“Reason,” said Lao Tze some twenty five hundred years ago, “is of all things the emptiest. Yet its use is inexhaustible.” With equal justice, he might have said the same of language. But Lao Tze, whose profound metaphysical probing appeared to carry him beyond the reach of linguistic aid, was led to insist that “Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.” Yet the “Old Philosopher,” as he is known to the Chinese, might be said (...) to admit, by the very implications of his insistence, that language can exercise the greatest influence on thought, if only, in his viewpoint, to nullify it. Today we acknowledge this influence by reversing the great metaphysician's statement, those without speech in some form or other cannot know. (shrink)

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama analitinės kalbos ir mokslo filosofijos raida Lietuvoje. Konstatuojama, kad analitinė filosofija Lietuvoje pradėta plėtoti XX amžiaus aštuntajame dešimtmetyje, kai Evaldas Nekrašas ir Rolandas Pavilionis paskelbė savo pirmųjų mokslo filosofijos ir kalbos filosofijos tyrinėjimų, kuriuose remiamasi analitine tradicija, rezultatus. Straipsnyje analizuojami jų ir kitų tyrėjų, kurie rėmėsi ta pačia tradicija, pirmiausia Algirdo Degučio ir Albino Plėšnio darbai. Analitinė filosofija buvo pirmoji nemarksistinės filosofijos kryptis, pradėta plėtoti pokarinėje Lietuvoje, todėl aštuntajame ir devintajame dešimtmečiuose ji atliko svarbų vaidmenį plečiant šalyje filosofinių (...) tyrinėjimų tematiką ir keičiant jų metodologinius pagrindus. Nors pastaruoju metu jos įtaka Lietuvos filosofijoje kiek sumažėjo, ji aiškiai juntama kai kuriuose pastarojo meto darbuose, kuriuose nagrinėjamos sąmonės filosofijos, priežastingumo, humanitarinių ir socialinių mokslų metodologijos problemos. Ji padarė nemažą poveikį ir pozityvizmo raidos bei politinės filosofijos problemų tyrimui. Pagrindiniai žodžiai: Lietuvos filosofija, analitinė filosofija, kalbos filosofija, mokslo filosofija, pozityvizmas. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to analyze the consequences of R. Rorty’s pragmatic cum linguistic turn for the understanding of natural and human sciences. The author analyzes first this turn and tries to show that it represents an intersubjectivist type of antirealism. Then he deals with Rorty’s approach to hermeneutics and his understanding of its place in natural and human sciences. Finally, he discusses the consequences of Rorty’s intersubjectivist antirealism for human sciences and tries to show that, on one (...) hand, it represents the philosophical basis of the so-called idea-lism of interpretative human science and on the other hand, it enables us to see the latter’s foundations from a new, fresh perspective. (shrink)

A Selection of Papers Contributed to Sections IV, VI, and XI of the Fourth International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Bucharest, September 1971.

By reconciling the linguistic device and the linguistic person, his book argues for a Vygotskyan cognitive science.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The hermeneutical ontology proposed in this book steers away from the rocks of realism and anti-realism.

‘Language and End Time’ is a translation of Sections I, IV and V of ‘Sprache und Endzeit’, a substantial essay by Günther Anders that was published in eight instalments in the Austrian journal FORVM from 1989 to 1991 (the full essay consists of 38 sections). The original essay was planned for inclusion in the third (unrealised) volume of The Obsolescence of Human Beings. ‘Language and End Time’ builds on the diagnosis of ‘our blindness toward the apocalypse’ that was (...) advanced in the first volume of The Obsolescence in 1956. The essay asks if there is a language that is capable of making us fully comprehend the looming ‘man-made apocalypse’. In response to this, it offers a critique of philosophical jargon and of the putatively ‘objective’ language of (nuclear) science, which are both dismissed as unsuitable. Sections I, IV and V introduce this core problematic. The selection of this text for inclusion in this special journal issue responds to present-day realities that inscribe Anders’s reflections on nuclear science and the nuclear situation into new contexts. The critique that ‘Language and End Time’ advances resonates with the way in which the (undemocratic) decisions of a few companies and individuals are shaping the future of life on earth. At the same time, the wider stakes of Anders’s turn against the language employed by (weapons) scientists are newly laid bare by the realities and politics of climate change and fake news. In this new context, the language of science is all too readily dismissed as if it were a mere idiom that can be ignored without consequence. It is against the backdrop of a future that is, if anything, more uncertain than at the time of Anders’s writing, that the essay’s reflections on popularisation, the limits of language and the nature of truth gain added significance. (shrink)

