Fodor (1998) argues that most lexical concepts have no internal structure. He rejects what he calls Inferential Role Semantics (IRS), the view that primitive concepts are constituted by their inferential relations, on the grounds that this violates the compositionality constraint and leads to an unacceptable form of holism. In rejecting IRS, Fodor must also reject meaning postulates. I argue, contra Fodor, that meaning postulates must be retained, but that when suitably constrained they are not susceptible to (...) his arguments against IRS. This has important implications for the view that certain of our concepts are deferential. A consequence of the arguments I present is that deference is relegated to a relatively minor role in what Sperber (1997) refers to as reflective concepts; deference has no important role to play in the vast majority of our intuitive concepts. (shrink)

Lasersohn has argued that the use of Russell's analysis of the definite determiner in Montague Grammar, which is responsible for giving the correct prediction in the case of the Temperature Paradox, is also responsible for giving the wrong prediction in the case of the Gupta Syllogism. In this paper I argue against Lasersohn, and show that the problem of the Gupta Syllogism can be solved by making a minor addition to Intensional Montague Grammar. This solution is one that Lasersohn discusses (...) but rejects. I will show that his critique of it is ill-founded. (shrink)

Most philosophers of science nowadays hold a network or postulational view of the meaning of theoretical words. However, there are many nuances to this view, and after explicitly separating them, we show what we take to be wrong with each one. While we reject the postulational view we do not defend its traditional alternatives either; rather we show the pointlessness of insisting on a single source for the meaning of theoretical words. We also point out the shortcomings of (...) Carnap's newest meaning criterion which depends upon a network view. But, again, we suggest not only that this new rendition of the criterion is faulty but also that there is something misguided about any search at all for such a criterion. (shrink)

The standard theory of belief revision was developed to describe how a rational agent should change his beliefs in the presence of new information. Many interesting tools were created, but the concept of rationality was usually assumed to be related to classical logics. In this paper, we explore the fact that the logical tools used can be extended to other sorts of logics, as proved in (Hansson and Wassermann, 2002), to describe models that are closer to the rationality of a (...) real agent. (shrink)

MEANING POSTULATES REINSTATED If I am right in agreeing with Cresswell that the "logicarrlexicaT distinction is one of degree rather than one of kind, that in turn impugns the distinction between the official truth-rules that define logical ...

The article aims at organizing multifaceted discourse on the concept of nondirectiveness in the practice of genetic counseling. The analysis of areas where nondirectiveness was invoked and discussed reveals the problematic confusion of different meanings of the term that often leads to false conclusions about the relations between the professional standards and the practice of genetic counseling. The article offers clear and comprehensive description of different approaches to nondirectiveness and various ideas associated with the term. Normative consequences of various meanings (...) attributed to nondirectiveness are explored. The article concludes by presenting important but unsolved problems regarding both theory (the meaning of nondirectiveness and its operational definition) and practice of genetic counseling (the scope and content of the norm of nondirective counseling). (shrink)

We propose to take issue with a neo-behaviorist upon what might seem to be a minor detail, and about which we are sure that, upon reflection, he would not differ from us. It has to do with the use of the word experience in a basic postulate of behaviorism. Even if by a hair's breadth this implies something categorically different from behavior, then, it seems to us, the essential meaning of behaviorism has been missed.

The aim of interpretation is to capture the past in the future: to capture, not to recapture, first, because the iterative prefix suggests that meaning, which was once manifest, must now be found again. But the postulated author dispenses with this assumption. Literary texts are produced by very complicated actions, while the significance of even our simplest acts is often far from clear. Parts of the meaning of a text may become clear only because of developments occurring long (...) after its composition. And though the fact that an author means something may be equivalent to the fact that a writer could have meant it, this is not to say that the writer did, on whatever level, actually mean it.Alexander Nehamas, professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, has written articles on ancient Greek philosophy, literary theory, Nietzsche and Thomas Mann. (shrink)

