Other Areas of Linguistics

..تقديم.. كتاب ″الدماغ واللغة: التمثلات الذهنية والمعالجة المعجمية- مقاربة سيكولسانية ونورومعرفية ديداكتيكية-ʺ، لمؤلفته الدكتورة «نعيمة بعلاوي»، هو عبارة عن رسالة دكتوراه، نوقشت بجامعة سيدي محمد بن عبد الله، كلية الآداب والعلوم الإنسانية سايس-فاس سنة 2018. ويعد هذا الكتاب من الدراسات الجادة الحديثة والفريدة من نوعها موضوعا ومنهجا وأسلوبا، لأنه يرتكز على ظاهرتين متلازمتين غالبا في جميع الأنشطة والممارسات الإنسانية هما ̎الدماغ̎ و̎اللغة̎، وكذلك آليات اشتغالهما، خاصة ما يتعلق بالتمثلات الذهنية وسبل المعالجة المعجمية، من زاوية نظر مخالفة لمعظم الدراسات والإنتاجات العلمية (...) التي اهتمت بهذا الموضوع لحد الآن. إن ما يميز هذه الدراسة القيمة هو استنجاد الدكتورة نعيمة بمناهج منفتحة ومتكاملة، بدء بالمنهج الوصفي التحليلي من أجل تعرية الظاهرة المدروسة وتحديد مكوناتها وعناصرها وتفكيك شفراتها، عبر الملاحظة والتحليل والتفسير للتمكن من صياغة تعميمات شافية مقيدة بالمتغيرات العلمية المقترحة، إضافة إلى الجانب الميداني من صلب الممارسة باعتماد المقابلات والاستمارات وتفريغها في جداول محكمة وتحليلها للوصول إلى استنتاجات وتوصيات علمية رصينة. الدكتورة نعيمة بعلاوي حاولت من خلال هذا العمل الجاد إبراز إشكال محوري قلما يُتناول في علوم اللغة، بالتركيز على تفكيك وتحليل وتوضيح آليات وسبل الانتقال من دراسة اللغة باعتبارها نسقا من الأجزاء الفاعلة في تكامل بنيوي ووظيفي، إلى دراسة اللغة باعتبارها سياقات ومسارات ذهنية غامضة. وفي إطار هذا التحول نكون أمام انتقال يفرض نفسه، وهو الانتقال من اللسانيات الطبيعية إلى اللسانيات المعرفية، وبالتالي يندرج هذا العمل ضمن اللسانيات المعرفية، ويتأسس على مقاربات عدة كالبيولوجية والنفسية والثقافية والحاسوبية والتربوية...، وهذا يظهر من صلب الإشكال العميق لهذا الكتاب باعتباره يناقش طبيعة المعارف وكيفية تمثلها من طرف الأفراد وسيرورة تنظيمها ومعالجتها على مستوى الذهن. وما يزيد هذا العمل قيمة علمية أكثر كونه ركز على مناقشة متغيري المعجم الذهني والذاكرة المعجمية، وهنا تطرح صعوبة دراسة المفردات خاصة في جانبيها الوظيفي والهندسي وسبل المعالجة على مستوى الإدراك والفهم والإنجاز وكل السياقات اللغوية عند المتعلم خاصة. ومن هذا المنطلق عملت الدكتورة نعيمة على فتح آفاق وسبل اشتغال المعجم في علاقته بالقدرة على الاكتساب اللغوي، من أجل تنظيم وتطوير الأفكار والمعلومات المكتسبة على مستوى الذهن، وبالتالي تنمية الملكة اللغوية. هذا العمل المتميز يثير إشكالات عميقة وقضايا معرفية علمية جديرة بالبحث والتحليل، فهو في عمقه يتجاوز المألوف ويركب موجة التجريب الخلاق، كما يخالف قاعدة التأليف من أجل التأليف، وبهذا يعطي للدكتورة نعيمة بعلاوي صفة العلمية بامتياز، كما أنه يفتح آفاقا رحبة أمام الباحثين والمهووسين باقتفاء أثر الحرف والسؤال. وتحظى مجلة كراسات تربوية، المجلة العلمية المحكمة، بشرف احتضان هذا الكتاب ضمن سلسلة منشوراتها، لأنها رأت فيه قيمة مضافة للعلم والمعرفة، حيث يتماشى موضوعا ومنهجا مع سياسة النشر الخاصة بها، وباعتباره أحد الأعمال التي تستفز أذهان وأفكار متتبعيها وقرئها من داخل المملكة المغربية ومن خارجها. ..الصديق الصادقي العماري... ..مدير ورئيس تحرير مجلة كراسات تربوية.. الأربعاء 31 مارس 2021 أرفود . (shrink)

Este manuscrito es una fiel transcripción de la entrevista que se realizó al doctor Gilberto Sánchez Cabezas, miembro de la Academia Chilena de la Lengua. La información que brindó el académico en este intercambio de preguntas fue esencial para tener un panorama de cómo fluctúa una investigación medular de las lenguas originarias o aborígenes de su país. Asimismo, hizo algunas precisiones en función de las traducciones de escritores canónicos que existen en lenguas proteiformes y cómo estas son plasmadas con modificaciones (...) que podrían alterar en demasía el contenido. Para ello, el académico usa con frecuencia algunos ejemplos de palabras quechuas, aimaras o castellanas con sus respectivos significados, además de citar fragmentos de autores como Paul Verlaine, Attila József, García Lorca, Goethe y Homero, con la volición de que se corrobore la traslación semántica y fonológica. (shrink)

Victoria Espinosa Santos es miembro de la Academia Chilena de la Lengua desde 2017 y forma parte de la Comisión de Lexicografía. Esta entrevista, realizada de forma virtual el 6 de julio de 2021, se concentra en los siguientes temas: las variaciones del español de América, el rol de las lenguas indígenas en el español de Chile, el trabajo de las academias de la Lengua Española, el rol de las academias en relación con la lingüística y la literatura.