According to Bickerton, the behavioral sciences have failed to give an adequate account of human nature at least partly because of the conjunction and mutual reinforcement of two widespread beliefs: that language is simply a means of communication and that human intelligence is the result of the rapid growth and unusual size of human brains. Bickerton argues that each of the properties distinguishing human intelligence and consciousness from that of other animals can be shown to derive straightforwardly from properties (...) of language. In essence, language arose as a representational system, not a means of communication or a skill, and not a product of culture but an evolutionary adaptation. The author stresses the necessity of viewing intelligence in evolutionary terms, seeing it not as problem solving but as a way of maintaining homeostasis - the preservation of those conditions most favorable to an organism, the optimal achievable conditions for survival and well-being. The term protolanguage is used to describe the stringing together of symbols that prehuman hominids employed. "It did not allow them to turn today's imagination into tomorrow's fact. But it is just this power to transform imagination into fact that distinguishes human behavior from that of our ancestral species, and indeed from that of all other species. It is exactly what enables us to change our behavior, or invent vast ranges of new behavior, practically overnight, with no concomitant genetic changes." Language and Human Behavior should be of interest to anyone in the behavioral and evolutionary sciences and to all those concerned with the role of language in human behavior. (shrink)

Quentin Smith offers powerful arguments against the New Theory of Reference propounded by leading thhinkers in the philosophy of language. Smith defends the tensed theory of time and argues that the simultaneity is absoltue, basing this position on the theory that all propositions exist in time. Using detailed propostitions and a theory of cognitive significance, he introduces an alternative interpretation of reference that will be relevant to metaphysicians, philosophers of science and philosophers of language and may come (...) to be recognised as the definitive statement on the tensed theory of time. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore three alternative frameworks for understanding the nature of language and mentality, which accent syntactical, semantical, and pragmatical aspects of the phenomena with which they are concerned, respectively. Although the computational conception currently exerts considerable appeal, its defensibility appears to hinge upon an extremely implausible theory of the relation of form to content. Similarly, while the representational approach has much to recommend it, its range is essentially restricted to those units of (...) class='Hi'>language that can be understood in terms of undefined units. Thus, the only alternative among these three that can account for the meaning of primitive units of language is one emphasizing the basic role of skills, habits, and tendencies in relating signs and dispositions. (shrink)

This article discusses the work of George Seddon as a significant Australian intellectual whose writing on postcolonial settler-descendant relations with land and nature is a major contribution to academic and public life. Seddon’s originality lies partly in his bridging knowledge and expertise in both the humanities and sciences. However, while there is a reliance upon factual data drawn from geology, botany and zoology, Seddon’s analyses of language and culture can appear idiosyncratic and unsystematic in terms of social science (...) methods. Based on introspection, the work might be considered ‘autoethnography’, though Seddon seeks to do more than tell stories about himself. In acknowledging both the brilliance and shortcomings of Seddon’s work, I present some examples of how it has stimulated my own research on the cultural implications of naming species and places in Australia. (shrink)

In this paper, the author intends to present an approach against lengthy contracts, judgements, and pleadings. He describes the advantages of brevity, conciseness, and plain English, focusing on research in Israel and abroad. An extreme example of how a whole page may be condensed into one sentence is provided by the author, as well as the opinion of a Supreme Court Chief Justice regarding methods to be used in writing good judgments, and a lawyer’s proposal to summarize pleadings. In the (...) second part of this paper, the author briefly illustrates the differences between three disciplines: Law, Business Administration, and Social Sciences. He proposes that the Law should examine and adopt several elements from other disciplines that can have a positive impact on legal language. (shrink)

Logical positivism is widely associated with an illiberal technocratic view of politics. This view is a caricature. Some members of the left Vienna circle were explicit in their criticism of this conception of politics. In particular, Neurath's work attempted to link the internal epistemological pluralism and tolerance of logical empiricism with political pluralism and the rejection of a technocratic politics. This paper examines the role that unified science played in Neurath's defence of political and social pluralism. Neurath's project of (...) unified science addressed problems that lie at the centre of recent debates around liberalism concerning the possibility of social co-operation in conditions of pluralism. His response is distinctive in calling upon an empiricist tradition that differs from Kantian proceduralist approaches that have predominated in recent liberalism. While Neurath's position has problems, it deserves reconsideration, especially in so far as it questions the Kantian assumption that a thin language of abstract rights provides the best basis for the cosmopolital lingua franca required by conditions of social pluralism. An investigation of the role that unified science plays in Neurath's politics also gives reasons for revising common misconceptions about the nature of the unity of science programme itself. (shrink)

