Dans la première partie de cet article, je presente une thèse parapluie — la thèse de l'«exhaustion» — qui cerne bien l'élément central des diverses positions déflationnistes au sujet de la vérité : l'idée que le contenu du prédicat de vérité s'épuise entièrement dans le contenu de ce à quoi le prédicats'applique. Je soutiens que cette thèse n'est supportée que d'une manière triviale par l'idée courante que la vérite résiste à une analyse substantielle, car les prédicats en général ne se (...) prêtent guere à ce genre d'analyse. J'examine ensuite deux élaborations positives de la thèse de l'exhaustion; et je soutiens que ni l'une ni l'autre ne commence même à montrer que la thèse en question soit explicativement adéquate. (shrink)

The paper considers our ordinary mentalistic discourse in relation to what we should expect from any genuine science of the mind. A meta-scientific eliminativism is commended and distinguished from the more familiar eliminativism of Skinner and the Churchlands. Meta-scientific eliminativism views folk psychology qua folksy as unsuited to offer insight into the structure of cognition, although it might otherwise be indispensable for our social commerce and self-understanding. This position flows from a general thesis that scientific advance is marked by an (...) eschewal of folk understanding. The latter half of the paper argues that, contrary to the received view, Chomsky's review of Skinner offers not just an argument against Skinner's eliminativism, but, more centrally, one in favour of the second eliminativism. (shrink)

It is widely held that propositions are structured entities. In The Nature and Structure of Content (2007), Jeff King argues that the structure of propositions is none other than the syntactic structure deployed by the speaker/hearers who linguistically produce and consume the sentences that express the propositions. The present paper generalises from King’s position and claims that syntax provides the best in-principle account of propositional structure. It further seeks to show, however, that the account faces severe problems pertaining to the (...) fine individuation of propositions that the account entails. The ‘fineness of cut’ problem has been raised by Collins (The unity of linguistic meaning, 2007) and others. King (Philos Stud 163(3):763–781, 2013) responds to these complaints in ways this paper rebuts. Thus, the very idea of structured propositions is brought into doubt, for the best in-principle account of such structure appears to fail. (shrink)

Answering machines and other types of recording devices present prima facie problems for traditional theories of the meaning of indexicals. The present essay explores a range of semantic and pragmatic responses to these issues. Careful attention to the difficulties posed by recordings promises to help enlighten the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics more broadly.

The object of this paper is to show why recent research in the psychology of deductive and probabilistic reasoning does not have.

Arguments based on Leibniz's Law seem to show that there is no room for either indefinite or contingent identity. The arguments seem to prove too much, but their conclusion is hard to resist if we want to keep Leibniz's Law. We present a novel approach to this issue, based on an appropriate modification of the notion of logical consequence.

Arguments based on Leibniz's Law seem to show that there is no room for either indefinite or contingent identity. The arguments seem to prove too much, but their conclusion is hard to resist if we want to keep Leibniz's Law. We present a novel approach to this issue, based on an appropriate modification of the notion of logical consequence.

: The relationship between facts and values—in particular, naturalism and normativity—poses an ongoing challenge for feminist science studies. Some have argued that the fact/value holism of W.V. Quine's naturalized epistemology holds promise. I argue that Quinean epistemology, while appropriately naturalized, might weaken the normative force of feminist claims. I then show that Quinean epistemic themes are unnecessary for feminist science studies. The empirical nature of our work provides us with all the naturalized normativity we need.

Those in education committed to folk psychology reject the advances of neuroscience as the way to explain learning. Winch is one of the most determined defenders of folk psychology. Yet his account of folk psychology is weak and his rejection of neuroscience is deeply flawed. This article sets out Winch’s Wittgensteinian theory of learning then proceeds to critically examine a number of issues, including the folk psychology/cognitive science dualism, problems with folk psychology, the advantages of cognitive science and why folk (...) psychology should be replaced by cognitive science. (shrink)

In considering philosophy of education now and in the future, this paper explores the issue from an Australasian perspective. While philosophy of education in this part of the world has strong international links there is an absence of indigenous influences. A number of philosophical strands have developed including naturalism and postmodernism which have informed thinking about education policy and practice. The institutional side of philosophy of education has witnessed both the promotion of philosophers to professorial positions and the slow decline (...) in numbers as departing staff are not replaced. How philosophy of education will fare in the future will depend on the survival of an academic community, the opportunity to teach papers in the subject to undergraduate and postgraduate students (and so replace ourselves) and convincing teachers and policy makers that philosophy of education makes an indispensable contribution to improving policy and the educational experiences of students. (shrink)

