The paper presents a number of empirical arguments for the perceptual view of speech comprehension. It then argues that a particular version of phenomenal dogmatism can confer immediate justification upon belief. In combination, these two views can bypass Davidsonian skepticism toward knowledge of meanings. The perceptual view alone, however, can bypass a variation on the Davidsonian argument. One reason Davidson thought meanings were not truly graspable was that he believed meanings were private (unlike behavior). But if the perceptual view of (...) speech comprehension is correct, then meanings (or at least conveyed meanings) are public objects like other perceivable entities. Hence, there is no particular problem of language comprehension, even if meanings originate in “private” mental states. (shrink)

The paper aims at providing an argument for a deflationary treatment of the notion of public language meaning. The argument is based on the notion of standards of correctness; I will try to show that as correctness assessments are context-involving, the notion of public language meaning cannot be treated as an explanatory one. An elaboration of the argument, using the notion of ground is provided. Finally, I will consider some limitations of the reasoning presented.

In the public sphere and especially in the media, the discourse on the Church and about the Church on faith and religion is often tainted by the confusion of meaning due, among other things, to the mutual borrowing less rigorous – epistemologically and methodologically – of the concepts which engage various disciplines (theology, sociology, anthropology, political science, information and communication science, and so on) who take possession of problematic centered on the relation between mankind and divinity. This article presents (...) some basic benchmarks for analyzing and understanding the construction of meaning as well as the rationality or irrationality of these issues by convening the disciplinary distinction between the content of the concepts of organization and that of the institution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 95-99 [Access article in PDF] Delusional Content and the Public Nature of Meaning:Reply to the Other Contributors Robert Klee The contribution by professors Bayne and Pacherie (2004) is an earnest attempt to defend a popular model of monothematic delusions against criticisms launched by John Campbell (2001). This model of monothematic delusions holds that such delusions are rational attempts by the sufferer to (...) explain to herself specific kinds of anomalous sensory/affective experiences. Bayne, Pacherie, Campbell, and for that matter Sass, Harper, and Georgaca, write as if semantic meaning accrued to words in a language term by term, as if meaning is "private" to the deluded person, and that she might therefore mean almost anything by her own idiosyncratic use of the public language she otherwise speaks. This is a notorious mistake. As Hilary Putnam famously put it in his classic 1975 paper "The meaning of 'meaning,'" "Cut the pie any way you like, 'meanings' just ain't in the head" (1975, 227). That is, meanings are not ethereal interior mental objects, private to the speaker—they are not private inner episodes that take place in some mental center stage of consciousness. The deluded person does not and cannot succeed in changing the meaning of a term in a public language like English merely by an individual act of imaginative will involving the making of a bizarre assertion—not even if she repeats it a thousand times. The public nature of meaning, if I can coin a phrase for it, is the central theme in the work of the later Wittgenstein. Even before Putnam, Wittgenstein had made the same point in his Philosophical Investigations via a famous footnote in which he writes, Can I say 'bububu' and mean "If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk"?—it is only in a language that I can mean something by something. This shows clearly that the grammar of 'to mean' is not like that of the expression 'to imagine' and the like." (2001, 18e) Wittgenstein argues that the answer to the rhetorical question in the footnote is an emphatic No. To mean something by the use of words in a public language is not equivalent to an act of individual free imagination. The languages we each speak, including the unfortunately deluded among us, are public not private, and insofar as the notion of meaning has an understandable sense, the meaning of a term is fixed by its actual public use, across large time intervals, in many different contexts, by the many millions of speakers of the language in question. It is time that segments of the intellectual map beyond the borders [End Page 95] of philosophy got the news about this, for I think an appreciation of this point would forestall certain objections and argumentative moves that otherwise take up space in the psychological literature.Bayne and Pacherie (2004) describe Campbell's model of monothematic delusions as proposing that "delusions can be usefully regarded as Wittgensteinian framework propositions" (p. 7). I have discussed this notion in my main paper, although I do not use the terms framework propositions; I stick to Wittgenstein's own words. Wittgenstein called them, literally in the German, propositions that "stand fast for us" (feststehen). This description strikes me as less misleading than calling them framework propositions, for the latter expression suggests that they could in some sense be replaceable by a different framework of framework propositions, something that Wittgenstein in no way ever meant to suggest. Wittgenstein did not think of these propositions as individualized or privately owned—as beliefs that might vary considerably across the population of speakers of the language in which they are expressed. That is why he explicitly wrote that they stand fast for us. Note the plural pronoun. There is something irreducibly collective, something publicly owned, about the epistemology of these propositions. These propositions represent the accumulated certainties that precipitate out of what is commonly shared in human experience over long time intervals. Precisely because what stands fast for us is... (shrink)

