48 found
Order:
  1. The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality.Markus Werning, Wolfram Hinzen & Edouard Machery (eds.) - 2012 - Oxford University Press.
    Leading linguists and philosophers report on all aspects of compositionality, the notion that the meaning of an expression can be derived from its parts. This book explores every dimension of this field, reporting critically on different lines of research, revealing connections between them, and highlighting current problems and opportunities.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  2.  15
    The Philosophy of Universal Grammar.Wolfram Hinzen & Michelle Sheehan - 2015 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    This interdisciplinary book considers the relationship between language and thought from a philosophical perspective, drawing both on the philosophical study of language and the purely formal study of grammar, and arguing that the two should align. The claim is that grammar provides homo sapiens with the ability to think in certain grammatical ways and that this in turn explains the vast cognitive powers of human beings. Evidence is considered from biology, the evolution of language, language disorders, and linguistic phenomena.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  3.  13
    Mind Design and Minimal Syntax.Wolfram Hinzen - 2006 - Oxford University Press UK.
    This book introduces generative grammar as an area of study and asks what it tells us about the human mind. Wolfram Hinzen lays the foundation for the unification of modern generative linguistics with the philosophies of mind and language. He introduces Chomsky's program of a 'minimalist' syntax as a novel explanatory vision of the human mind. He explains how the Minimalist Program originated in work in cognitive science, biology, linguistics, and philosophy, and examines its implications for work in these fields. (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  4.  37
    Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe.Wolfram Hinzen - 2003 - Cambridge University Press.
    Life's Solution builds a persuasive case for the predictability of evolutionary outcomes. The case rests on a remarkable compilation of examples of convergent evolution, in which two or more lineages have independently evolved similar structures and functions. The examples range from the aerodynamics of hovering moths and hummingbirds to the use of silk by spiders and some insects to capture prey. Going against the grain of Darwinian orthodoxy, this book is a must read for anyone grappling with the meaning of (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  5.  76
    An essay on names and truth.Wolfram Hinzen - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This pioneering book lays new foundations for the study of reference and truth.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  6.  96
    Linguistic Evidence against Predicativism.Wolfram Hinzen - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (10):591-608.
    The view that proper names are uniformly predicates has recently gained prominence. I review linguistic evidence against it. Overall, the linguistic evidence suggests that proper names function as predicates when they appear in a grammatically predicative position and as referential expressions when they are grammatically in a referential position. Conceptual grounds on which the predicativist view might nonetheless be upheld include ‘uniformity’, i.e., that a single semantic value be lexically specified for names in all of their occurrences irrespective of differences (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  7. Narrow syntax and the language of thought.Wolfram Hinzen - 2013 - Philosophical Psychology 26 (1):1-23.
    A traditional view maintains that thought, while expressed in language, is non-linguistic in nature and occurs in non-linguistic beings as well. I assess this view against current theories of the evolutionary design of human grammar. I argue that even if some forms of human thought are shared with non-human animals, a residue remains that characterizes a unique way in which human thought is organized as a system. I explore the hypothesis that the cause of this difference is a grammatical way (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  8.  56
    The linguistic roots of natural pedagogy.Otávio Mattos & Wolfram Hinzen - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology 6.
  9.  64
    The grammar of truth.Wolfram Hinzen & Martina Wiltschko - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (3):299-331.
    Much philosophical attention has been devoted to the truth predicates of natural language and their logic. However, lexical truth predicates are neither necessary nor sufficient for a truth-attribution to occur, which warrants closer attention to the grammar of truth attribution. A unified analysis of five constructions is offered here, in two of which the lexical truth predicate occurs (It's true that John left and That John left is true), while in the three remaining, it does not (John left; It seems (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  10.  71
    Nothing is Hidden: Contextualism and the Grammar‐Meaning Interface.Wolfram Hinzen - 2015 - Mind and Language 30 (3):259-291.
    A defining assumption in the debate on contextual influences on truth-conditional content is that such content is often incompletely determined by what is specified in linguistic form. The debate then turns on whether this is evidence for positing a more richly articulated logical form or else a pragmatic process of free enrichment that posits truly unarticulated constituents that are unspecified in linguistic form. Questioning this focus on semantics and pragmatics, this article focuses on the independent grammatical dimensions of the problem. (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  11.  51
    Mind–Language =? The significance of non‐verbal autism.Wolfram Hinzen, Dominika Slušná, Kristen Schroeder, Gabriel Sevilla & Elisabet Vila Borrellas - 2019 - Mind and Language 35 (4):514-538.