The psychofunctionalist claim that psychological terms can be defined through the use of an experimental theory has been criticized on the grounds that it is "chauvinistic": that it denies mentality to any creature of which the selected theory is false. I analyze the "argument from science fiction" that is thought to establish this conclusion, and show that its plausibility rests on a scope ambiguity in formulations of functional definitions. One formulation is indeed chauvinistic, but an alternative rendering is not, and (...) is perfectly consistent with ascribing mentality to creatures of which the selected psychological theory is false. This alternative interpretation of psychofunctionalism is set out in detail, defended from several objections, and finally tied to the semantics of ordinary language psychological terms. (shrink)

Postmodernism has established a significant hold in educational thought and some of the most important ideas are to be found in the writings of Michael Peters. This paper examines his postmodern stance and use of Lyotard's account of knowledge, and from a naturalist point of view raises a number of objections centred on science as a metanarrative, the unity of the empirical and the evaluative, and reason, truth and the growth of knowledge. It is concluded that postmodern epistemology, unlike naturalism, (...) does not serve education well. (shrink)

Radical interpretation is used by Davison in his linguistic theory not only as an interesting thought experiment but also a general pattern that is believed to be able to give an essential and general account of linguistic interpretation. If the principle of charity is absolutely necessary to radical interpretation, it becomes, in this sense, a general methodological principle. However, radical interpretation is a local pattern that is proper only for exploring certain interpretation in a specific case, and consequently the principle (...) of charity is an applicable principle in the limited scope. It is neither the case that every linguistic interpretation is in nature radical nor that the principle of charity is the primary and fundamental principle for all linguistic interpretation as Davidson believes. (shrink)

History and the modern sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a “methodological naturalism” that disregards talk of divine agency. Some religious thinkers argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism: a non-negotiable and a priori commitment to a materialist metaphysics. In response to this charge, I make a sharp distinction between procedural requirements and metaphysical commitments. The procedural requirement of history and the sciences—that proposed explanations appeal to publicly-accessible bodies of evidence—is non-negotiable, but has no metaphysical implications. The metaphysical (...) commitment is naturalistic, but is both a posteriori and provisional, arising from the fact that formore than 400 years no proposed theistic explanation has been shown capable ofmeeting the procedural requirement. I argue that there is nothing to prevent religious thinkers from seeking to overturn this metaphysically naturalistic stance. But in order to do so they would need to show that their proposed theistic explanations are the best available explanations of a range of phenomena. Until this has been done, the metaphysical naturalism of history and the sciences remains defensible. (shrink)

In this paper I will address the question of rationalizing mental causation which is involved in the processes of epistemic justification. The main problem concerning mental causation consists in the apparent incompatibility of the three following claims: (i) the subject's mental states (in particular his belief states) are realized by neural states of the subject's brain; (ii) the justifying character of belief transition consists in the fact that there are certain broadly logical relations between the contents of the relevant beliefs; (...) and (iii) all generations of neural states are, at bottom, governed by the purely physical laws. I try to reconciliate the physical necessity of the neural states generation with the logical rationality of the belief transition. Surprisingly enough, it will turn out that, in a sense, each thinking subject is logically perfect. However, in another sense we are exactly as fallible and irrational as our common-sense tells us. (shrink)

Much contemporary epistemology is informed by a kind of confirmational holism, and a consequent rejection of the assumption that all confirmation rests on experiential certainties. Another prominent theme is that belief comes in degrees, and that rationality requires apportioning one's degrees of belief reasonably. Bayesian confirmation models based on Jeffrey Conditionalization attempt to bring together these two appealing strands. I argue, however, that these models cannot account for a certain aspect of confirmation that would be accounted for in any adequate (...) holistic confirmation theory. I then survey the prospects for constructing a formal epistemology that better accommodates holistic insights. (shrink)

Our target article argued that a genetically specified Universal Grammar (UG), capturing arbitrary properties of languages, is not tenable on evolutionary grounds, and that the close fit between language and language learners arises because language is shaped by the brain, rather than the reverse. Few commentaries defend a genetically specified UG. Some commentators argue that we underestimate the importance of processes of cultural transmission; some propose additional cognitive and brain mechanisms that may constrain language and perhaps differentiate humans from nonhuman (...) primates; and others argue that we overstate or understate the case against co-evolution of language genes. In engaging with these issues, we suggest that a new synthesis concerning the relationship between brains, genes, and language may be emerging. (shrink)

In this article, I suggest that reflection on a broadly Aristotelian-cum-Hegelian conception about the determination of the conditions of identity and individuation of objects and properties shows that it entails (what Brandom calls) the Kant–Sellars thesis about modality and identity, one consequence of which is that persons are not identical to human beings. This view is in conflict with the Aristotelian liberal naturalist view to the effect that to be a person is identical to being an individual of a specific (...) animal kind—namely, homo sapiens—characterized by a specific and unique ‘form of life’ (and natural history) which differentiates it from all other animal kinds. I conclude that this novel and unorthodox liberal naturalist view about personhood constitutes an interesting and viable liberal naturalist alternative to more ‘orthodox’ liberal naturalist neo-Aristotelian views like Thompson’s, as it can better accommodate certain counterfactual ‘person-human being decoupling’ scenarios in our modern conception of ourselves-in-the-world. (shrink)

