Language Understanding

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we argue that the understanding one has of a proposition or a propositional content of a representational vehicle is a species of what contemporary epistemologists characterise as objectual understanding. Second, we demonstrate that even though this type of understanding differs from linguistic understanding, in many instances of successful communication, these two types of understanding jointly contribute to understanding a communicated thought.

In this paper, I discuss the similarity between Wittgenstein’s use of thought experiments and Relativity Theory. I begin with introducing Wittgenstein’s idea of “thought experiments” and a tentative classification of different kinds of thought experiments in Wittgenstein’s work. Then, after presenting a short recap of some remarks on the analogy between Wittgenstein’s point of view and Einstein’s, I suggest three analogies between the status of Wittgenstein’s mental experiments and Relativity theory: the topics of time dilation, the search for invariants, and (...) the role of measuring tools in Special Relativity. This last point will help to better define Wittgenstein’s idea of description as the core of his philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

We start with the ambition -- dating back to the early days of the semantic web -- of assembling a significant portion human knowledge into a contradiction-free form using semantic web technology. We argue that this would not be desirable, because there are concepts, known as essentially contested concepts, whose definitions are contentious due to deep-seated ethical disagreements. Further, we argue that the ninetenth century hermeneutical tradition has a great deal to say, both about the ambition, and about why it (...) fails. We conclude with some remarks about statistics. (shrink)

Existe un tipo particular de usos de términos discriminatorios en el que las emociones negativas típicamente asociadas a él no se hallan de hecho presentes. Aun así, lo incorrecto o inadecuado sigue resonando en esos usos. Este tipo de ``uso distante'' resulta interesante per se, en cuanto fenómeno conversacional rara vez advertido. Sin embargo, también presta apoyo a una aproximación a los términos discriminatorios basada en el concepto sociolingüístico de ``registro'', de la cual se sigue esta relación entre emociones e (...) incorrección. Este trabajo examina algunos tipos de usos distantes y sus rasgos esenciales, y considera cómo el registro sociolingüístico de los términos discriminatorios puede dar cuenta de ellos. (shrink)

What is the primacy of logic? Concepts, judgments, or inferences? Whereas representationalists traditionally argue for a primacy of the conceptual, rationalists, referring to the context principle and the use theory of meaning, consider judgments and inferences to be primary. This dispute also seems to be applicable to logic diagrams: Whereas “Euler-type diagrams” are actually only for judgments and inferences, “concept diagrams” represent ontologies by using concepts. With reference to Schopenhauer, the paper develops a position called “rational representationalism.” According to this (...) point of view, the question of primacy is decided by analyzing the functions of the logic principles: For the explanation of logic and language, concepts are primary, but for understanding it is judgments. The mediation between intuitive representation and logical rationality is ensured by concept diagrams. (shrink)

This essay is about the conception of second person in Donald Davidson. For Davidson, what characterizes a significant act and the possibility of the content of an attitude is the interaction between two agents driven by a primary intention: the speaker has the intention that his utterances be understood by another person. The essay is organized in three sections: in the first section, I present the specific meaning of the second person as a creature with whom the speaker currently interacts, (...) regardless of whether they share a rule or linguistic convention beforehand. In the second section I present Davidson’s thesis of triangulation, which is that the individualization of beliefs and thoughts is established from systematic causal connections in triangulation between the individual, another speaker with whom he interacts, and objects or events in the world. Finally, in the third section, I present the idea of the “norm of conversation” as a theoretical tool to address epistemological issues: in conversation, when interlocutors intend to understand each other, speakers engage in a kind of investigation about the meaning and content of the sentences, beliefs, and intentions in dispute. (shrink)

A satisfactory theory of linguistic communication must explain how it is that, through the interpersonal exchange of auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli, the communicative preconditions for the acquisition of testimonial knowledge regularly come to be satisfied. Without an account of knowledge-yielding communication this success condition for linguistic theorizing is left opaque, and we are left with an incomplete understanding of testimony, and communication more generally, as a source of knowledge. This paper argues that knowledge-yielding communication should be modelled on knowledge (...) itself. It is argued that knowledge-yielding communication occurs iff interlocutors coordinate on truth values in a non-lucky and non-deviant way. This account is able to do significant explanatory work: it sheds light on the nature of referential communication, and it allows us to capture, in an informative way, the sense in which interlocutors must entertain similar propositions in order to communicate successfully. (shrink)

