Rooth & Partee (1982) and Rooth (1985) have shown that the English-specific rule-by-rule system of PTQ can be factored out into function application plus two transformations for resolving type mismatch (type lifting and variable binding). Building on these insights, this article proposes a universal system for type-driven translation, by adding two more innovations: local type determination for gaps (generalizing Montague 1973) and a set of semantic filters (extending Cooper 1983). This system, dubbed Cross-Linguistic Semantics (XLS), is shown to account for (...) various phenomena — including scope relations in English and Greenlandic Eskimo, internally headed relative clauses in Lakhota, serial verbs in Yoruba and VP ellipsis in English. (shrink)

Interview with the author of "why We are in Need of Tails." Iguana Books, Toronto, Canada.

Readers are awaiting a new encounter with stories united under the common title Why We Are in Need of Tales. Let me remind you that these deep philosophical books were written by Maria daVenza Tillmanns, a professional philosopher dedicated to the study of philosophizing with children, who has gained valuable experience in this field. Maria’s books are inspired by her work with her students at El Toyon Elementary School in National City (California), with whom Maria held philosophy (...) with children classes for three years before COVID-19. With parental permission, the children provided their drawings, which are used as illustrations for the books. I read Why We Are in Need of Tales, Part III with great pleasure. The focus of this book is on making decisions, sometimes very hard decisions. In Part II, the focus is on dreams — hopes and wishes we have for life. This book looks at how we may best decide how to make those hopes and wishes come true. And the answer Huk and Tuk suggest is deceptively easy: by making decisions “with your eyes wide open.” (5, p. ix). The author of this excellent book managed to describe how to make decisions with your eyes wide open through the playful dialogue between Huk and Tuk. The books are written in dialogue so the reader immediately plunges into the context of a lively conversation. Dialogue not only sharpens attention, but also invites the reader to participate in the conversation. In this way, the reader becomes a listener at the same time. (shrink)

: The Hamblin-Karttunen approach has led to many insights about questions in English. In this article the results of this rule-by-rule tradition are reconsidered from a crosslinguistic perspective. Starting from the type-driven XLS theory developed in Bittner (1994a, b), it is argued that evidence from simple questions (in English, Polish, Lakhota and Warlpiri) leads to certain revisions. The revised XLS theory then immediately generalizes to complex questions — including scope marking (Hindi), questions with quantifiers (English) and multiple wh-questions (English, Hindi, (...) Japanese). Eliminating language- and construction-specific information from the compositional rules, in favor of universal semantic filters, leads to analyses that not only generalize across unrelated languages but are also empirically more accurate, not less. (shrink)

Over the last four decades arguments for and against the claim that creative hypothesis formation is based on Darwinian ‘blind’ variation have been put forward. This paper offers a new and systematic route through this long-lasting debate. It distinguishes between undirected, random, and unjustified variation, to prevent widespread confusions regarding the meaning of undirected variation. These misunderstandings concern Lamarckism, equiprobability, developmental constraints, and creative hypothesis formation. The paper then introduces and develops the standard critique that creative hypothesis formation is guided (...) rather than blind, integrating developments from contemporary research on creativity. On that basis, I discuss three compatibility arguments that have been used to answer the critique. These arguments do not deny guided variation but insist that an important analogy exists nonetheless. These compatibility arguments all fail, even though they do so for different reasons: trivialisation, conceptual confusion, and lack of evidence respectively. Revisiting the debate in this manner not only allows us to see where exactly a ‘Darwinian’ account of creative hypothesis formation goes wrong, but also to see that the debate is not about factual issues, but about the interpretation of these factual issues in Darwinian terms. (shrink)

Natural languages exhibit a great variety of grammatical paradigms. For instance, in English verbs are grammatically marked for tense, whereas in the tenseless Eskimo-Aleut language Kalaallisut they are marked for illocutionary mood. Although time is a universal dimension of the human experience and speaking is part of that experience, some languages encode reference to time without any grammatical tense morphology, or reference to speech acts without any illocutionary mood morphology. Nevertheless, different grammatical systems are semantically parallel in certain respects. Specifically, (...) I propose that English tenses form a temporal centering system, which monitors and updates topic times, whereas Kalaallisut moods form a modal centering system, which monitors and updates modal discourse referents. To formalize these centering parallels I define a dynamic logic that represents not only changing information but also changing focus of attention in discourse (Update with Centering, formalizing Grosz et al 1995). Different languages can be translated into this typed logic by directly compositional universal rules of Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) The resulting centering theory of tense and illocutionary mood draws semantic parallels across different grammatical systems. The centering generalizations span the extremes of the typological spectrum, so they are likely to be universal. In addition, the theory accounts for the translation equivalence of tense and illocutionary mood in a given utterance context. Following Stalnaker (1978) I assume that the very act of speaking up has a ‘commonplace effect’ on the context. It focuses attention on the speech act and thereby introduces default modal and temporal topics. These universal defaults complement language-specific grammars, e.g. English tenses and Kalaallisut moods. In a given utterance context the universal discourse-initial defaults plus language-specific grammatical marking may add up to the same truth conditions.. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. (...) In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