Intellectual humility can be broadly construed as being conscious of the limits of one’s existing knowledge and capable of acquiring more knowledge, which makes it a key virtue of the information age. However, the claim “I am humble” seems paradoxical in that someone who has the disposition in question would not typically volunteer it. Therefore, measuring intellectual humility via self-report may be methodologically unsound. As a consequence, we suggest analyzing intellectual humility semantically, using a psycholexical approach that focuses on both (...) synonyms and antonyms of ‘intellectual humility’. We present a thesaurus-based methodology to map the semantic space of intellectual humility and the vices it opposes as a heuristic to support analysis and diagnosis of this disposition. We performed the mapping both in English and German in order to test for possible cultural differences in the understanding of intellectual humility. In both languages, we find basically the same three semantic dimensions of intellectual humility as well as three dimensions of its related vices. The resulting semantic clusters were validated in an empirical study with English and German participants. We find medium-to-high correlations between thesaurus similarity and perceived similarity, and we can validate the three dimensions identified in the study. But we also find limitations of the thesaurus methodology in terms of cluster plausibility. We conclude by discussing the importance of these findings for constructing psychometric measures of intellectual humility via self-report vs. computer models. (shrink)

Amit's work addresses a critical issue in cognitive science: the structure of neural representations. The use of Hebbian cell assemblies is a positive step, and we now need to consider its role in a larger cognitive theory. When considering the dynamics of a system built out of attractors, a more limited version of reverberation becomes necessary.

The book from which these sections are excerpted is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as “mental organs.” These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated (...) structures along an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term.Various types of knowledge and modes of knowledge acquisition are discussed in these terms. Some of the properties of the language faculty are investigated. The basic cognitive relation is “knowing a grammar”; knowledge of language is derivative and, correspondingly, raises further problems. Language as commonly understood is not a unitary phenomenon but involves a number of interacting systems: the “computational” system of grammar, which provides the representations of sound and meaning that permit a rich range of expressive potential, is distinct from a conceptual system with its own properties; knowledge of language must be distinguished from knowledge of how to use a language; and the various systems that enter into the knowledge and use of language must be further analyzed into their specific subcomponents. (shrink)

Manley and Wasserman's PROP account of dispositions has been influential in the recent debate about the nature of dispositions. In this paper, I will bring under scrutiny one crucial step in Manley and Wasserman's reasoning leading to the PROP account. The step is one where they abandon what they call ‘MOST’, the idea that x is disposed to M when C iff x would M in most cases where C obtains. I will argue below, however, that this step is invalid.

This paper addresses the extent to which quotidian cognition is like scientific inference by focusing on Jerry Fodor's famous analogy. I specifically consider and rebut a recent attempt made by Tim Fuller and Richard Samuels to deny the usefulness of Fodor's analogy. In so doing, I reveal some subtleties of Fodor's arguments overlooked by Fuller and Samuels and others. Recognizing these subtleties provides a richer appreciation of the analogy, allowing us to gain better traction on the issue concerning the extent (...) to which everyday cognition is like scientific inference. In the end, I propose that quotidian cognition is indeed like scientific inference, but not precisely in the way Fodor claims it is. (shrink)

The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in counting. This idea has never been systematically (...) pursued, to the best of my knowledge. I make it precise relying on supervaluations (more specifically, ‘data semantics’) to model it. I identify a number of universals pertaining to how the mass/count contrast is encoded in the languages of the world, along with some of the major dimensions along which languages may vary on this score. I argue that the vagueness based model developed here provides a useful perspective on both. The outcome (besides shedding light on semantic variation) seems to suggest that vagueness is not just an interface phenomenon that arises in the interaction of Universal Grammar (UG) with the Conceptual/Intentional System (to adopt Chomsky’s terminology), but it is actually part of the architecture of UG. (shrink)

The present paper is intended to analyse from a theoretical point of view the relationships between natural language and idiolects in the context of communication by means of the Davidson–Dummett controversy on the nature of language. I will explore from a pragmatic point of view the reliability of an alternative position inspired by the recent literalism/contextualism debate in philosophy of language in order to overcome some limitations of Dummett’s and Davidson’s perspectives on language, idiolects and communication.