The keynote of our investigation is suggested by a remark made by Enriques, “the young student of mathematics would indeed look in vain to the classical logic into which he was initiated for an adequate conception of the structure of a deductive science like Geometry let alone for an explanation of the value and meaning of the principles of such a discipline. What are axioms, postulates, definitions? What place do they occupy in the edifice of the theory? What (...) criteria determine their choice and how can we establish whether they are acceptable or not?” These are in general the questions we shall seek to answer in part and then we shall make a special analysis of two of the criteria determining the choice of the axioms. (shrink)

In undertaking a discussion of the postulates of empiricism, I am confronted by the necessity of being empirical concerning the very postulates themselves. Were those postulates directly accessible to the average mind it would hardly be necessary to enter upon an analysis the success of which seems but a remote possibility even to one who has spent years in the effort to trace the priceless ingredient of the method of experiment in the cheap madness of scientific success. (...) How these postulates reveal themselves to more than the average mind would, of course, be very difficult for me to surmise, except by an ambitious extrapolation. It would have to be an extrapolation of the kind which telescopes a multitude of small rational steps into one swift unerring instinctive flight to the goal of goals. Yet, though genius with one intuitive glance may perceive the postulates as revelation—why not grant that there may be seers who can contemplate eternal objects unblinkingly?—it would still have to descend to mundane means to inform the average mind of its transcendental perceptions. Must not everyone indeed attend to the demands of the average mind? (shrink)

The globally generated concepts of environment and sustainability are fast gaining currency in international business discourse. Sustainability concerns are concurrently becoming significant to business planning around corporate social responsibility and integral to organizational strategies toward enhancing shareholder value. The mindset of corporate managers is a key factor in determining company approaches to sustainability. But what do corporate managers understand by sustainability? Our study explores discursive meaning negotiation surrounding the concepts of environment and sustainability within business discourse. The study is (...) based on qualitative interpretive research drawing from symbolic interactionism which postulates that meaning in discourse is an essentially contested domain dependent upon negotiation in the Habermasian tradition of mutually respectful dialogue. Data from semi-structured intensive interviews of a small sample of senior corporate managers was analyzed to examine how corporate elites in India frame their approach to sustainability issues and respond to external pressures for deeper corporate responsibility. The findings point to the existence of a distinctively local narrative with strong potential for the discursive negotiation of personal and collective understanding of ethical and socio-cultural values that may help internalize broader sustainability considerations into corporate decision-making processes. (shrink)

According to the prevailing opinion of the Kantian scholars, Kants critique of the traditional philosophical theology in the chapter of his Critique of Pure Reason dedicated to the ideal of reason motivated his rejection of transcendental theology in favor of a construction foundeв on postulates of reason. An examination of Kants sistematics of philosophical-theological disciplines reveals nonetheless some changeability of the borderlines of transcendental theology. This means that Kants critical arguments do not necessarily affect all kinds of trancendental theology, (...) and allows us to investigate Kants reflection of the transcendental ideal if reason as a foundation for an alternative version of philosophical ethico-theology which does not need practical postulates. In the first Critique there is no ground for such a construction, because Kant's concept of virtue remains partly naturalistic at that time. The idea of a pure aprioristic ethics of duty as expounded by Kant later furnished the needed conceptual foundation for a concept already prepared in the theory of the ideal, asserting the reality of a transcendental-practical ideal as a prototype of moral will, as humanity in its comprehensively determined moral perfection, as the realm of ethical ends, and lastly, in an anticipation of the prototypical Christology of Kant's late treatise on religion, as the divine human person within us. Compared with this version of transcendental philosophical theology Kants ethico-theology of postulates should be legitimately determined as a form of natural theology. (shrink)

This book develops an alternative approach to sentence- and word-meaning, which I dub the speech-act theoretic approach, or STA. Instead of employing the syntactic and semantic forms of modern logic–principally, quantification theory–to construct semantic theories, STA employs speech-act structures. The structures it employs are those postulated by a novel theory of speech-acts. STA develops a compositional semantics in which surface grammar is integrated with semantic interpretation in a way not allowed by standard quantification-based theories. It provides a pragmatic theory (...) of truth, a treatment of logically complex discourse as expressive cognitive states, and a background metaphysics in which the world is a totality of logically simple states of affairs. The book also puts forward an account of how intentional states provide the simple, representational foundation for a superstructure of speech-act structures–a system of thoughts–that far outruns the expressive power of the intentional foundation. In short, it provides an account of cognitive foundations of a language and a naturalistic reduction of semantics through an expressive theory of semantic norms. (shrink)