The first group of articles attempt to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of theoretical delusions. In the next three groups I comment on three of the principal delusions preventing a sustainable world— technology, religion and politics (cooperative groups). People believe that society can be saved by them, so I provide some suggestions in the rest of the book as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers. (...) -/- America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century and now all of it due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. Hence my concluding essay “Suicide by Democracy”. (shrink)

Eu começo com alguns comentários famosos pelo filósofo (psicólogo) Ludwig Wittgenstein porque Pinker compartilha com a maioria de povos (devido às configurações padrão de nosso psychology inata evoluído) determinados preconceitos sobre o funcionamento da mente, e Porque Wittgenstein oferece insights únicos e profundos sobre o funcionamento da linguagem, pensamento e realidade (que ele viu como mais ou menos coextensivo) não encontrado em nenhum outro lugar. Ore é apenas referência a Wittgenstein neste volume, que é mais lamentável, considerando que ele foi (...) o mais brilhante e original analista de linguagem. No último capítulo, usando a famosa metáfora da caverna de Platão, ele lindamente resume o livro com uma visão geral de como a mente (linguagem, pensamento, psicologia intencional)-um produto de egoísmo cego, moderado apenas ligeiramente por altruísmo automatizado para fechar parentes carregando cópias de nossos genes (inclusive fitness)--funciona automaticamente, mas tenta terminar em uma nota otimista, dando-nos esperança de que podemos, no entanto, empregar suas vastas capacidades para cooperar e tornar o mundo um lugar decente para viver. Pinker é certamente consciente de mas diz pouco sobre o fato de que muito mais sobre a nossa psicologia é deixada de fora do que incluído. Entre as janelas na natureza humana que são deixadas de fora ou dada a mínima atenção são matemática e geometria, música e sons, imagens, eventos e causalidade, ontologia (classes de coisas ou o que sabemos), a maioria da epistemologia (como sabemos), disposições (acreditando, pensando, julgando, pretendendo etc.) e o resto da psicologia intencional de ação, neurotransmissores e entheogens, Estados espirituais (por exemplo, Satori e iluminação, estimulação cerebral e gravação, danos cerebrais e comportamentais déficits e distúrbios, jogos e esportes, teoria da decisão (incluindo teoria do jogo e economia comportamental), comportamento animal (muito pouca linguagem, mas um bilhão de anos de genética compartilhada). Muitos livros foram escritos sobre cada uma dessas áreas de psicologia intencional. Os dados neste livro são descrições, não explicações que mostram por que os nossos cérebros fazê-lo desta forma ou como é feito. Como sabemos usar as frases de sua maneira (ou seja, conhecer todos os seus significados)? Esta é a psicologia evolutiva que opera em um nível mais básico-o nível em que Wittgenstein é mais ativo. E há pouca atenção ao contexto em que as palavras são usadas = uma arena que Wittgenstein foi pioneira. No entanto, este é um trabalho clássico e com estes cuidados ainda é bem vale a pena ler. Aqueles que desejam um quadro até à data detalhado para o comportamento humano da opinião moderna dos dois sistemas consultar meu livros Falando Macacos 3ª Ed (2019), A Estrutura Lógica da Filosofia, Psicologia, Mente e Linguagem em Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle 2a Ed (2019), Suicídio Pela Democracia,4aEd(2019), Entendendo as Conexões entre Ciência, Filosofia, Psicologia, Religião, Política e Economia Artigos e Análises 2006-2019 (2019), Ilusões Utópicas Suicidas no 21St século 5a Ed (2019), A Estrutura Lógica do Comportamento Humano (2019), e A Estrutura Lógica da Consciência (2019) y outras. (shrink)

In philosophical semantics, a distinction has been proposed between inferential and referential lexical semantic competence. The former accounts for the relationship of words to the world, the latter for the relationship of words among themselves. Recent neuroscience research suggests that the distinction might be actually neurally implemented. That is, that inferential and referential abilities might be underpinned by two functionally independent cognitive architectures, with partly different neural realizations. This hypothesis is consistent with brain patient data, supporting the notion of a (...) functional double dissociation between inferential and referential abilities, and with neuroscience data, suggesting that inferential and referential abilities are underpinned by at least partly different regions of the human brain. The principal aim of this article is to provide the first comprehensive and critical review of the empirical evidence in favour of such hypothesis. (shrink)

