Worlds, Lewis says this: Let us say that something persists iff, somehow or other, it exists at various times; this is the neutral word. Something perdures iff it persists by having different temporal parts, or stages, at different times, though no one part of it is wholly present at more than one time; whereas it endures iff it persists by being wholly present at more than one time. Perdurance corresponds to the way a road persists through space; part of it (...) is here, and part of it is there, and no part is wholly present at two different places. Endurance corresponds to the way a universal, if there are such things, would be wholly present wherever and whenever it is instantiated. Endurance involves overlap: the content of two different times has the enduring thing as a common part. Perdurance does not.1 Lewis's remarks suggest the following formulations of the two views in the 3D/4D controversy.2.. (shrink)

Fechner's conception of psychophysics included both “outer psychophysics” the relation between stimulus intensity and the response reflecting sensation strength, and “inner psychophysics” the relation between neurelectric responses and sensation strength. In his own time outer psychophysics focussed on the form of the psychophysical law, with Fechner espousing a logarithmic law, Delboeuf a variant of the logarithmic law incorporating a resting level of neural activity, and Plateau a power law. One of the issues on which the dispute was focussed concerned the (...) appearance of contrasts if the overall illumination was increased or decreased; another issue was the question of whether a sensation of a “just noticeable difference” established for one value of a sensory dimension appeared the same for a value elsewhere on the dimension. The development of “inner psychophysics” led through the works of Delboeuf, Solomons, Jastrow, and Thurstone to modern signal detection theory. A third line of research, devoted to the question of what was meant by the “measurement” of sensation strength, stemmed from the criticism of Fechner's work by von Kries (1882) and others. Although a valid body of science could be built up without the intervening variable called “sensation strength,” such a science might be a cumbersome representation of reality. When an optical contrast is set up, and its overall illumination is increased or decreased, subjective contrasts involving medium levels of lightness vary little as illumination varies (as a power law based on sensation ratios or a logarithmic law based on sensation differences predict), but subjective contrasts involving extreme levels of lightness might be subject to the effects of other variables. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to extend the Realist account of the foundations of linguistics offered by Postal, Katz and others. I first argue against the idea that naive Platonism can capture the necessary requirements on what I call a ‘mixed realist’ view of linguistics, which takes aspects of Platonism, Nominalism and Mentalism into consideration. I then advocate three desiderata for an appropriate ‘mixed realist’ account of linguistic ontology and foundations, namely (1) linguistic creativity and infinity, (2) linguistics as (...) a theory of types (and not tokens) and (3) independence but structural respect between language and the linguistic competence thereof. My own brand of mixed realism, what I call ante rem realism, is defended along the lines of an ante rem or non-eliminative structuralism, the likes of which has been offered for mathematics by Resnik (1997) and Shapiro (1997). In other words, grammars describe a mind-independent (but not necessarily unconnected) linguistic reality in terms of linguistic patterns or structures also known as natural languages. I further amend this picture to allow for the possibility of a naturalistic account of language acquisition and evolution by arguing against a particular view of the type-token distinction. (shrink)

The book provides a historical and systematic exposition of the semantic theory of truth formulated by Alfred Tarski in the 1930s. This theory became famous very soon and inspired logicians and philosophers. It has two different, but interconnected aspects: formal-logical and philosophical. The book deals with both, but it is intended mostly as a philosophical monograph. It explains Tarski’s motivation and presents discussions about his ideas as well as points out various applications of the semantic theory of truth to philosophical (...) problems. (shrink)

In The Metaphysics of Truth, Doug Edwards offers a sustained case against deflationism about truth and in favour of his preferred pluralist theory of truth. Here, I take up three of the main components of that case. The first is Edwards' account of the distinctive metaphysical commitments of deflationism. His views about this issue have changed over the past few years, and I detail these changes as well as a concern for the views that he develops in the book. Second, (...) I take up the argument that Edwards offers for thinking that deflationism is, in a certain sense, internally unstable. I explain why this argument is inconclusive, outlining three responses to it on behalf of the deflationist. Third, I consider Edwards' novel argument for truth pluralism, which acts as an indirect argument against deflationism. After sorting out some interpretive nuances related to the use of definite descriptions in this argument, I show how the deflationist can resist it. Having responded to Edwards' critique of deflationism, I close by briefly explaining why I take the methodology of deflationism to be especially promising, insofar as it underscores the significance of empirically-informed inquiry about truth. (shrink)

