Online research in philosophy

This book reexamines ideas about linguistic relativity in the light of new evidence and changes in theoretical climate.

Consciousness is often rendered causally and functionally inert, something which I deem deeply wrong. The actual cause of this misconception is not Cartesian, but Frege’an Dualism which is owed to the implicit assumption of the type-identity theory of language and cognition which equates cognitive types with linguistic or quasi-linguistic types by isomorphically mapping linguistic types on cognitive types and which is a massive blow in the face of a functionalistic-mechanistic explanation of cognition and everyday-folk phenomenological analysis. If we conceive paradigmatically of conscious (e.g. conceptual) thought linguistically and if we conceive of unconscious (e.g. conceptual) cognition linguistically too, then consciousness, particularly if phenomenal experience is conceived of the way it standardly is by philosophers, is inert. However, this type-identity theory is deeply flawed and I propose a framework which builds on a phenomenology of particularly visual-spatial consciousness, a generic embodied cognition framework and a mechanistic and principle naturalist framework of explanation. As a result, we will encounter a picture of cognition which is strongly bound to consciousness and a complex and dynamic sensori-emotio-motor view of the format of cognition which is able to deal more satisfactorily with a plethora of phenomena which we deem genuinely online and offline cognitive than the linguistic view.

The relationship between language and conceptual thought is an unresolved problem in both philosophy and psychology. It remains unclear whether linguistic structure plays a role in our cognitive processes. This special issue brings together cognitive scientists and philosophers to focus on the role of language in numerical cognition: because of their universality and variability across languages, number words can serve as a fruitful test case to investigate claims of linguistic relativism.

Linguistic competence, in general terms, involves the ability to learn, understand, and speak a language. The nativist view in the philosophy of linguistics holds that the principal foundation of linguistic competence is an innate faculty of linguistic cognition. In this paper, close scrutiny is given to nativism's fundamental commitments in the area of metaphysics. In the course of this exploration it is argued that any minimally defensible variety of nativism is, for better or worse, married to two theses: linguistic competence is grounded in a faculty of linguistic cognition that is (i) embodied and (ii) whose operating rules are represented in the brains of human language users.

The idea that natural languages shape the way we think in different ways was popularized by Benjamin Whorf, but then fell out of favor for lack of empirical support. But now, a new wave of research has been shifting the tide back toward linguistic relativity. The recent research can be interpreted in different ways, some trivial, some implausibly radical, and some both plausible and interesting. We introduce two theses that would have important implications if true: Habitual Whorfianism and Ontological Whorfianism. We argue that these offer the most promising interpretations of the emerging evidence.

Language and Ontology: Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity Semiotics and Ontology: Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998 Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010 The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas).

The nativist view of language holds that the principal foundation of linguistic competence is an innate faculty of linguistic cognition. In this paper, close scrutiny is given to nativism’s fundamental commitments in the area of metaphysics. In the course of this exploration it is argued that any minimally defensible variety of nativism is, for better or worse, committed to two theses: linguistic competence is grounded in a faculty of linguistic cognition that is (i) embodied and (ii) whose operating rules are represented in the neurophysiology of human language users.

Language and Ontology: Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity Semiotics and Ontology: Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998 Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010 The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas).

The relation between language and thought has held a constant fascination for students of human cognition. In recent years, the question of whether language shapes or is shaped by cognitive categories has been at the center of debates on language and thought. One position, commonly referred to as ‘linguistic determinism’ (or ‘linguistic relativity’), has been particularly forcefully argued for by Benjamin Whorf. According to Whorf (1956: 212).