This paper suggests that it is largely a want of notional distinctions which fosters the “explanatory gap” that has beset the study of consciousness since T. Nagel’s revival of the topic. Modifying Ned Block’s controversial claim that we should countenance a “phenomenal-consciousness” which exists in its own right, we argue that there is a way to recuperate the intuitions he appeals to without engaging in an onerous reification of the facet in question. By renewing with the full type/token/tone trichotomy developed (...) by C. S. Peirce, we think the distinctness Block calls attention to can be seen as stemming not from any separate module lurking within the mind, but rather from our ability to prescind qualities from occurrences. (shrink)

The paper gives a detailed reconstruction and discussion of Peirce’s doctrine of propositions, so-called Dicisigns, developed in the years around 1900. The special features different from the logical mainstream are highlighted: the functional definition not dependent upon conscious stances nor human language, the semiotic characterization extending propositions and quasi-propositions to cover prelinguistic and prehuman occurrences of signs, the relations of Dicisigns to the conception of facts, of diagrammatical reasoning, of icons and indices, of meanings, of objects, of syntax in Peirce’s (...) logic-as-semiotics. (shrink)

This paper examines the contemporary philosophical and cognitive relevance of Charles Peirce's diagrammatic logic of existential graphs (EGs), the ‘moving pictures of thought’. The first part brings to the fore some hitherto unknown details about the reception of EGs in the early 1900s that took place amidst the emergence of modern conceptions of symbolic logic. In the second part, philosophical aspects of EGs and their contributions to contemporary logical theory are pointed out, including the relationship between iconic logic and images, (...) the problem of the meaning of logical constants, the cognitive economy of iconic logic, the failure of the Frege–Russell thesis, and the failure of the Language of Thought hypothesis. (shrink)

The sentence Every horse did not jump over the fence can be interpreted with the negation taking scope over the quantifier or with the quantifier Every taking scope over the negation. Beginning with Musolino, Crain and Thornton, much work has shown that while adults typically adopt a Not every reading in ‘2-of-3’ contexts, children do not and often produce None readings instead. In line with suggestions from Musolino and Lidz, we propose that this developmental effect relies to a great extent (...) on pragmatic capacities. In the present work, we aim to replicate Musolino et al. 's results with 4-year-olds and adults while including verbally competent autistic participants. Syntactic skills among verbally competent autistic participants are assumed to be unimpaired while their pragmatic deficiencies have been well documented. Our results show an adult preference for the Not every reading in 2-of-3 contexts and equivocality among children and autistic participants. This is in line with the expectation that syntax makes the two readings equally available and that adults, unlike young children and autistic participants, are efficient at exploiting the context in order to come up with a single consistent reading. (shrink)

Reasoning is a goal-oriented activity. The logical steps are at best the median part of a full reasoning: before them, a language has to be defined, and a model of the goal in this language has to be developed; after them, their result has to be checked in the real world with respect to the goal. Both the prior and the subsequent steps can be conducted rationally; none of them has a logical counterpart. Furthermore, Logic aims at prescribing what a (...) correct reasoning is. But correct with respect to what? If the answer is: with respect to truth, the next question is whether the truth in everyday life, physics, economy, is the same as the truth that logicians have in mind. Resorting to Logic is justified only if an idealization in terms of true propositions in the logical sense is compatible with the goal. If such an idealization is legitimate, so is the use of classical Logic. If not, there is no authority forbidding to skew Logic in order to better reflect the nature of the reasoning required for the task. (shrink)

Does there exist any equivalence between the notions of inconsistency and consequence in paraconsistent logics as is present in the classical two valued logic? This is the key issue of this paper. Starting with a language where negation ( ${\neg}$ ) is the only connective, two sets of axioms for consequence and inconsistency of paraconsistent logics are presented. During this study two points have come out. The first one is that the notion of inconsistency of paraconsistent logics turns out to (...) be a formula-dependent notion and the second one is that the characterization (i.e. equivalence) appears to be pertinent to a class of paraconsistent logics which have double negation property. (shrink)