In 1902 there arrived in Jena a letter from Russell laying out a proof that shattered Frege’s confidence in logicism, which is widely taken to be the doctrine according to which every truth of arithmetic is re-expressible without relevant loss as a provable truth about a purely logical object. Frege was persuaded that Russell had exposed a pathology in logicism, which faced him with the task of examining its symptoms, diagnosing its cause, assessing its seriousness, arriving at a treatment option, (...) and making an estimate of future prospects. The symptom was the contradiction that had crept into naïve set theory in the form of the set that provably is and is not its own member. The diagnosis was that it is caused by Basic Law V of the Grundgesetze (Frege, In: Grundgesetze der Arithmetik: Begrifsschriftlich abgeleitet, Jena: Herman Pohle, 1893/1903. Translated into English as Basic Laws of Arithmetic, also edited by Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg, with Crispin Wright, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Triage answers the question, “How bad is it?” The answer was that the contradiction irreparably destroys the logicist project. The treatment option was nil. The disease was untreatable. In due course, the prognosis turned out to be that a scaled-down Fregean logic could have an honourable life as a theory inference for various domains of mathematical discourse, but not for domains containing the logical objects required for logicism. Since there aren’t such objects, there aren’t such domains. On the face of it, Frege’s logicist collapse is astonishing. Why wouldn’t he have repaired the fault in Law V and gone back to the business of bringing logicism to an assured realization? In the course of our reflections, we will have nice occasion to consider the good it might have done Frege to have booked some time with Aristotle had he been able to. By the time we’re finished, we’ll have cause to think that in the end the Russell might well have begged the question against Frege. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In ‘Properties, Propositions, and Conditionals’ Field [2021] advances further on our understanding of the logic and meaning of naive theories – theories that maintain, in the face of paradox, basic assumptions about properties and propositions. His work follows in a tradition going back over 40 years now, of using Kripke fixed-point model constructions to show how naive schemas can be (Post) consistent, as long as one embeds in a non-classical logic. A main issue in all this research is the (...) question of finding a suitable conditional for the naive schemas, an implication connective that is well-behaved enough to be useful but weak enough to maintain coherence when there are paradoxes in the surrounding aether. Field takes several cues from the exemplary work of Ross Brady. Brady's work is predominantly concerned with models for naive theories in relevant logic. Field's considered view is that ‘relevant conditionals are just the wrong tool for naive theories’ [ibid.: 140]. In this note, I reply that a relevant conditional is an indispensable tool for at least one very important job: giving identity conditions for properties. (shrink)

The Löwenheim-Hilbert-Bernays theorem states that, for an arithmetical first-order language L, if S is a satisfiable schema, then substitution of open sentences of L for the predicate letters of S...

Posner & Raichle (1994) is a nice addition to the Scientific American Library and the average reader will both enjoy the book and learn a great deal. As an activeresearcher, however, I find the book disappointing in many respects. My two major disappointments are in the illusion of computation that is created throughout the volume and in the inadequate perspective of the presentation on visual attention.

Statements of identity with a plural subject, of the form ‘They are the same person,’ as illustrated in each of the answers to the above two questions, give rise to a philosophical problem.

A common objection against deflationism is that it cannot account for the fact that truth depends on reality. Consider the question ‘On what does the truth of the proposition that snow is white depend?’ An obvious answer is that it depends on whether snow is white. Now, consider what answer, if any, a deflationist can offer. The problem is as follows. A typical deflationary analysis of truth consists of biconditionals of the form ‘The proposition that p is true iff p’. (...) Such biconditionals tell us nothing about what the truth of the proposition that p might depend on. Therefore, it seems that a typical deflationist cannot give an answer. Since we know that an answer is available, this throws doubt over the adequacy of deflationism as an account of truth. Articulated here is a defence of deflationism against this objection. It is argued that although biconditionals of the sort mentioned do not explicitly state a dependency between truth and reality, they nevertheless convey one. The reason is that, given the context in which a deflationist invokes the biconditionals, such a dependency is implicated. A potential problem with this defence is that it leaves the deflationist still unable to give an account of what it is for truth to depend on reality. One might think that a deflationist can offer such an account by appealing to truthmaker theory but, it is argued below, truthmaker theory is unavailable to a deflationist. Instead, the deflationist should question the assumption that an account is available. (shrink)

