Assertions about appearances license inferences about the speaker's perceptual experience. For instance, if I assert, 'Tom looks like he's cooking', you will infer both that I am visually acquainted with Tom (what I call the "individual acquaintance inference"), and that I am visually acquainted with evidence that Tom is cooking (what I call the "evidential acquaintance inference"). By contrast, if I assert, 'It looks like Tom is cooking', only the latter inference is licensed. I develop an account of the acquaintance (...) inferences of appearance assertions building on two main previous lines of research: first, the copy raising literature, which has aimed to account for individual acquaintance inferences through the "perceptual source" semantic role; second, the subjectivity literature, which has focused on the status of acquaintance inferences with predicates of personal taste, but hasn't given much attention to the added complexities introduced by appearance language. I begin by developing what I take to be the most empirically-sound version of a perceptual source analysis. I then show how its insights can be maintained, while however taking anything about perception out of the truth conditions of appearance sentences. This, together with the assumption that appearance assertions express experiential attitudes, allows us to capture the acquaintance inferences of bare appearance assertions without making incorrect predictions about the behavior of appearance verbs in embedded environments. (shrink)

This paper strives to characterize the relation between accent placement and discourse in terms of independent constraints operating at the interface between syntax and interpretation. The GIVENness Constraint requires un-F-marked constituents to be GIVEN. Key here is our definition of GIVENness which synthesizes insights from the literature on the semantics of focus with older views on information structure. AvoidF requires speakers to economize on F-marking. A third constraint requires a subset of F-markers to dominate accents.

All languages, both spoken and signed, make a formal distinction between two types of terms in a proposition – terms that identify what is to be talked about (nominals) and terms that say something about this topic (predicates). Here we explore conditions that could lead to this property by charting its development in a newly emerging language – Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). We examine how handshape is used in nominals vs. predicates in three Nicaraguan groups: (1) homesigners who (...) are not part of the Deaf com- munity and use their own gestures, called homesigns, to communicate; (2) NSL cohort 1 signers who fashioned the first stage of NSL; (3) NSL cohort 2 signers who learned NSL from cohort 1. We compare these three groups to a fourth: (4) native signers of American Sign Language (ASL), an established sign language. We focus on handshape in predicates that are part of a productive classifier system in ASL; handshape in these predicates varies sys- tematically across agent vs. no-agent contexts, unlike handshape in the nominals we study, which does not vary across these contexts. We found that all four groups, including home- signers, used handshape differently in nominals vs. predicates – they displayed variability in handshape form across agent vs. no-agent contexts in predicates, but not in nominals. Variability thus differed in predicates and nominals: (1) In predicates, the variability across grammatical contexts (agent vs. no-agent) was systematic in all four groups, suggesting that handshape functioned as a productive morphological marker on predicate signs, even in homesign. This grammatical use of handshape can thus appear in the earliest stages of an emerging language. (2) In nominals, there was no variability across grammatical con- texts (agent vs. no-agent), but there was variability within- and across-individuals in the handshape used in the nominal for a particular object. This variability was striking in homesigners (an individual homesigner did not necessarily use the same handshape in every nominal he produced for a particular object), but decreased in the first cohort of NSL and remained relatively constant in the second cohort. Stability in the lexical use of handshape in nominals thus does not seem to emerge unless there is pressure from a peer linguistic community. Taken together, our findings argue that a community of users is essential to arrive at a stable nominal lexicon, but not to establish a productive morpholog- ical marker in predicates. Examining the steps a manual communication system takes as it moves toward becoming a fully-fledged language offers a unique window onto factors that have made human language what it is. (shrink)

Arbib derives the origin of language from the emergence of a complex imitation system; however, it is unlikely that this complication could occur without a prior complicating within the imitated systems. This means that Arbib's hypothesis is not correct, because the other systems determined the appearance of language. In my opinion, language emerged when the motivational system became able to support goal-directed processes with no innate basis.

The purpose of this paper is to explore three alternative frameworks for understanding the nature of language and mentality, which accent syntactical, semantical, and pragmatical aspects of the phenomena with which they are concerned, respectively. Although the computational conception currently exerts considerable appeal, its defensibility appears to hinge upon an extremely implausible theory of the relation of form to content. Similarly, while the representational approach has much to recommend it, its range is essentially restricted to those units of (...) class='Hi'>language that can be understood in terms of undefined units. Thus, the only alternative among these three that can account for the meaning of primitive units of language is one emphasizing the basic role of skills, habits, and tendencies in relating signs and dispositions. (shrink)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have been transformative. They are pre-trained foundational models that are self-supervised and can be adapted with fine tuning to a wide range of natural language tasks, each of which previously would have required a separate network model. This is one step closer to the extraordinary versatility of human language. GPT-3 and more recently LaMDA can carry on dialogs with humans on many topics after minimal priming with a few examples. However, there has been (...) a wide range of reactions and debate on whether these LLMs understand what they are saying or exhibit signs of intelligence. This high variance is exhibited in three interviews with LLMs reaching wildly different conclusions. A new possibility was uncovered that could explain this divergence. What appears to be intelligence in LLMs may in fact be a mirror that reflects the intelligence of the interviewer, a remarkable twist that could be considered a Reverse Turing Test. If so, then by studying interviews we may be learning more about the intelligence and beliefs of the interviewer than the intelligence of the LLMs. As LLMs become more capable they may transform the way we interact with machines and how they interact with each other. Increasingly, LLMs are being coupled with sensorimotor devices. LLMs can talk the talk, but can they walk the walk? A road map for achieving artificial general autonomy is outlined with seven major improvements inspired by brain systems. LLMs could be used to uncover new insights into brain function by downloading brain data during natural behaviors. (shrink)