Hamm, Kamp, and van Lambalgen 2006 (hereafter HLK) propose to relate NL discourse to cognitive representations that also deal with world knowledge, planning, belief revision, etc. Surprisingly, to represent human cognition they use an event calculus "which has found applications in robotics". This comment argues that the robotics-based theory of HLK attributes too much to world knowledge and not enough to the ontology, centering, and other universals of NL semantics. It is also too Anglo-centric to generalize to languages of other (...) linguistic types. (shrink)

Tuesday evening, December 27, 1983 …I did go skiing today, though, which is what I want to write about. The temperature is down to –10°C again, on my thermometer, which probably means –12 to –13°C, in real terms. The visibility is still very poor though the wind has stopped. I set off at 2 pm and got home at about 4 pm, which meant skiing in the dark all the time. This wouldn’t have bothered me except that I had an (...) unpleasant adventure in Torssukataq fiord, on the intended route for me New Year’s hike. No more and no less but one of my ski poles went through the ice. I am not sure whether it would have continued all the way down, but it went in deeper than I liked, and I heard and saw water coming up around where it had gone in. I didn’t feel like probing any further, especially in the dark, [so I] just turned in my tracks and, carefully testing the ice with my ski poles, went back as fast as I could. (shrink)

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What’s Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to (...) social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development results from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether. (shrink)

This is a report on a philosophy performance that happened as part of the 2024 Long Night of Research in Austria. Maria Kronfeldner staged the content of her book “What’s left of Human Nature: A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept,” (2018, MIT Press) by filling the wall in the gallery of CEU’s Library Café with pictures and text, performatively communicating the process of philosophical inquiry – the ordering of the material that one has found, the (...) creation of a coherent and complexly structured whole – to make philosophical research visible and graspable beyond the written text. The visual essay documents the event. (shrink)

The current “exemplarist turn” within virtue ethics is increasingly shedding light on the importance of exemplars both as enabling one to identify the virtues and for the importance they bear for orienting one’s conduct, as well as for educating the novice. However, even if categorizations of exemplars have already been proposed, there seems to be a lack of discussion on the kind of imitation different exemplars are supposed to elicit. In order to offer a preliminary answer to this question, in (...) this paper I present three paths to flourishing via imitation of exemplary individuals: The Platonic, the Stoic, and the Aristotelian. Then, I sketch an attempt to reconcile these models. In conclusion, I suggest that, when it comes to education, this reconciliation becomes necessary. Along these lines, I recommend that a multi-step educational program is elaborated. (shrink)

In EN II, 1108 9-1108 b10 e più estesamente in EN IV, 1126b 10-1128b 9 Aristotele analizza tre virtù (amichevolezza, sincerità e arguzia) che, coinvolgendo il linguaggio e il senso dell’umorismo, riguardano quell’aspetto fondamentale della natura umana che è la socialità, al punto che pare giustificato l’utilizzo dell’etichetta “virtù sociali” per riferirsi ad esse. Tali virtù, infatti, rappresentano le eccellenze nell’ambito dei rapporti sociali non connotati da affetto e amicizia, ma caratterizzati da un legame ben definito, sufficiente a giustificare l’emergere (...) di virtù peculiari. Questo legame è la cittadinanza: la comune appartenenza a una stessa città genera una frequentazione che, per quanto formale o comunque non sentimentalmente connotata, è opposta all’estraneità. C’è un fine comune che regge la polis, in forza del quale ogni estraneità è vinta, e di cui l’amichevolezza reciproca, l’esigenza di una veridicità nei rapporti, e persino la moderazione ironica nello scherzare e nel fare battute sono segno inequivocabile. Aristotele pertanto tematizza una sfera ben precisa dei rapporti sociali, e ne stabilisce le eccellenze: ciò significa che questa sfera ha una sua specificità e consistenza e di conseguenza anche che questo gruppo di virtù ha una sua autonomia. (shrink)

Thinking of problems of aesthetics has a long and strong tradition in Austrian Philosophy. It starts with Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848); it is famously represented by the critic and musicologist Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904); and it is continued within the school of Alexius Meinong (1853-1920), in particular by Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932) and Stephan Witasek (1870-1915). Nowadays the aesthetic writings of Bolzano, Ehrenfels, and Witasek are hardly known, particularly not in the Anglo-Saxon world. Austrian aesthetics is surely less known than Austrian contributions (...) to other philosophical disciplines, like ontology, epistemology or philosophy of science. One of the aims of this paper is to show that this is both regrettable and unjustified for the following reasons: Austrian aestheticians have dealt with a number of problems (mainly concerning the foundations of aesthetics) that are salient until today; in terms of subtlety and depth as well as exactness and originality, in general, they easily stand comparison with today's analytic aesthetics; and many of there views and arguments are still worthy of consideration. In this paper, the focus is on a number of hardly known Austrian contributions to aesthetics. These contributions concern the following, partly interrelated, central problems of philosophical aesthetics: i. The problem of the definition of beauty (What is beauty? What does it mean to say of an object that it is beautiful?) ii. The problem of the ontological status of works of art (What kinds of objects are works of art?) iii. The problem of the objectivity of aesthetic values (Do we claim objective validity for aesthetic value judgements, and if so, is this claim justified?) The answers of Bolzano, Meinong, Witasek and Ehrenfels to these questions will be considered. (shrink)