María José Rincón González nació en Sevilla (España) y reside en República Dominicana desde 1992. Es miembro de número de la Academia Dominicana de la Lengua (ADL) desde el 2011 y directora del Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía. Asimismo, es miembro correspondiente de la Real Academia Española (RAE) y miembro del consejo asesor de Fundéu Guzmán Ariza. Con respecto a su formación superior, es doctora en Filología por la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) y máster en Lexicografía por (...) la Universidad de Sevilla y la UNED. Ha participado en congresos internacionales y ha contribuido en las ediciones de diccionarios del idioma español. Entre sus publicaciones de artículos, se encuentran las que pertenecen al Diario Libre y el Boletín de la Academia Dominicana de la Lengua, entre otros textos, tales como “La antroponimia femenina dominicana (1945-1995)” (2002), “El Diccionario de la lengua” (2013), “Presentación del Diccionario de americanismos de la ASALE” (2013), “Variantes dialectales del léxico dominicano en el Diccionario de americanismos” (2016), “La lematización de variantes gráficas en el Diccionario del español dominicano” (2017) y “El Diccionario de criollismos, primer diccionario dominicano” (2020). De igual modo, ha publicado en libros y capítulos de libros. Entre ellos se encuentran el Diccionario del español dominicano (2013), “El nacimiento de un nuevo diccionario: el Diccionario del español dominicano” (2017) y De la eñe a la zeta (2019). (shrink)

En esta entrevista se resolvieron las interrogantes formuladas y orientadas a la preservación de la lengua castellana en Hispanoamérica. En principio, se abordaron tres temas fundamentales derivados de esta propuesta: la escritura, la investigación y la publicidad. Con el primer tópico, se discernió la función de las normativas, los diccionarios y los manuales elaborados por la Real Academia Española. Su intervención es enjundiosa, ya que direcciona al lector y académico al perfeccionamiento de su lenguaje, con la finalidad de que no (...) reincida en errores gramaticales. El segundo rubro abarca la investigación. Esta fue destacada porque facilita la interacción de los hablantes de la lengua castellana con las metodologías que se instauran para configurar un lenguaje totémico. Además, se asume que la única manera de difundir y contribuir a ese conocimiento sería por medio de las publicaciones científicas. La tercera variante consiste en cómo se inserta esta inquietud en torno a la lengua castellana en los ámbitos publicitarios. Esto es neurálgico por su audiencia limitada y el desinterés de respaldo por los Gobiernos. Frente a ello, consideré que el Dr. Ignacio Bosque Muñoz era la persona idónea para confrontar esta realidad sobre el castellano. Su rol importante en la RAE y la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE) lo amerita, así como sus publicaciones orientadas al estudio del idioma con enfoques gramaticales. Con su interacción, la volición de este trabajo se evidenciará con la explicación del panorama vigente de la lengua y su preservación, como cuando uno desea comprender el Quijote, entender las contribuciones gramaticales y lexicales de la RAE y la ASALE o cuestionar la proliferación del idioma desde los medios de comunicación. La auscultación de esas oscilaciones será el aporte de esta entrevista. (shrink)

Ysabel Ydelsa Delgado Del Águila nació el 23 de diciembre de 1990 en Lima (Perú). Estudió la carrera de Traducción e Interpretación en el Instituto de Educación Superior Tecnológico Privado Cibertec, donde se especializó en el aprendizaje de las lenguas del inglés y el portugués y se graduó con una tesis dedicada al escritor portugués José Saramago. Actualmente, trabaja como traductora freelance y es gerente de operaciones en la filial Recife (Brasil) de VFS Global para la misión de Canadá y (...) Reino Unido. Esta organización se encarga del trámite de documentos administrativos y de cobranza para la adquisición de una visa o un permiso temporal en esos países en condición de turista. Durante el tiempo de capacitación de sus empleados, la entidad les brinda la oportunidad de establecer vínculos educativos con las universidades de la India. Ha estudiado el idioma francés en la Alianza Francesa y el italiano en el Instituto Italiano de Cultura. Además, continúa sus estudios de Administración en la Universidad Cruzeiro do Sul (São Paulo, Brasil). (shrink)