In the early 1760s, the entry dedicated to the term “social” in Diderot's Encyclopédie claimed that it was “un mot nouvellement introduit dans la langue.” Strictly speaking, this description was inaccurate: “social” had already appeared (though very sporadically) in seventeenth-century French texts. But the essence of the Encyclopédie's argument was correct: “social” had been so marginal in French up until the mid-eighteenth century that its wide deployment in enlightened discourse from the 1740s onward could be treated as a new (...) class='Hi'>appearance. The article main argument is that “social's” new appearance in the mid-1740s was of considerable intellectual importance. To support this argument, the article is divided into three parts. The first outlines the general premises of the research into the word “social” and its significance. By placing this research within the ongoing investigation of the semantic field around “société” in enlightened philosophy, the article claims that such an investigation is much more than an etymological exercise. The special epistemological status of “social” in enlightened philosophy makes an understanding of the reasons for its rapid domination of French philosophical discourse a most rewarding project from the perspective of intellectual history. The second part of the article provides empirical evidence for the argument that “social” had been all but completely absent from French intellectual discourse before the mid-eighteenth century. It is of course harder to ascertain the absence of a word before a given point in time than to confirm its presence, but many different indications substantiate the essence of the Encyclopédie's claim. These indications also allow one to follow “social's” discursive rise after about 1745 and to speculate about the identity of the author(s) responsible for it. All evidence lead to two philosophes, the article claims: Diderot and Rousseau. Finally, the third part of the article presents an argument about the reasons for “social's” rapid naturalization in French enlightened thought and discusses what the philosophes tried so intensively to do, achieve, or express with “social.” Possible answers to this question lead to a reevaluation of mid-eighteenth century enlightened thought in general and contemporary philosophes in particular. Most importantly, such answers allow us to reflect on how we write and think about the intellectual achievements of the mid-eighteenth century, and in what way we, too, still inhabit the mental universe the philosophes helped to create. ☆ I would like to thank Keith Michael Baker for his encouragement and helpful criticism of a previous draft of this article. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) have now entered the realm of medical ethics. In a recent study, Balaset alexamined the performance of GPT-4, a commercially available LLM, assessing its performance in generating responses to diverse medical ethics cases. Their findings reveal that GPT-4 demonstrates an ability to identify and articulate complex medical ethical issues, although its proficiency in encoding the depth of real-world ethical dilemmas remains an avenue for improvement. Investigating the integration of LLMs into medical ethics decision-making appears to (...) be an interesting avenue of research. However, despite the promising trajectory of LLM technology in medicine, it is crucial to exercise caution and refrain from attributing their expertise to medical ethics. Our thesis follows an examination of the nature of expertise and the epistemic limitations that affect LLM technology. As a result, we propose two more fitting applications of LLMs in medical ethics: first, as tools for mining electronic health records or scientific literature, thereby supplementing evidence for resolving medical ethics cases, and second, as educational platforms to foster ethical reflection and critical thinking skills among students and residents. The integration of LLMs in medical ethics, while promising, requires careful consideration of their epistemic limitations. Consequently, a well-considered definition of their role in ethically sensitive decision-making is crucial. (shrink)

It has been claimed that recursion is one of the properties that distinguishes human language from any other form of animal communication. Contrary to this claim, a recent study purports to demonstrate center‐embedded recursion in starlings. I show that the performance of the birds in this study can be explained by a counting strategy, without any appreciation of center‐embedding. To demonstrate that birds understand center‐embedding of sequences of the form AnBn (such as A1A2B2B1, or A3A4A5B5B4B3) would require not only (...) that they discriminate such patterns from other patterns, but that they appreciate that elements must be bound from the outside in (thus, in the above examples, A1B1, A2B2, A3B3, A4B4, A5B5 are bound pairs). This has not been shown in nonhuman species, and sentences with this structure are difficult even for humans to parse. There appears to be no evidence to date that nonhuman species understand recursion. (shrink)

Opinions have varied wildly as to whether the roots of language run extremely deep in the human lineage, or, alternatively, whether this unprecedented capacity is a recent acquisition. The question has been exacerbated by the fact that language itself does not preserve, so that its possession by earlier hominids has had to be inferred from indirect material proxies. Here I argue that while most technological putative proxies from the Paleolithic are certainly evidence of highly complex cognitive states among (...) our precursors, virtually none of them can reliably be taken as witness to the specific symbolic cognitive style that human beings share today—and with which language is intricately intertwined. Symbolic reasoning can only be confidently inferred from explicitly symbolic objects. These latter only became integral to hominid societies within the tenure of anatomically modern Homo sapiens, and their appearance marked an extreme inflection in the tempo of change as seen in the archaeological record. I thus suggest that the neural capacity for symbolic reasoning and language was acquired during the major developmental reorganization that gave rise to the highly anatomically distinctive H. sapiens some 200 thousand years ago, but that that the new potential was not exploited until about 100 thousand years later, when it was released by what was necessarily a cultural stimulus. Most probably, this stimulus was the spontaneous invention of externalized structured language. This brings the origin of language into the realm of exaptation and emergence—both of them familiar evolutionary phenomena requiring no special explanation—and excludes the long-term fine-tuning of language and human reasoning by natural selection. (shrink)