    The possibility and extent of thought without language have been subject to much controversy. Insight from non- or minimally verbal humans can inform this debate empirically. Since most such individuals are on the autism spectrum, of which they make up a sizable 25–30%, an important connection between language and autism transpires. Here we propose a model which makes sense of this link and explains why the non-verbal human mind, as present evidence suggests, represents a fundamentally different cognitive phenotype. This model (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  12.  55
    The linguistics of schizophrenia: thought disturbance as language pathology across positive symptoms.Wolfram Hinzen - forthcoming - Frontiers in Psychology.
  13.  80
    Anti-realist semantics.Wolfram Hinzen - 2000 - Erkenntnis 52 (3):281-311.
    I argue that the implementation of theDummettian program of an ``anti-realist'' semanticsrequires quite different conceptions of the technicalmeaning-theoretic terms used than those presupposed byDummett. Starting from obvious incoherences in anattempt to conceive truth conditions as assertibilityconditions, I argue that for anti-realist purposesnon-epistemic semantic notions are more usefully kept apart from epistemic ones rather than beingreduced to them. Embedding an anti-realist theory ofmeaning in Martin-Löf's Intuitionistic Type Theory(ITT) takes care, however, of many notorious problemsthat have arisen in trying to specify suitableintuitionistic (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  14.  15
    Explaining early generics: A linguistic model.Otávio Mattos & Wolfram Hinzen - 2021 - Mind and Language 38 (1):256-273.
    Preschoolers naturally form mental representations that capture generic knowledge about object kinds. These have been considered to pose a special explanatory and learning challenge. We here argue for a new deductive model of them, where (i) the representations in question have a linguistic format from the start; (ii) they are inherently structurally simpler compared to reference to individuals or quantifications; and (iii) formed in communicative contexts because communication in humans is linked to language. In this model, specific language‐related resources explain (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  15.  5
    Introduction.Edouard Machery, Markus Werning & Wolfram Hinzen - 2012 - In Markus Werning, Wolfram Hinzen & Edouard Machery (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality. Oxford University Press.
    The notion of compositionality was first introduced as a constraint on the relation between the syntax and the semantics of languages. It was later postulated as an adequacy condition also for other representational systems such as structures of mental concepts, computer programs, and even neural architectures. Syntax is compositional in that it builds more complex well-formed expressions recursively, on the basis of smaller ones, while semantics is compositional in that it constructs the meanings of larger expressions on the basis of (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  16.  47
    Truth's fabric.Wolfram Hinzen - 2003 - Mind and Language 18 (2):194–219.
    To understand language, philosophers have related sentences and/or their uses to the concept of truth. I study an aspect of this relation by studying the actual structures that sentences expressing truth judgements have, an issue that I consider empirical. So I propose to switch from studying ‘truth conditions’ for sentences (determined metaphysically, or normatively) to studying the structures of expressions of the form This sentence is true/has (some) truth to it. I argue that the status of the ‘truth predicate’ must (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  17.  15
    A new argument for linguistic determinants of human thought.Wolfram Hinzen, Txuss Martin & Martina Wiltschko - 2024 - Linguistics and Philosophy 47 (6):1027-1043.
    We argue that the commonly accepted existence of grammatical concepts such as Person (in the grammatical sense) or Tense poses an unrecognized challenge to the idea that human thought is independent of language. The argument is that such concepts identify aspects of linguistic expressions that also systematically define the contents and identity of the thoughts expressed in language. Since grammatical concepts are not known to have non-grammatical analogues, the thoughts in question do not appear to be non-linguistic in nature. We (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. On the metaphysics of linguistics.Wolfram Hinzen & Juan Uriagereka - 2006 - Erkenntnis 65 (1):71-96.
    Mind–body dualism has rarely been an issue in the generative study of mind; Chomsky himself has long claimed it to be incoherent and unformulable. We first present and defend this negative argument but then suggest that the generative enterprise may license a rather novel and internalist view of the mind and its place in nature, different from all of, (i) the commonly assumed functionalist metaphysics of generative linguistics, (ii) physicalism, and (iii) Chomsky’s negative stance. Our argument departs from the empirical (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  19.  56
    The image of mind in the language of children with autism.Wolfram Hinzen, Joana Rosselló, Otávio Mattos, Kristen Schroeder & Elisabet Vila - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology 6.
  20.  57
    Internalism about truth.Wolfram Hinzen - 2006 - Mind and Society 5 (2):139-166.
    Internalism is an explanatory strategy that makes the internal structure and constitution of the organism a basis for the investigation of its external function and the ways in which it is embedded in an environment. It is opposed to an externalist explanatory strategy, which takes its departure from observations about external function and mind-environment interactions, and infers and rationalizes internal organismic structure from that. This paper addresses the origins of truth, a basic ingredient in the human conceptual scheme. I suggest (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  21.  26
    Toward true integration.Joana Rosselló, Otávio Mattos & Wolfram Hinzen - 2017 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40.