In their article ‘Who is afraid of black box algorithms? On the epistemological and ethical basis of trust in medical AI’, Durán and Jongsma discuss the epistemic and ethical challenges raised by black box algorithms in medical practice. The opacity of black box algorithms is an obstacle to the trustworthiness of their outcomes. Moreover, the use of opaque algorithms is not normatively justified in medical practice. The authors introduce a formalism, called computational reliabilism, which allows generating justified beliefs on the (...) algorithm reliability and trustworthy outcomes of artificial intelligence systems by means of epistemic warrants, called reliability indicators. However, they remark the need for reliability indicators specific to black box algorithms and that justified knowledge is not sufficient to justify normatively the actions of the physicians using medical AI systems. Therefore, Durán and Jongsma advocate for a more transparent design and implementation of black box algorithms, providing a series of recommendations to mitigate the epistemic and ethical challenges behind their use in medical practice. In this response, I argue that a peculiar form of black box algorithm transparency, called design publicity, may efficiently implement these recommendations. Design publicity encodes epistemic, that is, reliability indicators, and ethical recommendations for black box algorithms by means of four subtypes of transparency. These target the values and goals, their translation into design requirements, the performance and consistency of the algorithm altogether. I discuss design publicity applying it to a use case focused on the automated classification of skin lesions from medical images. (shrink)

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China;There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds– Gregory Bateson (1972, p. 492)While there are classical anteced...

Next SectionBackground: Publication bias and discrimination are increasingly recognised in medicine. A survey was conducted to determine if medical journals were more likely to publish research reports from members of their own than a rival journal’s editorial board. Methods: A retrospective review was conducted of all research reports published in 2006 in the four competing medical journals within five medical specialties. Only three journals were willing to divulge the authorship of reports that had been rejected. Results: Overall, 4460 research reports (...) were published in 2006 by the 20 journals from five subspecialties (mean 223 (SD = 164) reports per journal; median 176; interquartile range 108–238). On average, 17.2 (7.7%) reports were from a journal’s own editorial board (SD = 10.7; median 15; interquartile range 10–23; n = 20), and 6.3 (2.8%) reports were from a member of the editorial board of one of the three rival journals within the specialty (SD = 7.3; median 3.5; interquartile range 1–8; n = 60). There was a statistically significant excess of publications from the journal’s own editorial board in 14 of the 20 journals (p<0.05). Journals were almost three times more likely to publish reports from their own editorial board than from one of the three rivals within their subspecialty (p<0.0001; median difference 11; Mann–Whitney U test; power for 5% significance >99.99%). Conclusions: There was a significant excess of publications from medical journals’ own editorial boards, although it is not possible to determine whether this is due to bias in the peer review process or selective submission by editors. (shrink)

First published in 1962, The Diversity of Meaning was written to provide a more constructive criticism of the philosophy of ordinary language than the more destructive approach that it was commonly subjected to at the time of publication. The book deals with a range of philosophical problems in a way that cuts underneath the more typical orthodoxies of the time. It is concerned primarily with the concept of meaning and asks not just how people ordinarily speak or think (...) about meanings, but also what is gained or lost by their so doing. The author challenges the assumption that there is only one way of talking about meanings and instead argues that no single analysis of meaning can suit the semantics of lexicographers, language-teachers, translators, logicians, historians of ideas, psychologists and philosophers. By examining various common concepts of meaning and their relations to one another, the book sheds light on the issues most alive in philosophical controversy at the time of publication, giving it lasting relevance for those interested in the history of philosophical thought and theory. (shrink)

The generalized theory of evolution suggests that evolutionary algorithms apply to biological and cultural processes like language alike. Variation, selection and reproduction constitute abstract and formal traits of complex, open and often self-regulating systems. Accepting this basic assumption provides us with a powerful background methodology for this investigation: explaining the emergence and proliferation of semantic patterns, that become conventional. A teleosemantic theory of public (conventional) meaning (Millikan 1984; 2005) grounded in a generalized theory of evolution explains the proliferation of (...) public language forms in terms of their adaptive proper function. It has also been suggested, that the emergence of meaning, can be formalized with game-theoretical tools (Skyrms 2010) within signaling systems of coordination. I want to show how closely related these approaches are, both in terms of explanandum and of outcomes. To put it in a nutshell: If the emergence of public meaning can be satisfyingly explained in terms of signaling games, then the cultural evolutionary dynamics will serve as an adequate model to describe their proliferation. Public or conventional meaning (in contrast to personal meaning) can be fully understood in terms of its evolutionary function in a population of communicators. Furthermore, I want to argue how this understanding of conventional meaning could lead us to a strong semantic holism. (shrink)

