The Routes of Sense : Thought, Semantic Underdeterminacy And
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Gibson's Ecological Approach: Perceiving What Exists
1 TRENDS IN INTERDISCIPLINARY STU DIES AVANT The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard AVANT Pismo awangardy filozoficzno-naukowej 2/2012 EDITORS OF THIS ISSUE / REDAKTORZY TEGO NUMERU Witold Hensel, Dawid Lubiszewski, Przemysław Nowakowski, Nelly Strehlau, Witold Wachowski TORUŃ 3 ISSN: 2082-6710 AVANT. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard AVANT. Pismo Awangardy Filozoficzno-Naukowej Vol. III, No. 2/2012 (October-December 2012), English Issue Toruń 2012 The texts are licensed under / Teksty udostępniono na licencji: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Graphics design / Opracowanie graficzne: Karolina Pluta & Jacek S. Podgórski. Cover/Okładka: pictures by / obrazy autorstwa: Teresa Young (front/przód: "The Ripple Effect"; back/tył: " Flight Of The Humblebee"). Graphics inside by / Grafika wewnątrz autorstwa: Karolina Pluta. Address of the Editorial Office / Adres redakcji: skr. poczt. nr 34, U.P. Toruń 2. Filia, ul. Mazowiecka 63/65, 87-100 Toruń, Poland www.avant.edu.pl/en [email protected] Publisher / Wydawca: Ośrodek Badań Filozoficznych, ul. Stawki 3/20, 00-193 Warszawa, Poland www.obf.edu.pl Academic cooperation: university workers and PhD students of Nicolaus Copernicus University (Toruń, Poland). Współpraca naukowa: pracownicy i doktoranci Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu. The Journal has been registered in District Court in Warsaw, under number: PR 17724. Czasopismo zarejestrowano w Sądzie Okręgowym w Warszawie pod numerem: PR 17724. ADVISORY BOARD / RADA NAUKOWA Chairman/Przewodniczący: Włodzisław -
Mind and World: Beyond the Externalism/Internalism Debate
Research Proposal Mind and World: Beyond the Externalism/Internalism Debate Sanjit Chakraborty Research Scholar Department of Philosophy Jadavpur University Background For the last few years the concept of the natural kind terms has haunted me. My main concern has been regarding the location of the meaning of these terms. Are meanings of the natural kind terms in the head or in the world? This question has been the most pressing in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Language. I have realized that we cannot separate mind from the world. I had in the beginning only a layman‟s conception regarding mind, meaning and the world. When I entered the field of philosophy inspired by Hilary Putnam, I found that semantic externalism is a vexing issue involving a vast area. The location of content is at the core of the metaphysical debate regarding internalism and externalism in the sense that internalists believe that mental proprieties are intrinsic only if they preserve across world identity of internal replicas. Externalism is opposed to this thinking. For externalists, mental properties are in many cases dependent on physical or social environment. The linguistic strategy also maintains a difference between internalism and externalism regarding the mental content. Descriptivism focuses on general terms that consist in descriptive content and leads to mode of presentation of reference through sense. Besides, the causal theory of reference refutes descriptivism to ensure that there is a causal chain of reference between words and 1 objects that help us to identify agent‟s thought through an identification of its relation with external environment. -
The Unlimited Responsibility of Spilling Ink Marko Zlomislic
ISSN 1393-614X Minerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 11 (2007): 128-152 ____________________________________________________ The Unlimited Responsibility of Spilling Ink Marko Zlomislic Abstract In order to show that both Derrida’s epistemology and his ethics can be understood in terms of his logic of writing and giving, I consider his conversation with Searle in Limited Inc. I bring out how a deconstruction that is implied by the dissemination of writing and giving makes a difference that accounts for the creative and responsible decisions that undecidability makes possible. Limited Inc has four parts and I will interpret it in terms of the four main concepts of Derrida. I will relate signature, event, context to Derrida’s notion of dissemination and show how he differs from Austin and Searle concerning the notion of the signature of the one who writes and gives. Next, I will show how in his reply to Derrida, entitled, “Reiterating the Differences”, Searle overlooks Derrida’s thought about the communication of intended meaning that has to do with Derrida’s distinction between force and meaning and his notion of differance. Here I will show that Searle cannot even follow his own criteria for doing philosophy. Then by looking at Limited Inc, I show how Derrida differs from Searle because repeatability is alterability. Derrida has an ethical intent all along to show that it is the ethos of alterity that is called forth by responsibility and accounted for by dissemination and difference. Of course, comments on comments, criticisms of criticisms, are subject to the law of diminishing fleas, but I think there are here some misconceptions still to be cleared up, some of which seem to still be prevalent in generally sensible quarters. -