An influential view about the relationship between publicity and linguistic meaning is brought into question. It has been thought that since public languages are essentially public, linguistic meaning is subject to a kind of epistemic cap so that there can be nothing more to linguistic meaning than can be determinately known on the basis of publicly available evidence. Given the thinness of such evidence, a well-known thesis follows to the effect that linguistic meaning is substantially indeterminate. In this paper, we (...) consider the sort of reasons offered for the Epistemic Thesis and uncover an unexamined presupposition about the epistemic requirements of communication and the establishment of meaning conventions. We show this presupposition is undermined by independently motivated considerations about communication and convention, giving us good reason to reject the Epistemic Thesis and its corollary about indeterminacy. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es establecer una condición de posibilidad para el diálogo interreligioso o religioso-ateo. Esta condición consiste en tomar los conceptos de «verdad» y «condiciones de verdad» como elementos centrales de la naturaleza de la creencia religiosa. Además, para hacer posible el diálogo, es necesario rechazar cualquier rasgo de inefabilidad de cualquier descripción satisfactoria de la creencia religiosa. Así, en primer lugar, se examinará el trabajo de Wittgenstein en su Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus para mostrar que, en esta aproximación, (...) todo discurso religioso es un sinsentido y, por lo tanto, ningún diálogo sería posible. En segundo lugar, se analizará la obra tardía de Wittgenstein, para mostrar que conceptos como «juego de lenguaje», «forma de vida» y «ver-aspectos» no son herramientas suficientes que permitan el diálogo. En general, se argumentará que ambas perspectivas de Wittgenstein fallan debido a que asumen que la inefabilidad es un atributo esencial de la creencia religiosa. Finalmente, se argumentará que los conceptos de «verdad» y «condiciones de verdad» son esenciales a la creencia religiosa, si se quiere garantizar el diálogo interreligioso. Se defenderá que la interpretación radical de Davidson es útil para este propósito y además permite la tolerancia entre puntos de vista religiosos y divergentes. (shrink)

This dissertation is devoted to empirically contrasting the Suppositional Theory of conditionals, which holds that indicative conditionals serve the purpose of engaging in hypothetical thought, and Inferentialism, which holds that indicative conditionals express reason relations. Throughout a series of experiments, probabilistic and truth-conditional variants of Inferentialism are investigated using new stimulus materials, which manipulate previously overlooked relevance conditions. These studies are some of the first published studies to directly investigate the central claims of Inferentialism empirically. In contrast, the Suppositional Theory (...) of conditionals has an impressive track record through more than a decade of intensive testing. The evidence for the Suppositional Theory encompasses three sources. Firstly, direct investigations of the probability of indicative conditionals, which substantiate “the Equation” (P(if A, then C) = P(C|A)). Secondly, the pattern of results known as “the defective truth table” effect, which corroborates the de Finetti truth table. And thirdly, indirect evidence from the uncertain and-to-if inference task. Through four studies each of these sources of evidence are scrutinized anew under the application of novel stimulus materials that factorially combine all permutations of prior and relevance levels of two conjoined sentences. The results indicate that the Equation only holds under positive relevance (P(C|A) – P(C|¬A) > 0) for indicative conditionals. In the case of irrelevance (P(C|A) – P(C|¬A) = 0), or negative relevance (P(C|A) – P(C|¬A) < 0), the strong relationship between P(if A, then C) and P(C|A) is disrupted. This finding suggests that participants tend to view natural language conditionals as defective under irrelevance and negative relevance (Chapter 2). Furthermore, most of the participants turn out only to be probabilistically coherent above chance levels for the uncertain and-to-if inference in the positive relevance condition, when applying the Equation (Chapter 3). Finally, the results on the truth table task indicate that the de Finetti truth table is at most descriptive for about a third of the participants (Chapter 4). Conversely, strong evidence for a probabilistic implementation of Inferentialism could be obtained from assessments of P(if A, then C) across relevance levels (Chapter 2) and the participants’ performance on the uncertain-and-to-if inference task (Chapter 3). Yet the results from the truth table task suggest that these findings could not be extended to truth-conditional Inferentialism (Chapter 4). On the contrary, strong dissociations could be found between the presence of an effect of the reason relation reading on the probability and acceptability evaluations of indicative conditionals (and connate sentences), and the lack of an effect of the reason relation reading on the truth evaluation of the same sentences. A bird’s eye view on these surprising results is taken in the final chapter and it is discussed which perspectives these results open up for future research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We review the book About Oneself: De Se Thought and Communication, a compilation of papers on de se thought and its implications for a theory of communication. We critically examine the main themes put forward by the papers and try to show how, when put together, they point the way for future discussions about the issue of indexical thought and communication.

