In this paper, I will introduce you to a new theory of mental representation, emphasizing two important features. First, the theory coheres very well with folk psychology; better, I believe, than its competitors (e.g. Cummins, 1996; Dretske, 1988; Fodor, 1987 and Millikan, 1989, with which it has the most in common), though I will do little by way of direct comparison in this paper. Second, it receives support from current neuroscience. While other theories may be consistent with current neuroscience, none (...) that I know of actually receives some degree of confirmation from it. There are many different kinds of representations. Some examples are maps, words, meter and gauge readings, diagrams, pictures, scale models, computer simulations, blueprints, charts, musical notation, smoke signals, semaphore, and computer data structures. Qua representations, they all possess intentionality, or aboutness: maps are about places, most words are about the entities they refer to, meters and gauges are about the quantities they measure, etc. However, it seems they have little in common beyond this aboutness (Millikan, 1984, p. 85). Therefore we should be open to the possibility that the aboutness of different representations is ultimately to be explained in different ways. It is becoming increasingly popular to understand the aboutness of a large class of these representations in terms of function.1 For example, a tire gauge represents one of the properties that it indicates or carries information about, namely air pressure. However, it also carries information about other quantities. If the pressure and volume of the tire are kept constant, the tire gauge will indicate the temperature of the air inside the tire, and if the temperature and pressure are kept constant, the gauge will indicate the tire volume. However, although the tire gauge indicates these things, it does not represent them. It only.. (shrink)

One of the most important recent developments in the study of concepts has been the resurgence of interest in nativist accounts of the human conceptual system. However, many theorists suppose that a key feature of neural organization—the brain’s plasticity—undermines the nativist approach to concept acquisition. We argue that, on the contrary, not only does the brain’s plasticity fail to undermine concept nativism, but a detailed examination of the neurological evidence actually provides powerful support for concept nativism.

This thesis aims to develop a psychologically plausible account of concepts by integrating key insights from philosophy (on the metaphysical basis for concept possession) and psychology (on the mechanisms underlying concept acquisition). I adopt an approach known as informational atomism, developed by Jerry Fodor. Informational atomism is the conjunction of two theses: (i) informational semantics, according to which conceptual content is constituted exhaustively by nomological mind–world relations; and (ii) conceptual atomism, according to which (lexical) concepts have no internal structure. I (...) argue that informational semantics needs to be supplemented by allowing content-constitutive rules of inference (“meaning postulates”). This is because the content of one important class of concepts, the logical terms, is not plausibly informational. And since, it is argued, no principled distinction can be drawn between logical concepts and the rest, the problem that this raises is a general one. An immediate difficulty is that Quine’s classic arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction suggest that there can be no principled basis for distinguishing content-constitutive rules from the rest. I show that this concern can be overcome by taking a psychological approach: there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a particular inference is governed by a mentally-represented inference rule, albeit one that analytic philosophy does not have the resources to determine. I then consider the implications of this approach for concept acquisition. One mechanism underlying concept acquisition is the development of perceptual detectors for the objects that we encounter. I investigate how this might work, by drawing on recent ideas in ethology on ‘learning instincts’, and recent insights into the neurological basis for perceptual learning. What emerges is a view of concept acquisition as involving a complex interplay between innate constraints and environmental input. This supports Fodor’s recent move away from radical concept nativism: concept acquisition requires innate mechanisms, but does not require that concepts themselves be innate. (shrink)

Quinian bootstrapping is Susan Carey's solution to Fodor’s paradox of concept learning. Carey claims that contrary to Fodor’s view, not all learning amounts to hypothesis testing, and that there are ways in which even primitive concepts can be learned. Recently Georges Rey has argued that Carey’s attempt to refute radical concept nativism is unsuccessful. First it cannot explain how the expressive power of mental representational systems could increase due to learning. Second, both Fodorian circularity charges and Goodmanian problems of indeterminacy (...) apply to Carey’s examples of Quinian bootstrapping. I argue that Carey’s examples of bootstrapping can be amended to escape Fodorian and Goodmanian objections. I suggest some ways to improve on our models of concept learning to this end. I also argue that skill learning is the way for mental representational systems to increase their own expressive power, that is, to enrich their conceptual repertoire beyond what compositionality alone affords. (shrink)