Semantics and Context-Dependence: Towards a Strawsonian Account∗
Semantics and Context-Dependence: Towards a Strawsonian Account∗ Richard G Heck, Jr Brown University Some time in the mid-1990s, I began to encounter variations on the following argument, which was popular with certain of my colleagues and with students who had fallen under their influence. (i) Semantics is about truth-conditions. (ii) Only utterances have truth-conditions. (iii) Hence, a semantic theory must assign truth-conditions to utterances. (iv) Only a theory that incorporated a complete theory of human rationality could assign truth-conditions to utterances. (v) So there is no such thing as a semantic theory (in anything like the usual sense). The argument need not be formulated in terms of truth-conditions. The first premise could equally be stated as: Semantics is about the expression of propositions. The rest of the argument then adapts smoothly. So (i) is meant to be obvious and uncontroversial. With regard to the second premise, it is important to appreciate the force of the word “only”: (ii) asserts that (perhaps with a very few exceptions, such as statements of pure mathematics) sentences never have truth-conditions; only utterances do. So what underwrites (ii) is not just the existence of context-dependence but, rather, its ubiquity. As has become clear over the last few decades, it is not just the obvious expressions—like “I”, “here”, “this”, and the like—whose meaning seems to vary with the circumstances of utterance. All of the following sentences seem as if they could express different propositions on different occasions, due to context-dependence connected with the italicized expressions: • No-one passed the test. -
Borderline Vs. Unknown: Comparing Three-Valued Representations of Imperfect Information Davide Ciucci, Didier Dubois, Jonathan Lawry
Borderline vs. unknown: comparing three-valued representations of imperfect information Davide Ciucci, Didier Dubois, Jonathan Lawry To cite this version: Davide Ciucci, Didier Dubois, Jonathan Lawry. Borderline vs. unknown: comparing three-valued representations of imperfect information. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, Elsevier, 2014, vol. 55 (n° 9), pp. 1866-1889. 10.1016/j.ijar.2014.07.004. hal-01154064 HAL Id: hal-01154064 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01154064 Submitted on 21 May 2015 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Open Archive TOULOUSE Archive Ouverte ( OATAO ) OATAO is a n open access repository that collects the work of Toulouse researchers and makes it freely available over the web where possible. This is an author-deposited version published in : http://oatao.univ-toulouse .fr/ Eprints ID : 13234 To link to this article : DOI:10.1016/j.ijar.2014.07.004 URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijar.2014.07.004 To cite this version : Ciucci, Davide and Dubois, Didier and Lawry, Jonathan Borderline vs. unknown : comparing three-valued representations of imperfect information. (2014) International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, vol. 55 (n° 9). -
Holism and Compositionality
Holism and Compositionality Francis Jeffry Pelletier 1 Introduction A brief acquaintance with the web shows that the terms ‘holism’1 and ‘compositionality’ are used in many different fields, both academic and non-academic. And given any two academic fields, it is usually not obvious that the terms mean the same to the practitioners. Even just within philosophy and linguistics it seems that rather different conceptions are in play when we read any two different authors. We start, therefore, with a brief survey of some of the senses in which these terms are used. A little later we will make some more careful remarks about the notions. 1.1 Two Kinds of Compositionality A recent interdisciplinary conference revealed that there are (at least) two different things that are thought of when the issue of compositionality is considered. One concerns a (generalized) notion of “what is a complex item (of my theory) made of?” Here are a few places where this notion arose: Prototypes: Current prototype theory says that a prototype is a structure that has a number of attribute-value pairs. A question of interest in this area is: Given that prototype-1 has a structure [A: value-a; B: value-b; . ] and that prototype-2 has the structure [C: value-c; D: value-d . ], is the prototype of the “combined prototypes” (that is, the conceptual combination of the two proto- types) made up only from the material in the two component prototypes, that is, from the attribute-value pairs that are in one or the other of the prototypes? 1 ‘Whole’, and presumably also ’hole’, is derived from the Greek . -