It is widely held that quantum mechanics is the first scientific theory to present scientifically internal, fundamental difficulties for a realistic interpretation (in the philosophical sense). The standard (Copenhagen) interpretation of the quantum theory is often described as the inevitable instrumentalistic response. It is the purpose of the present article to argue that quantum theory doesnot present fundamental new problems to a realistic interpretation. The formalism of quantum theory has the same states—it will be argued—as the formalisms of older physical (...) theories and is capable of the same kinds of philosophical interpretation. This result is reached via an analysis of what it means to give a realistic interpretation to a theory. The main point of difference between quantum mechanics and other theories—as far as the possibilities of interpretation are concerned—is the special treatment given tomeasurement by the “projection postulate.” But it is possible to do without this postulate. Moreover, rejection of the projection postulate does not, in spite of what is often maintained in the literature, automatically lead to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. A realistic interpretation is possible in which only the reality ofone (our) world is recognized. It is argued that the Copenhagen interpretation as expounded by Bohr is not in conflict with the here proposed realistic interpretation of quantum theory. (shrink)

This dissertation contains four independent essays addressing a cluster of related topics in the philosophy of mind. Chapter 1: “Fundamentality Physicalism” argues that physicalism can usefully be conceived of as a thesis about fundamentality. The chapter explores a variety of other potential formulations of physicalism (particularly modal formulations), contrasts fundamentality physicalism with these theses, and offers reasons to prefer fundamentality physicalism over these rivals. Chapter 2:“Modal Rationalism and the Demonstrative Reply to the Master Argument Against Physicalism” introduces the Master Argument (...) Against Physicalism and investigates its crucial premise: the inference from an a priori gap between the physical and consciousness to a lack of necessitation between the two. I argue against the strong form of modal rationalism that underwrites the master argument and offer a more moderate rationalist view. I offer a novel demonstrative reply to the master argument, according to which a connection between conscious experience and demonstratives, not dualism, is the source of the epistemic gap between consciousness and the physical. Chapter 3: “Conceptual Mastery and the Knowledge Argument” argues that Frank Jackson’s famous anti-physicalist knowledge argument featuring Mary, a brilliant neuroscientist raised in a black and white room, founders on a dilemma. Either (i) Mary cannot know the relevant experiential truths because of trivial obstacles that have no bearing on the truth of physicalism or (ii) once the obstacles have been removed, Mary can know the relevant truths. Chapter 4: “Toward a Theory of Conceptual Mastery” investigates the question “Under what conditions does a thinker fully understand, or have mastery of, a concept?” I argue against three views of conceptual mastery, according to which conceptual mastery is a matter of holding certain beliefs, being disposed to make certain inferences, or having certain intuitions. I propose and respond to objections to my own “meaning postulate view” of the conditions under which a thinker has mastery of a concept. (shrink)

In the following article, the author offers an interpretation of George Canguilhem’s thinly articulated concept “biological meaning.” As a way into the problem, the article begins with the question: how does “biological meaning” differ from other forms of meaning? That is to ask, if we are to hold that the mere physical/chemical mode of being of a stone differs from the biological mode of being of an organism, how do they differ in their meaning? In an (...) effort to supply an answer to this question, our author postulates that, when we consider the lived circumstances of the organism, the existential situation of living beings, their biological facticity, then we intuit a fundamental difference in the mode of being of the motions of billiard balls and those of organisms. Moreover, through the investigation into, on the one hand, the motions that take place in a living milieu and, on the other hand, the form of potentiality inherent in what we might call the motions of adaptation, the author offers a preliminary description of a meaning that might be uniquely biological. (shrink)