This paper seeks a better understanding of the elements of practical reasoning: premises and conclusion. It argues that the premises of practical reasoning do not normally include statements such as ‘I want to ϕ’; that the reasoning in practical reasoning is the same as in theoretical reasoning and that what makes it practical is, first, that the point of the relevant reasoning is given by the goal that the reasoner seeks to realize by means of that reasoning and the subsequent (...) action; second, that the premises of such reasoning show the goodness of the action to be undertaken; third, that the conclusions of such reasoning may be actions or decisions, that can be accompanied by expressions of intention, either in action, or for the future; and that these are justified, and might be contradicted, in ways that are not only peculiar to them (i.e. in ways that diverge from those found in theoretical reasoning), but are distinctively practical, in that they involve reference to reasons for acting and to expressions of intention, respectively.1. (shrink)

We analyze Case in terms of independent constraints on syntactic structures — namely, the Projection Principle (inherent Case), the ECP (marked structural Case), and the theory of extended projections (the nominative, a Caseless nominal projection). The resulting theory accounts for (1) the government constraint on Case assignment, (2) all major Case systems (accusative, ergative, active, three-way, and split), (3) Case alternations (passive, antipassive, and ECM), and (4) the Case of nominal possessors. Structural Case may correlate with pronominal agreement because the (...) former can, and the latter must, involve antecedent-government by a functional head. However, neither phenomenon implies the other. (shrink)

This paper investigates civility from an Aristotelian perspective and has two objectives. The first is to offer a novel account of this virtue based on Aristotle’s remarks about civic friendship. The proposed account distinguishes two main components of civility—civic benevolence and civil deliberation—and shows how Aristotle’s insights can speak to the needs of our communities today. The notion of civil deliberation is then unpacked into three main dimensions: motivational, inquiry-related, and ethical. The second objective is to illustrate how the post-truth (...) condition—in particular, the spread of misinformation typical of the digital environments we inhabit—obstructs our capacity to cultivate the virtue of civility by impairing every component of civil deliberation. The paper hopes to direct virtue theorists’ attention to the need to foster civic virtues as a means of counteracting the negative aspects of the post-truth age. (shrink)

This paper describes quantificational structures in Greenlandic Eskimo (Kalaallisut), a language where familiar quantificational meanings are expressed in ways that are quite different from English. Evidence from this language thus poses some formidable challenges for cross-linguistic theories of compositional semantics.

The present paper presents experimental evidence confirming that contextually mismatching scalar implicatures can be generated even when quantifiers range over empty domains. In the literature, this possibility has been interpreted as providing further evidence for a grammatical approach to scalar implicatures. The main result presented here is that scalar sentences with empty domains are judged as more infelicitous when associated with a mismatching implicature than variants with the same empty domains but associated with a non-mismatching implicature. We interpret this result (...) as suggesting that the infelicity judgment associated with the first kind of sentence stems from the cumulative effect of the mismatching implicature and the contextual domain emptiness. Compared to previous literature on blind implicatures, our results indicate that the body of knowledge involved in relevance assignments is restricted to ignoring existential determination while still considering the properties attributed to nonexistent entities. They also show that, while not blocking implicature generation, contextual domain emptiness plays a role in speakers’ evaluation of scalar sentences, reflecting the unconscious nature of scalar implicature generation. (shrink)

Аннотация Понятие «парресия» впервые появляется в греческой литературе в V в. до н. э. Парресия — это возможность говорить свободно и открыто, не считаясь с авторитетами, говорить то, что без этого права может привести к наказанию или смерти. Парресия позволяла говорить правду властям, принося пользу тому, кто властвует, кому зачастую не хватает понимания сути реального положения дел. 1 Перевод статьи выполнен С. В. Борисовым по изданию: Tillmanns, Maria daVenza (2022). “How Parrhesia in Doing Philosophy With Children: Develops Their Touchstones (...) of Reality”. International Journal of Philosophical Practice, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1-11. В своей книге «Занятия философией с детьми в начальной школе: сложная деятельность» Берри Хисен утверждает, что занятие философией с детьми является формой парресии, поскольку побуждает детей говорить свободно и открыто. Парресия изменяет отношения между взрослым и ребенком. Серьезное отношение взрослых к детям как полноправным гражданам дает детям возможность серьезно относиться к себе, а также нести ответственность за свои мысли и чувства. Обосновывая свои мысли и чувства и прислушиваясь к мнению своих сверстников, дети становятся критическими слушателями не только других, но и самих себя. Они узнают, что то, что они думают и чувствуют, имеет вес, имеет значение в глазах других, что повышает самооценку. В процессе философствования дети также вырабатывают свои собственные критерии («пробные камни») реальности. Более того, для ощущения целостности и обоснованности того, кто мы есть, необходимо самопознание, что дает нам осознание цели и направления развития. (shrink)