Concepto es una palabra que refiere a un constructo problemático en la psicología cognitiva y en la filosofía de la mente, el cual indistintamente refiere a cierto tipo de representaciones mentales, a entidades extramentales e incluso a habilidades psicológicas. Lo cierto es que las teorías de conceptos emblemáticas al interior de la filosofía y la psicología, como la Teoría Clásica de conceptos (entendidos como definiciones aristotélicas), o como la Teoría de Prototipos de Rosch (entendidos como estructuras estadísticas de datos), no (...) logran dar cuenta de fenómenos tales como la productividad, la sistematicidad y la composicionalidad del pensamiento humano. Se analizarán los requisitos que una buena teoría psicológica sobre los conceptos debe satisfacer, y se presentará un breve esbozo de la Teoría de Sistemas de Símbolos Perceptuales de Lawrence Barsalou. (shrink)

There is a New Idea in epistemology. It goes by the name of ‘knowledge first,’ and it is particularly associated with Timothy Williamson’s book Knowledge and Its Limits. In slogan form, to put knowledge first is to treat knowledge as basic or fundamental, and to explain other states—belief, justification, maybe even content itself—in terms of knowledge, instead of vice versa. The idea has proven enormously interesting, and equally controversial. But deep foundational questions about its actual content remain relatively unexplored. We (...) think that a wide variety of views travel under the banner of ‘knowledge first’ (and that the slogan doesn’t help much with differentiating them). Furthermore, we think it is far from straightforward to draw connections between certain of these views; they are more independent than they are often assumed to be. Our project here is exploratory and clarificatory. We mean to tease apart various ‘knowledge first’ claims, and explore what connections they do or do not have with one another. Our taxonomy is offered in §2, and connections are explored in §3. The result, we hope, will be a clearer understanding of just what the knowledge first theses are. We conclude, in §4, with some brief suggestions as to how we think the various theses might be evaluated. (shrink)

Anti-representationalism is the hallmark of Richard Rorty's critique of the epistemological tradition. According to it, knowledge does not "mirror" reality and the human mind is not a representational device. Anti-representationalism is a family of philosophical theses, respectively dealing with the notion of "representation" in different ways. Though prima facie one may feel entitled to think about anti-representationalism as a kind of uniform philosophical movement, things stand quite differently. In fact, among many anti-representationalist options, we can identify two main versions: a (...) global anti-representationalism that entirely rejects the philosophical uses of the notion of "representation", and a local version that just removes the notion of "representation" from the explanatory toolbox. In this chapter I try to compare Rorty's global anti-representationalism and Robert Brandom's local version, exploiting a recent discussion by Brandom and a famous exchange between Rorty and Bjørn Ramberg about Donald Davidson's take on the special role of the intentional vocabulary. (shrink)

The theory of concepts advanced in the dissertation aims at accounting for a) how a concept makes successful practice possible, and b) how a scientific concept can be subject to rational change in the course of history. Traditional accounts in the philosophy of science have usually studied concepts in terms only of their reference; their concern is to establish a stability of reference in order to address the incommensurability problem. My discussion, in contrast, suggests that each scientific concept consists of (...) three components of content: 1) reference, 2) inferential role, and 3) the epistemic goal pursued with the concept's use. I argue that in the course of history a concept can change in any of these three components, and that change in one component—including change of reference—can be accounted for as being rational relative to other components, in particular a concept's epistemic goal.This semantic framework is applied to two cases from the history of biology: the homology concept as used in 19th and 20th century biology, and the gene concept as used in different parts of the 20th century. The homology case study argues that the advent of Darwinian evolutionary theory, despite introducing a new definition of homology, did not bring about a new homology concept (distinct from the pre-Darwinian concept) in the 19th century. Nowadays, however, distinct homology concepts are used in systematics/evolutionary biology, in evolutionary developmental biology, and in molecular biology. The emergence of these different homology concepts is explained as occurring in a rational fashion. The gene case study argues that conceptual progress occurred with the transition from the classical to the molecular gene concept, despite a change in reference. In the last two decades, change occurred internal to the molecular gene concept, so that nowadays this concept's usage and reference varies from context to context. I argue that this situation emerged rationally and that the current variation in usage and reference is conducive to biological practice.The dissertation uses ideas and methodological tools from the philosophy of mind and language, the philosophy of science, the history of science, and the psychology of concepts. (shrink)