Impairments in pragmatic abilities, that is, difficulties with appropriate use and interpretation of language – in particular, non-literal uses of language – are considered a hallmark of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). Despite considerable research attention, these pragmatic difficulties are poorly understood. In this paper, we discuss and evaluate existing hypotheses regarding the literalism of ASC individuals, that is, their tendency for literal interpretations of non-literal communicative intentions, and link them to accounts of pragmatic development in neurotypical children. We present evidence (...) that reveals a developmental stage at which neurotypical children also have a tendency for literal interpretations and provide a possible explanation for such behaviour, one that links it to other behavioural, rule-following, patterns typical of that age. We then discuss extant evidence that shows that strict adherence to rules is also a widespread feature in ASC, and suggest that literalism might be linked to such rule-following behaviour. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that indicative conditionals like "If people wear masks, the spread of Covid-19 will be diminished" require a probabilistic dependency between their antecedents and consequents to be acceptable (Skovgaard-Olsen et al., 2016). But it is easy to make the slip from this claim to the thesis that indicative conditionals are acceptable only if this probabilistic dependency results from a causal relation between antecedent and consequent. According to Pearl (2009), understanding a causal relation involves multiple, hierarchically organized conceptual dimensions: (...) prediction, intervention, and counterfactual dependence. In a series of experiments, we test the hypothesis that these conceptual dimensions are differentially encoded in indicative and counterfactual conditionals. If this hypothesis holds, then there are limits as to how much of a causal relation is captured by indicative conditionals alone. Our results show that the acceptance of indicative and counterfactual conditionals can become dissociated. Furthermore, it is found that the acceptance of both is needed for accepting a causal relation between two co-occurring events. The implications that these findings have for the hypothesis above, and for recent debates at the intersection of the psychology of reasoning and causal judgment, are critically discussed. Our findings are consistent with viewing indicative conditionals as answering predictive queries requiring evidential relevance (even in the absence of direct causal relations). Counterfactual conditionals in contrast target causal relevance, specifically. Finally, we discuss the implications our results have for the yet unsolved question of how reasoners succeed in constructing causal models from verbal descriptions. (shrink)

Past work has shown systematic differences between Easterners' and Westerners' intuitions about the reference of proper names. Understanding when these differences emerge in development will help us understand their origins. In the present study, we investigate the referential intuitions of English- and Chinese-speaking children and adults in the U.S. and China. Using a truth-value judgment task modeled on Kripke's classic Gödel case, we find that the cross-cultural differences are already in place at age seven. Thus, these differences cannot be attributed (...) to later education or enculturation. Instead, they must stem from differences that are present in early childhood. We consider alternate theories of reference that are compatible with these findings and discuss the possibility that the cross-cultural differences reflect differences in perspective-taking strategies. (shrink)

Can supervaluationism successfully handle indirect speech reports? This chapter considers, and rejects, Schiffer’s claim that they cannot. One alleged problem with indirect speech reports is that the truth of “Carla said that Bob is tall” implausibly requires that Carla said all of a huge number of precise things (i.e. that Bob was over n feet tall, for values of n corresponding to precisifications of “tall”). The paper shows why the supervaluationist is not committed to this. Vague singular terms are no (...) particular problem for supervaluationism within indirect speech reports, it is argued, but there remain some issues surrounding certain vague demonstratives. The supervaluationist has good responses available, however, and any remaining questions face all theories of vagueness and are more appropriately addressed within a theory of demonstratives rather than a theory of vagueness. (shrink)

A one-stop resource on the current developments in word order research, this comprehensive survey provides an up-to-date, critical overview of this widely debated topic, exploring and evaluating research carried out in four major ...

The paper argues for a decompositionalist account of lexical concepts. In particular, it presents and argues for a cluster decompositionalism, a view that claims that the complexes a token of a word corresponds to on a given occasion are typically built out of a determinate set of basic concepts, most of which are present on most other occasions of use of the word. The first part of the paper discusses some explanatory virtues of decompositionalism in general. The second singles out (...) cluster decompositionalism as the best explanation of the variability of meaning. The third part is devoted to responding to some problems. (shrink)

The success of deep learning in natural language processing raises intriguing questions about the nature of linguistic meaning and ways in which it can be processed by natural and artificial systems. One such question has to do with subword segmentation algorithms widely employed in language modeling, machine translation, and other tasks since 2016. These algorithms often cut words into semantically opaque pieces, such as ‘period’, ‘on’, ‘t’, and ‘ist’ in ‘period|on|t|ist’. The system then represents the resulting segments in a dense (...) vector space, which is expected to model grammatical relations among them. This representation may in turn be used to map ‘period|on|t|ist’ (English) to ‘par|od|ont|iste’ (French). Thus, instead of being modeled at the lexical level, translation is reformulated more generally as the task of learning the best bilingual mapping between the sequences of subword segments of two languages; and sometimes even between pure character sequences: ‘p|e|r|i|o|d|o|n|t|i|s|t’ → ‘p|a|r|o|d|o|n|t|i|s|t|e’. Such subword segmentations and alignments are at work in highly efficient end-to-end machine translation systems, despite their allegedly opaque nature. The computational value of such processes is unquestionable. But do they have any linguistic or philosophical plausibility? I attempt to cast light on this question by reviewing the relevant details of the subword segmentation algorithms and by relating them to important philosophical and linguistic debates, in the spirit of making artificial intelligence more transparent and explainable. (shrink)