Escribir hoy en día un libro sobre hermenéutica, que tal hermenéutica se refiera a la desarrollada por G. Gadamer en su conocido Verdad y método y que se pretenda añadir algo nuevo a lo mucho escrito sobre el tema parecería, a primera vista, empresa irrealizable. Que ambas pretensiones inspiren la sólida monografía de María G. Navarro —titulada Interpretar y argumentar— constituye empresa audaz y arriesgada, plena de coraje innovador, que provoca admiración, curiosidad e interés. Contra lo que pudiera parecer a (...) primera vista, el libro contiene un alto componente de originalidad y creatividad, debido a la estratagema metodoló-gica de que se sirve la autora. A saber, una hermenéutica in obliquo, estrategia consistente en interpretar a la hermenéutica gadameriana a través del prisma de la lógica de la argumentación. (shrink)

Translation into Russian by Dr. Sergey Borisov -/- Аннотация Понятие «парресия» впервые появляется в греческой литературе в V в. до н. э. Парресия — это возможность говорить свободно и открыто, не считаясь с авторитетами, говорить то, что без этого права может привести к наказанию или смерти. Парресия позволяла говорить правду властям, принося пользу тому, кто властвует, кому зачастую не хватает понимания сути реального положения дел. -/- Перевод статьи выполнен С. В. Борисовым по изданию: Tillmanns, Maria daVenza (2022). “How Parrhesia (...) in Doing Philosophy With Children: Develops Their Touchstones of Reality”. International Journal of Philosophical Practice, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1-11. В своей книге «Занятия философией с детьми в начальной школе: сложная деятельность» Берри Хисен утверждает, что занятие философией с детьми является формой парресии, поскольку побуждает детей говорить свободно и открыто. Парресия изменяет отношения между взрослым и ребенком. Серьезное отношение взрослых к детям как полноправным гражданам дает детям возможность серьезно относиться к себе, а также нести ответственность за свои мысли и чувства. Обосновывая свои мысли и чувства и прислушиваясь к мнению своих сверстников, дети становятся критическими слушателями не только других, но и самих себя. Они узнают, что то, что они думают и чувствуют, имеет вес, имеет значение в глазах других, что повышает самооценку. В процессе философствования дети также вырабатывают свои собственные критерии («пробные камни») реальности. Более того, для ощущения целостности и обоснованности того, кто мы есть, необходимо самопознание, что дает нам осознание цели и направления развития. (shrink)

: This study describes a new field method, suited for investigating scope relations — and other aspects of truth conditional meaning — with native speaker consultants who may speak no other language and have no background in linguistics or logic. This method revealed a surprising scope contrast between the antipassive and the ergative construction in Greenlandic Eskimo. The results of this field work are described in detail and a crosslinguistic scope generalization is proposed based on Greenlandic Eskimo, Basque, Polish, Russian, (...) Finnish and English. (shrink)

In Kalaallisut (Eskimo-Aleut:Greenland) verbs inflect for illocutionary mood (declarative, interrogative, imperative, or optative). In addition, the language has an evidential (reportative) clitic which is compatible with all illocutionary moods and gives rise to a variety of readings. These<br>lecture notes exemplify the attested combinations and readings by means of a representative sample of mini-discourses and mini-dialogs.

The synthetic theory of evolution has gone stale and an expanding or (re-)widening of it towards a new synthesis has been announced. This time, development and culture are supposed to join the synthesis bandwagon. In this article, I distinguish between four kinds of synthesis that are involved when we extend the evolutionary synthesis towards culture: the integration of fields, the heuristic generation of interfields, the expansion of validity, and the creation of a common frame of discourse or ‘big-picture’. These kinds (...) of synthesis are connected to epistemic values that are used to evaluate theories as well as analogies. A review of these epistemic values and the kinds of synthesis connected to them shall illustrate two points. First, that the discussions about culture and evolution exhibit an epistemic bias towards synthesis, even if, as history shows, synthesis and well as isolation can be fruitful epistemic strategies in science. The paper thus contains some critical notes on the value of synthesis in science. Second, reviewing the kinds of synthesis and values involved allows for a new perspective on the analogies involved in theories of cultural evolution. It is a perspective that makes the criteria with which these theories are usually evaluated explicit. With this we can compare the different standpoints people have taken on the usefulness of theories of cultural evolution at a higher level. Differences arise because of different epistemic values assumed. (shrink)