In British and American anthropological literature, the ethnology of Central and Eastern European countries has shared in the plight of descriptions of this part of the world: it was seen as exotic, foreign, remote, a backwater, focused on sideline problems and situated on the periphery of this field of science. This state of affairs has been the case since at least the beginning of the Cold War as the descriptions of the national characters of Eastern Bloc communities, drafted by American (...) scholars. The ethnography of these countries was automatically aligned with the same categories of description which were applied to the characteristics of these communities. This was, in part, an effect of entirely different research traditions in the subject matter, objectives and methods of these remote parts of the science. The differences of ’cultural wholes’ did have a decisive impact on the image of ethnology. Like all these communities, Polish ethnology was perceived as a homogeneous whole, which it never was. (shrink)

It is not a particularly hard thing to want or seek explanations. In fact, explanations seem to be a large and natural part of our cognitive lives. Children ask why and how questions very early in development and seem genuinely to want some sort of answer, despite our often being poorly equipped to provide them at the appropriate level of sophistication and detail. We seek and receive explanations in every sphere of our adult lives, whether it be to understand why (...) a friendship has foundered, why a car will not start, or why ice expands when it freezes. Moreover, correctly or incorrectly, most of the time we think we know when we have or have not received a good explanation. There is a sense both that a given, successful explanation satisfies a cognitive need, and that a questionable or dubious explanation does not. There are also compelling intuitions about what make good explanations in terms of their form, that is, a sense of when they are structured correctly. (shrink)

The goal of inquiry in this essay is to ascertain to what extent the Principle of Compositionality – the thesis that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meaning of its parts and its mode of composition – can be justifiably imposed as a constraint on semantic theories, and thereby provide information about what meanings are. Apart from the introduction and the concluding chapter the thesis is divided into five chapters addressing different questions pertaining to the overarching (...) goal of inquiry. Chapter Two is an attempt to determine whether the Principle of Compositionality is a trivial principle. It is argued that this is not the case in the context of providing the semantics of natural languages since it is an open question whether the best theories that respect available syntactic and semantic data are compositional. Chapter Three and Chapter Four ask whether there are reasons to think that the Principle of Compositionality is true. It is argued that the three most commonly cited reasons for thinking that correct semantic theories must be compositional – Linguistic Creativity, Productivity and Systematicity – in fact only give us reasons to think that the meaning of complex expressions depend on the meanings of their parts and their modes of composition, but not that the meaning of complex expressions depend ONLY on those factors. Chapter Five asks whether there are any reasons to think that the Principle of Compositionality is false. It is argued that all the phenomena that have been suggested entail non-compositionality are in fact compatible with some versions of compositionality. Even if this conclusion is reached in this chapter, the conclusion of the previous two chapters entails that we are not justified in imposing the Principle of Compositionality as an adequacy constraint on Semantic theories. Chapter Six explores the ways in which information about what meanings are can be derived by imposing constraints on semantic theories. It is argued that the distinction emphasized in Chapter Three and Chapter Four between depending on and depending ONLY on is of critical importance. It is demonstrated that the informative potential of the Principle of Compositionality goes far beyond that of the principle we are in fact justified in imposing on semantic theories. So not only is it the case that we cannot learn anything about meanings from the justified imposition of the Principle of Compositionality – since we cannot justifiably impose it as a constraint on semantic theories – what we could have learned from it had we been justified in imposing it is very different from what we can learn from the principle that we are justified in imposing. (shrink)