It is generally recognised that Western civilization is faced with a double threat to its survival, communism from without and disintegration from within. The latter had its beginnings in the Renaissance and the Reformation, both of which had disruptive effects of a size that is now being more or less clearly seen. We also see that there is urgent need to offset the consequences of these movements, and as rapidly as possible. To-day the accent is on co-operation between the diverse (...) elements of Western culture, and a good deal of thought is being given to devising ways and means of bringing the estranged components together, and re-establishing a unity akin to that which formerly existed in Christendom. (shrink)

A proposed measure of voting power should satisfy two conditions to be plausible: first, it must be conceptually justified, capturing the intuitive meaning of what voting power is; second, it must satisfy reasonable postulates. This paper studies a set of postulates, appropriate for a priori voting power, concerning blockers (or vetoers) in a binary voting game. We specify and motivate five such postulates, namely, two subadditivity blocker postulates, two minimum-power blocker postulates, each in weak (...) and strong versions, and the added-blocker postulate. We then test whether three measures of voting power, namely the classic Penrose-Banzhaf measure, the classic Shapley-Shubik index, and the newly proposed Recursive Measure, satisfy these postulates. We find that the first measure fails four of the postulates, the second fails two, while the third alone satisfies all five postulates. This work consequently adds to the plausibility of the Recursive Measure as a reasonable measure of voting power. (shrink)

In the present paper, I analyze the complex relationship of tension between Critical Theory and phenomenology from a sociological-theoretical perspective. I start from two theses. The first one is that one of the primary reasons for the antagonism between these two paradigms lies in their ideal-typically opposed assessments of the role of ‘meaning-adequacy’ in social research. The second one is that in recent years, there has been a strong rapprochement of Critical Theory with (social) phenomenology. This shift, fundamentally embodied (...) in Hartmut Rosa’s work, can be understood as the culminating point of a progressive turn towards meaning-adequacy within the Frankfurt School. In order to unfold these two theses, I will proceed in three steps. First (1), I will present the main outlines of the relationship of tension between the two traditions from both a historico-intellectual and a systematic perspective. Second (2), I will focus on the contemporary readings of the Schutzian notion of ‘meaning-adequacy’ and discuss their value for better understanding the historical opposition between the two paradigms, as well as their recent rapprochement. Third (3), I will sketch the key features of Rosa’s sociology of world-relations, understood as a phenomenological Critical Theory that shows a strong commitment to a radicalized version of the meaning-adequacy postulate. (shrink)

This paper deals with a foundational aspect of Integrated Information Theory of consciousness: the nature of the relation between the axioms of phenomenology and the postulates of cause-effect power. There has been a lack of clarity in the literature regarding this crucial issue, for which IIT has received much criticism of its axiomatic method and basic tenets. The present contribution elucidates the problem by means of a categorial analysis of the theory’s foundations. Its main results are that: IIT has (...) a set of nine fundamental concepts of reason, called categories, which constitute its categorial lexicon and through which it formulates a system of principles incorporating the axioms, the postulates, and the central identity; and the connection between the axioms and postulates is grounded by their common root in this categorial lexicon, the categories of which find their justification by means of a phenomenological and transcendental deduction. Some further results are the unique origin of axioms and postulates in the categories; the distinction between conceptual and formalized postulates; a clarification of the uniqueness problem of categorial lexica in general; and an IIT account of objectivity by explicating how the physical is defined by means of categories. All of this is put to use against various criticism targeting IIT’s theoretical core. If successful, the proposed interpretation illuminates a central issue in the contemporary study of consciousness and contributes to an environment of mutual understanding between defenders and critics of the theory. (shrink)