The contents of Brahmajnaana, the Buddhism, the Jainism, the Sabdabrahma Siddhanta and Shaddarsanas will be discussed to present the true meaning of individual’s identity and I. The influence of spirituality contained in Upanishadic insight in the development of Sanskrit language structure, Indian culture, and individual identity formation will be developed. The cultural and psychological aspects of a civilization on the formation of its language structure and prominence given to various parts of speech and vice versa will be touched upon. These (...) aspects will be also compared and contrasted with German, French, Telugu and Hindi and their respective influence on cultural and identity formation and vice versa. A cognitive science interpretation of advaita and dvaita phases of mind and bhakti and vibhakti modes of language acquisition and communication in terms of physics and electronics will be given and be clubbed to present an inclusive and comprehensive modern scientific and social scientific understanding and interpretation of Brahmajnaana, the Buddhism, the Jainism and rest of current theistic and atheistic awareness of I and its spiritual, linguistic, cognitive scientific and rationalistic ideas and opinions. The use of this study for national integration and oneness of Indians will be highlighted. (shrink)

The main objective of the paper is to provide a conceptual apparatus of a general logical theory of language communication. The aim of the paper is to outline a formal-logical theory of language in which the concepts of the phenomenon of language communication and language communication in general are defined and some conditions for their adequacy are formulated. The theory explicates the key notions of contemporary syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The theory is formalized on two levels: token-level and type-level. As (...) such, it takes into account the dual – token and type – ontological character of linguistic entities. The basic notions of the theory: language communication, meaning and interpretation are introduced on the second, type-level of formalization, and their required prior formalization of some of the notions introduced on the first, token-level; among others, the notion of an act of communication. Owing to the theory, it is possible to address the problems of adequacy of both empirical acts of communication and of language communication in general. All the conditions of adequacy of communication discussed in the presented paper, are valid for one-way communication (sender-recipient); nevertheless, they can also apply to the reverse direction of language communication (recipient-sender). Therefore, they concern the problem of two-way understanding in language communication. (shrink)

After presenting Kripke’s criticism to Frege’s ideas on context dependence of thoughts, I present two recent attempts of considering cognitive aspects of context dependent expressions inside a truth conditional pragmatics or semantics: Recanati’s non-descriptive modes of presentation (MOPs) and Kaplan’s ways of having in mind (WHIMs). After analysing the two attempts and verifying which answers they should give to the problem discussed by Kripke, I suggest a possible interpretation of these attempts: to insert a procedural or algorithmic level in semantic (...) representations of indexicals. That a function may be computed by different procedures might suggest new possibilities of integrating contextual cognitive aspects in model theoretic semantic. (shrink)

Wittgenstein has shown that that life, in the sense that applies in the first place to human beings, is inherently linguistic. In this paper, I ask what is involved in language, given that it is thus essential to life, answering that language – or concepts – must be both alive and the ground for life. This is explicated by a Wittgensteinian series of entailments of features. According to the first feature, concepts are not intentional engagements. The second feature brings life (...) back to concepts by describing them as inflectible: Attitudes, actions, conversations and other engagements inflect concepts, i.e., concepts take their particular characters in our actual engagements. However, inflections themselves would be reified together with the life they ground unless they could preserve the openness of concepts: hence the third feature of re-inflectibility. Finally, the openness of language must be revealed in actual life. This entails the possibility of conceptual ambivalence. (shrink)

