Abstract
This thematic volume entitled Human Minds and Cultures deciphers different aspects of human minds and cultures that differ in their methodological patterns. It exhibits humanity as a universal, underlying cultural multiplicity coping with diverse prospects of normative morality, semiotics, and socio-linguistic human affairs. Two major concerns that the thematic volume anticipates here are as follows:
It is true that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs; but you can break a great many eggs without making an omelette.
–Hannah Arendt
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I am personally indebted to Noam Chomsky for this valuable discussion.
- 2.
Looking back to half a century ago, Noam Chomsky sets up the style of his “general linguistic theory” by cutting free from the notion of meaning in his linguistic analysis. He says, “Meaning is notoriously difficult notion to pin down. If it can be shown that meaning and related notions do play a central role in linguistic analysis, its results and conclusions become subject to all of the doubts and obscurities that plague the study of meaning, and a serious blow is struck at the foundations of linguistic theory” (Chomsky, 1955, 141). About a decade later, Jerrold Katz and Jerry Fodor have deductively formalized a model that genuinely nubs of this debate by engaging with a “dictionary view” of word meaning. They said, “It is widely acknowledged and certainly true that one component of a semantic theory of a natural language is a dictionary of that language … Given an accurate dictionary of English, WHICH HE APPLIES BY USING HIS LINGUISTIC ABILITY, the fluent speaker can semantically interpret any sentence on the list under any grammatical derivations” (Katz & Fodor, 1963, 181–182).
- 3.
I am deeply indebted to Hilary Putnam, my mentor, for this valuable note.
- 4.
My thanks go to Noam Chomsky for this valuable note.
References
Bernstein, R. J. (1978). The restructuring of social and political theory. University of Pennsylvania.
Chakraborty, S. (2020). The labyrinth of mind and world: Beyond internalism-externalism. Routledge.
Chakraborty, S. (2021a). Pursuits of belief: Reflecting on the cessation of belief. Sophia, 60(3), 639–654. Springer.
Chakraborty, S. (2021b). Spinning solitude: Coronavirus and the philosopher. Sophia, 60(3), 769–774. Springer.
Chomsky, N. (1955). Semantic considerations in grammar (Monograph No. 8). Georgetown Monograph Series..
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. Basic Books.
Hauser, M. (2007). Moral minds. Little Brown.
Heidegger, M., Gunter, F., & Jerome, V. (Eds.). (2009). The Heidegger reader. Indiana University Press.
Katz, J. J., & Fodor, J. A. (1963). The structure of a semantic theory. Language, 39(2), 170–210.
Kim, J. (2008). What is ‘naturalized epistemology’. In E. Sosa & J. Kim (Eds.), Epistemology: An anthology. Blackwell Publishing.
Malinowski, B. (1931). Culture. In Encyclopaedia of the social sciences (Vol. 4). MacMillian.
Nietzsche, F. (2002). Beyond good and evil (J. Norman, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
Quine, W. V. (1969). Epistemology naturalized. In Ontological relativity and other essays. Columbia University Press.
Taylor, C. (1994). The politics of recognition. In A. Gutmann (Ed.), Multiculturism: Charles Taylor (pp. 25–75). Princeton University Press.
Thornton, T. (1998). Wittgenstein on language and thought: The philosophy of content. Edinburgh University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L., & Anthony, K. (1994). The Wittgenstein reader. Blackwell Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chakraborty, S. (2024). Human Minds and Cultures: An Introduction. In: Chakraborty, S. (eds) Human Minds and Cultures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56448-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56448-2_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-56447-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-56448-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)