Important empirically informed proposals of virtue cultivation invoke techniques of goal pursuit. This paper argues that these techniques are effective in changing behavior due to the attention narrowing they bring about, and further show that such attention narrowing can threaten the appropriate exercise of phronetic-related capacities. When these phronetic-related capacities are threatened, two derivative problems arise: (1) One can end up acting in morally inappropriate ways, and (2) Even in cases where one performs the morally appropriate action, one nonetheless can (...) fail to notice and appreciate features of moral value. In light of these concerns, such techniques of goal pursuit – at least, by themselves – serve the most good for those who are merely trying to avoid vice, rather than cultivate virtue. And so, I suggest that such accounts of virtue cultivation are incomplete. I then go on to argue that these undesirable effects of attention narrowing brought about by these goal pursuit techniques may be ameliorated by also engaging in certain indirect modifications of cognition, particularly those which broaden attention. The suggestion, then, is that attention narrowing techniques of goal pursuit, along with attention broadening modifications, might best facilitate virtue cultivation when employed together. While the particulars of how we might best go about this are currently unclear, this paper ends by looking at empirical research on Open Monitoring Meditation as providing a hopeful option that might be further investigated. (shrink)

Data involving epistemic modals suggest that some classically valid argument forms, such as _reductio_, are invalid in natural language reasoning as they lead to modal collapses. We adduce further data showing that the classical argument forms governing the existential quantifier are similarly defective, as they lead to a _de re–de dicto_ collapse. We observe a similar problem for disjunction. But if the classical argument forms for negation, disjunction and existential quantification are invalid, what are the correct forms that govern the (...) use of these items? Our diagnosis is that epistemic modals interfere with hypothetical reasoning. We present a modal first-order logic and model theory that characterizes hypothetical reasoning with epistemic modals in a principled manner. One upshot is a sound and complete natural deduction system for reasoning with epistemic modals in first-order logic. (shrink)

This article sheds light on moral education from an exemplarist perspective. Following Linda Zagzebski's Exemplarist Virtue Theory, we relate several fundamental exemplarist intuitions to the classical virtue ethical debate over the unity-disunity of the virtues, to endorse a pluralistic exemplar-based approach to moral education ("Empe"). After a few preliminary remarks, we argue that Empe amounts to defending "a prima facie" disunitarist perspective in moral theory, which admits both exemplarity in all respects (moral sainthood) and single-domain exemplarity (moral heroism). Then, we (...) evaluate the effectiveness of heroes and saints for moral education, according to four criteria derived from Empe. This analysis allows us to conclude that moral education should value both kinds of exemplars and, therefore, adopt weaker standards of exemplarity than the unitarist's ones. (shrink)

Over the past decades a number of scholars have identified Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld as one of the most decisive early influences on Leibniz. In particular, the impressive similarity between their conceptions of universal harmony has been stressed. Since the issue of relations is at the heart of both Bisterfeld and Leibniz’s doctrines of universal harmony, the extent of the similarity between their doctrines will depend, however, on Bisterfeld and Leibniz’s respective theories of relations, and especially on their ontologies of relations. (...) This paper attempts to determine in more detail whether Bisterfeld’s ontology of relations contains at least the germ of the defining features of the ontology of relations later developed by Leibniz. It comes to the conclusion that, although Bisterfeld’s theory of relations is not as fully developed and explicit as that of Leibniz, it does contain all the key “ingredients” of it. (shrink)

In the paper it is argued that bridging the digital divide may cause a new ethical and social dilemma. Using Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, we show that an improper opening and enlargement of the digital environment (Infosphere) is likely to produce a Tragedy of the Digital Commons (TDC). In the course of the analysis, we explain why Adar and Huberman's previous use of Hardin's Tragedy to interpret certain recent phenomena in the Infosphere (especially peer-to-peer communication) may not be entirely (...) satisfactory. We then seek to provide an improved version of the TDC that avoids the possible shortcomings of their model. Next, we analyse some problems encountered by the application of classical ethics in the resolution of the TDC. In the conclusion, we outline the kind of work that will be required to develop an ethical approach that may bridge the digital divide but avoid the TDC. (shrink)

So far, we have focused on discourse reference to atomic individuals and specific times, events, and states. The basic point of the argument was that all types of discourse reference involve attention-guided anaphora (in the sense of Bittner 2012: Ch. 2). We now turn to discourses involving anaphora to and by quantificational expressions. Today, we focus on quantification over individuals but the analysis we develop will directly generalize to other semantic types. The basic idea is that quantification is one more (...) species of top-level anaphora--to wit, anaphora to top-ranked sets. (shrink)