Turing does not provide an explanation for substituting the original question of his test – i.e., “Can machines think?” with “Can a machine pass the imitation game?” – resulting in an argumentative gap in his main thesis. In this article, I argue that a positive answer to the second question would mean attributing the ability of linguistic interactions to machines; while a positive answer to the original question would mean attributing the ability of thinking to machines. In such a situation, (...) defending the Turing Test requires establishing a relationship between thought and language. In this regard, Davidson's no-priority theory is presented as an approach for defending the test. (shrink)

The standard paradigm for mental causation is a person’s acting for a reason. Something happens - she intentionally φ’s - the occurrence of which we explain by citing a relevant belief or desire. In the present context, I simply take for granted the following two conditions on the appropriateness of this explanation. First, the agent φ’s _because_ she believes/desires what we say she does, where this is expressive of a _causal_ dependence.1 Second, her believing/desiring this gives her a _reason_ for (...) φ-ing: recognizing that she has this belief/desire makes her φ-ing intelligible as rational in the light of her other attitudes and circumstances. A further condition must be met, though, if this is to be a genuine psychological explanation, a case of her acting _for_ the reason in question. Consider the following example of Davidson’s (1973, p. 79). An exhausted climber is desperate to rid herself of the weight and danger of holding her partner on a rope; and her sudden realization that simply letting go would achieve this so unnerves her that her grip loosens slightly and he falls. Her releasing him causally depends upon her having this belief and desire, which provide _a_ reason for doing what she does. But this is not _why_ she does it: it would be at best misleading to say that she dropped him, intentionally, because she was fed up with holding his weight, or because she thought that she might otherwise fall. Her letting go does not depend upon her having these reasons in the right way. The reason-giving relation is causally irrelevant. If we are to explain a person’s acting _for_ a reason, then her doing. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of how it is possible to understand the language of an incommensurable theory. The aim is to defend the idea of translation failure against the objection that it incoherently precludes understanding.

This paper considers the issue of translation failure between theories from the perspective of a modified causal theory of reference. It is argued that translation failure between theories is in fact a consequence of such a modified causal theory of reference. The paper attempts to show what is right about the incommensurability thesis from the perspective of such a theory of reference. Since relations of co-reference may obtain between theories in the absence of translation, incomparability of content does not follow (...) from failure of translation. (shrink)

This paper addresses criticisms of the concept of untranslatability which Davidson and Putnam have raised against the incommensurability thesis.

In tis paper I examine the notion of innate knowledge maintained by N. Chomsky.

According to information processing models of cognition, such as Chomsky's, the set of well-formed formulae of any natural language must be recursively enumerable (RE), otherwise, human learning language is impossible. I argue that there is nothing unlearnable about languages that are not RE. Insofar as natural languages turn out to be RE, this is to be accounted for on grounds of simplicity and not by appeal to the mistaken claim that nonRE languages are ruled out a priori. A consequence of (...) this position is that grammars will be somewhat depsychologized, and the acquisition of competence will come to be seen as a matter of degree - perhaps admitting of refinement and improvement without end. (shrink)

I suggest a revised meta-linguistic account that distinguishes between the language used to talk about a particular language -- the meta-language -- from direct speech reports made within a language -- the object language. Making this distinction leads to a kind of meta-linguistic analysis of competence with names that is not simply tautologous, so long as competence with names is not construed as knowing this: 'Tyler' is whatever is called 'Tyler'. Rather, it should be this: the name 'Tyler' is whatever (...) speakers of an object language call "Tyler," where the double quotes represent direct speech acts. This makes it possible that the schema, 'X' is whatever speakers of an object language call "X," could very well be informative, and serve as an explanation of what a speaker understands when competent with a name. Well, it would insofar as a speaker could learn something about the meaning of the the name 'Tyler' by examining its utterances. In fact, something like this must have to have some truth to it. After all, even non-fluent children learn to speak a language, in part, by attending to utterances of certain expressions in particular situations. The major difference is that when we are finally competent with the expression 'duck' it is not because we have grasped the previous schema. It is because we will engage in duck-awareness behaviors when our environment has something to with ducks at a certain time. In contrast, simply understanding the previous schema is exactly what competence with names consists in. (shrink)