The ability to understand and communicate about the actions of others is a fundamental aspect of our daily activity. How can we talk about what others are doing? What qualities do different actions have such that they cause us to see them as being different or similar? What is the connection between what we see and the development of concepts and words or expressions for the things that we see? To what extent can two different people see and talk about (...) the same things? Is there a common basis for our perception, and is there then a common basis for the concepts we form and the way in which the concepts become lexicalized in language? The broad purpose of this thesis is to relate aspects of perception, categorization and language to action recognition and conceptualization. This is achieved by empirically demonstrating a prototype structure for action categories and by revealing the effect this structure has on language via the semantic organization of verbs for natural actions. The results also show that implicit access to categorical information can affect the perceptual processing of basic actions. These findings indicate that our understanding of human actions is guided by the activation of high level information in the form of dynamic action templates or prototypes. More specifically, the first two empirical studies investigate the relation between perception and the hierarchical structure of action categories, i.e., subordinate, basic, and superordinate level action categories. Subjects generated lists of verbs based on perceptual criteria. Analyses based on multidimensional scaling showed a significant correlation for the semantic organization of a subset of the verbs for English and Swedish speaking subjects. Two additional experiments were performed in order to further determine the extent to which action categories exhibit graded structure, which would indicate the existence of prototypes for action categories. The results from typicality ratings and category verification showed that typicality judgments reliably predict category verification times for instances of different actions. Finally, the results from a repetition priming paradigm suggest that high level information about the categorical differences between actions can be implicitly activated and facilitates the later visual processing of displays of biological motion. This facilitation occurs for upright displays, but appears to be lacking for displays that are shown upside down. These results show that the implicit activation of information about action categories can play a critical role in the perception of human actions. (shrink)

The term “consciousness” is very often, though not always, interchangeable with the term “awareness,” which is more colloquial to many ears. We say things like “are you aware that ...” often. Sometimes we say “have you noticed that ... ?” to express similar thoughts, and this indicates a close connection between consciousness (awareness) and attention (noticing), which we will come back to later in this chapter. Ned Block, one of the key figures in this area, provides a useful characterization of (...) what he calls “phenomenal consciousness.” For him, phenomenal consciousness is experience. Experience covers perceptions, e.g., when we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste, we typically have experiences, such as seeing colors and smelling odors. It also covers bodily awareness, e.g., we typically have experiences of our own bodily temperature and positions of limbs. Consciousness is primarily about this experiential aspect of our mental lives. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper I sketch a theory of indexical concepts within a broadly epistemic framework. In the second part I discuss and dismiss an argument due to Jerry Fodor, to the effect that any epistemic approach to concept individuation (including the theory of indexical concepts I will sketch) is doomed to failure.

This thesis will address the question of whether there are any situated cognition concepts of memory functioning as investigative kinds in the sciences of memory. Situated cognition is an umbrella term, subsuming extended, embedded, embodied, enacted and distributed cognition. I will be looking closely at case studies of investigations into memory where such concepts seem prima facie most likely to be found in order to establish a) whether the researchers in question are in fact employing such concepts, and b) whether (...) the concepts are functioning well – functioning as investigative kinds – and should therefore continue to be employed, or whether something has gone wrong in the practice of the science and they should employ a different kind of concept. An historically situated approach to the case studies will allow me to answer part b) here. -/- Along the way, I will argue for a way of construing scientific research that I call the dynamic framework account, an account of (im)maturity for science, a variety of conceptual role semantics with respect to scientific concepts, and the historically situated case study-based method I will employ in answering the central question. My conclusions, and the way I reach them, constitute contributions to debates about situated cognition particularly, and to philosophy of science more generally, as well as recommendations for scientific practice. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the embodied view of cognition applied to language. First we discuss what we intend when we say that concepts are “embodied”. Then we briefly explain the notion of simulation, addressing also its neuro-physiological basis. In the main part of the paper we will focus on concepts mediated by language, presenting behavioral and neuro-physiological evidence of the action/perception systems activation during words and sentences comprehension.