This chapter considers the phenomenon of meaning from the perspective of Chomsky’s ‘I-linguistics’ and his empirical postulation of the ‘language faculty’. After a sketch of that model, the question is raised as to how meaning should be incorporated within it. In accord with the use-theoretic perspective of this book, an answer is developed whereby the association of I-sounds with I-meanings is achieved by virtue of the conceptual roles of those I-sounds, i.e., their basic acceptance-properties. It is shown that (...) this picture compares favourably with various alternatives, including those suggested by Fodor’s mentalese, Davidson’s view of compositionality, naturalizations of the reference relation, and by Chomsky-style explicitly-represented definitions. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, following his elucidation of the ‘postulates’ of possibility, actuality, and necessity, Kant makes a series of puzzling remarks. He seems to deny the somewhat metaphysically intuitive contention that the extension of possibility is greater than that of actuality, which, in turn, is greater than that of necessity. Further, he states that the actual adds nothing to the possible. This leads to the view, fairly common in the literature, that Kant holds that all modal (...) categories, in their empirical applications, are coextensive. I diverge from the common view. First, Kant is not committed to the coextensiveness thesis, understood as above. Instead, he espouses a weaker, epistemological version of the coextensiveness thesis, namely that what we can assert to be really possible is coextensive with what we cognize to be actual. Second, Kant's remarks are not intended to introduce a positive ontological thesis about the extensions of modal categories. Rather, he means to criticize a certain conception of modalities that was prevalent among his rationalist predecessors, i.e., the conception of modalities as various determinations that enter the intensions of concepts of things. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct and correct one argument in support of the symmetrization postulate in quantum mechanics. I identify the central premise of the argument as a thesis specifying a particular ontic property of quantum superpositions. The precise form of this thesis depends on some underlying assumptions of a metaphysical character. I compare the exchange degeneracy argument with alternative formal arguments for the symmetrization postulate, and I discuss the role and meaning of labels in the (...) symmetric/antisymmetric representations of the states of many particles. (shrink)

A unified axiomatic theory that embraces both mechanics and thermodynamics is presented in three parts. It is based on four postulates; three are taken from quantum mechanics, and the fourth is the new disclosure of the existence of quantum states that are stable (Part I). For nonequilibrium and equilibrium states, the theory provides general original results, such as the relation between irreducible density operators and the maximum work that can be extracted adiabatically (Part IIa). For stable equilibrium states, it (...) shows for the first time that the canonical and grand canonical distributions are the only stable distributions (Part IIb). The theory discloses the incompleteness of the equation of motion of quantum mechanics not only for irreversible processes but, more significantly, for reversible processes (Part IIb). It establishes the operational meaning of an irreducible density operator and irreducible dispersions associated with any state, and reveals the relationship between such dispersions and the second law (Part III). (shrink)

Our aim is to illuminate the interconnected notions of meaning and truth. For this purpose, we investigate the relationship between meaning theories based on commonsensical ‘means that’ and interpretive truth theories. The latter are Tarski–Davidson-style truth theories serving as meaning theories. We consider analytically true semantic principles containing ‘means’ and ‘means that’ side to side with ‘denotes’, ‘satisfies’, and ‘true’, which constitute the extensional semantic constants of interpretive truth theories. We show that these semantic constants are definable (...) in terms of ‘means’ and ‘means that’ operators. The definitions themselves are semantic principles in the role of meaning postulates. We extend a meaning theory based on ‘means that’ by adjoining semantic principles to the axioms of the theory. Then, all axioms, hence all theorems, of a corresponding interpretive truth theory are provable in the extension of the meaning theory. Furthermore, every interpretive truth theory can be included in the extension of a corresponding meaning theory. Therefore, the extension of a meaning theory resulting from the adjunction of semantic principles constitutes a unified meaning-and-truth theory since it includes both a meaning theory and an interpretive truth theory. (shrink)

