Language, Thought, and Dessert
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Concepts and Compositionality: in Search of the Brain's Language Of
PS71CH11_Greene ARjats.cls November 27, 2019 15:55 Annual Review of Psychology Concepts and Compositionality: In Search of the Brain’s Language of Thought Steven M. Frankland1 and Joshua D. Greene2 1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA; email: [email protected] 2Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2020. 71:273–303 Keywords First published as a Review in Advance on compositionality, conceptual combination, language of thought, default September 24, 2019 mode network, grid cells, artificial intelligence The Annual Review of Psychology is online at psych.annualreviews.org Abstract https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216- Imagine Genghis Khan, Aretha Franklin, and the Cleveland Cavaliers per- 011829 forming an opera on Maui. This silly sentence makes a serious point: As Access provided by Harvard University on 01/08/20. For personal use only. Copyright © 2020 by Annual Reviews. humans, we can flexibly generate and comprehend an unbounded num- Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2020.71:273-303. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org All rights reserved ber of complex ideas. Little is known, however, about how our brains ac- complish this. Here we assemble clues from disparate areas of cognitive neuroscience, integrating recent research on language, memory, episodic simulation, and computational models of high-level cognition. Our review is framed by Fodor’s classic language of thought hypothesis, according to which our minds employ an amodal, language-like system for combining and recombining simple concepts to form more complex thoughts. Here, we highlight emerging work on combinatorial processes in the brain and con- sider this work’s relation to the language of thought. -
Structuralism 1. the Nature of Meaning Or Understanding
Structuralism 1. The nature of meaning or understanding. A. The role of structure as the system of relationships Something can only be understood (i.e., a meaning can be constructed) within a certain system of relationships (or structure). For example, a word which is a linguistic sign (something that stands for something else) can only be understood within a certain conventional system of signs, which is language, and not by itself (cf. the word / sound and “shark” in English and Arabic). A particular relationship within a شرق combination society (e.g., between a male offspring and his maternal uncle) can only be understood in the context of the whole system of kinship (e.g., matrilineal or patrilineal). Structuralism holds that, according to the human way of understanding things, particular elements have no absolute meaning or value: their meaning or value is relative to other elements. Everything makes sense only in relation to something else. An element cannot be perceived by itself. In order to understand a particular element we need to study the whole system of relationships or structure (this approach is also exactly the same as Malinowski’s: one cannot understand particular elements of culture out of the context of that culture). A particular element can only be studied as part of a greater structure. In fact, the only thing that can be studied is not particular elements or objects but relationships within a system. Our human world, so to speak, is made up of relationships, which make up permanent structures of the human mind. B. The role of oppositions / pairs of binary oppositions Structuralism holds that understanding can only happen if clearly defined or “significant” (= essential) differences are present which are called oppositions (or binary oppositions since they come in pairs). -
Philosophy of Linguistics
Philosophy of Linguistics Brian Rabern Philosophy DSB 4.04c 0131 651 5178 [email protected] Geoff Pullum Linguistics DSB 2.23 0131 650 3603 [email protected] Meetings The class meetings are from 11:00 to 13:00 each Wednesday from 19th September to 28th November in Old Library 2.19, Geography building, Old Infirmary complex (weeks 1–3 and 6–11) and in 01M.469 Teaching Room 12 (Doorway 3), Medical School building. Class meetings are mandatory. Readings Required reading is to be done before the class meets; background reading to be studied as time and specific interests permit. Assessment (i) short paper (1000-1500 words) to be turned in by 5 p.m. on Monday 15th October (topics will be provided); (ii) final essay examination with choice of questions from the whole of the course. Week 1 (19th September; Old Library 2.19): Introduction What linguistics is. Linguistics as a special science. Syntax and semantics as conceived in logic. Charles Morris’s trichotomy of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Philosophy of science applied to linguistics. Required reading • Hunter, Geoffrey (1971) Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First Order Logic (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 4–13. Background reading • Stainton, Robert (2014) ‘Philosophy of linguistics’, Oxford Handbooks Online. Online at https://works.bepress.com/robertstainton/126/ Week 2 (26th September; Old Library 2.19): Language and languages The metaphysics of linguistics. The vexed question of whether language should be regarded as psychological, social, or purely abstract. The descriptive linguistics of the American structuralists and the mentalist/cognitive backlash; ‘God’s truth’ (realism) vs. -