This dissertation argues that mental representation is identical to phenomenal consciousness, and everything else that appears to be both mental and a matter of representation is not genuine mental representation, but either in some way derived from mental representation, or a case of non-mental representation.

The development of possible worlds semantics for modal claims has led to a more general application of that theory as a complete semantics for various formal and natural languages, and this view is widely held to be an adequate (philosophical) interpretation of the model theory for such languages. We argue here that this view generates a self-referential inconsistency that indicates either the falsity or the incompleteness of PWS.

forthcoming in P. Robbins and M. Aydede (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition (Cambridge UP).

The classic thought experiments for Content Externalism have been motivated by consideration of intentional states with a mind-to-world direction of fit. In this paper, I argue that when these experiments are run on intentional states with a world-to-mind direction of fit, the thought experiments actually support Content Internalism. Because of this, I argue that the classic thought experiments alone cannot properly motivate Content Externalism. I do not show that Content Externalism is false in this paper, just that it cannot be (...) motivated by the classic thought experiments alone. I discuss various externalist responses to the argument I raise and show that they all fail. (shrink)

Fodor (1975) proposed that word meanings were atomic, and that meaning relations between words could be captured by inference rules, or 'meaning postulates', linking atomic concepts. In his recent work, however, Fodor has rejected meaning postulates as a way of capturing meaning relations, because he sees no principled way of distinguishing meaning postulates from empirical knowledge. In this paper, I argue that Fodor is wrong to reject meaning postulates.

While Chomsky subscribes to methodological naturalism, he rejects both metaphysical naturalism and an externalist conception of meaning. This chapter explores some of Chomsky's grounds for rejecting both metaphysical naturalism and meaning externalism, in particular his peculiar attitude towards ontological physicalism and his arguments for an internalist approach to meaning.

Traditionally, computational theory (CT) and dynamical systems theory (DST) have presented themselves as opposed and incompatible paradigms in cognitive science. There have been some efforts to reconcile these paradigms, mainly, by assimilating DST to CT at the expenses of its anti-representationalist commitments. In this paper, building on Piccinini’s mechanistic account of computation and the notion of functional closure, we explore an alternative conciliatory strategy. We try to assimilate CT to DST by dropping its representationalist commitments, and by inviting CT to (...) recognize the functionally closed nature of some computational systems. (shrink)

The introduction to the volume and the overview of the idea of naturalizing the mind.

The following thesis starts from the question «why be moral?» and adresses an action-theoretic strategy for answering this question in the positive by reference to the constitutive natur of actions. In these debates, the epistemology of action has turned into a central issue. The thesis adresses these debates and develops a novel account of the epistemology: an account that may well turn out to provide a ground for the aforementioned constitutivist strategies.

Adviser: Professor Stefan Baumrin In the first chapter I introduce the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics and argue that metaethics, properly conceived, is a part of cognitive science. For example, the debate between rationalism and sentimentalism can be informed by recent empirical work in psychology and the neurosciences. In the second chapter I argue that the traditional view that one’s theory of semantics determines what one’s theory of justification must be is mistaken. Though it has been the case that (...) there are ‘typical’ combinations of semantic and justificational theories this is by no means forced on one. In the third chapter I examine two current kinds of expressivism; that of Blackburn and Copp. Each gives us an example of different combinations of semantic and justificatory theory. In Blackburn’s case he combines a use theory of meaning with a classic emotivist theory of justification, In Copp’s case it is a neo-Gricean philosophy of language with a realist’s theory of justification. I find both of these wanting as they ultimately collapse into relativistic subjectivism. In the fourth and fifth chapter I turn to developing Emotive Realism. The basic idea behind this view is that when someone says ‘x is wrong/right’ that person has (a) expressed a moral emotion about x and at the same time (b) expressed the belief that the emotion in (a) is the correct one to have. The belief expressed in (b) will be true or false depending on one’s theory of justification. In the fourth chapter I argue that we need separate semantic theories for thoughts and sentences. In the fifth chapter I fill in the details of Emotive Realism as I see it. (shrink)

