Abstract
A phenomenon “emerges” when a concept is instantiated for the first time: hence emergence is relative to a set of concepts. Propositional thought and language emerge together. It is proposed that the degree of complexity of an object language relative to a given metalanguage can be gauged by the number of ways it can be translated into that metalanguage: in analogy with other forms of measurement, the more ways the object language can be translated into the metalanguage, the less powerful the conceptual resources of the object language.
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Davidson, D. The Emergence of Thought. Erkenntnis 51, 511–521 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005564223855
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005564223855