Linguistic Relativity Hyp
THE LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY HYPOTHESIS by Michele Nathan A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Social Science in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida December 1973 THE LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY HYPOTHESIS by Michele Nathan This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. John D. Early, Department of Anthropology, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the College of Social Science and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: &~ rl7 IC?13 (date) 1 ii ABSTRACT Author: Michele Nathan Title: The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis Institution: Florida Atlantic University Degree: Master of Arts Year: 1973 Although interest in the linguistic relativity hypothesis seems to have waned in recent years, this thesis attempts to assess the available evidence supporting it in order to show that further investigation of the hypothesis might be most profitable. Special attention is paid to the fact that anthropology has largely failed to substantiate any claims that correlations between culture and the semantics of language do exist. This has been due to the impressionistic nature of the studies in this area. The use of statistics and hypothesis testing to provide mor.e rigorous methodology is discussed in the hope that employing such paradigms would enable anthropology to contribute some sound evidence regarding t~~ hypothesis. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction • 1 CHAPTER I THE.HISTORY OF THE FORMULATION OF THE HYPOTHESIS. -
Linguistic Determinism and Mutability: the Sapir-Whorf "Hypothesis" and Intercultural Communication
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 403 761 FL 024 384 AUTHOR van Troyer, Gene TITLE Linguistic Determinism and Mutability: The Sapir-Whorf "Hypothesis" and Intercultural Communication. PUB DATE Dec 94 NOTE 18p. PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative/Feasibility (142) Journal Articles (080) JOURNAL CIT JALT Journal; v16 n2 p163-78 Dec 1994 EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PCO1 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Foreign Countries; *Intercultural Communication; *Language Research; *Linguistic Theory; Research Methodology; Scientific Methodology IDENTIFIERS *Sapir (Edward); Whorf (Benjamin Lee); *Whorfian Hypothesis ABSTRACT The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, long considered a factor in intercultural communication, is discussed. Empirical studies that have tended to validate the hypothesis are reviewed, and the hypothesis is then considered from the standpoint of empirical and scientific research requirements. It is shown that the hypothesis has never been formally defined for testing, and therefore does not exist as a scientifically testable thesis. As a result, all studies that have attempted to interpret empirical data accorded to the hypothesis are either flawed or invalid because they have tested something other than the hypothesis. It is concluded that the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis exists only as a notion, and has no meaningful relation to intercultural communication. Includes an abstract in Japanese. Contains 22 references. (Author/MSE) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION AND CENTER (ERIC) DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL This document has been reproduced as HAS BE N GRANTEDBY ceived from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. -
Islamization of Anthropological Knowledge
The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6. No. 1, 1989 143 Review Article Islamization of Anthropological Knowledge A. R. Momin The expansion of Western coloniaHsrn during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought in its wake the economic and political domination and exploitation of the Third World countries. Western colonialism and ethnocentrism went hand in hand. The colonial ideology was rationalized and justified in terms of the white man's burden; it was believed that the White races of Europe had the moral duty to carry the torch of civilization which was equated with Christianity and Western culture-to the dark comers of Asia and Africa. The ideology of Victorian Europe accorded the full status of humanity only to European Christians; the "other" people were condemned, as Edmund Leach has bluntly put it, as "sub-human animals, monsters, degenerate men, damned souls, or the products of a separate creation" (Leach, 1982). One of the most damaging consequences of colonialism relates to a massive undermining of the self-confidence of the colonized peoples. Their cultural values and institutions were ridiculed and harshly criticized. Worse still, the Western pattern of education introduced by colonial governments produced a breed of Westernized native elite, who held their own cultural heritage in contempt and who consciously identified themselves with the culture of their colonial masters. During the nineteenth century Orientalism emerged as an intellectual ally of Western colonialism. As Edward Said has cogently demonstrated, Oriental ism was a product of certain political and ideological forces operating in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that it was inextricably bound up with Western ethnocentrism, racism, and imperialism (Said, 1978). -