This essay argues that Johannes von Kries analysis of the status in the criminal law of the rationally intending subject and the doctrine of _mens rea_ so closely associated with it (cf. Kries, 1886 ; 1888 ) was well known to Max Weber, who had initially trained in law, and highly significant both for the development of his sociology of subjective understanding and his parallel view that the social sciences must be jointly committed to combining a generalizing objective with an (...) individualizing method in their research. It also sees many indications that Weber believed that social scientific investigations could and should go further toward franchising the subject of such social research by encouraging active, even critical responses in his/her testimony in the interests of better achieving both causal and meaning adequacy. From this it would have been only a short step to what I call the practical activation of Alfred Schutz’s postulate of adequacy, which requires that intellectual type constructs in the social sciences not only make sense to research subjects but accord with their perceptions, observations and views. The essay discusses the obstacles provided by the environing authoritarian social and political framework, including the trajectories of those professions on which the social sciences had little choice but to model themselves, as reasons explaining why practical activation of the postulate of adequacy has not yet fully come to pass. It concludes by addressing new Weber scholarship which sees him as a complex and dynamic probabilist whose constructivist and interpretivist theory of human social action is based much more on _Chance_ and orientation than we thought, even to the point of being a model for practical activation of the postulate of adequacy as well as a new and revised basis for the analysis of social interaction itself (see Weber, [ 1913 ] ( 1981 ). (shrink)

The paper attempts to answer a very obstinate fundamental problem—is literary meaning determinable at all? Would it be determinable if it were constructed by the language of the text? Or is this meaning open-ended, constantly deferred or shifted as a result of the very nature of signification? In this paper, I argue that the levels of _dhvani-ṣ Avivakṣitavācya dhvani _ and_ Vivakṣitavācya dhvani_ and their sub-levels are far more comprehensive than the concept of ‘_differance_’, both based on the (...) play of meanings. Ānandvardhana seems to anticipate Derrida in postulating the infinite suggested meaning over and above the expressed literal meaning in the levels of _dhvani_, though the admission of any definite literal meaning itself goes against the deconstructive approach of ‘_differance_’. The paper also deals with the analysing a few literary works with the levels of _dhvani_ and also how meaning of a text is revealed to the _sahrdaya_ (reader). (shrink)

We study whether the probabilistic postulate could be derived from basic principles. Through the analysis of the Strong Law of Large Numbers and its formulation in quantum mechanics, we show, contrary to the claim of the many-worlds interpretation defenders and the arguments of some other authors, the impossibility of obtaining the probabilistic postulate by means of the frequency analysis of an ensemble of infinite copies of a single system. It is shown, though, how the standard form of the probability as (...) the square of the scalar product follows from Gleason's theorem. (shrink)

How did life come into existence on Earth? Although many scientific theories and hypotheses have been drawn, we have not yet been able to provide a detailed answer to this fundamental question. What if intelligent computers would someday be in a condition to postulate their own evolution theory which would explain how they came into the world, how would this theory look like? And how would it stand in comparison to the humans’ theory? Let us suppose that a thousand years (...) from now, intelligent and self-aware computers who, for any reason whatsoever, had lost all contacts with humans, and had continued to self-develop and improve by themselves, slowly began to wonder about how they came into the world? These intelligent computers may eventually develop a coherent theory of evolution, which would seemingly explain their existence. How would their theory stand in comparison to our theory of evolution? Would it be less comprehensive or viable? Taking into consideration the inorganic nature of computers, their relative simplicity compared to the human body, and the closeness of their components to the surrounding inorganic environment, it would not be a surprise if their theory would be more plausible than that of the humans. So, what would this signify and mean to our scientific theories in general? (shrink)

I trace the development of arguments for the consistency of non-Euclidean geometries and for the independence of the parallel postulate, showing how the arguments become more rigorous as a formal conception of geometry is introduced. I analyze the kinds of arguments offered by Jules Hoüel in 1860-1870 for the unprovability of the parallel postulate and for the existence of non-Euclidean geometries, especially his reaction to the publication of Beltrami’s seminal papers, showing that Beltrami was much more concerned with the existence (...) of non-Euclidean objects than he was with the formal consistency of non-Euclidean geometries. The final step towards rigorous consistency proofs is taken in the 1880s by Henri Poincaré. It is the formal conception of geometry, stripping the geometric primitive terms of their usual meanings, that allows the introduction of a modern fully rigorous consistency proof. (shrink)