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. – Albert Einstein -/- In my philosophical discussions with elementary school children, I use questions not just to uncover hidden assumptions the children may have, but to lead them to a place of aporia – puzzlement, a place of “not-knowing.” If some children assume that to be brave is to be fearless, (...) I not only ask why they assume this, but go on to ask how it is that we can be called brave, if we’re not even afraid? What’s there to be brave about? With this question, I try to bring the children to a place of “aporia,” a place of puzzlement. Aporia empowers thinking. -/- Philosophy is the pursuit of clear thinking; it is also the pursuit of wisdom, a deeper truth (see quote). -/- Wonder captivates us and connects us to the world around us. In “doing” philosophy with children, this sense of wonder is expanded upon. In their book, Journey of the Universe Swimme and Tucker state, “For or a young mammal, behavior is open-ended in a way that is rarer in adults… In a word, what often occupies their consciousness is play…. they enter into many kinds of relationships out of sheer curiosity.” -/- In doing philosophy with children, we play with ideas. Shobhan Lyons states in her article, “What makes a philosopher?”, in Philosophy Now, “Linking philosophy and truth is a common approach; but I believe that philosophy is less a search for truth and more an engagement with possibilities; …” For example, whereas fear may be a good thing in some instances, it may not be in others. Lying may be necessary in some instances and a good thing (although, it doesn’t imply that lying in itself is a good thing), and in other cases it may be harmful and hurtful. So how do you decide? This is where navigational skills come into play. What may work in some instances may in fact be the entirely wrong thing to do in other cases. So how can you tell? This is where you need to learn how to respond to complex situations. -/- I conclude with examples of aporia questions for 8 picture book stories. “Dragons and Giants,” in Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel: -/- The question is, are Frog and Toad brave? Children often conclude that to be brave you cannot be afraid. Since Frog and Toad are afraid, they cannot be brave. -/- An aporia question is, whether you can be brave without being afraid? If you are not in the least afraid, what makes you brave? Another aporia question is, whether Frog and Toad would be foolish rather than brave if they were not to jump out of the way of the snake, the avalanche or the hawk. A third aporia question has to do with the question how we know we are foolish or brave when dealing with that which is dangerous. -/- . (shrink)

By this point, we have developed some articulated analyses of top-level temporal anaphora, including temporal quantification, in languages with grammatical tense and/or aspect systems, represented by English, Polish, and Mandarin. But it is still not clear how this approach might extend to temporal anaphora in a language such as Kalaallisut, which has neither grammatical tense nor grammatical aspect, but instead marks only grammatical mood and person. Most theories of mood and modal reference either ignore temporal reference or analyze modal and (...) temporal reference as unrelated phenomena. Such theories provide no inkling how temporal reference in a tenseless mood-based language can be as precise as in English. (shrink)

Once upon a time, Aesop says, there was a donkey who wanted to be a pet dog. The pet dog was given many treats by the master and the household servants, and the donkey was envious of him. Hence, the donkey began emulating the pet dog. What happened next? The story ends up with the donkey beaten senseless, chased off to the stables, exhausted and barely alive. Who is to blame for the poor donkey’s unfortunate fate? Well, there could be (...) disagreement upon this, but we think emulation is to blame. And it’s on the kinds of envy-related emulation that we focus in this chapter. More analytically, we aim at vindicating the role of envy for moral exemplars within an exemplarist character educational framework. In the first section, we recall the central tenets of an exemplarist account of moral progress, and highlight how negative emotions, in general, have suffered a bad press within character education, with exemplarism being no exception. Then we provide a brief outline of standard strategies of defending envy by appealing to useful taxonomies of envy (e.g., Taylor 1988; Protasi 2016; Fussi 2018). After that, we put forward our 'Donkey Objection' by recalling Aesop’s fable on "foolish imitation", so as to show that when envy triggers mere emulation, it can bear devastating effects such as conformism and a lack of self-worth and personal integrity. In response to this objection, we bring into play a distinction between two rival forms of imitation—emulation and inspiration—and we coin the label of "inspired envy" for those forms of imitation by inspiration triggered by envy that lead to self-improvement avoiding morally detrimental consequences. (shrink)

Last time we introduced the notion of an illocutionary perspective . The basic idea is that the very act of speaking up introduces several discourse referents. The speech act itself (e ) is introduced as the central perspective point ( ε ). In addition, all the speech spheres (p ) where this speech act is realized, as well as the worlds of each sphere (w ∈p ) are introduced as modal topics ( Ω and  ω ).

Embodied self-reflection goes beyond strictly rational thinking – we are thinking beings after all, for it includes our tacit concrete knowledge, as Michael Polanyi and David Bohm would describe the thinking that is implicit in our abilities to know how to do things such as knowing how to ride a bicycle. Polanyi describes this knowledge as: “[knowing] more than we can tell.” To become aware of the thinking below the surface of rational thinking is very challenging. Yet that is exactly (...) what is required for any kind of self-awareness and self-transformation to take place. To become aware of our own thinking essentially means becoming aware of oneself as a witness to our own thinking in the process of thinking. Bohm understands thinking as a movement and similarly to becoming aware of our physical movements through proprioception, so too can we become aware of our thinking as a movement. Proprioception of thinking implies proprioception of embodied thinking. -/- (Self-)reflection is (self-)examination or (self-)scrutiny is a process that requires the courage to question one’s self and with it the touchstones underlying our identity. This process is a form of parrhesia, for parrhesia is essentially also a form of infinite questioning, and which can also be applied to questioning the self. (shrink)

One of Elizabeth Anscombe’s most decisive legacies is the rejection of modern legalistic morality, in the name of a rescue of Aristotelian-inspired natural normativity. However, as I will argue in this contribution, this legacy does not seem to have been fully collected, neither by those who, like Philippa Foot, are explicitly inspired by Anscombe’s work, nor by those who, while apparently opposing its assumptions, have also somehow recovered it by different routes, as emblematically does Christine Korsgaard in her constitutivist proposal. (...) In more detail, I aim to explore the relationship between teleology and normativity at the crossroads between neo-Aristotelian naturalism and constitutivism: both theories, though opposed, rest normativity on a link between function (the Aristotelian ergon) and practical reason and fail precisely in declining this relationship convincingly. (shrink)

This is the last of three lectures on anaphoric parallels between individuals and possibilities across languages (IMS, Stuttgart, 2000).