In recent writing on the theory of knowledge a distinction has been drawn between ‘the language of appearing’ and ‘the sense-datum language’. The aim of this paper is to suggest that consideration of that distinction and of what Kant’s attitude toward it would have been can shed light on two otherwise-puzzling aspects of his doctrine in the Critique of Pure Reason: his adamant conviction that there are things-in-themselves, and his confidence that the Antinomies are resolved once we admit (...) the transcendental ideality of space and time. (shrink)

A fundamental goal of linguistic theory is to explain how natural languages are acquired. This paper describes some recent findings on how learners acquire syntactic knowledge for which there is little, if any, decisive evidence from the environment. The first section presents several general observations about language acquisition that linguistic theory has tried to explain and discusses the thesis that certain linguistic properties are innate because they appear universally and in the absence of corresponding experience. A third diagnostic for (...) innateness, early emergence, is the focus of the second section of the paper, in which linguistic theory is tested against recent experimental evidence on children's acquisition of syntax. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to the understanding of Heidegger and a rare attempt to bridge the schism between traditions of analytic and Continental philosophy. Cristina Lafont applies the core methodology of analytic philosophy, language analysis, to Heidegger's work providing both a clearer exegesis and a powerful critique of his approach to the subject of language. In Part One, she explores the Heideggerean conception of language in depth. In Part Two, she draws on recent work from (...) theorists of direct reference (Putnam, Donnellan and Kripke inter alia) to reveal the limitations of Heidegger's views and to show how language shapes our understanding of the world without making learning impossible. The book first appeared in German but has been substantially revised for the English edition. (shrink)

17 essays discussing the role of language in the history of western thought. Since Adam before the Fall named the animals by true insight into their essences, language has never ceased to be the pivot of efforts to understand human nature and our capacity to feel at home in the twin worlds of nature and society. This volume brings together seventeen essays that have appeared in the Journal of the History of Ideasover the last thirty years. Their common (...) theme is the role of language in aspects of the history of western thought from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. The essays cover questions in epistemology, religion, anthropology, lexicography, evolution, the theory of signs, and the origin of language. Contributors: FRANK L. BORCHARDT, MARGRETA DE GRAZIA, SIDONIE CLAUSS, JAN MIEL, THOMAS C.SINGER, VICTOR ANTHONY RUDOWSKI, JULES PAUL SEIGEL, JAMES McLAVERTY, J.R. KNOWLSON, STEPHEN K. LAND, LIA FORMIGARI, H.J. JACKSON, W. JAY REEDY, V.P. BYNACK, CYMBRE QUINCYRAUB, MICHAEL SPRINKER, S. MORRIS ENGEL. (shrink)

From the first months of life, human infants produce “protophones,” speech-like, non-cry sounds, presumed absent, or only minimally present in other apes. But there have been no direct quantitative comparisons to support this presumption. In addition, by 2 months, human infants show sustained face-to-face interaction using protophones, a pattern thought also absent or very limited in other apes, but again, without quantitative comparison. Such comparison should provide evidence relevant to determining foundations of language, since substantially flexible vocalization, the inclination (...) to explore vocalization, and the ability to interact socially by means of vocalization are foundations for language. Here we quantitatively compare data on vocalization rates in three captive bonobo (Pan paniscus) mother–infant pairs with various sources of data from our laboratories on human infant vocalization. Both humans and bonobos produced distress sounds (cries/screams) and laughter. The bonobo infants also produced sounds that were neither screams nor laughs and that showed acoustic similarities to the human protophones. These protophone-like sounds confirm that bonobo infants share with humans the capacity to produce vocalizations that appear foundational for language. Still, there were dramatic differences between the species in both quantity and function of the protophone and protophone-like sounds. The bonobo protophone-like sounds were far less frequent than the human protophones, and the human protophones were far less likely to be interpreted as complaints and more likely as vocal play. Moreover, we found extensive vocal interaction between human infants and mothers, but no vocal interaction in the bonobo mother–infant pairs—while bonobo mothers were physically responsive to their infants, we observed no case of a bonobo mother vocalization directed to her infant. Our cross-species comparison focuses on low- and moderate-arousal circumstances because we reason the roots of language entail vocalization not triggered by excitement, for example, during fighting or intense play. Language appears to be founded in flexible vocalization, used to regulate comfortable social interaction, to share variable affective states at various levels of arousal, and to explore vocalization itself. (shrink)

This Handbook documents the main trends in current research between logic and language, including its broader influence in computer science, linguistic theory and cognitive science. The history of the combined study of Logic and Linguistics goes back a long way, at least to the work of the scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages. At the beginning of this century, the subject was revitalized through the pioneering efforts of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Polish philosophical logicians such as Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. (...) Around 1970, the landmark achievements of Richard Montague established a junction between state-of-the-art mathematical logic and generative linguistic theory. Over the subsequent decades, this enterprise of Montague Grammar has flourished and diversified into a number of research programs with empirical and theoretical substance. This appears to be the first Handbook to bring logic-language interface to the fore. Both aspects of the interaction between logic and language are demonstrated in the book i.e. firstly, how logical systems are designed and modified in response to linguistic needs and secondly, how mathematical theory arises in this process and how it affects subsequent linguistic theory. The Handbook presents concise, impartial accounts of the topics covered. Where possible, an author and a commentator have cooperated to ensure the proper breadth and technical content of the papers. The Handbook is self-contained, and individual articles are of the highest quality. (shrink)

