In addition to the distinction between species as a category and speciesas a taxon, the word species is ambiguous in a very different butequally important way, namely the temporal distinction between horizontal andvertical species. Although often found in the relevant literature, thisdistinction has thus far remained vague and undefined. In this paper the use ofthe distinction is explored, an attempt is made to clarify and define it, andthen the relation between the two dimensions and the implications of thatrelation are examined. (...) Using Darwin's analogy of language evolution forspeciesevolution, and by appealing to a major change in the conception of languagebetween 19th- and 20th-century linguistics, it is argued that the horizontaldimension has priority (pragmatic, epistemological, logical, and ontological)over the vertical dimension. This has immense ramifications for the modernspecies problem. Fundamentally, it favors horizontal species concepts oververtical ones. In so doing it places species realism on a much more securefoundation and largely undercuts species pluralism. In addition it raises aserious problem for the increasingly popular family of phylogenetic speciesconcepts, which generally suffer from a dimensionality confusion. However,thereis a recent trend within this family that attempts to restore the priority ofthe horizontal dimension. It is concluded that this trend should be affirmedandthat the species-as-individuals view should be abandoned. (shrink)

John MacFarlane has made relativism popular again. Focusing just on his original discussion, I argue that the data he uses to motivate the position do not, in fact, motivatie it at all. Many of the points made here have since been made, independently, by Hermann Cappelen and John Hawthorne, in their book Relativism and Monadic Truth.

The language parasite approach refers to the view that language, like a parasite, is an adaptive system that evolves to fit its human hosts. Supported by recent computer simulations, LPA proponents claim that the reason that humans can use languages with ease is not because we have evolved with genetically specified linguistic instincts but because languages have adapted to the preexisting brain structures of humans. This article examines the LPA. It argues that, while the LPA has advantages over its rival, (...) Chomskyan nativism, there are additional factors that may limit linguistic variety that have yet to be identified by its insightful proponents. This article suggests abandoning the search for a decisive cause of language capacity and argues that language evolution is more likely to arise from balancing multiple engineering constraints. (shrink)

Cognitive science and hathayoga both make emphatic claims about the relationship between the body and the mind. To examine this complementary relationship I draw upon the five main approaches currently being used by cognitive science and then consider their implications within the context of three specific points of contact with hathayoga theory: the rejection of dualism, the nature of consciousness, and the role of the nervous and circulatory systems in religious experience. This type of comparative analysis can provide additional information (...) about the nature of consciousness and the potential practices that heighten our awareness or knowledge of it. Consequently, cognitive science offers a new and provocative way to dialogue with Indian yoga traditions in terms of the methods and theories of modernity. (shrink)

Defends the view that the study of language should concern itself, primarily, with idiolects. The main objections considered are forms of the normativity objection.

In this dissertation, I defend the view that natural languages are concrete biopsychological phenomena to be studied empirically. In Section One, I begin with an historical explanation. Some analytic philosophers, I argue, misapply formal logic as an analysis of natural language, when it was in fact originally developed as an alternative to natural language, employed for scientific purposes., quasi-mathematical philosophies of language, I argue, are partially a result of this misunderstanding. I respond to Jerrold Katz’ argument that a proper understanding (...) of analytic truth requires this quasi-mathematical philosophy of language through a model-theoretical analysis of analytic truth in modal and intuitionist logics. In Section Two, I offer a positive argument for a biopsychological philosophy of language. While Chomsky and others have emphasized the metaphysical basis of natural languages in psychological representations, I further contribute to understanding by emphasizing the basis of natural language in psychological representations of relevant properties of a specifically constrained biological implementation base. I defend this ontological perspective through a thorough engagement with the subfield of linguistic phonology and its important relations to physiological articulation and perception, along with an analysis of crucial interface relations among phonology, morphology and syntax. In the final section, I engage with the objections to this biopsychological philosophy of language stemming from concerns related to linguistic normativity and communication. If natural language is based metaphysically in the biopsychological representations of individuals, there are apparent paradoxes in the notion of public rules for language use, and in the notion of shared content for the purpose of communication. Drawing on David Forrest Wallace’s pragmatic conception of linguistic prescription, together with analogies from anti-realist metaethical systems, I defend the intelligibility of public linguistics norms without the need for abstract ontological commitment. Drawing on Ray Jackendoff’s internalist semantic and metasemantic analysese, together with Burtrand Russell’s analogy argument on other minds, I also defend intelligibility of linguistic communication equally without need for abstract ontological commitment. (shrink)