Unlike English and Polish, Mandarin has no grammatical tense (TNS). Therefore, reference times are only introduced by temporal modifiers (contra Smith 1991/7, Wu 2003, Lin 2005, etc). In Mandarin discourse, the frequency of such modifiers (‘today’, ‘last night’, etc) is about the same (low) as in tensed languages (e.g. English, Polish) and plays a similarly marginal role in temporal discourse reference. This, however, does NOT mean that in tenseless Mandarin temporal relations between eventualities in discourse are in any way less (...) precise than in tensed languages. Rather, the issue is HOW temporal relations are established: indirectly , via reference times, or directly, without mediating reference times. Tensed English and Polish typically first introduce a topic time (by topic-setting TNS) and then locate verbal eventualities in relation to this temporal topic (by anaphoric TNS). (shrink)

After Brexit became a reality in the UK and Trump became a reality in the United States, many thought that this was perhaps the last stand of those who thought of themselves as white and entitled to their land, calling it their country. Others living in their country may be citizens of that country, but it did not mean it was theirs as well. It belonged to those of white origin. And this “fact” would embolden those who wanted to “take (...) back” their country and protect its sovereignty. -/- Initially, I too, thought this was a sign that this nationalist thinking was becoming a part of history and, while it may create havoc on its way out, it was nonetheless on its way out. I thought this, at least, until I read an article in the New York Times by Jesse Singal titled “Undercover with the Alt-Right.”. (shrink)

Appendix to lecture notes on "Nominal (re)centering: From Kalaallisut to UC1". Day 2 of advanced course on "Cross-linguistic compositional semantics" at LSA Summer Institute 2009 at UC Berkeley.

Abstract: -/- In this paper we discuss how through our bi-weekly Socratic dialogue groups with inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown San Diego, we were able to bring the inmates to a sense of aporia or puzzlement. Not only did the dialogues help to uncover assumptions, uncovering the dots, so to speak, but also to help reconnect the dots and see their world from a different perspective. It allowed them to question their lives in a safe and non-judgmental environment. (...) They felt empowered by these dialogues to become their own life’s judges, freeing themselves from feeling oppressed by the judgments of others. (shrink)

The first of three lectures on nominal and modal discourse reference across languages (IMS, Stuttgart, 2000).

Was Iris Murdoch a virtue ethicist? At first sight, it would appear that she was not. She does not offer an explicit definition of account of the term ‘virtue’, and there are significant differences between her views and those of standard Aristotelian virtue ethicists. There is no reason, however, to think that the standard Aristotelian view represents the only legitimate form of virtue ethics. In this chapter, I begin by recalling (in section 1) the main commonalities between Murdoch’s criticisms of (...) the prevailing moral theories of her time and those of other first-wave virtue-ethicists. I then highlight (in section 2) some cornerstones of Murdoch’s peculiar approach to morality, which represent the background against which her account of virtue is developed, and I propose to trace these cornerstones back to a more diverse range of influences than the standard version of Aristotelianism. In section 3, I sketch the basics of Murdoch’s account of virtue, and I argue that there are at least three routes to vindicate it as a genuine virtue-ethical approach: the Buddhist, the Kantian and the Socratic-Aristotelian. I explore each of these routes in turn in sections 4, 5, and 6. In conclusion, I argue that the virtue-ethical field would benefit a great deal from the kind of pluralistic account of virtue that Murdoch offers. (shrink)

Philosophy with children often focuses on abstract reasoning skills, but as David Bohm points out the “entire process of mind” consists of our abstract thought as well as our “tacit, concrete process of thought.” Philosophy with children should address the “entire process of mind.” Our tacit, concrete process of thought refers to the process of thought that involves our actions such as the process of thought that goes into riding a bicycle. Bohm contends that we need to develop an awareness (...) or proprioception of thinking as well. When Socrates enters into dialogue with his interlocutors, he shows the limitations of purely abstract thought by leading them to admit that they really “don’t know.” But, of course, they know. We know what bravery is or what love is, even though we can never “explain” these concepts in abstract terms. Life has taught us through experience what these concepts mean and we have developed an understanding of them. We can recognize when a person acts bravely. This is where I see the link between our tacit, concrete process of thought and emotional intelligence. We need emotional intelligence to learn how to be brave, to learn how to love, and be just in the way we act in the world. Knowing what justice is abstractly does not make us act justly. We have to develop awareness of our actions in order to develop the skills necessary to act the part. This is also where emotional intelligence comes in. In the bulletin of the play Romeo and Juliet, director Barry Edelstein wrote the following: “To perform Romeo and Juliet, actors need a series of skills… they must have the emotional and psychological awareness and openness of uncommon depth; they must listen with acuteness, they must possess an imagination of real suppleness and subtlety…” An abstract portrayal would not bring these characters to life. We can surely agree – abstractly – that racism is destructive, but still act racist, without being even slightly aware of it. My contention is that while our abstract sense of racism has evolved, our tacit, concrete knowledge has not, which explains that racism is for the most part still rampant, even though we know abstractly that it is wrong. So how do we educate and develop the awareness of the tacit, concrete knowledge that informs our actions, and develop the emotional intelligence to give a depth of understanding to what we know and believe abstractly. (shrink)