Objective. Study of the validity and reliability of the discourse approach for the psycholinguistic understanding of the nature, structure, and features of the linguistic consciousness functioning. -/- Materials & Methods. This paper analyzes artificial neural network models built on the corpus of texts, which were obtained in the process of experimental research of the coronavirus quarantine concept as a new category of linguistic consciousness. The methodology of feedforward artificial neural networks (multilayer perceptron) was used in order to assess the possibility (...) of predicting the leading texts semantics based on the discourses ranks and their place in the respective linear sequence. Same baseline parameters were used to predict respondents' self-assessments of changes in their psychological well-being and in daily life routine during the quarantine, as well as to predict their preferences of the quarantine strategies. The study relied on basic ideas about discourse as a meaning constituted by the dispersion of other meanings (Foucault). The same dispersion mechanism realizes itself in interdiscourse interaction, forming a discursive formation at a higher level. The method of T-units (Hunt) was used to identify and count discourses in the texts. The ranking of discourses was provided based on the criterion of their semantic-syntactic autonomy. -/- Results. The conducted neural network modeling revealed a high accuracy in predicting the work of the linguistic consciousness functions associated with retrospective self-assessment and anticipatory imagination of the respondents. Another result of this modeling is a partial confirmation of the assumption concerning existence a relationship between the structural parameters of the discursive field (the rank of the discourses and their place in the respective linear sequence) and the leading semantics of the text. -/- Conclusions. A discourse approach to the study of linguistic consciousness, understanding of its structure and functioning features seems to be reasonably appropriate. The implementation of the approach presupposes the need to form a base of linguistic corpora with the inclusion in each text markup of such parameters as: the presence of specific discourses, their ranks, positions in the linear sequence of discourses. (shrink)

Objective. Study of the Covid-19 related quarantine concept as an emerging category of linguistic consciousness of Ukrainians. -/- Materials & Methods. The strategy of the study is based on the logical and methodological concept of inductivism. Respondents were asked to write down their own understanding of the quarantine, formulate an appropriate definition and describe the situation, which in their opinion is the exact opposite to quarantine. Respondents also assessed how much their psychological well-being, their daily lifestyle during quarantine had changed, (...) and ranked their preferences for the quarantine strategies proposed to them. A discursive analysis was applied to the obtained texts, as a result of which nine discourses were identified. These data, along with some socio-demographic characteristics were subjected to multidimensional mathematical and statistical processing. -/- Results. Covid-19 related quarantine is represented in the linguistic consciousness of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by a discursive field, which includes at least nine recognizable, semantically autonomous discourses. Empirically discovered such phenomenon as – inter-discourse semantic dissociation. Its essence is a statistically significant reduction in the probability of some discourses appearing in the texts when others are being actualized there. This feature is associated with the innate negativity of the language and determines the semantic biasing of the quarantine concept. Inter-discourse semantic dissociation, as well as the influence of non-discursive factors constitute the discursive formation of the quarantine concept, which is qualitatively characterized by the hierarchical relationship of its components. At the same time, it was revealed that part of the discourses interacting “horizontally” are indirectly associated “vertically”, which forms the stable semantic core of the quarantine concept. Partial empirical confirmation has been found of the previously put forward assumptions about: a) the existence of such a relationship between discourses and psychological defense mechanisms (as character-forming factors) that contributes to the hierarchical structure construction of discursive formations; b) the differential nature of discourses and mechanisms of psychological defenses interaction, which makes it possible to single out the discursive aspect in a characterological profile and consider a discourse as an operator of characterological semantics. -/- Conclusions. An empirical study made it possible to form a primary idea of the substantive and structural semantic features of the quarantine concept, as an emerging category of linguistic consciousness of Ukrainians. The results obtained have a potentially useful application perspective. Thus, when implementing anti-epidemiological measures, it is important to consider the studied features of the discursive formation hierarchical structure of the quarantine concept, since discursive semantics are associated with cognitive focusing, which, in turn, affects the behavior direction and its upshots. (shrink)

The manuscript presents a summary of the results of the linguistic semantics study of Covid-19 related quarantine. Research conducted on a sample of Russian speaking Ukrainians. Found content and structure of the respective discursive field. Described features of inter-discourse connections. Established that the actualization of some discourses is accompanied by the deactivation of others, what makes quarantine semantics biased. Also, it was suggested that some of the discourses are indirectly positively associated and form the semantic core of the quarantine concept.

In this chapter we use methods of corpus linguistics to investigate the ways in which mathematicians describe their work as explanatory in their research papers. We analyse use of the words explain/explanation (and various related words and expressions) in a large corpus of texts containing research papers in mathematics and in physical sciences, comparing this with their use in corpora of general, day-to-day English. We find that although mathematicians do use this family of words, such use is considerably less prevalent (...) in mathematics papers than in physics papers or in general English. Furthermore, we find that the proportion with which mathematicians use expressions related to ‘explaining why’ and ‘explaining how’ is significantly different to the equivalent proportion in physics and in general English. We discuss possible accounts for these differences. (shrink)