This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and phi losophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and socio biology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and computer science. While primary (...) emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual and epistemologi cal aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. Among the most challenging and difficult projects within the scope of artificial intelligence is the development and implementation of com puter programs suitable for processing natural language. Our purpose in compiling the present volume has been to contribute to the foundations of this enterprise by bringing together classic papers devoted to crucial problems involved in understanding natural language, which range from issues of formal syntax and logical form to those of possible-worlds and situation semantics. The book begins with a comprehensive introduc tion composed by Jack Kulas, the senior editor of this work, which pro vides a systematic orientation to this complex field, and ends with a selected bibliography intended to promote further research. If our efforts assist others in dealing with these problems, they will have been worthwhile. J. H. F. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy is beginning to pay to problems of linguistic justice the attention that they deserve in today’s heavily interconnected world. However, contemporary philosophy, as a part of today’s world, has problems of linguistic justice of its own which deserve meta-philosophical attention. At least in the philosophical tradition that is mainstream in much of the world today, viz. analytic philosophy, methodological and sociological mechanisms make it the case that the voices of non-native-speaking philosophers are substantially less heard. In this essay, (...) I briefly outline the problems non-native speakers face in contemporary analytic philosophy. I then move on to analysing the possible causes of the current problems. Among these reasons, I argue, is the emphasis given to linguistic style and appearances as signs of clarity, precision and rigour in the treatment of philosophical problems. I argue that the current emphasis on linguistic style in analytic philosophy is not justifiable, in part because it deprives contemporary analytic philosophy of a wider variety of philosophical perspectives. I argue that an important remedy for the emphasis on linguistic appearances within philosophy is to foster greater linguistic diversity. I conclude by presenting and motivating a recent initiative that aims to achieve such a goal. (shrink)

Challenges the idea held by many prominent twentieth-century Sinologists that early China experienced a “language crisis.” Jane Geaney argues that early Chinese conceptions of speech and naming cannot be properly understood if viewed through the dominant Western philosophical tradition in which language is framed through dualisms that are based on hierarchies of speech and writing, such as reality/appearance and one/many. Instead, early Chinese texts repeatedly create pairings of sounds and various visible things. This aural/visual polarity suggests that (...) texts from early China treat speech as a bodily practice that is not detachable from its use in everyday experience. Firmly grounded in ideas about bodies from the early texts themselves, Geaney’s interpretation offers new insights into three key themes in these texts: the notion of speakers’ intentions (yi), the physical process of emulating exemplary people, and Confucius’s proposal to rectify names (zhengming). Jane Geaney is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond and the author of On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. (shrink)

Because of their range, brilliance, and singularity, the ideas of the philosopher-critic-historian Michel Foucault have gained extraordinary currency throughout the Western intellectual community. This book offers a selection of seven of Foucault's most important published essays, translated from the French, with an introductory essay and notes by Donald F. Bouchard. Also included are a summary of a course given by Foucault at College de France; the transcript of a conversation between Foucault and Gilles Deleuze; and an interview with Foucault that (...) appeared in the journal Actuel. Professor Bouchard has divided the book into three closely related sections. The four essays in Part One examine language as a "perilous limit" of what we know and what we are. The essays in the second part suggest the methodological guidelines to which Foucault subscribes, and they record, in the editor's words, "the penetration of the language of literature into the domain of discursive thought." The material in the last section is more obviously political than the essays. It treats language in use, language attempting to impart knowledge and power. Translated by the editor and Sherry Simon into fluent and lucid English, these essays will appeal primarily to students of literature, especially those interested in contemporary continental structuralist criticism. But because of the breadth of Foucault's interests, they should also prove valuable to anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and psychologists. (shrink)

Natural language is full of patterns that appear to fit with general linguistic rules but are ungrammatical. There has been much debate over how children acquire these “linguistic restrictions,” and whether innate language knowledge is needed. Recently, it has been shown that restrictions in language can be learned asymptotically via probabilistic inference using the minimum description length (MDL) principle. Here, we extend the MDL approach to give a simple and practical methodology for estimating how much linguistic data (...) are required to learn a particular linguistic restriction. Our method provides a new research tool, allowing arguments about natural language learnability to be made explicit and quantified for the first time. We apply this method to a range of classic puzzles in language acquisition. We find some linguistic rules appear easily statistically learnable from language experience only, whereas others appear to require additional learning mechanisms (e.g., additional cues or innate constraints). (shrink)

In this paper, we complement proximate or ‘how’ explanations for the origins of language, broadening our perspective to include fitness-consequences explanations, i.e. ultimate, or ‘why’ explanations. We identify theplatform of trustas a fundamental prerequisite for the development of a language-like system of symbolic communication. The platform of trust is a social niche in which cheap but honest communication with non-kin is possible, because messages tend to be trusted as a default. We briefly consider the place of the platform (...) of trust on the road map as laid out in the Mirror System Hypothesis. We then turn to recent research on turn-taking in primates, which has been proposed as a precursor of the cooperative structuring of conversation in humans. We suggest, instead, that human turn-taking, in its full richness that makes it an interesting explanatory target, may only appear in a communicative system that is already founded on a community-wide, cooperative platform of trust. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to the understanding of Heidegger and a rare attempt to bridge the schism between traditions of analytic and Continental philosophy. Cristina Lafont applies the core methodology of analytic philosophy, language analysis, to Heidegger's work providing both a clearer exegesis and a powerful critique of his approach to the subject of language. In Part One, she explores the Heideggerean conception of language in depth. In Part Two, she draws on recent work from (...) theorists of direct reference to reveal the limitations of Heidegger's views and to show how language shapes our understanding of the world without making learning impossible. The book first appeared in German but has been substantially revised for the English edition. (shrink)