In this paper I criticise some aspects of the view that Ernie Lepore and Mathew Stone propose in their book Imagination and Convention. I concentrate on their analysis of indirect speech acts and contrast it with the view held by Searle. I point out some problems that arise for Lepore and Stone’s ambiguity view and argue that admitting conventions of usage that are not meaning conventions allows one to avoid postulating global ambiguity, which in my opinion threatens the view (...) proposed in Imagination and Convention. In addition, if one admits that there might be such conventions of usage, one is in a position to provide an adequate analysis of sub-sentential speech acts and semantic underdetermination as well as indirect speech acts. (shrink)

The classical measures of voting power are based on players' decisiveness or full causal efficacy in vote configurations or divisions. We design an alternative, recursive measure departing from this classical approach. We motivate the measure via an axiomatic characterisation based on reasonable axioms and by offering two complementary interpretations of its meaning: first, we interpret the measure to represent, not the player's probability of being decisive in a voting structure, but its expected probability of being decisive in a uniform (...) random walk from a vote configuration in the subset lattice (through which we represent the voting structure); and, second, we interpret it as representing a player's expected efficacy, thereby incorporating the notion of partial and not just full causal efficacy. We shore up our measure by demonstrating that it satisfies a set of postulates any reasonable voting measure should satisfy, namely, the iso-invariance, dummy, dominance, donation, minimum-power bloc, and quarrel postulates. (shrink)

The aim of the thesis is to provide the foundations for a representation-based theory of meaning, i.e. a theory of meaning that encompasses the psychological level of cognitive representations. This is in opposition to the antipsychologist goals of the Fregean philosophy of language and represents the results of a joint analysis of multiple philosophical problems in contemporary philosophy of language, which, as argued in the tesis, stem from the lack of recognition of a cognitive level in language. In (...) the thesis, I first provide and argue a definition of cognitive/mental representations based on results in developmental psychology as well as theoretical considerations. Then, I use the definition to build upon it a richer theory of concepts and apply it to various philosophical conundra. The problems tackled include the problem of proper names (for which a solution is proposed that respects the post-Kripkean criticism), a unified meaning postulate for modalities and the epistemology and ontology of mathematical terms. The thesis concludes with a proposed application of the newly acquired framework to select social aspects of language use. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Meaning and Non-Existence: Kumārila’s Refutation of Dignāga’s Theory of Exclusion by Kei Kataoka and John TaberCharles A. Goodman (bio)Meaning and Non-Existence: Kumārila’s Refutation of Dignāga’s Theory of Exclusion. By Kei Kataoka and John Taber. Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2021. Pp. 268. Paper $44.00, ISBN 978-3-7001-8641-0.Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (seventh century CE) was a brilliant and highly original thinker, a master of Sanskrit style, and perhaps the most (...) formidable philosophical critic the Buddhist tradition has ever faced. Yet among philosophers trained in Western traditions, his work is today almost unknown. One key cause of this unmerited neglect may be that very little of Kumārila’s oeuvre has been available in Western languages. The present work, by two prominent experts on Mīmāṃsā, presents one of the most influential and difficult chapters of Kumārila’s most important work, the Commentary in Verses, in a clear and accurate English translation.As one of the greatest philosophical authors to have appeared in the traditions we now call Hinduism, Kumārila’s works in general are of considerable interest to specialists in Hindu thought. The particular chapter translated in this volume, however, may well be of broader significance than most of his writings. In that chapter, the Apohavāda, Kumārila offers a thorough and wide-ranging critique of the philosophy of language advocated by Dignāga, a key figure in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. Many scholars maintain that it was this critique in particular that motivated Dharmakīrti, another major Buddhist epistemologist, to formulate a new version of this understanding of language, one that would be widely accepted and influential among Buddhists in India and Tibet. Thus, anyone interested in the history of Buddhist philosophy may also find much to ponder in this volume.Several traditions of South Asian philosophy, including the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Kumārila’s own Mīmāṃsā school, were realists about universals. They held that universals were permanent, mind-independent entities and that our understanding of the world was dependent on them. Kumārila’s views on the topic are especially uncompromising, as he holds that we can directly perceive universals in the ordinary things we encounter.These views were, however, rejected by Buddhist epistemologists, who sought to develop nominalist or conceptualist understandings of thought and language that could dispense with real universals. Their most important attempts to do so take the form of theories of apoha, a Sanskrit word literally meaning “exclusion.” In its most basic form, a doctrine of apoha maintains that a general [End Page 1] term such as “cow” manages to be meaningful by excluding all non-cows. But this deceptively simple formulation leads to a variety of interpretations, each facing its own difficulties. In his chapter, Kumārila is unstinting in pointing out a wide variety of objections that can be raised against the apoha view as expressed in the works of Dignāga.One way to think about the apoha theory is that it is fundamentally ontological in nature, seeking to avoid the problems with postulating real universals by arguing that the meanings of words, being exclusions, are negations or absences, not positive entities. Many scholars understand the theory in this way, but Kumārila points out fundamental flaws with this approach. One of the gravest of these flaws is that if absences are non-entities, it is unclear how they can be, at the level of ontology, any different from each other. As a result, the theory is in danger of entailing that all words are synonyms.Another possible way to understand the apoha theory is that it seeks mainly to offer an account of the psychological process by which human minds construct the meanings of words, understanding this process as fundamentally contrastive in nature. A form of this psychological interpretation also briefly comes in for critique by Kumārila, in the guise of the view that our ideas of distinct exclusions are produced by vāsanā-s, a difficult Sanskrit word referring to underlying psychological processes or tendencies that, according to Buddhists, shape our... (shrink)