This article contains the results of a theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of natural language understanding (NLU), as a methodological problem. The combination of structural-ontological and informational-psychological approaches provided an opportunity to describe the subject matter field of NLU, as a composite function of the mind, which systemically combines the verbal and discursive structural layers. In particular, the idea of NLU is presented, on the one hand, as the relation between the discourse of a specific speech message and the meta-discourse (...) of a language, in turn, activated by the need-motivational factors. On the other hand, it is conceptualized as a process with a specific structure of information metabolism, the study of which implies the necessity to differentiate the affective (emotional) and need-motivational influences on the NLU, as well as to take into account their interaction. At the same time, the hypothesis about the influence of needs on NLU under the scenario similar to the pattern of Yerkes-Dodson is argued. And the theoretical conclusion that emotions fulfill the function of the operator of the structural features of the information metabolism of NLU is substantiated. Thus, depending on the modality of emotions in the process of NLU, it was proposed to distinguish two scenarios for the implementation of information metabolism - reduction and synthetic. The argument in favor of the conclusion about the productive and constitutive role of emotions in the process of NLU is also given. (shrink)

This has been made available gratis by the publisher. -/- This piece gives the raison d'etre for the development of the converters mentioned in the title. Three reasons are given, one linguistic, one philosophical, and one practical. It is suggested that at least /two/ independent converters are needed. -/- This piece ties together the extended paper "Abstracts from Logical Form I/II," and the short piece providing the comprehensive theory alluded to in the abstract of that extended paper in "Pragmatics, Montague, (...) and 'Abstracts from Logical Form'" by motivating the entire project from beginning to end. (shrink)

Narrative passages told from a character's perspective convey the character's thoughts and perceptions. We present a discourse process that recognizes characters'.

In recent decades, the analysis of phraseology has made use of the exploration of large corpora as a source of quantitative information about language. This paper intends to present the main lines of work in progress based on this empirical approach to linguistic analysis. In particular, we focus our attention on some problems relating to the morpho-syntactic annotation of corpora. The CORIS/CODIS corpus of contemporary written Italian, developed at CILTA – University of Bologna (Rossini Favretti 2000; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini, De (...) Santis in press), is a synchronic 100-million-word corpus and is being lemmatised and annotated with part-of-speech (POS) tags, in order to increase the quantity of information and improve data retrieval procedures (Tamburini 2000). The aim of POS tagging is to assign each lexical unit to the appropriate word class. Usually the set of tags is pre-established by the linguist, who uses his/her competence to identify the different word classes. The very first experiments we made revealed how the traditional part-of-speech distinctions in Italian (generally based on morphological and semantic criteria) are often inadequate to represent the syntactic features of words in context. It is worth noting that the uncertainties in categorisation contained in Italian grammars and dictionaries reflect a growing difficulty as they move from fundamental linguistic classes, such as nouns and verbs, to more complex classes, such as adverbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions. This latter class, that groups together elements traditionally used to express connections between sentences, appears inadequate when describing cohesive relations in Italian. This phenomenon actually seems to involve other elements traditionally assigned to different classes, such as adverbs, pronouns and interjections. Recent studies proposed the class of ‘connectives’, grouping all words that, apart from their traditional word class, have the function of connecting phrases and contributing to textual cohesion. From this point of view, conjunctions can be considered as part of phrasal connectives, that can in turn be included in the wider category of textual connectives. The aim of this study is to identify elements that can be included in the class of phrasal connectives, using quantitative methods. According to Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) observation that words are linked by dependent probabilities, corroborated by Halliday’s (1991) argument that the grammatical “system” (in Firth’s sense of the term) is essentially probabilistic, quantitative data are introduced in order to provide evidence of relative frequencies. Section 2 presents a description of word-class categorisation from the point of view of grammars and dictionaries arguing that the traditional category of conjunctions is inadequate for capturing the notion of phrasal connective. Section 3 examines the notion of ‘connective’ and suggests a truth-function interpretation of connective behaviour. Section 4 describes the quantitative methods proposed for analysing the distributional properties of lexical units, and section 5 comments on the results obtained by applying such methods drawing some provisional conclusions. (shrink)

Some recent studies in computational linguistics have aimed to take advantage of various cues presented by punctuation marks. This short survey is intended to summarise these research efforts and additionally, to outline a current perspective for the usage and functions of punctuation marks. We conclude by presenting an information-based framework for punctuation, influenced by treatments of several related phenomena in computational linguistics.

One of the central problems in the philosophy of action is to spell out the distinction between action and what merely happens, e.g., a wink versus an eye twitch. This essay proposes a theory of action offering an account of this distinction. The central claim of the theory is that action is movement that is controlled by the mover, where movement is understood capaciously and control is characterized by a trio of conditions consisting of an aim condition, a modal condition, (...) and an explanatory condition. Importantly, being controlled is shown to be a determinable property of movements, and its determination dimensions are isolated. Paired with the claim that action is movement that is controlled by the mover, this account of control as a determinable illuminates the diversity within the category of action. (shrink)