Compared to the extensive amount of literature on various themes of W.V.O. Quine’s philosophy, his immanent concept of truth remains a relatively unexplored topic. This relative lack of research contributes to a persistent confusion on the deflationary and inflationary details of Quine’s truth. According to a popular reading, Quine’s disquotational definition of the truth predicate exhausts the content of truth, thus amounting to a deflationary view. Others promote opposing interpretations. I argue that by relying on Tarski’s semantic conception of truth, (...) Quine’s disquotational account inherits a commitment to classical correspondence intuitions. Based on this, Quine posits a firm constitution for truth as an intermediary between language and the world. From this constitution claim follows that the disquotational account proves incompatible with both the general deflationary thesis and, more specifically, the minimalist account, which deny any constitution for truth past what is given by the preferred deflationary schema. This reading is significant for refuting the widespread misrepresentations of Quine as a prominent deflationist. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that our knowledge of linguistic types can bejustified by what we know about the tokens of these types. But one then hasto explain what it is about the relation a type bears to its tokens that makespossible the move from knowledge of the concrete to knowledge of theabstract. I argue that the standard solution to this difficulty, that the relevant relation is instantiation and that the transition is inductive generalization, is inadequate. I propose an alternative, (...) according to which tokens are representations of the type they belong to. I also defend this view against the charge that it cannot account for the systematic ambiguity of expressions like ‘word’ or ‘sentence’, and the objection that it leads to an implausible form of Platonism. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that our knowledge of linguistic types can bejustified by what we know about the tokens of these types. But one then hasto explain what it is about the relation a type bears to its tokens that makespossible the move from knowledge of the concrete to knowledge of theabstract. I argue that the standard solution to this difficulty, that the relevant relation is instantiation and that the transition is inductive generalization, is inadequate. I propose an alternative, (...) according to which tokens are representations of the type they belong to. I also defend this view against the charge that it cannot account for the systematic ambiguity of expressions like ‘word’ or ‘sentence’, and the objection that it leads to an implausible form of Platonism. (shrink)

The authors ofImages of the Mindhave made a significant contribution to our understanding of the brain through imaging technology. The book is well written, timely, beautifully illustrated and conveys a sense of history. It will appeal to alay audience as well as a professional audience.

To resolve putative liar paradoxes it is sufficient to attend to the distinction between liar-sentences and the propositions they would express, and to exercise the option of turning would-be deductions of paradox (of contradictions) into reductions of the existence of those propositions. Defending the coherence of particular resolutions along these lines, leads to recognition of the non-extensionality of some liar-sentences. In particular, it turns out that exchanges of terms for identicals in the open-sentence '- does not expression a true proposition' (...) are not invariably truth-preserving because they are not invariably proposition-expression preserving. All of this recommends propositions as fruitful subjects of interesting renewed research. (shrink)

There are methodological problems with the new techniques reviewed by Posner & Raichle. Some brain mechanisms are not detected by the temporal and spatial resolution. Questions are also raised by the stimulation paradigms.

What are words? How should words be individuated? Such questions set the agenda for the metaphysics of words. Unfortunately, misunderstandings are piling up in this field. Although the discussion between Kaplan, Cappelen, Hawthorne, Lepore and others has given rise to interesting insights into many aspects of words, I contend that the debate is highly compromised by a lack of clarity about the questions in the first place. The purpose of this article is to partially clarify the debate on the metaphysics (...) of words by examining the very nature of the questions to be addressed. I shall differentiate three inquiries about words and shall provide explanations of why misunderstandings can and do arise. I claim that, in so doing, we may put the debate back on solid footing in order to rethink the real nature of words. (shrink)

En este artículo una paradoja es un tipo de argumentación con respecto a un sujeto X (sea un individuo o una comunidad) en un determinado momento T. Muchas argumentaciones paradójicas tienen lugar en el desarrollo histórico y práctico de las ciencias. Algunas suponen grandes sorpresas acompañadas de profundas crisis, como ocurre con las llamadas antinomias. Solventar, y eventualmente resolver, una paradoja en este sentido supone avances revolucionarios que se obtienen al precio de rechazar creencias previamente asumidas o tenidas por verdaderas (...) por la comunidad científica. El concepto de paradoja que se propone es relativo a sujetos y dinámico en el tiempo. Una argumentación que resulta paradójica para X pudiera no ser paradójica para Y, simplemente porque X e Y no tienen por qué compartir las mismas creencias. Asimismo, X puede descubrir que tiene una paradoja en T, y dejar de tenerla ulteriormente en virtud de un cambio de sus creencias. (shrink)