Welcome to the fifth issue of Humanist Studies &the Digital Age entitled Networks and Projects: New Platforms in Digital Humanities. The sections Perspectives and Interventions are devoted to the publication of a selection from the proceedings of a colloquium held at Brown University in the Spring of 2015. These first two sections are presented and introduced by Massimo Riva in his essay on Scholarly Networks and Collaborative Practices. The third section of this issue, Projects, is presented by Crystal Hall in (...) her introduction, Italian Studies and Digital Humanities: Research Outcomes. In the brief notes of my Editorial, I reflect on the idea of “network” as conceptual framework and privileged space of knowledge engaging with Pierre Lévy’s work, and I anticipate the topic of the sixth issue of this journal that will be published in 2019. (shrink)

How should we go about trying to identify which particular underlying property of a given word is responsible for its meaning? And what sort of property will that turn out to be? The answers elaborated in this chapter are that the meaning of a word, w, is engendered by whichever non-semantic feature of w is the one that explains w’s overall deployment; and that this will turn out to be an acceptance-property of the following form: ‘that such-and-such w-sentences (...) are regularly accepted in such-and-such circumstances’ is the idealized law governing w’s use. Some notable features of this theory are: that it rebuts Quine’s scepticism about meaning, that it rejects the idea that the meanings of public-language terms derive from our intentions, that it focuses on idiolects, but can also accommodate communal meaning, and that it embraces a limited form of meaning-holism. (shrink)

This book present interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities by connecting seemingly disparate sources through a sensitivity to endangered human values. It links reflections on the contemporary relationship between art and technology in a post-modern context, seeing art in terms of crossing boundaries and exploring virtuality. It deals with the consequences of economics colonising other disciplines, in terms of the processes by which the social becomes the economic. Using Jantsch''s evolutionary paradigm, the concept of self-transcendence is seen as (...) crucial for the understanding of human beings and their social systems. Incorporating recent thinking from the natural sciences, the learning process can be conceived as the life and activity of all complex systems, including those once conceived as organisms, machines, cultures or economies. Without the societal embrace of scientific and technological development no collective or individual meaning can be assigned to the production of new knowledge. The book seeks to recognise the point where a collective learning process becomes the heart of productivity, and where the shift from the hegemony of material labour to immaterial labour becomes fundamental. The author brings new understandings of art, the social, and technology together, based on the idea that history is not a story told in separate physical, social and spiritual spaces and that the most fundamental problem of today is how to find some shared meaning in a fractured world. The author analyses, at a global level, the process of the co-production of scientific and social order, of culture and technology, of life sciences and economic and political regimes. It rightly identifies the rise of the role of knowledge and the move of capital into life sciences as a new stage in the history of capitalism: what we can qualify as cognitive capitalism or biocapitalism. In this new era of capitalism, what is being manufactured and sold are not just tangible and non-tangible goods, whose increasing importance, as the author shows, poses unsurmountable theoretical problems to the theoretical apparatus of economic science. The increasing mercantilisation of the world appears at the same time as a bio-power, i.e. a set of instruments creating and controlling different forms of life, forms of communication, standards of socialisation, education, the individual and collective imaginary, etc. More fundamentally, the encounter of life sciences and the information technology integrates and subjects the most essential mechanisms of biological and social reproduction to the logic of capital valorization. To understand the complexity of these changes and the ethical and philosophical questions that the development of technology and sciences poses to the future of mankind one must break through the disciplinary barriers delineating different disciplines in social sciences and those separating social sciences from natural sciences. Professor Matko Mestrovic manages to tackle this challenge not only because of his impressive and masterful knowledge of different disciplines in the social and natural sciences, but he does it also owing to his capacity for theoretical elaboration that allows him to lay the foundations of a new transdisciplinary paradigm. This is why his work can raise the awareness of the general public on two issues: on a global and profound vision of the challenges posed by the new millennium; and on the need for a radical theoretical innovation bringing into question the disciplinary certitudes in develop a social science able to better understand the movement and the ambiguity of history. - Carlo Vercellone, Universite de Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne Mestrovic provides a unique insight into the often forgotten relation between economics on the one hand and arts and culture on the other, demonstrating that these adomains function as a total social facticity and not as separate, entirely independent elements thereof. In doing so he is dispelling the illusions about the disciplinary self-containdness of individual forms of knowledge and is relying on those paradigms of contemporary scientific thought whose aepistemiological programs are based on close cooperation and aopening up and not on the persuasion about one''s own positions and dispositions. - Prof. dr. Rade Kalanj, Redovni profesor na Odjelu za sociologiju. (shrink)