It has long been claimed that Homo sapiens is the only species that has language, but only recently has it been recognized that humans also have an unusual pattern of growth and development. Social mammals have two stages of pre-adult development: infancy and juvenility. Humans have two additional prolonged and pronounced life history stages: childhood, an interval of four years extending between infancy and the juvenile period that follows, and adolescence, a stage of about eight years that stretches from (...) juvenility to adulthood. We begin by reviewing the primary biological and linguistic changes occurring in each of the four pre-adult ontogenetic stages in human life history. Then we attempt to trace the evolution of childhood and juvenility in our hominin ancestors. We propose that several different forms of selection applied in infancy and childhood; and that, in adolescence, elaborated vocal behaviors played a role in courtship and intrasexual competition, enhancing fitness and ultimately integrating performative and pragmatic skills with linguistic knowledge in a broad faculty of language. A theoretical consequence of our proposal is that fossil evidence of the uniquely human stages may be used, with other findings, to date the emergence of language. If important aspects of language cannot appear until sexual maturity, as we propose, then a second consequence is that the development of language requires the whole of modern human ontogeny. Our life history model thus offers new ways of investigating, and thinking about, the evolution, development, and ultimately the nature of human language. (shrink)

Thomas Sebeok and Noam Chomsky are the acknowledged founding fathers of two research fields which are known respectively as Biosemiotics and Biolinguistics and which have been developed in parallel during the past 50 years. Both fields claim that language has biological roots and must be studied as a natural phenomenon, thus bringing to an end the old divide between nature and culture. In addition to this common goal, there are many other important similarities between them. Their definitions of (...) class='Hi'>language, for example, have much in common, despite the use of different terminologies. They both regard language as a faculty, or a modelling system, that appeared rapidly in the history of life and probably evolved as an exaptation from previous animal systems. Both accept that the fundamental characteristic of language is recursion, the ability to generate an unlimited number of structures from a finite set of elements (the property of ‘discrete infinity’). Both accept that human beings are born with a predisposition to acquire language in a few years and without apparent efforts (the innate component of language). In addition to similarities, however, there are also substantial differences between the two fields, and it is an historical fact that Sebeok and Chomsky made no attempt at resolving them. Biosemiotics and Biolinguistics have become two separate disciplines, and yet in the case of language they are studying the same phenomenon, so it should be possible to bring them together. Here it is shown that this is indeed the case. A convergence of the two fields does require a few basic readjustments in each of them, but leads to a unified framework that keeps the best of both disciplines and is in agreement with the experimental evidence. What is particularly important is that such a framework suggests immediately a new approach to the origin of language. More precisely, it suggests that the brain wiring processes that take place in all phases of human ontogenesis (embryonic, foetal, infant and child development) are based on organic codes, and it is the step-by-step appearance of these brain-wiring codes, in a condition that is referred to as cerebra bifida, that holds the key to the origin of language. (shrink)

This paper develops three points in response to Habermas's ?The Language Game of Responsible Agency and the Problem of Free Will.? First, while Habermas nicely characterizes the appearance of freedom, he misconstrues its connections to deliberate agency, responsibility, and our justificatory practice. Second, Habermas's discussion largely overlooks grave conceptual challenges to our idea of freedom, challenges more fundamental than those posed by naturalism. Finally, a physicalist view of ourselves may be able to save as much of the (...) class='Hi'>appearance of freedom as can the anti-physicalist naturalism that Habermas recommends. (shrink)

This book explores two basic questions regarding constitutional theory. First, in view of a commitment to democratic self-rule and widespread disagreement on questions of value, how is the creation of a legitimate constitutional regime possible? Second, what must be true about a constitution if the regime that it supports is to retain its claim to legitimacy? Howard Schweber shows that the answers to these questions appear in a theory of constitutional language that combines democratic theory with constitutional philosophy. The (...) creation of a legitimate constitutional regime depends on a shared commitment to a particular and specialized form of language. Out of this simple observation, Schweber develops arguments about the characteristics of constitutional language, the necessary differences between constitutional language and the language of ordinary law or morality, as well as the authority of officials such as judges to engage in constitutional review of laws. (shrink)

The following paper examines Tuomela’s explanation of the appearance of basic social facts. In this proposal, the elementary components of a social ontology are due to the “collective intentionality” shared by different actors. Even though Tuomela alludes to language being present in some forms of intentionality in his exhibition, his reconstruction is oriented towards other forms of generating social facts that suppos-edly would not include it. In this writing, it will be argued, on the contrary, that it is (...) not possible to avoid the main mechanism of generation of basic phenomena of sociality in any of its instances. Once language takes its central place as the main mechanism for coordinating action, creator of social groups and guide for a social ontology, many of the distinctions of the intentionalist program lose relevance from an ontological point of view. (shrink)

We may reflect on language in different ways. There is the way familiar to analytical philosophers. That may take different forms, but most of them are strikingly different from the way of someone like Elias Canetti or F. R. Leavis, whose thought is shaped by their concern with literature. In the latter case language appears as an essentially human phenomenon, not because it is limited to the species Homo sapiens, but because it is essentially connected with the culture (...) and histories of peoples, whose plurality is underdetermined by any elaboration on the nature and environmental conditions of Homo sapiens. It is rare to find analytical philosophers of language for whom that is important or who have tried even to sketch the kind of importance it may have. That is because they assume that it is not important to language as such but only to the sophisticated use of language in poetry or literature. They have tended to misunderstand the sense in which a language such as English is a natural language. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to study scientific observation from a broad perspective, taking into account history, practice and philosophical reflexivity. I shall draw on a series of new approaches variously termed: historical epistemology, history of philosophy of science, science studies, etc. Such approaches were undoubtedly sparked by the difficulties that philosophy of science encountered: if the idea of a neutral language of observation has been abandoned, debate remains as to the character and degree of the theory-ladenness of (...) facts. Two case studies will be considered: observation in the birth of modern science and observation in the life sciences. These will enable us to follow the evolution of the related concepts of accuracy, exactness and precision, as features that render an observation scientific. On closer inspection it appears that these concepts are not given spontaneously; they had to be constructed, and this process was intimately bound up with the development of knowledge. (shrink)