Mental actions are things we do with our minds. Consider inferring, deliberating, imagining, remembering, calculating, and so on. I introduce a non-reductive alternative to standard causalist accounts of mental action that understands such action in terms of dispositions for performing mental actions. I call this alternative the powers framework. On the powers framework, habitual and skillful mental actions are themselves infused with practical intelligence by being expressions of the agent’s rational tendencies and capacities, respectively. The intelligence exemplified in the performance (...) of habitual and skillful mental actions stems from the agent’s having shaped the corresponding tendencies and capacities through training and practice. In this way, mental habits and skills are ‘second nature’ to us. I substantiate the powers framework by giving an account of imagining as a type of skillful mental action. In particular, I argue that imagination is a power to construct representations and select their contents as a means to performing learned behaviors like pretending, engaging with fiction, predicting others’ behavior, reasoning about possibility and necessity, reasoning hypothetically or counterfactually about contingent matters of fact, and even imagining for its own sake. I extend the account of imagining to episodic remembering. I argue that such remembering, considered as a mental action, is a kind of imagining by virtue of the agent’s constructing a representation and selecting its content as a means of performing the learned behavior of navigating her personal past. (shrink)

In recent years, multiple authors have voiced discontent with the theoretical and practical neglect of the concept of ability. This includes, but is not limited to, philosophers of disability who have long assailed the implausible accounts of ability utilized by most social and political philosophers. Historically, most philosophers took it for granted that the meaning of ability will come easily, or is even a given, when higher-order questions are addressed. The aim of this chapter is to animate discussions about ability (...) trouble, which is to say, to animate (i) concern over the lack of philosophical inquiry that takes the concept of ability seriously as a problem in its own right and to animate (ii) novel interest in and further research on the concept of ability—and, correlatively, disability. We first analyze a famous argument concerning moral status that exemplifies how treating the concept of ability as a mere matter of common sense can lead philosophical inquiry awry. We then turn to the role of the concept of ability in an account that does, at least prima facie, take the concept seriously: Sen and Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. While better than common-sense approaches, we draw a cautionary tale, suggesting that even there the concept is simplified in theoretically and practically problematic ways. We conclude with a number of open questions offered in the hope of inspiring future non-ideal research on the topic. (shrink)

Psychological and philosophical studies have extended J. J. Gibson’s notion of affordances. Affordances are possibilities for bodily action presented to us by the objects of our perception. Recent work has argued that we should extend the actions afforded by perception to mental action. I argue that we can extend the notion of affordance itself. What I call ‘Introspective Affordances’ are possibilities for mental action presented to us by introspectively accessible states. While there are some prima facie worries concerning the non-perceptual (...) nature of introspection, I will argue that our internal mental lives share enough commonalities with experiences in our environment to warrant this extension. I will demonstrate the value of introspective affordances by showing how they allow us to explain an underexplored aspect of thought insertion. (shrink)

This thesis develops an account of ethics called the Linguistic Perspective, which is realist in a practical, non-theoretical sense, and is rooted Wittgenstein’s 'On Certainty'. On this account, normativity is intrinsic to human action and language; the norms of ethics are the logical limits of the most basic, unassailable concepts that practical reasoning requires for intelligibility. Part I lays the groundwork for this account by developing a Tractarian Reading of 'On Certainty'. Here, I contend that 'On Certainty' is primarily concerned (...) with the logical requirements and limits of language, and like the 'Tractatus' it develops these concerns in a realist direction. 'On Certainty', I argue, does so by advancing three key claims about logic: Everything descriptive of a language-game is part of logic; the boundary between logical and empirical propositions is not sharp; logic is founded on action. I investigate these claims, with particular emphasis on how natural human reactions provide logical conditions for the possibility of language. Hinge propositions, I argue, are rooted in these reactions; they point us to the limits of intelligibility of our concepts, though these limits are vague and inarticulable. In Part II, I discuss the practical syllogism and its validity. I argue that practical reasoning is distinct from theoretical reasoning and embodies a different standard of logical validity for inference. This standard is not strict and narrow, but creative and wide open; furthermore, it is an intrinsically ethical standard. Then, I advance my Linguistic Perspective on ethics, according to which human reactions provide the conditions for ethical normativity, just as they do for language. I argue that we can access ethical norms by reflecting on those linguistic concepts that are rooted in the most basic patterns of action, and by identifying the norms of behaviour that ensure the development of those concepts without contradiction. (shrink)

Intentional action is often accompanied by knowledge of what one is doing—knowledge which appears non-observational and non-inferential. G.E.M. Anscombe defends the stronger claim that intentional action always comes with such knowledge. Among those who follow Anscombe, some have altered the features, content, or species of the knowledge claimed to necessarily accompany intentional action. In this paper, I argue that there is no knowledge condition on intentional action, no matter the assumed features, content, or species of the knowledge. Further, rather than (...) follow the usual methodology in this debate of arguing by counterexample, I present an argument that explains why we continue to find counterexamples: intentional action and knowledge are regulated by thresholds under distinct pressures; in particular, the threshold of control regulating intentional action is disparately influenced by the role of intentional action in practical normativity. (shrink)

Some actions we perform “just like that” without taking a means, e.g., raising your arm or wiggling your finger. Other actions—the nonbasic actions—we perform by taking a means, e.g., voting by raising your arm or illuminating a room by flipping a switch. A nearly ubiquitous view about nonbasic action is that one's means to a nonbasic action constitutes the nonbasic action, as raising your arm constitutes voting or flipping a switch constitutes illuminating a room. In this paper, I challenge this (...) view. I argue that one's means to a nonbasic action can cause rather than constitute it. In the process, we gain a clearer understanding of the scope of our agency—one that includes mental actions such as judgment and decision—and the pluralistic nature of basic features of action including control, purposefulness, and agent participation. (shrink)