Ludwig Boltzmann is one of the foremost responsible for the development of modern atomism in thermodynamics. His proposition was revolutionary not only because it brought a new vision for Thermodynamics, merging a statistical approach with Newtonian physics, but also because he produced an entirely new perspective on the way of thinking about and describing physical phenomena. Boltzmann dared to flirt with constructivism and realism simultaneously, by hypothesizing the reality of atoms and claiming an inherent probabilistic nature related to many particles (...) systems. Boltzmann faced criticism from the positivists, who rejected the hypothesis of the atom as a matter of principle, and also from physicists, who rejected the idea of a classical bounded system that does not follow deterministic mechanical laws. We consider that Boltzmann thermodynamics has emerged as a systemic theory that deals with macroscopic bodies using collective variables; it was reformulated to a kinetic theory of gases, and subsequently to statistical mechanics. From the theoretical physical point of view, Boltzmann advocates an approach to thermodynamics based on mechanics and was one of the founders of statistical mechanics, together with ideas by Maxwell, Clausius and Gibbs. Subsequently, statistical mechanics has also influenced the development of quantum mechanics and information theory. Using an evolutionary epistemological perspective as a metaphor to describe the physical entities claimed in Boltzmann propositions, we interpret his work as a selected theory that gained attributes of reality and “survived” during a scientific-contextual competition to be more adapted, in the sense that it was able to better explain physical phenomena, and also generated “descendants”. (shrink)

Images of mindsuperbly summarizes work on cognitive neuroscienee using PET scanning. Some of the data emphasized suggests that parietal cortex is involved in the disengagement of attention. We have discovered neurons in awake monkeys which could perform this function. Another point of emphasis is the concept of neutral cues. Although an appealing concept, it is extremely difficult to define what is actually neutral.

Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation has puzzled the philosophical community for several decades. It is unquestionably among the best known and most disputed theses in contemporary philosophy. Quine’s classical argument for the indeterminacy thesis, in his seminal work Word and Object, has even been described by Putnam as “what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories” (Putnam, 1975a: p. 159).

This study aims to propose a rational reconstruction of the theory-core ofWittgenstein's Tractatus, in order to bring into prominence its theoreticaland philosophical sources, its epistemological nature and metaphysical significance.The main idea of my approach is that when we take due account of the scientific andphilosophical context of the Tractatus, we see that its central philosophicalinnovation is a new form of metaphysics, namely a structural theory of representation.``I am not interested in constructing a building,so much as in having a perspicuous view (...) of the foundation of possible buildings.''. (shrink)

Nominal concepts represent things as tokens of types. Recent research suggests that we represent principled connections between the type of thing something is (e.g., DOG) and some of its properties (k‐properties; e.g., having four legs for dogs) but not other properties (t‐properties; e.g., being brown for dogs). Principled connections differ from logical, statistical, and causal connections. Principled connections license (i) the expectation that tokens of the type will generally possess their k‐properties, (ii) formal explanations (i.e., explanation of the presence of (...) k‐properties in tokens of a type by reference to the type of thing it is), and (iii) normative expectations concerning the presence of k‐properties in tokens of the type. The present paper investigates the hypothesis that representing principled connections requires representing properties as aspects of being the relevant kind of thing (Aspect Hypothesis). Experiment 1 provides a direct test of the Aspect Hypothesis. Experiments 2 and 3 provide indirect tests of the Aspect Hypothesis. All three experiments provide support for the Aspect Hypothesis. Experiment 4 investigates a prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis concerning the manner in which formal explanations are licensed by principled connections. Finally, Experiment 5 investigates a prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis concerning the nature of the normative expectations licensed by principled connections. Together these results provide strong evidence for the idea that representing principled connections involves representing a property as being an aspect of being a given kind of thing. The results also help clarify the manner in which formal explanation differs from other modes of explanation. Finally, the results of the experiments are used to motivate a proposal concerning the formal structure of the conceptual representations implicated by principled connections. This structure provides a domain‐general way of structuring our concepts and embodies the perspective we take when we think and talk of things as being instances of a kind. (shrink)

This volume explores how functional brain imaging techniques like positron emission tomography have influenced cognitive studies. The first chapter outlines efforts to relate human thought and cognition in terms of great books from the late 1800s through the present. Chapter 2 describes mental operations as they are measured in cognitive science studies. It develops a framework for relating mental operations to activity in nerve cells. In Chapter 3, the PET method is reviewed and studies are presented that use PET to (...) map the striate cortex and to activate extrastriate motion, color, and form areas. Chapter 4 shows how top down processes involving attention can lead to activation of these same areas in the detection of targets, visual search, and visual imagery. This chapter reveals complex networks of activations. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the presentation of words. Chapter 5 illustrates PET studies of the anatomy of visual word processing and shows how the circuitry used for generating novel uses of words changes as the task becomes automated. Chapter 6 applies high density electrical recording to explore these activations in real time and to show how a constant anatomy can be reprogrammed by task instructions to produce and perform different cognitive tasks. Chapter 7 shows how studies of brain lesions and PET converge on common networks underlying attentional functions such as visual orienting, target detection, and maintenance of the alert state. Chapters 8 and 9 apply the network approach to examine normal development of attention in infants and pathological conditions resulting from brain damage, and psychiatric pathologies of depression, schizophrenia, and attention deficit disorder. In Chapter 10, new developments such as functional MRI are discussed in terms of future developments and integration of cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

