, Jonathan Stoltz, 4 : 567-582Saying the Unsayable, Chien-hsing Ho, 3 : 409-427Schiltz, Elizabeth, Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, 3 : 451-468Spackman, John, The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, 3 : 428-450Stevenson, Frank W., Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, 2 : 301-331Stoltz, Jonathan, Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, 4 : 567-582The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, John Spackman, 3 : 428-450 [End Page 709]Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, Elizabeth Schiltz, 3 : 451-468van Brakel, Jaap, and Lin Ma, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566Yuan, Jinmei, The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, 1 : 136-152Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, Kim-chong Chong, 3 : 370-391Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, Frank W. Stevenson, 2 : 301-331Book NotesFenner, David E. W., Introducing Aesthetics (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516Introducing Aesthetics, by David E. W. Fenner (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516McRae, James, a book... (shrink)

In the present essay, I aim to accentuate an analogy between the patterns of thought articulated by Berkeley's Hylas and those of Nagel in his philosophy of bats and aliens. The comparison has a critical purpose, with Philonous playing a role similar to that of Wittgenstein. I argue that Nagel's central claim comes down to statements that are marked by a peculiar form of emptiness. Towards the end, though, I will concede that this kind of Wittgensteinian criticism runs up against (...) certain limits. The fantasies produced by Hylas or Nagel have as counterparts genuine philosophical expressions of experience, which are not vulnerable to the charges levelled at their theoretical parallels. (shrink)

These are central to the accounts of lexical representation and meaning construction developed, giving rise to the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive ...

A realist view of numbers often rests on the following thesis: statements like ‘The number of moons of Jupiter is four’ are identity statements in which the copula is flanked by singular terms whose semantic function consists in referring to a number (henceforth: Identity). On the basis of Identity the realists argue that the assertive use of such statements commits us to numbers. Recently, some anti-realists have disputed this argument. According to them, Identity is false, and, thus, we may deny (...) that the relevant statements commit us to numbers. The present paper argues that the correct linguistic analysis of the relevant number statements supports the anti-realist view that Identity is false. However, as will further be shown, pace the anti-realist, this analysis does not establish that such statements do not commit us to numbers after all. (shrink)

The basic conflict: an initial characterization -- The main arguments against ordinary language philosophy -- Must philosophers rely on intuitions? -- Contextualism and the burden of knowledge -- Contextualism, anti-contextualism, and knowing as being in a position to give assurance -- Conclusion: skepticism and the dialectic of (semantically pure) "knowledge" -- Epilogue: ordinary language philosophy, Kant, and the roots of antinomial thinking.