The article is a more detailed consideration of the problems that were outlined in the first part of this study, “The Application of the Proprioception of Thinking in Doing Philosophy with Children” (Socium and Power, 2019, no. 4). This time, the author pays attention to the characterization of thinking as a process in the practice of philosophizing with children, justifying the effectiveness of this practice, which forms the awareness of actions and develops emotional intelligence. The author contrasts static abstract thinking (...) with the dynamics of a tacit concrete process of thought. Philosophizing with children in a dialogue form completely engages in the thought process, focuses on the very thinking, which is constantly developing taking into account different points of view, is complicated and deepens the understanding on an emotional level. (shrink)

Proprioception is usually used in reference to body movement and the self-perception of body movement. Proprius in Latin means “one’s own,” or “self.” It refers to the physical knowledge acquired, say, in the process of doing a particular activity, such as riding a bicycle, for instance. You can be told how to ride a bicycle, and this may be of some help. But in the end, it’s the physical knowledge and not the mere theoretical knowledge that enables you to ride (...) your bike. David Bohm, a world-renowned theoretical physicist, applied this notion of proprioception to the movement of thought, the process of thought. In On Dialogue, he contends that thinking can become aware of its own movement and aware of itself in action: -/- “Proprioception” is a technical term – you could also say “self-perception of thought,” “self-awareness of thought,” or “thought is aware of itself in action.” Whatever terms we use, I am saying: thought should be able to perceive its own movement, be aware of its own movement. In the process of thought there should be the awareness of that movement, of the intention to think, and of the result which the thinking produces. -/- This opens the door to an understanding of thinking as a process like any other physical process, such as riding a bicycle. We usually think of thinking as an abstract process – one of learning abstract knowledge and how to apply that knowledge. And this is what we are primarily taught in school. Unfortunately, some methods used in doing philosophy with children focus too much on strictly developing abstract critical thinking skills. -/- In doing philosophy with children, I am interested in focusing on the process of thinking in the process of thinking. In this way, it is also different from metacognition, which tends to focus on the ability to self-correct in response to the self-assessment toward the completion of a task. (shrink)

Mostraremos que el desacuerdo entre pesimistas y optimistas sobre la resolución racional de los desacuerdos profundos no se ubica en el nivel del contenido, de lo que están diciendo, sino en uno diferente. Para mostrar por qué es así, proponemos detenernos en el funcionamiento lógico-semántico del término clave en este desacuerdo: “racional”. Iniciaremos con el repaso de algunos argumentos que pesimistas y optimistas han esgrimido en su discusión, y comprobaremos la diferencia de estándares ya mencionada (sección 1); luego, nos detendremos (...) en las particularidades lógico-semánticas de “racional”, y explicitaremos lo que hacen los hablantes cuando realizan movidas lingüísticas con él (sección 2); y para finalizar, volveremos sobre el desacuerdo entre pesimistas y optimistas, y mostraremos por qué, a pesar de la diferencia, permanece como un desacuerdo genuino y es importante seguir inmiscuidos en esta discusión. El análisis lógico-semántico nos mostrará que “racional” no es usado para describir un estándar de racionalidad independiente de cualquier contexto, sino para expresar ciertas actitudes respecto de lo que decimos o hacemos. A pesar de la diferencia de estándares, pesimistas y optimistas siguen inmiscuidos en un desacuerdo genuino porque discrepan acerca de ciertas actitudes que hay que adoptar con respecto a, en este caso específico, los DP. (shrink)

This paper focuses on creating a paradigm shift; looking at how philosophy for and with children can inform philosophy, instead of having philosophy inform philosophy for and with children. My work in doing philosophy with children has shown me the limitations to trying to understand their way of doing philosophy through the lens of how adults understand philosophy and the influence western philosophy has had on the perception of what kids do when they are involved in philosophical group discussions. The (...) paradigm shift is relationally-based and for this I include the work of Martin Buber and David Bohm. Instead of looking at how we can develop critical thinking skills in children through developing their abstract thinking, I am interested in looking at what Bohm calls the tacit, concrete process of thinking. It’s the thinking that underlies thinking, so to speak. It’s the act of thinking underlying the abstract thinking we usually associate with thinking. In doing philosophy with children, I am interested in focusing on the process of thinking in the process of thinking. (shrink)