La actividad teórica y la actividad práctica han sido tradicionalmente entendidas como complementarias en el sentido que mediante la actividad teórica el sujeto se apropiaría idealmente de los objetos del mundo externo, mientras que mediante la actividad práctica realizaría sus propias metas subjetivas en el mundo. Sin embargo, dicho modelo plantea un conjunto de graves problemas exegéticos y conceptuales sobre la estructura y significado de la entera filosofía del espíritu de Hegel. En este artículo buscaremos esclarecer qué es a ojos (...) de Hegel lo propiamente específico de la actividad teórica y de la actividad práctica, para, sobre esa base, ofrecer un modelo exegético que logre dar satisfactoriamente cuenta de la particular periodización general que Hegel propone sobre las diferentes formas de actividad del espíritu humano. (shrink)

My aim in this essay is to reorient our understanding of the Kantian ethical project, especially in relation to its assumed rivals. I do this by considering Kant's relation to eudaimonism, especially in its Aristotelian form. I argue for two points. First, once we understand what Kant and Aristotle mean by happiness, we can see that not only is it the case that, by Kant's lights, Aristotle is not a eudaimonist. We can also see that, by Aristotle's lights, Kant is (...) a eudaimonist. Second, we can see that this agreement on eudaimonism actually reflects a deeper, more fundamental agreement on the nature of ethics as a distinctively practical philosophy. This is an important result, not just for the history of moral philosophy but for moral philosophy as well. For it suggests that both Kantians and Aristotelians may well have more argumentative resources available to them than is commonly thought. (shrink)

Mere capacity views hold that agents who can intervene in an unfolding movement are performing an agentially controlled action, regardless of whether they do intervene. I introduce a simple argument to show that the noncausal explanation offered by mere capacity views fails to explain both control and action. In cases where bodily subsystems, rather than the agent, generate control over a movement, agents can often intervene to override non-agential control. Yet, contrary to what capacity views suggest, in these cases, this (...) capacity to intervene does not amount to agential control or action. I illustrate this with a case study of how passive breathing, a mere behavior, is misclassified by mere capacity views. I end by revisiting the central alternative to mere capacity views: causal control views. Advances in our understanding of how agents exert control over unfolding movements indicate that the nature of control is characterized by ubiquitous, small-scale causal interventions. (shrink)

As one of the first readers of this fine collection of chapters in improvisation studies, I’ve been interactively constructing my experiences and interpretations of the chapters as I go along. Engaged reading – like all our characteristic activities – has a substantial improvisatory dimension. Readers are neither passively downloading data transmitted fully formed from the contributors’ minds nor making up whatever we like, projecting our own views onto a blank slate of a book. In forging and sharing here my own (...) idiosyncratic responses, I reach out to other, future readers by welcoming and inviting creative pushback, aiming to open up options, to accept and expand on the rich fare these authors offer us. (shrink)

What makes an event an action rather than a mere happening? What makes us agents rather than non-agents? What does being in control amount to? And in virtue of.

This is a review of Gul A. Agha’s Actors: A Model of Concurrent Computation in Distributed Systems (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987), a part of the MIT Press Series in Artificial Intelligence, edited by Patrick Winston, Michael Brady, and Daniel Bobrow.

This chapter discusses the structure of our temporally extended agency. We do not have the power to act directly at a distance, so any of our temporally extended projects must be sustained over its temporal unfolding by momentary actions. We need both the capacity to organize these momentary steps in light of a synoptic overview of the extended activity as a whole and to sustain our motivation to continue to pursue the extended activity. Hence, the distinctive mode in which we (...) act over time is that of ’planning agency,’ which requires a form of temporal identification that goes beyond mere psychological continuity. I then discuss the differences in internal structure between merely continuous and integrated activities, and between telic and atelic ones. I provide a taxonomy of the different kinds of temporal goods and values and how these structures might bear on the risk of crisis of meaning in our temporal existence. I then touch briefly on the issue of how our mortality might make a difference to the structure of what we find valuable and how it relates to the temporal features of our agency. In the closing section, I discuss the effects of the moving temporal location of the agent (with her local executive powers) relative to her extended pursuits, including the asymmetries generated by the distinction between past and future stages of the activity and the moving horizon of what the agent can anticipate and (indirectly) control. (shrink)

In this paper we will review the history of Quechua in the Peruvian territory (including the eras of the Inca empire, the viceroyalty, and the republic) and consider the challenges it faces in order to survive from the bicentenary of our republic onwards. I begin by showing that most varieties of Quechua are in a process of extinction and reflect on the causes that may have determined this trend in the republican era. I defend the thesis that it was the (...) progressive increase in opportunities for social mobility in the republic that motivated an increasing adoption of Spanish by Quechua speakers, since such opportunities depended on mastering Spanish. The paper closes by discussing about the possibilities to reverse the trend towards the extinction of Quechua. (shrink)

Com podem fer per individuar accions? Com determinem quines accions són diferents d'unes altres? El present treball discutirà dues teories sobre la individuaci´ó d'accions: la de Davidson i la de Goldman. Atenent a un clàssic escenari filosòfic sobre la individuació d'accions veurem les virtuds i defectes d'aquestes dues propostes.