Franz Boas's Legacy of “Useful Knowledge”: the APS Archives And
Franz Boas’s Legacy of “Useful Knowledge”: The APS Archives and the Future of Americanist Anthropology1 REGNA DARNELL Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology University of Western Ontario t is a pleasure and privilege, though also somewhat intimidating, to address the assembled membership of the American Philosophical ISociety. Like the august founders under whose portraits we assemble, Members come to hear their peers share the results of their inquiries across the full range of the sciences and arenas of public affairs to which they have contributed “useful knowledge.” Prior to the profes- sionalization of science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the boundaries between disciplines were far less significant than they are today. Those who were not experts in particular topics could rest assured that their peers were capable of assessing both the state of knowledge in each other’s fields and the implications for society. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington were all polymaths, covering what we now separate into several kinds of science, humanities, and social science in ways that crosscut one another and illustrate the permeability of disciplinary boundaries. The study of the American Indian is a piece of that multidisciplinary heri- tage that constituted the APS and continues to characterize its public persona. The Founding Members of the Society all had direct and seminal experience with the Indians and with the conflict between their traditional ways of life and the infringing world of settler colonialism. On the one hand, they felt justified in exploiting Native resources, as surveyors, treaty negotiators, and land speculators. On the other hand, the Indians represented the uniqueness of the Americas, of the New World that defined itself apart from the decadence of old Europe. -
History of the Human Sciences
History of the Human Sciences http://hhs.sagepub.com/ Herder: culture, anthropology and the Enlightenment David Denby History of the Human Sciences 2005 18: 55 DOI: 10.1177/0952695105051126 The online version of this article can be found at: http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/18/1/55 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for History of the Human Sciences can be found at: Email Alerts: http://hhs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://hhs.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://hhs.sagepub.com/content/18/1/55.refs.html Downloaded from hhs.sagepub.com at Zabol University on November 23, 2010 03HHS18-1 Denby (ds) 8/3/05 8:47 am Page 55 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 18 No. 1 © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 55–76 [18:1;55–76; DOI: 10.1177/0952695105051126] Herder: culture, anthropology and the Enlightenment DAVID DENBY ABSTRACT The anthropological sensibility has often been seen as growing out of opposition to Enlightenment universalism. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) is often cited as an ancestor of modern cultural relativism, in which cultures exist in the plural. This article argues that Herder’s anthropology, and anthropology generally, are more closely related to Enlightenment thought than is generally considered. Herder certainly attacks Enlightenment abstraction, the arrogance of its Eurocentric historical teleology, and argues the case for a proto-hermeneutical approach which emphasizes embeddedness, horizon, the usefulness of prejudice. His suspicion of the ideology of progress and of associated theories of stadial development leads to a critique of cosmopolitanism and, particularly, of colonialism. -
Edward Sapir J 1884-1939
EDWARD SAPIR J 1884-1939 1 Hew shall we approach Sapir in an lecture? There is really no need nowadays for an introduction to this important anthropological linguist. The student has all the materials readily to hand, or so it would seem. There is first of all his original famous work, entitled Language, in 1921 (refer red to by his memorialists quite frequently as his only real book, as opposed to papers and monographs). Then there is that compend iouswork of riety, the Selected Writings, collected by David G. Mandelbaum (1949). 2 Its 617 pages largely fill the gap between his 'real book' and his life's output - even this volume does not contain the exhaustively complete works. Then there is the centenary volume, Eaward Sapir: AppraisaZs of his Life and Work~ edited by Konrad Koerner of the University of Ottawa and published (1984). This latter is what in English Depart- ments would be called the 'Critical Heritage'. It contains nine obituaries and memorials, dated 1939-52, reviews, mostly early, of language (1921) and of the monograph Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture (1916), several reviews of the Selected Writings (1949), and finally various re-reappraisals dated 1956-198 O. One begins to. expect the centennial volume to be in the centennial volume by some version of the Russellian paradox! We may add to all of this a small paperback of selections from the Selected Writings (Mandelbaum 1956), the early memorial volume edited by Spier and others in 1941, and many more. There is, 1 Delivered in the series General Linguistics for the of Linguistics, Oxford University, May 1987. -