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  22.  23
    The Origins of Complex Language: An Inquiry Into the Evolutionary Beginnings of Sentences, Syllables, and Truth.Wolfram Hinzen - 1999 - Oxford University Press on Demand.
    Proposing a theory of the origins of human language ability and presenting an account of the early evolution of language, this text explains why humans are the only language-using animals and challenges the assumption that language is due to intelligence-- jacket cover.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  23.  46
    Rethinking the role of language in autism.Wolfram Hinzen - 2022 - Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 4 (1):129-151.
    Linguists have long sought to draw support from developmental disorders like Williams Syndrome (WS) and Specific Language Impairment (SLI) for linguistic theories and the modularity of language in particular. Linguistic diversity in the autism spectrum (ASD) has received comparatively little attention from linguists. Here I argue, against recent claims to the contrary, that language patterns in ASD do not support the modularity of language any more than WS or SLI are by now acknowledged to do. Rather, conceptualizing the linguistic diversity (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24.  33
    The Pragmatics Of Inferential Content.Wolfram Hinzen - 2001 - Synthese 128 (1-2):157-181.
    Carnap took the content of a particularsentence or set of sentences to consist in the set ofthe consequences of the sentence or set. This claimequates meaning with inferential role, but itrestricts the inferences to deductive or explicativeones. Here I reject a recent proposal by RobertBrandom, where inductive or ampliative inferences arealso meant to confer contents on expressions. I arguethat if Brandom's inferentialist picture is upheld, andboth explicative and ampliative inferences confermeaning, one consequence of this is that the contentof a sentence (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  25.  74
    Your theory of the evolution of morality depends upon your theory of morality.David Kirkby, Wolfram Hinzen & John Mikhail - 2013 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (1):94-95.
    Baumard et al. attribute to humans a sense of fairness. However, the properties of this sense are so underspecified that the evolutionary account offered is not well-motivated. We contrast this with the framework of Universal Moral Grammar, which has sought a descriptively adequate account of the structure of the moral domain as a precondition for understanding the evolution of morality.
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  26.  5
    Syntax in the Atom.Wolfram Hinzen - 2012 - In Markus Werning, Wolfram Hinzen & Edouard Machery (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality. Oxford University Press.
    The organization of words into phrases and sentences is what is traditionally associated with syntax: the “syntagmatic” combinatoriality in human language. Surface language, crucially including word formation, is a mere “expression” of deep thought, and whatever word-level regularities can be found ought to be studied as regularities of thought unmediated by lexical expression. Argument structure is syntactic, necessarily, since it is to be identified with the syntactic structures projected by lexical heads. The configurational position that an argument ends up in (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  27.  20
    Belief and meaning: Essays at the interface.Wolfram Hinzen & Hans Rott (eds.) - 2002 - Deutsche Bibliothek der Wissenschaften.
    Theories of belief and meaning have long occupied philosophers. Typically, there is a correlation between the meaning of a sentence that is uttered and the content of the attitude that the speaker thereby conveys. This is also why a sentence can be used to specify content in an attribution of the attitude to the speaker. From the perspective of a theory of semantic content, there is a level of description where mental states and sentences can be said to share a (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Über einige empirische Annahmen der Bedeutungstheorie.Wolfram Hinzen - 2001 - Philosophia Naturalis 38 (2):147-178.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29.  82
    Dualism and the atoms of thought.Wolfram Hinzen - 2006 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (9):25-55.
    Contemporary arguments for forms of psycho-physical dualism standardly depart from phenomenal aspects of consciousness. Conceptual aspects of conscious experience, as opposed to phenomenal or visual/perceptual ones, are often taken to be within the scope of functionalist, reductionist, or physicalist theories. I argue that the particular conceptual structure of human consciousness makes this asymmetry unmotivated. The argument for a form of dualism defended here proceeds from the empirical premise that conceptual structure in a linguistic creature like us is a combinatorial and (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  30. External and internal aspects in the semantics of names.Wolfram Hinzen - 2006 - In Tomáš Marvan (ed.), What determines content?: the internalism/externalism dispute. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.
  31.  18
    Explaining intersubjectivity. A comment on Arie Verhagen, Constructions of Intersubjectivity.Wolfram Hinzen & Michiel van Lambalgen - 2008 - Cognitive Linguistics 19 (1).
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  32. Eine verteidigung Von descartes'argument fur die existenz gottes in principia 13-20.Wolfram Hinzen - 2002 - Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 35 (86-88):243-261.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  33. Grenzen einer rationalistischen Kritik von Ethikbegründung.Wolfram Hinzen - 1995 - Ethik Und Sozialwissenschaften 6 (2):188.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34.  66
    Human Nature and Grammar.Wolfram Hinzen - 2012 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 70:53-82.