From the Greek satyr to the American Mickey Mouse and from the Chinese dragon to the Egyptian Sphinx, animals and animal/humans have come throughhuman imagination into myth, legend and story. This combination or fusion of animal and human in literature presents a double signification. At the same time that our attention goes to the animality of the human, we may also entertain the humanity of the animal. Besides blending of physical and psychological characteristics, these ancient and modern characters of world (...) texts may embed authentic experiences of communion or communication between humans and animals. The texts may be understood as signifying the limits of both the human and the animal and the possibility of the humanimal. Humanimality signifies the fusion of human and animal which dissolves the ordinary dualism of human subject and animal object and allows for intersubjectivity unmarked by specific biological limitations. This kind of intersubjectivity occurs in the contact of communication and is often an occasion for awe on the part of the human if not of the animal. We may understand such awesome communication as imitation, non-verbal cooperation, and as teaching and learning. Three poems by the author, reproduced in the Appendix, “The Ravens Fly Yet,” “Neighbors,” and “The Lesson,” provide the literary fields in which humanimal phenomena may appear. (shrink)

My dissertation concerns the nature of linguistic understanding. A standard view about linguistic understanding is that it is a propositional knowledge state. The following is an instance of this view: given a speaker S and an expression alpha that means M, S understand alpha just in case S knows that alpha means M. I refer to this as the epistemic view of linguistic understanding. The epistemic view would appear to be a mere conceptual truth about linguistic understanding, since it is (...) entailed by the following two claims that themselves seem to be mere conceptual truths: S understands alpha iff S knows what alpha means, and---given that a means M--- S knows what alpha means iff S knows that alpha means M. I argue, however, that this is not a mere conceptual truth. Contrary to the epistemic view, propositional knowledge of the meaning of alpha is not necessary for understanding alpha. I argue that linguistic understanding does not even require belief. My positive proposal is that our understanding of language is typically realized, at least in native speakers, as a perceptual capacity. Evidence from cognitive neuropsychology suggests that our perceptual experience of language comes to us already semantically interpreted. We perceive a speaker's utterance as having content, and it is by perceiving the speaker's utterances as having the right content that we understand what the speaker says. We count as understanding language in virtue of having this capacity to understand what speakers say when they use language. This notion of perceiving an utterance as having content gets analyzed in terms of Dretske's account of representation in terms of a teleological notion of function: you perceive a speaker's utterance as having content when the utterance produces in you a perceptual state that has a certain function in your psychology. I show how this view about the nature of linguistic understanding provides an attractive account of how identity claims can be semantically informative, as opposed to merely pragmatically informative, an account that avoids the standard difficulties for Fregean views that attempt to account for the informativeness of identity claims in terms of their semantics. (shrink)

In theoretical work about the language of personal taste, the canonical example is the simple predicate of personal taste, 'tasty'. We can also express the same positive gustatory evaluation with the complex expression, 'taste good'. But there is a challenge for an analysis of 'taste good': While it can be used equivalently with 'tasty', it need not be (for instance, imagine it used by someone who can identify good wines by taste but doesn't enjoy them). This kind of two-faced (...) behavior systematically arises with complex sensory-evaluative predicates, including those with other appearance verbs, such as 'look splendid' and 'sound nice'. I examine two strategies for capturing these different uses: one that posits an ambiguity in appearance verbs, and one that does not. The former is in line with an approach to 'look'-statements prominent in work in philosophy of perception, and I consider how the motivation given in that tradition carries over to the present context. I then show how the data used to support the verbal ambiguity approach can equally be captured on the second strategy, which appeals only to independently-motivated flexibility in adjective meaning. I close by discussing some considerations that are relevant for choosing between the two options. (shrink)

It was a tenacious dream: the first language spoken by man was music, poetry and science, all at the same time. In the beginning the same word, given by God or dictated by Nature, stood for things, feelings and laws. And in the cherished image of this dawning faculty not only had the distinction between word and song, the difference between expressive power and objective designational power (or “referential function,” as the linguists say) not yet appeared, but the sacred (...) and profane uses of speech had not yet established their separate kingdoms: in the great festival of the earliest days each word was a celebrant and contained the substance of reality. The word, invested with an integral meaning, hit the mark and rejoiced at the contact. Everything to which man gave a name was a god to him or the delegate of a god, so that by virtue of a benevolent revelation or of an exact inspiration the earliest vocal expression combined the fullness of knowing with the musical fullness of its expressive power. But this language of Paradise, witness to an age when man was not separated from man or removed from Nature or from God, has long been forgotten, dismembered, dispersed. Multiple and incompatible idioms have taken its place. The clear light of meaning has become clouded. (shrink)