Professor Hilary Putnam has been one of the most influential and sharply original of recent American philosophers in a whole range of fields. His most important published work is collected here, together with several new and substantial studies, in two volumes. The first deals with the philosophy of mathematics and of science and the nature of philosophical and scientific enquiry; the second deals with the philosophy of language and mind. Volume one is now issued in a new edition, (...) including an essay on the philosophy of logic first published in 1971. (shrink)

This book examines linguistic expressions of emotion in intensional contexts and offers a formally elegant account of the relationship between language and emotion. The author presents a compelling case for the view that there exist, contrary to popular belief, logical universals at the intersection of language and emotive content. This book shows that emotive structures in the mind that are widely assumed to be not only subjectively or socio-culturally variable but also irrelevant to a general theory of cognition (...) offer an unusually suitable ground for a formal theory of emotive representations, allowing for surprising logical and cognitive consequences for a theory of cognition. Challenging mainstream assumptions in cognitive science and in linguistics, this book will appeal to linguists, philosophers of the mind, linguistic anthropologists, psychologists and cognitive scientists of all persuasions. Prakash Mondal is Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. He is the author of Language, Mind and Computation (2014), Natural Language and Possible Minds (2016) and Language, Biology and Cognition (completed). (shrink)

Many philosophers and psychologists argue that out everyday ability to predict and explain the actions and mental states of others is grounded in out possession of a primitive 'folk' psychological theory. Recently however, this theory has come under challenge from the simulation alternative. This alternative view says that human beings are able to predict and explain each other's actions by using the resources of their own minds to simulate the psychological aetiology of the actions of the others. This book and (...) the companion volume Folk Psychology: The Theory of Mind Debate together offer a richly woven fabric of philosophical and psychological theory, which promises to yield real insights into the nature of our mental lives. (shrink)

This is a book about Aristotle's philosophy of language, interpreted in a framework that provides a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and science. The aim of the book is to explicate the description of meaning contained in De Interpretatione and to show the relevance of that theory of meaning to much of the rest of Aristotle's philosophy. In the process Deborah Modrak reveals how that theory of meaning has been much maligned. This is a (...) major reassessment of an underestimated aspect of Aristotle that will be of particular interest to classical philosophers, classicists and historians of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

This book offers insights on the study of natural language as a complex adaptive system. It discusses a new way to tackle the problem of language modeling, and provides clues on how the close relation between natural language and some biological structures can be very fruitful for science. The book examines the theoretical framework and then applies its main principles to various areas of linguistics. It discusses applications in language contact, language change, diachronic linguistics, (...) and the potential enhancement of classical approaches to historical linguistics by means of new methodologies used in physics, biology, and agent systems theory. It shows how studying language evolution and change using computational simulations enables to integrate social structures in the evolution of language, and how this can give rise to a new way to approach sociolinguistics. Finally, it explores applications for discourse analysis, semantics and cognition. (shrink)

What is the role of language in human cognition? Could we attain self-consciousness and construct our civilisation without language? Such were the questions at the basis of eighteenth-century debates on the joint evolution of language, mind, and culture. Language and Enlightenment highlights the importance of language in the social theory, epistemology, and aesthetics of the Enlightenment. While focusing on the Berlin Academy under Frederick the Great, Avi Lifschitz situates the Berlin debates within a larger temporal (...) and geographical framework. He argues that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of all forms of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion rather than a feature of the so-called 'Counter-Enlightenment'. -/- Enlightenment authors of different persuasions investigated whether speechless human beings could have developed their language and society on their own. Such inquiries usually pondered the difficult shift from natural signs like cries and gestures to the artificial, articulate words of human language. This transition from nature to artifice was mirrored in other domains of inquiry, such as the origins of social relations, inequality, the arts and the sciences. By examining a wide variety of authors - Leibniz, Wolff, Condillac, Rousseau, Michaelis, and Herder, among others - Language and Enlightenment emphasises the open and malleable character of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. The language debates demonstrate that German theories of culture and language were not merely a rejection of French ideas. New notions of the genius of language and its role in cognition were constructed through a complex interaction with cross-European currents, especially via the prize contests at the Berlin Academy. (shrink)

This book looks at two ‘revolutions’ in philosophy – phenomenology and conceptual analysis which have been influential in sociology and psychology. It discusses humanistic psychiatry and sociological approaches to the specific area of mental illness, which counter the ultimately reductionist implications of Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The book, originally published in 1973, concludes by stating the broad underlying themes of the two forms of humanistic philosophy and indicating how they relate to the problems of theory and method in sociology.