Thoughts in Motion
! ! "# $ % & #''# #() (*+,(( - . / 0& /& &1 , ' ,2 &##/ # ,# & 3, ,/4 # 56/'# / & , , & , ' & / & ' , # # # & 7 '& & ' 3#/(((6,0 '# & / # 8 # 8 # & '# , ' & # '& ,% & # / # # & # ,9& / '# #' '# , 3 6, 3 & 6 # ,% / # / /& '# # 3 & '4 56'/ #/ ' # # & ' 34 56, # , ' & ,2 : # 3 6 & # '; # , / # ' &' ; 3,,/ <6,2 / ' & ' / / , ! (* 7== ,',= &< > 7 ' 777&?@* 2$-@*A@*B?@A(* 2$-@*A@*B?@A(AA 2-?((C@ % & #/(B@ Thoughts in Motion The Role of Long-Term L1 and Short-Term L2 Experience when Talking and Thinking of Caused Motion Guillermo Montero-Melis Centre for Research on Bilingualism Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism Stockholm University Doctoral Dissertation 2017 Centre for Research on Bilingualism Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism Stockholm University Copyright: Guillermo Montero-Melis Printing: Universitetsservice AB, Stockholm 2017 Correspondence: SE 106 91 Stockholm www.biling.su.se ISBN 978-91-7649-807-1 (print) ISBN 978-91-7649-808-8 (electronic) ISSN 1400-5921 A mi abuelo Manuel Melis, por su amor al saber Acknowledgements Two persons have mainly guided my efforts. I am deeply grateful to my main advisors, Manne -
Society: a Key Concept in Anthropology - Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik
ETHNOLOGY, ETHNOGRAPHY AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY - Society: A Key Concept In Anthropology - Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik SOCIETY: A KEY CONCEPT IN ANTHROPOLOGY Christian Giordano and Andrea Boscoboinik University of Fribourg, Department of Social Sciences, Pérolles 90, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland. Keywords: Society, Culture, Evolutionism, Functionalism, Structuralism, Post- Structuralism, Dynamic Anthropology, Diffusionism, Relativism, Interpretive Anthropology, Postmodern Anthropology Contents 1. Introduction: semantic ambiguities of the concept of anthropology 2. Pioneers of Social Anthropology: Evolutionism and Society 3. The Idea of Society in British Anthropology: Functionalism 4. The French School: Structuralism 5. From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism and Their Influence on Agency Theory 6. Against Stability: Dynamic Anthropology 7. Diffusionism, Historicism and Relativism in Franz Boas: Culture as the Expression of Society in American Anthropology 8. Beyond seemingly objective facts: the interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz 9. Postmodern Anthropology: The Advent of Methodological Individualism and the Omission of Society. 10. Conclusion. Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketches Summary In this chapter, we present the major anthropological currents that directly or indirectly made use of the notion of society in their theoretical reflections and analyses of empirical data. Having first clarified the polysemic nature of the term anthropology, we analyze the theoretical framework of early anthropologists who drew upon the evolutionist theories stemming from natural science. We then analyze British functionalism,UNESCO-EOLSS whose theoretical basis chiefly consists in a criticism of evolutionism, which was regarded as too speculative. Functionalism is characterized by its interest in institutions that, through their functions, generate cohesion in societies deemed primitive. TypicalSAMPLE of British functionalism is CHAPTERSthe empirical orientation of research put forward by Bronislaw Malinowski. -
Edward Sapir and the Origin of Language
EDWARD SAPIR AND THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE ALBERT F. H. NACCACHE Archaeology Department, Lebanese University, (ret.) Beirut, Lebanon [email protected] The field of Language Evolution is at a stage where its speed of growth and diversification is blurring the image of the origin of language, the “prime problem” at its heart. To help focus on this central issue, we take a step back in time and look at the logical analysis of it that Edward Sapir presented nearly a century ago. Starting with Sapir’s early involvement with the problem of language origin, we establish that his analysis of language is still congruent with today’s thinking, and then show that his insights into the origin of language still carry diagnostic and heuristic value today. 1. Introduction The origin of language is a challenging problem to focus upon. Language, like mind and intelligence, is a phenomenon that “we find intuitive but hard to define” (Floridi, 2013, p. 601), and a century of progress in Linguistics has only heightened our awareness of the protean nature of language while exacerbating the fuzziness of its definition. Meanwhile, research in the field of Language Evolution is blooming and the sheer variety of available approaches, though highly promising, has blurred, momentarily at least, our perception of the issue at the core of the field: the origin of language. We do not propose a solution to this problem, just an attempt to put it in perspective by looking at it through the writings of a researcher who had nearly no data with which to tackle the issue and could only rely on his analytical abilities.