Language can be used as an instrument to exert power over people, as in issuing an order or a ban, or when it exercises an intrinsic power by virtue of its semantic or pragmatic content. The Politics of Meaning focuses on this latter aspect and answers the following question: what does it mean for linguistic meaning to be embedded in social structures and practices if we have good reasons to assume that these practices rest on asymmetrical power relations (...) and are often unjust? My comprehensive study of meaning in morally and politically problematic language use accomplishes four major goals. Firstly, I defend a theory of meaning which is able to account for a broad range of politically significant aspects of language use. Secondly, I relate these aspects to non-linguistic aspects of social practices which are structured by asymmetrical power relations. Thirdly, my work responds to topical questions of public debates concerning language criticism, political disagreement, and political correctness. Fourthly and finally, my approach involves reflecting on the methodological problems that arise when we engage in politically relevant philosophical questions. It is both a plea for and an instance of non-ideal philosophy of language. (shrink)

First published in 1962, The Diversity of Meaning was written to provide a more constructive criticism of the philosophy of ordinary language than the more destructive approach that it was commonly subjected to at the time of publication. The book deals with a range of philosophical problems in a way that cuts underneath the more typical orthodoxies of the time. It is concerned primarily with the concept of meaning and asks not just how people ordinarily speak or think (...) about meanings, but also what is gained or lost by their so doing. The author challenges the assumption that there is only one way of talking about meanings and instead argues that no single analysis of meaning can suit the semantics of lexicographers, language-teachers, translators, logicians, historians of ideas, psychologists and philosophers. By examining various common concepts of meaning and their relations to one another, the book sheds light on the issues most alive in philosophical controversy at the time of publication, giving it lasting relevance for those interested in the history of philosophical thought and theory. (shrink)

Frank Jackson often writes as if his descriptivist account of public language meanings were just plain common sense. How else are we to explain how different speakers manage to communicate using a public language? And how else can we explain how individuals arrive at confident judgments about the reference of their words in hypothetical scenarios? Our aim in this paper is to show just how controversial the psychological assumptions behind in Jackson’s semantic theory really are. First, we explain how Jackson’s (...) theory goes well beyond the commonsense platitudes he cites in its defence. Second, we sketch an alternative explanation of those platitudes, the jazz model of meaning, which we argue is more psychologically realistic. We conclude that the psychological picture presupposed by Jackson’s semantic theory stands in need of a much more substantial defence than he has so far offered. (shrink)

This is the third in a series of essays on the seminal role of the paradigms of essence-function and interpenetration in East Asian religious and philosophical thought. The first article, entitled "The Composition of Self-Transformation Thought in Classical East Asian Philosophy and Religion"[1] was a general introduction to these paradigms over the broad expanse of indigenous East Asian thought religious/philosophical thought. The second article, entitled "Essence-Function (t'i-yung): Early Chinese Origins and Manifestations,"[2] examined the earliest precursors of these notions in classics (...) such as the Book of Changes, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean , paying special attention to the unique role played by the concept of "sincerity" in manifesting and mediating presence of essencefunction and interpenetration. In this essay, we look at the role essence-function and interpenetration play in the Analects (Lunyu ). (shrink)

“What we have learned from Saussure” affirms Merleau-Ponty “is that, taken singly, signs do not signify anything, and that each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence of meaning between itself and other signs.” While it has often been stressed that Merleau-Ponty was arguably among the earliest philosophical readers of Saussure, the real impact of this reading on Merleau-Ponty’s thinking has rarely been assessed in detail. By focusing on the middle period (...) – the years between the publication of the Phenomenology of Perception and the abandonment of the book project The Prose of the World – a special interest in language and its ideality becomes all the more evident. Now this period is crucial for understanding the turn of the later years: similarly to Saussure, who shifted the problem of meaning from a problem of referentiality to an issue of self-differentiation of the linguistic field, Merleau-Ponty shifts his account of perception from a relationship based on sensory subjects and perceived objects to an immanent differentiation of the sensible world. The genesis ofan articulated world can be conceptualized with the experience of children’s language acquisition and the phenomenon of “deflation.” At a certain point in her development, the child interrupts her incessant babbling and learns to shape pauses and silences, which are the precondition for meaningful sounds. Learning how to speak – as it were – would thus be learning how not to speak. The child may only enter a specific language by means of a phonematic restriction; to become a member of a language community is to lose the capacity to speak all languages. (shrink)

This paper raises questions concerning Ted Morris’ interpretation of Hume’s notion of meaning and investigates the private and public aspects of Hume’s notion of meaning.