Fodor (1998) argues that most lexical concepts have no internal structure. He rejects what he calls Inferential Role Semantics (IRS), the view that primitive concepts are constituted by their inferential relations, on the grounds that this violates the compositionality constraint and leads to an unacceptable form of holism. In rejecting IRS, Fodor must also reject meaning postulates. I argue, contra Fodor, that meaning postulates must be retained, but that when suitably constrained they are not susceptible to his arguments against IRS. (...) This has important implications for the view that certain of our concepts are deferential. A consequence of the arguments I present is that deference is relegated to a relatively minor role in what Sperber (1997) refers to as reflective concepts; deference has no important role to play in the vast majority of our intuitive concepts. (shrink)

Formal ontologies are nowadays widely considered a standard tool for knowledge representation and reasoning in the Semantic Web. In this context, they are expected to play an important role in helping automated processes to access information. Namely: they are expected to provide a formal structure able to explicate the relationships between different concepts/terms, thus allowing intelligent agents to interpret, correctly, the semantics of the web resources improving the performances of the search technologies. Here we take into account a problem regarding (...) Knowledge Representation in general, and ontology based representations in particular; namely: the fact that knowledge modeling seems to be constrained between conflicting requirements, such as compositionality, on the one hand and the need to represent prototypical information on the other. In particular, most common sense concepts seem not to be captured by the stringent semantics expressed by such formalisms as, for example, Description Logics (which are the formalisms on which the ontology languages have been built). The aim of this work is to analyse this problem, suggesting a possible solution suitable for formal ontologies and semantic web representations. The questions guiding this research, in fact, have been: is it possible to provide a formal representational framework which, for the same concept, combines both the classical modelling view (accounting for compositional information) and defeasible, prototypical knowledge ? Is it possible to propose a modelling architecture able to provide different type of reasoning (e.g. classical deductive reasoning for the compositional component and a non monotonic reasoning for the prototypical one)? We suggest a possible answer to these questions proposing a modelling framework able to represent, within the semantic web languages, a multilevel representation of conceptual information, integrating both classical and non classical (typicality based) information. Within this framework we hypothesise, at least in principle, the coexistence of multiple reasoning processes involving the different levels of representation. (shrink)

Inferentialism is the conviction that to be meaningful in the distinctively human way, or to have a 'conceptual content', is to be governed by a certain kind of inferential rules. The term was coined by Robert Brandom as a label for his theory of language; however, it is also naturally applicable (and is growing increasingly common) within the philosophy of logic.

We try to show that there is no difference in principle between communicating a piece of information to a human and to a machine. The argumentation depends on the following theses: Communicating is transfer of information; information has propositional form; propositional form can be modelled as categorization; categorisation can be modelled in a machine; a suitably equipped machine can grasp propositional content designed for human communication. What I suggest is that the discussion should focus on the truth and precise meaning (...) of these statements. However, in case these statements are true it follows that: For any act of communication that successfully transfers a piece of information to a human, that act could also transfer that piece of information to a machine. (shrink)

A general direction in which cognitive linguistics is heading at the turn of the century is outlined and a revised understanding of cognitive linguistics as a methodological paradigm is suggest. The goal of cognitive linguistics is defined as understanding what language is and what language does to ensure the predominance of homo sapiens as a biological species. This makes cognitive linguistics a biologically oriented empirical science.

Semantic holism has it that the semantic properties of an individual expression are determined by that expression.