    Seeing human nature through the prism of grammar may seem rather unusual. I will argue that this is a symptom for a problem – in both discussions of human nature and grammar: Neither the theory of grammar has properly placed its subject matter within the context of an inquiry into human nature and speciation, nor have discussions of human nature properly assessed the significance of grammar.
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35.  46
    Isaac Levi, the covenant of reason – rationality and the commitments of thought.Wolfram Hinzen - 2000 - Erkenntnis 52 (3):403-407.
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36.  43
    On the Grammar of Referential Dependence.Wolfram Hinzen - 2016 - Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 46 (1):11-33.
    All forms of nominal reference, whether quantificational, definite, rigid, deictic, or personal, require that the nominals in question appear in relevant grammatical configurations. Reference is in this sense a grammatical phenomenon. It is never determined lexically or a word-world relation in a purely semantic or causal sense. Here it is further argued that the principles of the grammar of object-reference naturally extend to cases where the reference of one nominal depends on that of another, i.e. the grammar of referential dependence, (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. On the Semantics of Belief-sentences.Wolfram Hinzen - 2001 - Epistemologia 24 (1):111-122.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38.  19
    Pascal Engel (ed.), Believing and accepting. Dordrecht: Kluwer academic publishers, 2000.Wolfram Hinzen - 2001 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1):282-286.
  39.  37
    Guest editor’s introduction.Wolfram Hinzen - 2006 - Erkenntnis 65 (1):1-4.
    Since our visual perception of physical things essentially involves our identifying objects by their colours, any theory of visual perception must contain some account of the colours of things. The central problem with colour has to do with relating our normal, everyday colour perceptions to what science, i.e. physics, teaches us about physical objects and their qualities. Although we perceive colours as categorical surface properties of things, colour perceptions are explained by introducing physical properties like reflectance profiles or dispositions to (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40.  31
    Synthese a priori bei Wittgenstein.Wolfram Hinzen - 2004 - Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 58 (1):1 - 28.
    In einer vereinzelten Anmerkung in den Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik scheint Wittgenstein die Existenz synthetischer Urteile a priori anzunehmen und damit ein entscheidendes Element der rationalistisch-transzendentalen Tradition. Ich argumentiere für eine Weise, in der sich diese Bemerkung in den größeren Zusammenhang von Wittgensteins Nachdenken über Mathematik einbettet, sowie für den kohärenten erkenntnistheoretischen Sinn, den sie unabhängig davon hat. Tatsächlich weist dieser weit über den Bereich bloß mathematischer Urteile hinaus. Beginnend mit einem empirisch-syntaktischen Begriff von Urteil, argumentiere ich, dass (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41. The Emergence of Complex.Wolfram Hinzen - 2012 - In David McFarland, Keith Stenning & Maggie McGonigle (eds.), The Complex Mind: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 243.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  42.  74
    The Inessential Indexical: On the Philosophical Insignificance of Perspective and the First Person, by Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever.Wolfram Hinzen - 2015 - Mind 124 (495):898-904.
  43. The mind we do not change.Wolfram Hinzen - 2006 - In Erik J. Olsson (ed.), Knowledge and Inquiry: Essays on the Pragmatism of Isaac Levi. New York: Cambridge University Press.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44.  10
    Turing’s Test and the Metaphysics of Body and Mind: A Note on a Lack of Implications.Wolfram Hinzen - 2003 - In Hans Rott & Vitezslav Horak (eds.), Possibility and Reality. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 253-268.
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  45.  47
    Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Origins of Complex Language. An Inquiry into the Evolutionary Beginnings of Sentences, Syllables, and Truth.Wolfram Hinzen - 2003 - Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (6):765-780.
  46.  41
    Constructive Versus Ontological Construals of Cantorian Ordinals.Wolfram Hinzen - 2003 - History and Philosophy of Logic 24 (1):45-63.
    In a recent paper, Kit Fine offers a reconstruction of Cantor's theory of ordinals. It avoids certain mentalistic overtones in it through both a non-standard ontology and a non-standard notion of abstraction. I argue that this reconstruction misses an essential constructive and computational content of Cantor's theory, which I in turn reconstruct using Martin-Löf's theory of types. Throughout, I emphasize Kantian themes in Cantor's epistemology, and I also argue, as against Michael Hallett's interpretation, for the need for a constructive understanding (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  47.  45
    Review of Nirmalangshu Mukherji, The Primacy of Grammar[REVIEW]Wolfram Hinzen - 2010 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2010 (10).
  48. The Unity of Linguistic Meaning, by John Collins. [REVIEW]Wolfram Hinzen & Ulrich Reichard - 2012 - Mind 121 (483):788-793.