In this paper we investigate how the dynamic nature of words’ meanings plays a role in a philosophical theory of meaning. For ‘dynamic nature’ we intend the characteristic of being flexible, of changing according to many factors (speakers, contexts, and more). We consider meaning as something that gradually takes shape from the dynamic processes of communication. Accordingly, we present a draft of a theory of meaning that, on the one hand, describes how a private meaning is (...) formed as a mental state of individual agents during a lifetime of experiences, and, on the other hand, shows how a public meaning emerges from the interaction of agents. When communicating with each other, agents need to converge on a shared meaning of the words used, by means of a negotiation process. A public meaning is the abstract product of many of these processes while, at the same time, the private meanings are continually reshaped by each negotiation. Exploring this dynamics, we have been looking at the work done by computer scientists dealing with problems of heterogeneity of sources of information. We argue that a suitable solution for both disciplines lies in a systematic characterization of the processes of meaning negotiation. (shrink)

‘The co-production of meaning’ is a popular, widely-used, but under-defined concept. To better understand the co-production of meaning, we shall attempt to develop an account of co-production through phenomenological psychopathology. Through Hans Georg Gadamer’s remarks on ‘the hermeneutic problem of psychiatry’, we distinguish kinds of contingent and intrinsic obstacles to 'co-production'. In calling attention to these obstacles, we problematise the concept of ‘co-production’ in public mental health, revealing it to be more complex than originally thought. We conclude that (...) new developments in phenomenological psychopathology can be used to overcome some of the limitations of ‘co-production’. (shrink)

In The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard tried to argue against what she called the ‘privacy’ of reasons, appealing to Wittgenstein's argument against the possibility of a private language. In recent work she continues to endorse Wittgenstein's perspective on the normativity of meaning, although she now emphasizes that her own argument was only meant to be analogous to the private language argument. The purpose of the present paper is to show that the Wittgensteinian perspective is not only not useful (...) in support of Korsgaard's general project, but that it is positively inimical to it, in two ways. First, Wittgenstein opposes views on which principled or rule-following behavior requires that one be guided by anything like a mental representation of a rule or principle. But for Korsgaard, human action essentially requires this. Second, Wittgenstein systematically attempts to de-emphasize the importance of the first-personal perspective, and to emphasize the social functions even of concepts that might seem deployed primarily from that perspective: for example, concepts of sensations and intentions. This is the reverse of Korsgaard's emphasis. The paper also argues, however, that the private language argument does have some implications for a theory of rationality and reasons. (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

ID 68, the important Delian inscription found in 1910 prohibiting access to outsiders and with jurisdiction probably over the Archegesion, is shown to have been inscribed twice. This is not a matter of republication, rather of simultaneous publication within the same sanctuary. The article provides a new text and a complete bibliography for the double publication before analyzing the architectural function of the two inscriptions and their significance as sacred law. With emphasis on the palaeography and aesthetic value of the (...) letterforms as well as on the physical evidence of the stones themselves, the meaning of the prohibition is reexamined, resulting in the proposal of a specific social context and date. (shrink)

The work of scientists and doctors in advancing genetic research and its applications has been accompanied by plenty of discussion in the popular press—from Good Housekeeping and Forbes to Ms. and the Congressional Record—about such ...

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

NOTE TO THE READER - December, 2021 ●●●●● -/- After a long period of time devoted to research in other areas, the author returned to the subject of this paper in a book-length study, CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning. In this book (Chapter 11, “The Metalogic of Meaning”), the position developed in the 1982 paper, "Referential Consistency as a Criterion of Meaning", has been substantively revised and several important corrections made. It is recommended (...) that readers read the revised and corrected version that appears in the book, CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON. ●●●●● -/- The book is available in a printed edition, ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6, from online booksellers such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and through independent bookstores. The book is also available as a freely downloadable _corrected second edition_ eBook, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5458352, through PhilSci, PhilPapers, HAL, and other online archives. ●●●●● -/- In addition to the above-mentioned book, readers may find "A Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" to be useful as a guide to the nearly 900-page CRITIQUE. The primer is available as a free download through PhilPapers. ●●●●● -/- "Referential Consistency as a Criterion of Meaning" describes a logically compelling criterion of meaning — that is, a necessary condition of meaning, one which is non-arbitrary and compelling. One cannot _not_ accept the proposed criterion without self-referential inconsistency. This “metalogical” variety of self-referential inconsistency is new, opening a third category beyond semantical and pragmatical forms of self-referential inconsistency. ●●●●● -/- It is argued that such a criterion of meaning can serve as an instrument of internal criticism for any theoretical framework that permits reference to a class of objects. The paper combines the concern of the logical empiricists to formulate a rigorous meaning criterion, with the analytical interest in identifying and eliminating self-defeating statements through an analysis of the referential structure of theories. ●●●●● -/- The paper is followed by a list of other publications by the author that further develop and extend the ideas presented here. (shrink)