This paper develops the situational model of primate beliefs from the Prior-Lurz line of thought. There is a strong skepticism concerning primate beliefs in the analytic tradition which holds that beliefs have to be propositional and non-human animals do not have them. The response offered in this paper is twofold. First, two arguments against the propositional model as applied to other animals are put forward: an a priori argument from referential opacity and an empirical argument from varieties of working memory. (...) Second, the Prior-Lurz situational model based on state of affairs as opposed to propositions is introduced and defended with two significant modifications. With this model of primate beliefs we can make progress in understanding how other primates can have certain mindreading capacity. (shrink)

Traditional correspondence theory of truth with the concept of fact encounters many serious difficulties, main one of which is that it is too difficult to explain clearly the concept of ‘fact’ and how propositions ‘correspond’ to facts. This does not mean that we should abandon the traditional correspondence theory of truth and turn to some other type theories of truth. In order to guarantee the objectivity of truth, any reasonable theory of truth must adhere to the core insight of the (...) traditional correspondence theory: it is not something in our language, nor in our mind, but something in the external world, that make the propositions we use to describe the states of affairs in the world either true or false. It is entirely possible to formulate a new correspondence theory of truth without the concept of fact but still adhering to the core insights mentioned above of the traditional correspondence theory. New correspondence theory of truth has its own metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, and also its assumption in the philosophy of language. Because of the generativity of language, in defining the concept of truth, the new correspondence theory of truth must resort to Tarskian recursive procedure. First, it gives the semantic value of the components of a proposition, defines the truth of its atomic propositions, then gradually defines the truth of its more and more complex propositions and finally of the whole proposition. Coherence is the intrinsic element of truth. The concept of truth is by no means trivial and insignificant; on the contrary, it is very substantive. The pursuit of truth is our mission. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to examine adult learners' ability to extract multiple statistics in simultaneously presented visual and auditory input. Experiment 1 used a cross‐situational learning paradigm to test whether English speakers were able to use co‐occurrences to learn word‐to‐object mappings and concurrently form object categories based on the commonalities across training stimuli. Experiment 2 replicated the first experiment and further examined whether speakers of Mandarin, a language in which final syllables of object names are more predictive of category membership (...) than English, were able to learn words and form object categories when trained with the same type of structures. The results indicate that both groups of learners successfully extracted multiple levels of co‐occurrence and used them to learn words and object categories simultaneously. However, marked individual differences in performance were also found, suggesting possible interference and competition in processing the two concurrent streams of regularities. (shrink)

Objects in the world usually have names at different hierarchical levels (e.g., beagle, dog, animal). This research investigates adults' ability to use cross‐situational statistics to simultaneously learn object labels at individual and category levels. The results revealed that adults were able to use co‐occurrence information to learn hierarchical labels in contexts where the labels for individual objects and labels for categories were presented in completely separated blocks, in interleaved blocks, or mixed in the same trial. Temporal presentation schedules significantly affected (...) the learning of individual object labels, but not the learning of category labels. Learners' subsequent generalization of category labels indicated sensitivity to the structure of statistical input. (shrink)

In this special issue, we put together papers that explore the theme “objectivity, space, and mind” from various angles. In the introduction we minimally discuss what are involved in this theme.

A philosophically important but largely overlooked cognitive theory is examined, one that provides information on which inferences an agent will make from his beliefs. Such a theory of feasible inferences is indispensable in a complete cognitive psychology, in particular, for predicting the agent's actions on the basis of rationality conditions and attributed beliefs and desires. However, very little of the feasibility theory which applies to a typical human being can be shown a priori to apply to all agents. The logical (...) competence required of a rational agent seems to have a cluster structure: it cannot be the case that an agent is able to make no inferences, but an agent can be unable to make any particular one. (shrink)

This paper attempts to provide a defence for a narrative theory of the self in the face of criticisms from the anti‐narrative camp. It begins by addressing certain uncontroversial premises that both pro‐ and the anti‐narrative camps might be thought to agree on: the status of humans as homo significans or meaning‐makers, the natural form‐finding tendency and certain desiderata for significance and value that we possess, and the raw material of life and its constituents that we proceed from. Whereas the (...) pro‐narrative camp seeks to provide the narrative theory of the self as a valid argument for how we proceed from the raw material of life and undifferentiated experience and these desiderata and tendencies (i.e.: the premises) to a conception of both selfhood and moral responsibility (i.e.: the conclusion), the anti‐narrative camp holds the conclusion to be false and the narrative theory of the self to be invalid. The Parfitian view holds the conception of the self to be ultimately false, whereas the Strawsonian view holds both the conception of the self and the conception of moral responsibility to be ultimately false. The grounds they provide, however, tend to be metaphysical in nature, demonstrating that they have fundamentally misunderstood how the narrative theory of the self functions as a semantic thesis. I will demonstrate certain defects in the metaphysical arguments that anti‐narrativists like Parfit and Strawson have made against what is essentially a semantic thesis about how we make sense of our lives. I will also attempt to shore up the semantic thesis in other relevant aspects. (shrink)