Brandom's book Making It Explicit defends Davidson's claim that conceptual thought can arise only on the background of a practice of mutual interpretation, without endorsing the further view that one can be a thinker only if one has the concept of a concept. This involves giving an account of conceptual content in terms of what Brandom calls practical deontic attitudes. In this paper, I make a plea for the conclusion that these practical attitudes are best seen as intentional, but non-conceptually (...) contentful. In particular, I argue that the hypothesis that Brandom's practical deontic attitudes are non-conceptually contentful wouldn't conflict with his view that non-conceptual intentionality is merely derivative. I then explore some of the implications which this hypothesis might have with respect to various forms of «intentional ascent». (shrink)

I show that there are good arguments and evidence to boot that support the language as an instrument of thought hypothesis. The underlying mechanisms of language, comprising of expressions structured hierarchically and recursively, provide a perspective (in the form of a conceptual structure) on the world, for it is only via language that certain perspectives are avail- able to us and to our thought processes. These mechanisms provide us with a uniquely human way of thinking and talking about the world (...) that is different to the sort of thinking we share with other animals. If the primary function of language were communication then one would expect that the underlying mechanisms of language will be structured in a way that favours successful communication. I show that not only is this not the case, but that the underlying mechanisms of language are in fact structured in a way to maximise computational efficiency, even if it means causing communicative problems. Moreover, I discuss evidence from comparative, neuropatho- logical, developmental, and neuroscientific evidence that supports the claim that language is an instrument of thought. (shrink)

The thesis is intended to contribute to the growing understanding of the indispensable role played by phenomenal consciousness in human cognition, and specifically in making our concepts of the external world available. The focus falls on so called observational concepts, a type of rudimentary, perceptually-based objective concepts in our repertoire — picking out manifest properties such as colors and shapes. A theory of such concepts gets provided, and, consequently, the exact role that perceptual consciousness plays in making concepts of this (...) sort available gets settled. In the first half of the thesis, observational concepts get construed as a special type of recognitional concepts. On an analogy with perceptual demonstratives, having such concepts would involve having non-trivial knowledge of their reference. The experiential basis of such concepts would, among other things, provide for such constitutive knowledge. The theoretical background relevant to the hypothesis gets provided in the first chapter. A defence of the hypothesis follows in the second. In the second half of the thesis, care is taken to distinguish among two ways in which the constitutive knowledge of the reference of an observational concept could be fleshed out. In the third chapter, perceptual experience is shown to provide the basis both for knowledge of observational properties by acquaintance, and for knowledge of the essence of such properties — provided that knowledge of essence gets construed in the right, modest way. It might be natural to take knowledge by acquaintance to be the sort relevant to observational concept possession, especially given that in the case of perceptual demonstratives this is the role likely played by experience. However, this initial impression proves to be mistaken. The constitutive knowledge of the referent of an observational concept turns out to consist in the capacity to determine a priori the essence of the respective property. To show this, an argument gets provided in the penultimate fourth chapter, based on the key role played by experiences of instances of observational properties in optimal viewing conditions in enabling the possession of the respective observational concept. (shrink)

Over two decades ago a "quite revolution" overwhelmingly replaced knowledgebased approaches in natural language processing (NLP) by quantitative (e.g., statistical, corpus-based, machine learning) methods. Although it is our firm belief that purely quantitative approaches cannot be the only paradigm for NLP, dissatisfaction with purely engineering approaches to the construction of large knowledge bases for NLP are somewhat justified. In this paper we hope to demonstrate that both trends are partly misguided and that the time has come to enrich logical semantics (...) with an ontological structure that reflects our commonsense view of the world and the way we talk about in ordinary language. In this paper it will be demonstrated that assuming such an ontological structure a number of challenges in the semantics of natural language (e.g., metonymy, intensionality, copredication, nominal compounds, etc.) can be properly and uniformly addressed. (shrink)

assumptions about the phenomena of interest with process models. Thus, phlogiston has been replaced by combustion, caloric by random thermal motion, and vital fluid by far- from-equilibrium self-reproducing organizations of process. The most significant exceptions to this historical pattern are found in studies of the mind. Here, substance assumptions are still ubiquitous, ranging from models of representation to those of emotions to personality and psychopathology. Substance assumptions do pernicious damage to our ability to understand such phenomena. In this discussion, I (...) will focus on the problem of representation. (shrink)

This article provides a critical overview of competing theories of conceptual structure (definitional structure, probabilistic structure, theory structure), including the view that concepts have no structure (atomism). We argue that the explanatory demands that these different theories answer to are best accommodated by an organization in which concepts are taken to have atomic cores that are linked to differing types of conceptual structure.