It is known that Turkish, like all languages, has changed and is in a process of change. The direction of the change in question is both from verbal language to written language and from written language to verbal language. Changes are studied in linguistics by two different types of research approaches, namely diachronic and synchronic. This qualitative study using the quantitative data collection tool focused on the phenomenon of synchronic change. The aim of this descriptive study is to reveal to (...) what extend the reductions in verbal Turkish has reflected on written language. For this purpose, four words with adverbial functions (daha, beri, kadar ve kere), whose use in daily speech is gradually decreasing, from everyday language in standard Turkish of Turkey have been chosen, a " grammatical judgement test " has been prepared and applied to sample group that consists of 24 undergraduate students studying in Turkish Language and Literature department. As a result of the research, is has been determined that the functions of these words dropped in daily language use are provided with suffixes. It was observed that a significant part of the participants tended to accept the sentences whose words with adverbial were omitted. (shrink)

El presente escrito pretende ser una mirada a algunas visiones —antiguas y contemporáneas— en torno al modo en que los traductores reflexionan y enfrentan las traslaciones de la literatura clásica griega. De esta manera, estos pensamientos y proyecciones van desde los primeros escritos sobre la traducción con autores como Livio Andrónico, Cicerón o San Jerónimo, hasta traductores o traductólogos contemporáneos como Nord o Grammatico, quienes tienen en común la labor de traernos los textos clásicos —escritos en lengua griega— de Homero, (...) Heráclito, San Pablo, etc. (shrink)

Buddhist philosophers generally hold that concepts like “I” and “me,” while useful in everyday life, are ultimately meaningless. Under this view, there would be no “agents” because it is meaningless to say “I did so and so....” How do we explain the occurrence of actions without referring to agents? I argue that Cappelen and Dever’s Action Inventory Model (AIM) is a useful resource for developing a Buddhist theory of action. In response to an objection that AIM cannot explain a buddha’s (...) action, I show that a slightly tweaked version of AIM succeeds in explaining how a buddha acts. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 282-294, April 2022.

We commonly appeal to emotions to explain human behaviour: we seek comfort out of grief, we threaten someone in anger and we hide in fear. According to the standard Humean analysis, intentional action is always explained with reference to a belief-desire pair. According to recent consensus, however, emotions have independent motivating force apart from beliefs and desires, and supplant them when explaining emotional action. In this paper I provide a systematic framework for thinking about the motivational structure of emotion and (...) show how it is consistent with the Humean analysis. On this picture, emotions are not reducible to beliefs and desires, instead their primary motivational force comes from their role as modulators of desires—they control the strength of our occurrent desires. Emotions therefore motivate actions through the belief-desire system instead of overriding it. (shrink)

How homogenous are the sources of human motivation? Textbook Humeans hold that every human action is motivated by desire, thus any heterogeneity derives from differing objects of desire. Textbook Kantians hold that although some human actions are motivated by desire, others are motivated by reason. One question in this vicinity concerns whether there are states such that to be in one is at once take the world to be a certain way and to be motivated to act: the state-question. My (...) question here is different: whether passion and reason constitute distinct sources of human motivation: the source question. In this essay, I defend an affirmative answer to the source-question while remaining neutral on the state-question. I distinguish between what I call orectic desires, which are associated with the appetites, and anorectic desires, which are associated with judgments of the good. I argue that the two sorts of desires constitute distinct sources of motivation initially on the basis of their differing epistemological profiles. Specifically, self-attributions of anorectic desires are governed by the transparency condition, self-attributions of orectic desires are not. It emerges from this discussion that the motivation for performing an action arises in very different ways from each sort of desire. This difference, in turn, is explained by their differing relations to the will. Roughly, an orectic desire influences the will, but an anorectic desire is the will. The motivation to perform some of our actions derives simply from the determination that they are to-be-done—from reason. (shrink)

The received view about rationalizing explanations divides our psychological status into two kinds: beliefs and desires. In *The Retrieval of Ethics*, Talbot Brewer makes a case against this view. In this paper, I examine our experience as readers of *The Castle* by Franz Kafka to support Brewer's critical program, that is, his challenge to the received view. I will argue, however, that a proper analysis of this experience poses a serious problem to Brewer's alternative approach, that is, to his attempt (...) to retrieve our agency thanks to a proper understanding of the role of the good in rationalizing explanations. (shrink)

Whether we are free agents or not and to what extent depends on factors such as the necessary conditions for free will and our definition of human agency and identity. The present article, apart from possible alternatives and the causality of the agent regarding his actions, addresses the element of inclination as a necessary condition for free will. Therefore, an analysis of these conditions determines that even though in some circumstances the range of alternatives the agent can choose is very (...) limited or the agent chooses an action without having the inclination to choose it; however, this does not make the agent forced; rather, free will has levels and every individual possesses a certain extent of it in different conditions. Just the fact that the ultimate choice is made by the agent himself and has voluntarily performed the act himself ultimately is sufficient for being free. As a result, even though the influence of external factors on human actions cannot be disregarded; however, because the action is ultimately not outside his control, accordingly, there is neither such a thing as a compelled agent and nor are our actions left to luck. The character of the agent that is voluntarily formed through our actions plays a determinant role in our choices and actions due to the epistemic and motivational components they possess. (shrink)