Emotions are part of our culture ; particular emotions like resentment andguilt are part of specific cultural heritages. On the other hand, moral judgementsand imperatives have the appearance of objectivity. There lies - or so it seems -a conflict, even a contradiction. Statements like "Slavery is unjust" may beasserted, agreements may be reached concerning what they claim or express,and they may occur as antecedents in conditionals such as "If slavery is unjust,then it must be abolished". When it is claimed (...) that slavery is unjust or that it iswrong to harm others, it is thereby claimed that it is so objectively. We mean bythis (among other things) that it is so independently of the moral emotionsanyone may feel with respect to slavery or the infliction of pain.It will be argued here that there are grounds to believe that emotions must beevaluated cognitively and that they do have cognitive significance, value andcontent. In this cognitive or quasi-cognitive perspective, the appropriatecharacter of an emotion is akin to the truth of a proposition : just as the truth of aproposition may be evaluated in terms of the justifications we are able toprovide in its favour, the correctness of emotions may be evaluated relatively tocognitive bases and classes of available warrants. Some emotions may be ruledout as incorrect or inapproriate, just as some propositions may be rejected asunjustified or in need of a warrant. The parallel relies on the controversial notionof non-propositional forms of moral justification. The notion may be construedin a variety of ways, the most promising construals being, I believe, thoseprovided by the perceptual model.I shall focus on the following point. Moral judgements and imperatives areexpressed with the usual resources of natural languages. These typically includepredicates like "unjust" and "wrong", and deontic sentential operators like"must" and "should". Moral emotions, on the other hand, may be expressed bybodily movements and facial expressions. Although it may be argued thatemotions do not bear the cognitive marks of objectivity when expressed in thisway, there is no reason to think that a reformed language of ethics, i.e. a purelanguage of emotions, free of all the linguistic or symbolic marks of truth,assertability and objectivity, would thereby be free of normative input, or evenbe inadequate to express normative claims. I shall argue that once nonpropositionalforms of justifications are taken into account, the reformingstrategy of emotivists and neo-emotivists is indeed ineffective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 131-136 [Access article in PDF] Language, Logic, and Recovery:A Commentary on van Staden Paul Falzer and Larry Davidson Keywords: analytic philosophy, experience, Frege, ordinary language, psychosis, psychotherapy. VAN STADEN'S PAPER, "Linguistic Markers of Recovery," takes on a formidable task. As he explains it, findings from a previously conducted empirical study suggest that recovery from a psychiatric condition can be predicted by (...) certain patterns of first person pronoun usage. His current paper explains how these patterns follow the mathematical logic of Gottlob Frege. van Staden's attempt to systematize the link between language and treatment outcome shows promise. We want to support his effort by raising a few caveats about the application of foundational systems in psychiatry and psychology, particularly the advisability of employing a logical system to explain recovery from mental illness. Along the way, we will be identifying related issues that the author may elect to take up in his future work.van Staden's proposal is inspired by Frege's logical system, but the paper is, at the very least, an innovative adaptation. There are various points where we are left to wonder just how much of this proposal is really Frege's. Nevertheless, the genesis of van Staden's ideas is so dependent that one would expect a fuller account of Frege's pivotal role in the development of modern logic, how his work precipitated what is known commonly as the linguistic turn, and why a logical system that was so well received when first articulated was eclipsed so quickly by Russell's Principia (1963) and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. (1981) These issues can be addressed separately and perhaps they should, because lacking an account of how Frege's philosophy developed and evolved makes the presentation appear somewhat sketchy and incomplete.Frege is portrayed in philosophical lore as the founder of modern logic and a pioneer of the movement that later became known as analytic philosophy. Dummett (1991) regards Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic (1968) as analytical philosophy's first work (p. 111). According to Quine (1955), "All modern logic owes an incalculable debt to Frege. If anyone can be singled out as the founder of mathematical logic, it is by all odds he" (p. 158). Rorty (1967) notes that analytic philosophy's tack of construing philosophical questions as turning on language use and construction challenges the entire tradition, from Parmenides forward. However, the challenge reaches fruition not in Frege, but in works of Moore, Wittgenstein, and Austin. Rather than [End Page 131] sharing the limelight with the great analytic philosophers, Frege has become somewhat of a peripheral figure, whose contribution is usually portrayed as transitional. In some respects, analytic philosophy was moving against Frege's, and later, Russell's logical systems as it was concomitantly countering the various strands of idealism expounded principally by Bradley and McTaggart (see Hacker 1996, 5-12). Almost from the outset, Fregean logic was caught in a cross fire, and the author is obligated to tell us why we should be attending to the pristine version and not the more fully developed approaches that came soon after.Such a justification undoubtedly would begin with the dictum most central to Frege's philosophical thought, that propositions are primary. For Kemp (1998), this declaration carries two interrelated implications: Logical propositions are the real bearers of truth and falsity, and reasoning is a movement from one judgment to another (see p. 218). Frege posits that propositions are independent of mind, grammar, and language use. Knowledge and cognition are embodied in, but do not predicate, judgment. Frege adamantly rejects the notion that philosophical concepts are grounded in psychological phenomena, such as perception, sense impression, and some traditional accounts of meaning. This is the doctrine known as psychologism, and Frege abjures the suggestion that psychology can contain the sciences or adjudicate their findings (Frege 1956; for a discussion of this doctrine, see Notturno 1989; Davidson 1988; Davidson and Cosgrove 1991). The dictum that propositions are primary dispels the commonly held idea that reasoning begins with perception and proceeds... (shrink)