Since the publication of Ruth Millikan's Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories in 1984, a great deal of literature has discussed her so-called teleosemantic or biosemantic solution to the problem of intentionality. Only recently, though, has much attention been paid to her co-ordinated solution to the problem of productivity. This article, first, clearly describes the problems of intentionality, productivity, and compositionality, and describes their relationships and their relevance for the theory of meaning. It then describes Millikan's proposal with respect (...) to the problem of intentionality and shows how this buys her a novel solution to the problem of productivity. The article closes by discussing some alternative teleosemantic theories and some issues that will contribute to deciding between them. (shrink)

The title question should be construed as an epistemological and not ontological one. Omitting the difficult problems of the ontology of intentionality we will ask, if all, what is needed to explain the phenomenon of meaningful use of words, could be found “in our private head” interpreted as a sphere of specific privileged access, the sphere that is in the relevant epistemological sense subjective, private or non public. There are many “mentalistic” theories of meaning that force us to the (...) answer: “yes”. According to these theories our words are meaningful in virtue of some intentions of the speaker. And our intentions consist in having some mental states that should be in the relevant sense subjective or private. (Searle, Chisholm) But there are also the philosophers (Kripke, Putnam) who claim to have the evidence to the contrary. They argue that the meanings of our words could not be “in the head”, because of two important reasons. (i) Very often we don’t know exactly the meanings of the words that we use meaningfully. Furthermore, our “semantical self-knowledge” is principally corrigible by other people, and hence our access to the meanings we use could be by no means privileged. And secondly (ii) we can imagine a situation in which two subjects with the same mental intention use the same word with the very different meanings. We will investigate our question on the ground of the Ingarden’s philosophy. As we will see, his answer turns out to be in an interesting sense: “yes and no”. (shrink)

In this, the first of two ground-breaking volumes on the nature of language in the light of the way it evolved, James Hurford looks at how the world first came to have a meaning in the minds of animals and how in humans this meaning eventually came to be expressed as language. He reviews a mass of evidence to show how close some animals, especially primates and more especially apes, are to the brink of human language. Apes may (...) not talk to us but they construct rich cognitive representations of the world around them, and here, he shows, are the evolutionary seeds of abstract thought - the means of referring to objects, the memory of events, even elements of the propositional thinking philosophers have hitherto reserved for humans. What then, he asks, is the evolutionary path between the non-speaking minds of apes and our own speaking minds? Why don't apes communicate the richness of their thoughts to each other? Why do humans alone have a unique disposition to reveal their thoughts in complex detail? Professor Hurford searches a wide range of evidence for the answers to these central questions, including degrees of trust, the role of hormones, the ability to read minds, and the willingness to cooperate. Expressing himself congenially in consistently colloquial language the author builds up a vivid picture of how mind, language, and meaning evolved over millions of years. His book is a landmark contribution to the understanding of linguistic and thinking processes, and the fullest account yet published of the evolution of language and communication."A wonderful read - lucid, informative, and entertaining, while at the same time never talking down to the reader by sacrificing argumentation for the sake of 'simplicity'. Likely to be heralded as the major publication dealing with language evolution to date. Frederick J. Newmeyer, University of Washington. (shrink)