Mieli, Maailma Ja Referenssi. John Mcdowellin Mielenfilosofian Ja
JYVÄSKYLÄ STUDIES IN EDUCATION, PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 328 Petteri Niemi Mieli, maailma ja referenssi John McDowellin mielen filosofian ja semantiikan kriittinen tarkastelu ja ontologinen täydennys JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO JYVÄSKYLÄ STUDIES IN EDUCATION, PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 328 Petteri Niemi Mieli, maailma ja referenssi John McDowellin mielenfilosofian ja semantiikan kriittinen tarkastelu ja ontologinen täydennys Esitetään Jyväskylän yliopiston yhteiskuntatieteellisen tiedekunnan suostumuksella julkisesti tarkastettavaksi yliopiston päärakennuksen salissa C1 tammikuun 12. päivänä 2008 kello 12. Academic dissertation to be publicly discussed, by permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Jyväskylä, in the Main Building, Hall C1, on January 12, 2008 at 12 o'clock noon. UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ JYVÄSKYLÄ 2008 Mieli, maailma ja referenssi John McDowellin mielenfilosofian ja semantiikan kriittinen tarkastelu ja ontologinen täydennys JYVÄSKYLÄ STUDIES IN EDUCATION, PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 328 Petteri Niemi Mieli, maailma ja referenssi John McDowellin mielenfilosofian ja semantiikan kriittinen tarkastelu ja ontologinen täydennys UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ JYVÄSKYLÄ 2008 Editors Jussi Kotkavirta Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy/philosophy, University of Jyväskylä Irene Ylönen, Marja-Leena Tynkkynen Publishing Unit, University Library of Jyväskylä URN:ISBN:9789513931988 ISBN 978-951-39-3198-8 (PDF) ISBN 978-951-39-3030-1 (nid.) ISSN 0075-4625 Copyright ©2008 , by University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä University Printing House, Jyväskylä 2008 ABSTRACT Niemi, Petteri Mind, World and Reference: A Critical Examination and Ontological Supple- ment of John McDowell’s Philosophy of Mind and Semantics Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2008, 283 p. (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research 0075-4625; 328) ISBN 978-951-39-3198-8 (PDF), 978-951-39-3030-1 (nid.) Summary Diss. -
Compositionality and the Metaphysics of Meaning
“This is not the first time such a view has been put forward. If it could be worked out in detail, so rigorously that not the smallest doubt remained, that, it seems to me, would be a result not entirely without importance.” - Gottlob Frege University of Alberta Compositionality and the Metaphysics of Meaning by Jeffery Fedorkiw A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Philosophy ©Jeffery Fedorkiw Fall 2011 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission. Dedicated to Helen Fedorkiw Abstract The principle of compositionality states that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its con- stituent parts and the way those parts are combined. Jerry Fodor has argued that semantic productivity and systematicity requires compositionality and that compositionality requires atomism about semantic values. Atomism is here the thesis that there are simple meanings which are assigned to grammatical terms completely inde- pendent of any other (i.e. -
Artigo Moderate Holism.Indd
ARTIGOSARTIGOS MODERATE HOLISM: ANSWERING TO CRITICISM AND EXPLAINING LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA* DOI 10.18224/frag.v28i2.6061 KÊNIO ANGELO DANTAS FREITAS ESTRELA** Resumo: neste artigo tenho o objetivo de apresentar uma versão do holismo semântico proposta por Henry Jackman (1999a, 1999b, 2005 e 2015) intitulada “holismo semântico moderado”. Defenderei que esta versão moderada do holismo, além de responder grande parte das críticas atribuídas ao holismo semântico tradicional (como a tradução, o desacordo, a mudança de opinião e comunicação), também se faz extremamente útil para explicar a ocorrência de diversos fenômenos linguísticos, como, por exemplo: a vagueza e a polissemia. Palavras-chave: Fenômenos linguísticos. Holismo semântico. Semântica. Holismo moderado. MEANING HOLISM1 eaning holism is a theory that is related to the meanings attributed to words and their relations to other words in a language. Th is theory supports the mutual in- Mterdependence of all items of linguistic knowledge in a way that, for example, to understand the meaning of a specifi c expression is necessary to understand a large sector of the language in question or even the language for completeness. Often holistic theories are derived from a more general holism that has to do with the holism of mental or cognitive * Recebido em: 16.11.2017. Aprovado em: 04.05.2018. Th is paper is the result of a research sponsored by Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científi ca y Tecnológica (Conicyt), agency of the government of Chile. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Henry Jackman for the criticisms, comments and suggestions made in this text. I would also like to thank José Tomás Alvarado, my advisor, for the sug- gestion of the subject discussed here and for all the support during my Ph.D. -