Words have meaning. Sentences also have meaning, but their meaning is different in kind from any collection of the meanings of the words they contain. I discuss two puzzles related to this difference. The first is how the meanings of the parts of a sentence combine to give rise to a unified sentential meaning, as opposed to a mere collection of disparate meanings (UP1). The second is why the formal ontology of linguistic meaning changes when grammatical structure is built up (...) (UP2). For example, the meaning of a sentence is a proposition evaluable for truth and falsity. In contrast, a collection of the meanings of its parts does not constitute a proposition and is not evaluable for truth. These two puzzles are closely related, since change in formal ontology is the clearest sign of the unity of meaning. The most popular strategy for answering them is taking the meanings of the parts as abstractions from primitive sentence meanings. However, I argue that, given plausible psychological constraints, sentence meanings cannot be taken as explanatory primitives. Drawing on recent work in Generative Grammar and its philosophy, I suggest that the key to both unity questions is to distinguish strictly between lexical and grammatical meaning. The latter is irreducible and determines how lexical content is used in referential acts. I argue that these referential properties determine a formal ontology, which explains why and how formal ontology changes when grammatical structure is built up (UP2). As for UP1, I suggest that, strictly speaking, lexical meanings never combine. Instead, whenever grammar specifies a formal ontology for the lexical meanings entering a grammatical derivation, further lexical (or phrasal) meanings can only specify aspects of this recursive grammatical process. In this way, contemporary grammatical theory can be used to address old philosophical problems. (shrink)

This thesis comprises three main chapters—each comprising one relatively standalone paper. The unifying theme is fragmentalism about truth, which is the view that the predicate “true” either expresses distinct concepts or expresses distinct properties. -/- In Chapter 1, I provide a formal development of alethic pluralism. Pluralism is the view that there are distinct truth properties associated with distinct domains of subject matter, where a truth property satisfies certain truth-characterizing principles. On behalf of pluralists, I propose an account of logic (...) and semantics that shows how they can answer central conceptual and logical challenges for their view. -/- In Chapter 2, I motivate and develop a modal account of propositions on the basis of an iterative conception of propositions, where the modality is logico-mathematical. The modal account of propositions takes the conception to motivate an inherently potential hierarchy of propositions. I show that the account helps provide satisfying solutions to the intensional paradoxes of Russell-Myhill, Kaplan, and Prior. -/- In Chapter 3, I propose that “true” is polysemous. I suggest that “true” is initially polysemous between correspondence truth and disquotational truth, and further polysemous between the meanings corresponding to the subconcepts of the concept truth generated by the indefinite extensibility of that concept. I show that the proposal provides satisfying solutions to the semantic paradoxes. (shrink)

In this paper I shall defend a projectivist view of sensory experience. The case I shall focus on is that of color experience. Projectivism has recently been criticized by some authors who claim that it is unintelligible, or at least implausible, and that it makes a severe category mistake. I shall argue that despite some prima facie impressions of implausibility, projectivism can be made intelligible, and plausible, if its details are spelled out in a reasonable way. In addition, projectivism is (...) ubiquitous in human psychology, and certain cases of projection are reasonably viewed as making a category mistake. Viewed from this perspective, sensory projection is just one instance of projectivism, brought about by low-level perceptual processing. Whether sensory projection is one that makes a category mistake is not obvious. However, even if it does, this is perfectly compatible with the evolutionary advantage of sensation and perception. (shrink)