Holistic accounts of meaning normally incorporate a subjective dimension that invites the criticism that they make communication impossible, for speakers are bound to differ in ways the accounts take to be relevant to meaning, and holism generalises any difference over some words to a difference about all, and this seems incompatible with the idea that successful communication requires mutual understanding. I defend holism about meaning from this criticism. I argue that the same combination of properties (subjective origins (...) of value, holism among values, and ultimate publicity of value) is exhibited by monetary value and take the emergence of equilibrium prices as a model for the emergence of public meanings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pragmatism and a Behavioral Theory of Meaning HAROLD N. LEE IT HAS BEEN ALMOST ONE HUNDRED YEARS since the publication of Peirce's article "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" in the Popular Science Monthly. There Peirce stated what came to be called The Pragmatic Maxim. 1 Since then pragmatism has been developed and expounded by many proponents. Some of the developments have differed markedly from others, and some (...) of these differences are not easily compatible.2 Opponents of pragmatism have differed in their interpretations in step with the proponents. As the century is rounded out, we should be able to review the scene and appraise the maneuvers and sorties. Just what is pragmatism? It has often been held that pragmatism is not the name of a philosophy but only of a loose collection of philosophies having at most a faint family resemblance. It must be admitted that this interpretation received some support from James's genial and hospitable personality. Nevertheless, I think it is incorrect. We can now discern a central, characterizing position which the early proponents of the new movement were setting forth and defending; and we can free it from misunderstandings that have historically beset it. It was apparent from the first that action and the consequences of action were to be regarded as fundamental to the new position, but this characterization is vague enough to cover many incompatible special developments. It can be sharpened now, after a century of discussion and debate, and we can identify the respects in which action is central, thus separating the general position from the special interests belonging to one or another of the individuals who were its early advocates. Such clarification will reveal a pragmatism that is highly relevant to contemporary philosophy. I. Peirce proposed his maxim as a theory of meaning: the clear apprehension of an idea is to be obtained by considering the effects or consequences on future possible action that follow from the idea. Meanings consist in the possible effects of present experience on future behavior. In accordance with the pragmatic maxim, I shall take the behavioral theory of meaning and the behavioral theory of knowledge that issues from it to be the central position of pragmatism. What is either incompatible or unnecessary to this behavioral core is expendable, and if it has contributed to the misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the core, it should be abandoned in the further development of pragmatism. Both Peirce and James presented pragmatism primarily 1 Collected Papers o/ Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1-6 ed. by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss; vols. 7-8 ed. by Arthur W. Burks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931-35, 1958), vol. 5, paragraphs 2 and 402. Hereafter cited as CP followed by volume and paragraph number. 2 See A. O. Lovejoy, "The Thirteen Pragmatisms," Journal o[ Philosophy, V (1908); reprinted in The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Other Essays (Baltimore: The Johns HopkinsPress, 1963). [435] 436 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY as a method, but in the philosophies of both, and of Dewey as well, the emphasis on method is often obscured by specific doctrines in some field such as ontology, epistemology or ethics; and in the cases especially of James and Dewey, it was the special doetrines that elicited the bulk of the adverse criticism. The pragmatism of all the early pragmatists was so mixed with other advocacies and causes that it was often difficult to distinguish between what should be called pragmatic and what should not. Pragmatism did not emerge full-blown in stark separateness. Certain auxiliary positions that revolve around the behavioral theory of meaning also characterize pragmatism. They are to be found in the writings of all the early pragmatists and both yield and receive systematic support from the behavioral theory of meaning. Together with the theory of meaning they demarcate the core of pragmatism. The list is as follows: (1) Meaning and knowledge are behaviorally defined. (2) The various forms of pragmatism share an evolutionary, naturalistic outlook. (3) They all emphasize, in harmony with the evolutionary outlook, process and time-especially the continuity of passage and temporality. (4) They all show, in harmony with the continuity of process, a tendency to reject Cartesian dualism... (shrink)

There is a growing movement to increase access to palliative care by declaring it a human right. Calls for such a right—in the form of articles in the healthcare literature and pleas to the United Nations and World Health Organization—rarely define crucial concepts involved in such a declaration, in particular ‘palliative care’ and ‘human right’. This paper explores how such concepts might be more fully developed, the difficulties in using a human rights approach to promote palliative care, and the relevance (...) of such an enterprise to public health ethics. (shrink)

Addressing controversy over same-sex marriage, I defend the privatization response: disestablish civil marriage, leaving the question of same-sex marriage to private organizations; detach civil rights from erotic affiliation; and grant legal equality through the mechanism of civil unions. However, the privatization response does not fully address one key conservative argument to the effect that (heterosexual) marriage constitutes a public good of such importance that civil society has a sustaining interest in it. I acknowledge the legitimate, even profound, values or goods (...) that marriage promotes, but contend that they are compatible withhomosexuality. Further, I argue that marriage is neither necessary nor sufficient for sustaining the goods that inhere in modern marriage. Thus, it is not clear that marriage is the best way for the state to promote these goods. Finally, I suggest that the core goods of marital commitment are moral and are not the proper subject of state regulation. (shrink)

Addressing controversy over same-sex marriage, I defend the privatization response: disestablish civil marriage, leaving the question of same-sex marriage to private organizations; detach civil rights from erotic affiliation; and grant legal equality through the mechanism of civil unions. However, the privatization response does not fully address one key conservative argument to the effect that (heterosexual) marriage constitutes a public good of such importance that civil society has a sustaining interest in it. I acknowledge the legitimate, even profound, values or goods (...) that marriage promotes, but contend that they are compatible withhomosexuality. Further, I argue that marriage is neither necessary nor sufficient for sustaining the goods that inhere in modern marriage. Thus, it is not clear that marriage is the best way for the state to promote these goods. Finally, I suggest that the core goods of marital commitment are moral and are not the proper subject of state regulation. (shrink)

According to the principles derived from his theory of discourse ethics, Habermas's model of deliberative democracy is justified only if the public is capable of making political decisions that advance the common good. Recent public‐opinion research demonstrates that the public's overwhelming ignorance of politics precludes it from having such capabilities, even if radical measures were taken to thoroughly educate the public about politics or to increase the salience of politics in their lives.