Sharp Boundaries and Supervaluationism
Sharp Boundaries and Supervaluationism by JONATHAN JAMES SALISBURY A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Philosophy, Theology and Religion College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham December 2010 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract It is claimed to be a crucial advantage of supervaluationism over other theories of vagueness that it avoids any commitment to sharp boundaries. This thesis will challenge that claim and argue that almost all forms of supervaluationism are committed to infinitely sharp boundaries and that some of these boundaries are interesting enough to be problematic. I shall argue that only iterated supervaluationism can avoid any commitment to sharp boundaries, but on the other hand that is the model that Terrance Horgan has recently argued is a form of transvaluationism and thus logically incoherent. I shall first argue that infinitely higher-order vagueness gives rise to an infinite number of boundaries. I will then argue that an infinite number of these boundaries are, in the case of the vague term ‘tall’, located over a finite range of heights. -
Thinking the Concept Otherwise: Deleuze and Expression
Thinking the Concept Otherwise: Deleuze and Expression PETER COOK University o/Sydney ABSTRACT: In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari think the concept of concept otherwise. In keeping with Deleuze 's professed empiricism, he and Guattari study various concepts and 'extract' a new concept ofthe concept. This constructive method does not illuminate how and why their proposed concept diffors from the traditional. This paper considers how Deleuze and Guattari 's concept does differ, as afirst step towards arriving at some evaluation oftheir analysis. REsUME: Dans Qu' est-ce que la philosophie?, Deleuze et Guattari pensent Ie concept autrement. Tout en s 'en tenant aI 'empirisme avoue de Deleuze, ce dernier et Guattari analysent differents concepts et en 'extraient' un nouveau concept de concept. Cette methode constructive n 'eclaire cependant pas comment et pourquoi Ie concept qu 'ils proposent di.ffere du concept traditionnel. Apres avoir considere la faryon dont Ie concept de Deleuze et Guattari di.ffere en effit de l'acception traditionnelle, cet article pourra se pencher sur la question de I 'evaluation de leur analyse. " ... one can ... think ... the concept of concept otherwise ... "l In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari think the concept of concept otherwise. In keeping with Deleuze's professed empiricism, he and Guattari study various concepts and 'extract' a new concept of the concept. This constructive method does not illuminate how and why their proposed concept differs from the traditional. In this paper I consider how Deleuze and Guattari's concept does differ, as a first step towards arriving at some evaluation of their analysis. -
Cg 2014 Alexander D. Morgan ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
c 2014 Alexander D. Morgan ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ON THE MATTER OF MEMORY: NEURAL COMPUTATION AND THE MECHANISMS OF INTENTIONAL AGENCY by ALEXANDER D. MORGAN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Philosophy written under the direction of Frances Egan and Robert Matthews and approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION On the Matter of Memory: Neural Computation and the Mechanisms of Intentional Agency by ALEXANDER D. MORGAN Dissertation Directors: Frances Egan & Robert Matthews Humans and other animals are intentional agents; they are capable of acting in ways that are caused and explained by their reasons. Reasons are widely held to be medi- ated by mental representations, but it is notoriously difficult to understand how the intentional content of mental representations could causally explain action. Thus there is a puzzle about how to `naturalize' intentional agency. The present work is motivated by the conviction that this puzzle will be solved by elucidating the neural mechanisms that mediate the cognitive capacities that are distinctive of intentional agency. Two main obstacles stand in the way of developing such a project, which are both manifestations of a widespread sentiment that, as Jerry Fodor once put it, \notions like computational state and representation aren't accessible in the language of neu- roscience". First, C. Randy Gallistel has argued extensively that the mechanisms posited by neuroscientists cannot function as representations in an engineering sense, since they allegedly cannot be manipulated by the computational operations required to generate structurally complex representations.