There is a form of intellectual controversy, exhibited throughout the nineteenth century and into our own, which is less accessible because of a radically different order than certain controversies it appears to resemble, namely those which sprang up dramatically between science and religion in this era. Those latter controversies developed chiefly because it was at first supposed that religion was in possession of factual truths which entailed answers incompatible with those offered by science, to just the same factual questions: the (...) age of the universe, the mutability of species, the community of men and beasts or, for the matter, the historicity of sacred writ itself. On the basis of criteria supposed appropriate to the resolution of scientific controversies as such, the factual claims of religion were one by one infirmed, and it seemed then a reasonable projection that more or less the same would happen in any future such collisions. This left certain options open for religionists. They could, like adherents of any infirmed theory, simply give them up like good scientists are supposed to do. Or they could attempt to shun refutation by regarding religious statements as mere mythic paraphrases of recoverable literal scientific statements which were in fact true. Or religion could constitute itself a specialized science, concerned with an area of reality the "other" sciences did not touch upon, purging itself of any statements which then could conflict with those of the "other" sciences. Or finally, it could radically redefine its own scope and office by foreswearing any claim at all to factuality, so that questions of truth or falsity simply no longer would apply, and controversies between it and any discipline to which such questions did apply would be as inconceivable as a truth-contest between chemistry and opera. The Wittgensteinian suggestion that it is not the purpose of religious language to state facts may be seen as a late response to a dilemma which is then resolved by assigning religious utterance to one language game and physics to another. Were this a suitable disposition of the matter, religionists might be grateful for the suffering undergone, for though in the light of it the dilemma need never have arisen, still, had it not done so, religion might never have arrived at a proper consciousness of its own deep character. So the recent history of religion recapitulates its own favorite episodes of trial and purified renascence. (shrink)

The author narrates her journey to women’s circle dances of the Balkans, and explores how they incorporate prehistoric signs which Marija Gimbutas called ‘the language of the Goddess’. These symbolic images appear in archaeological artefacts, textile motifs, song words, and dance patterns, and have been passed down for thousands of years in nonverbal ways. The interdisciplinary approach of archaeomythology suggests that the images may carry ideas and values from the Neolithic cultures in which these dances are said to have (...) their roots. Women’s ritual dances affirm the Old European values which honoured the Goddess, the mother principle, and the cycles of life, and offer an extraordinary oasis of women’s empowerment, even within patriarchal culture, indicating that the dances most likely originate in pre-patriarchal egalitarian matriarchy. For women today, even outside the Balkans, these women’s ritual dances offer insight and meaning through an embodied experience of the values of the Goddess. (shrink)

The dissertation examines the intersection of language and sense discrimination in the texts of classical Chinese philosophy . Through an analysis of the figures of speech related to language and sense discrimination, it argues that the pair 'aural and visual' forms a significant dualism within the Chinese cosmos. ;The significance of the aural/visual dualism is threefold. First, it clarifies classical Chinese epistemology. The dissertation argues that classical Chinese epistemology is a matter of matching many levels of parallels between (...) the aural and the visual. In other words, knowledge in classical China is verified through correspondences between the aural and visual. ;Second, the aural/visual dualism challenges a common assumption that in classical China sense discrimination is natural while language is conventional. The aural and visual are two aspects of sense discrimination, but they are also two aspects of language. That is, the category 'language' extends over both sides of the dualism. It is both aural and visual . As a result, the contrast of 'language as conventional' in opposition to 'sense discrimination as natural' does not develop in classical China. Both language and sense discrimination are to some extent both natural and conventional. ;Thirdly, the importance of the aural and visual is connected to the pair ming/shi. Ming/shi is typically translated 'names and reality' or 'names and objects' on the assumption that shi is more substantial and therefore more real. But as a form of the aural/visual dualism, there seems to be no justification for taking shi as 'reality'. Shi is what is seen by the eyes, just as ming is what is heard by the ears, but neither appears more intrinsically 'real'. Thus, the dissertation argues that in light of the aural/visual dualism we must reconsider what constitutes the notion of reality in classical China. (shrink)

This chapter argues that language use does not provide persuasive evidence for the Representational Thesis view of linguistic competence, and that RT is implausible. RT is not supported by the apparently popular “only-theory-in-town” abduction, nor it is supported by the psychology of skills in general, an appropriate place to look because linguistic competence appears to be procedural knowledge acquired by implicit learning. The chapter also argues for some tentative proposals: that language processing is not governed by the unrepresented (...) structure rules of the language; that language processing does not involve metalinguistic representations of the syntactic and semantic properties of linguistic expressions, but rather is a fairly brute-causal associationist process; and that if the Language-of-Thought Hypothesis is false, then the rules of a language are not, in a robust way, psychologically real in a speaker. (shrink)

This paper trials new experimental methods for the analysis of natural language reasoning and the development of critical ordinary language philosophy in the wake of J.L. Austin. Philosophical arguments and thought experiments are strongly shaped by default pragmatic inferences, including stereotypical inferences. Austin suggested that contextually inappropriate stereotypical inferences are at the root of some philosophical paradoxes and problems, and that these can be resolved by exposing those verbal fallacies. This paper builds on recent efforts to empirically document (...) inappropriate stereotypical inferences that may drive philosophical arguments. We demonstrate that previously employed questionnaire-based output measures do not suffice to exclude relevant confounds. We then report an experiment that combines reading time measurements with plausibility ratings. The study seeks to provide evidence of inappropriate stereotypical inferences from appearance verbs that have been suggested to lie at the root of the influential ‘argument from illusion’. Our findings support a diagnostic reconstruction of this argument. They provide the missing component for proof of concept for an experimental implementation of critical ordinary language philosophy that is in line with the ambitions of current ‘evidential’ experimental philosophy. (shrink)