Derogatory terms (racist, sexist, ethnic, and homophobic epithets) are bully words with ontological force: they serve to establish and maintain a corrupt social system fuelled by distinctions designed to justify relations of dominance and subordination. No wonder they have occasioned public outcry and legal response. The inferential role analysis developed here helps move us away from thinking of the harms as being located in connotation (representing mere speaker bias) or denotation (holding that the terms fail to refer due to inaccurate (...) descriptive content). The issue is not bad attitudes or referential misfires. An inferential role semantic analysis of derogatory terms shows exactly what is at stake between those who argue that the terms should be eliminated (Absolutists) and those who claim they can be successfully rehabilitated (Reclaimers). The Reclaimer maintains, and the Absolutist denies, that certain contexts can detach the derogatory force from deeply derogatory terms. The article looks at these claims with respect to ‘nigger’ and ‘dyke,’ setting out the inferential role of each term and examining detachability potential. Explaining detachability in terms of linguistic commitments, this article also addresses the issue of whether such terms count as political discourse, and examines the implications of that issue. (shrink)

The paper discusses the publications of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS) as part of a wider network of publication exchange, linking learned societies, libraries, and archives. The periodicals of the RSAS went through several reorganisations between 1813 and 1903, all to some extent related to their role in publication exchange. Although subject to many of the same deliberations of commercial value and institutional prestige as the expanding book trade, publication exchange offered a means of communication for institutions with (...) widely differing financial, linguistic and scientific status, and a forum for articulating a wide range of values significant in scientific publication. In the context of publication exchange, the roles of producers and consumers, and of publishers and repositories of scientific knowledge overlap, and librarians emerge alongside editors as central actors in scientific communication. Scientific editorship should be viewed not only as a means of disseminating scientific findings to wider audiences, but as designing a product that could be used to forge institutional connections, to acquire publications, and to build collections. The case of the RSAS periodicals highlights the importance of publication, not only for the distribution of scientific knowledge, but for its acquisition. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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'Glocal Public Philosophy' means a practical philosophy that deals with universal public issues from the particular public world or place where each individual lives and acts. Taking historical changes of the nature of public philosophy, as well as of academic situations from the 19th century onwards into consideration, the author tries to develop this idea in view of contemporary philosophies both in Western countries and in Japan. This book provides, not only new knowledge about modern Japanese public philosophies, but also (...) inspiration for a new role of philosophy for the realization of a more peaceful and just societies. (Series: Philosophy in International Context / Philosophie im internationalen Kontext. Studies / Abhandlungen, Vol. 9) [Subject: Philosophy]. (shrink)

Berkeley's immaterialism aims to undermine Descartes's skeptical arguments by denying that the connection between sensory perception and reality is contingent. However, this seems to undermine Berkeley's (alleged) defense of commonsense by failing to recognize the existence of objects not presently perceived by humans. I argue that this problem can be solved by means of two neglected Berkeleian doctrines: the status of the world as "a most coherent, instructive, and entertaining Discourse" which is 'spoken' by God (Siris, sect. 254) and the (...) nature of language as a public social practice. Together these doctrines entail that ordinary physical objects, including those that are not presently perceived, are a joint product of divine discursive activity and human interpretive activity. (shrink)

Rawlsian idea of public reason refers to the boundaries on political justification of coercive laws and public policies that have wide impact on lives of citizens. The boundaries of public reason means that political justification should be based on reasons we can expect every citizen can reasonably accept independently of any comprehensive religious, philosophical or moral doctrine to which she adhere. In modern liberal democracies characterized by reasonable pluralism of comprehensive doctrines it is unjustified for political argumentation to be based (...) on claims that many citizens can not accept. As I understand it, the point of idea of public reason is to strengthen the relationship of civic trust or civic friendship that can ensure inherent stability of just political regime. An important part of the idea of public reason is how it incorporates scientific claims in political argumentation. Rawls writes that citizens are to base their public justification on „presently accepted general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense, and the methods and conclusions of science when those are not controversial.“ If the idea of public reason is the source of political stability it is necessary to answer what it means that conclusions of science are controversial in political and social context? First, scientific controversy is different from controversy of comprehensive doctrines. Science stands outside of comprehensive doctrines so conclusions of science will not be controversial because they clash with comprehensive beliefs, but they will be controversial if they rely on comprehensive beliefs. Second, if conclusions of science are controversial within scientific community, if there are some expert witness disputing its validity, then maybe value-judgments can enter to set standards for certification of the scientific claim. If potential consequences of scientific claim are bad for welfare of some group in society than standards of evidence that will certify this claim must go up. Finally, even if some scientific claim has been certified it still can be controversial as a premise in political justification. The reason can be that certification has not been transparent and many citizens do not realize that this claim is part of scientific consensus. Again, the criterion for controversy of scientific conclusions in political context is connected to the notion of trust and not to the validity of scientific claim or supportive evidence by itself. (shrink)