The nature of the connection between theory and observation has been a major source of difficulty for philosophers of science. It is most vexing for those who would reduce the terms of a theory to those of an observation language, e.g. Carnap, Braithwaite, and Nagel. Carnap's work, particularly his treatment of physical theories as partially interpreted formalisms, forms the point of focus of this paper. Carnap attempted to make the connection between theory and observation through correspondence postulates. It is (...) pointed out that such postulates depend in critical ways upon theoretical truths. This particular type of theoretical dependence produces serious trouble for Carnap's approach. For reasons given it may make it untenable. Furthermore, this problem when generalized creates difficulty for any similar reductionist program. Not only is this kind of theoretical dependence pointed out, but more important, the logical conditions which produce it are revealed. In this way light is shed upon the formal characteristics of the notion of theory dependence, especially upon the way in which observation terms depend upon theories for their meaning. (shrink)

Following an account of signaling games, one can show how meaning emerges and is preserved on the basis of the interactions between individuals and their environments. It is here argued that, as all concepts, a concept of consciousness is formed from a set of signaling games and is assigned a sense, from which its extensional reference can be postulated. It will be helpful to understand the contrast between what we may call a representationalist account of consciousness and an enactivist (...) account. As argued, a consciousness state can be assumed and fixed by intensional reference. Thus, although the notion of consciousness may be explanatorily excluded, in principle, from a neurobiological language, it remains relevant in a semantic way. This is a consequence of what we may call the semantic gap between the mental and the physical. Keywords: concept, sense, reference, enaction, mind, neurophenomenology. (shrink)

Conventional metaphors such as early bird are interpreted rather fast and efficiently. This is so because they might be stored as lexicalized, non-compositional expressions. In a previous study, employing a maze task, we showed that, after reading metaphors (John is an early bird so he can …), participants took longer and were less accurate in selecting the appropriate word (attend) when it was paired with a literally-related distractor (fly) rather than an unrelated one (cry). This suggests that the literal (...) class='Hi'>meaning of conventional metaphors is awakened or made available immediately after their metaphorical interpretation. But does the literal meaning remain available further downstream during sentence comprehension? In two experiments also employing a maze task, we examined whether the awakening effect can be obtained when there is a medium (6 to 8 words) and a large (11 to 13 words) distance between the metaphor and lexical choice. Results indicated that the metaphor awakening effect persists but decreases as word distance increases. An analysis of our data based on a GPT model showed that our maze effects could not be attributed to target predictability. Overall, our results suggest that the literal meaning of a metaphor is accessed and remains available for about three seconds, fading as the sentence unfolds over time. The results support a model of metaphor comprehension that postulates the availability of both literal and metaphoric content in the course of sentence processing. (shrink)