We divided the many diverse comments on our book into categories. These are: theory, scope and goals of our project, methods, comments on specific anatomical areas, the concept of attention, consciousness and cognitive control, and finally other issues. Although many of the points of the critics are certainly well taken, we believe studies that have emerged since our book provide strong evidence that the general approach taken in our book is now yielding important new data on the relation of cognitive (...) processes to underlying brain activity. (shrink)

PET studies in domains like vision and attention have been successful because the experiments are the product of highly articulated theories. In contrast, the results of PET studies investigating language processing are difficult to interpret. We suggest that this difficulty is due to the more tentative connection of these experiments with the insights of psycholinguistics and linguistic theory.

In order to reconnect Quine's views to the current debate on scientific realism, I reframe Quine's scientific realism into a semantic, a metaphysical, and an epistemological dimension. With this conceptual background, I review the historical development of Quine's scientific realism from the late 1940s until his death in 2000. I challenge Soames's view that Quine is a phenomenalist at the time of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) and show that he remains agnostic between a realist and an anti‐realist conceptual scheme (...) instead. I also argue that Quine's early views on regimentation are incompatible with a strong formulation of semantic realism. I proceed in reconstructing how he becomes a metaphysical and epistemological realist in the mid‐1950s and argue against the view of Keskinen and Fogelin that interprets Quine as being a metaphysical anti‐realist. Contrary to Davidson, I defend the view that he never gave up normative epistemology and really is a proper epistemological realist. Finally, I discuss how he tries to reconcile his realism with his thesis of ontological relativity and how this necessitates the switch to a stronger form of semantic realism. (shrink)

In Posner & Raichle's (1994) book, two essential and strictly related limitations of cognitive neurophysiology are not sufficiently enhanced: (1) The problem of “coding,” namely the capability of a natural brain to redefine its own “basic symbols” as a function of a changing environment; (2) the inadequacy of a Hebbian rule to reckon with complex computational problems such as those solved by real brains.

Pictures of normal brain activity during human thought can be worth a great deal. Electrophysiology and functional neuroimaging together allow both temporal and spatial dimensions of neurocognitive functions to be explored. Although these techniqueshave their limitations, the Cognitive Neuroscience approach is well-suited to pursuing questions about how words are perceived, understood, and remembered.

Summary This paper is intended to discuss the problems occurring in the relation between the notion of truth and the question of self-reference. To do this, we shall review Tarski's (T) convention and its related terminology. We shall clarify the relation between truth and extension in order to lead into the question of semantic paradoxes appearing in the theoretical models concerned with truth. Subsequently, we shall review the logical system which develops in the reformulation of the modal proposal of the (...) (T) convention. In closing, we shall critically examine Kripke's interpretation from the proposals made by Tarski. (shrink)

Posner & Raichle's book is a superbly presented and wellwritten overview of a fast-developing and important field in contemporary neuroscience. It suffers from being an overview, however, because it does not go into sufficient detail or depth in many of the issues that it raises. It also neglects many other important areas of current research, for example, technical advances in other areas, learning and memory, and lesion analysis of brain function.

Grelling’s Paradox is the paradox which results from considering whether heterologicality, the word-property which a designator has when and only when the designator does not bear the word-property it designates, is had by ‘ ȁ8heterologicality’. Although there has been some philosophical debate over its solution, Grelling’s Paradox is nearly uniformly treated as a variant of either the Liar Paradox or Russell’s Paradox, a paradox which does not present any philosophical challenges not already presented by the two better known paradoxes. The (...) aims of this paper are, first, to offer a precise formulation of Grelling’s Paradox which is clearly distinguished from both the Liar Paradox and Russell’s Paradox; second, to offer a solution to Grelling’s Paradox which both resolves the paradoxical reasoning and accounts for unproblematic predications of heterologicality; and, third, to argue that there are two lessons to be drawn from Grelling’s Paradox which have not yet been drawn from the Liar or Russell’s Paradox. The first lesson is that it is possible for the semantic content of a predicate to be sensitive to the semantic context; i.e., it is possible for a predicate to be an indexical expression. The second lesson is that the semantic content of an indexical predicate, though unproblematic for many cases, can nevertheless be problematic in some cases. (shrink)