Starting from six kinds of periodicity of words we define six sets of words which are primitive in different senses and we investigate their relationships. We show that only three of the sets are external Marcus contextual languages with choice but none of them is an external contextual language without choice or an internal contextual language. For the time complexity of deciding any of our sets by one-tape Turing machines, n2 is a lower bound and this is (...) optimal in two cases. The notions of roots and degrees of words and languages, which are strongly connected to periodicity and primitivity, are also considered, and we show that there can be an arbitrarily large gap between the complexity of a language and that of its roots. (shrink)

We correct a mistake in the paper “Generalized periodicity and primitivity for words” [4] and justify the existence of regular languages all of whose roots are not even context-sensitive.

In her ‘Primitive Normativity and Scepticism about Rules’ (2011b), Hannah Ginsborg proposes a novel solution to Kripke’s sceptical challenge to factualists about meaning (those who think that there is some fact about what you mean or meant by your utterances). According to Ginsborg, the fact in virtue of which you mean, say, addition by ‘plus’ is the fact that ‘you are disposed to respond to a query about (say) “68 plus 57” with “125,” where, in responding in that way, (...) you take that response to be primitively appropriate in light of your previous uses of “plus”’ (Ginsborg 2011b, 244). Ginsborg’s account is at its most compelling when considering what we might call unsophisticated cases of meaning, cases in which a subject means something by their words without their being in a position to identify the relevant rule or provide any sort of justification for their using the term as they do. In this paper, I raise doubts about whether Ginsborg’s account is extendable to sophisticated cases of meaning. Reflection on those cases which generate the doubts brings it into question whether the dispositions that Ginsborg identifies are necessary and jointly sufficient for one’s meaning that p even in unsophisticated cases. (shrink)

A theory of conceptual development must provide an account of the innate representational repertoire, must characterize how these initial representations differ from the adult state, and must provide an account of the processes that transform the initial into mature representations. In Carey, 2009 (The Origin of Concepts), I defend three theses: 1) the initial state includes rich conceptual representations, 2) nonetheless, there are radical discontinuities between early and later developing conceptual systems, 3) Quinean bootstrapping is one learning mechanism that underlies (...) the creation of new representational resources, enabling such discontinuity. I also claim that the theory of conceptual development developed in The Origin of Concepts addresses two of Fodor's challenges to cognitive science; namely, to show how learning could possibly lead to an increase in expressive power and to defeat Mad Dog Nativism, the thesis that all concepts lexicalized as mono-morphemic words are innate. A recent article by Georges Rey (Mind & Language, 29.2, 2014) argues that my responses to Fodor's challenges fail, because, he says, I fail to distinguish concept possession from manifestation and I do not confront Goodman's new riddle of induction. My response is to show that, and how, new primitives in a language of thought can be learned, that there are easy routes and hard ones to doing so, and that characterizing the learning mechanisms involved is the key to understanding both concept possession and constraints on induction. (shrink)

In setting up a formal system to specify a grammar formalism, the conventional (mathematical) wisdom is to start with primitives (basic primitive structures) as simple as possible, and then introduce various operations for constructing more complex structures. An alternate approach is to start with complex (more complicated) primitives, which directly capture some crucial linguistic properties and then introduce some general operations for composing these complex structures. These two approaches provide different domains of locality, i.e., domains over which various types (...) of linguistic dependencies can be specified. The latter approach, characterized as complicate locally, simplify globally (CLSG), pushes non‐local dependencies to become local, i.e., they arise in the basic primitive structures to start with.The CLSG approach has led to some new insights into syntactic description, semantic composition, language generation, statistical processing, and psycholinguistic phenomena, all these with possible relevance to the cognitive architecture of language. In this paper, we will describe these results in an introductory manner making use of the framework of lexicalized tree‐adjoining grammar (LTAG), a key example of the CLSG approach, thereby describing the interplay between formal analysis on the one hand and linguistic and processing issues on the other hand. (shrink)

In an article entitled "Is BAD a semantic primitive?", John Myhill suggested that the concept 'bad' should be removed from the list of semantic primitives put forward by Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard. Myhill argued that 'bad' is semantically decomposable, that there is no word in Biblical Hebrew that corresponds to the English word bad and, thus, no linguistic form that represents the primitive BAD in this language, and that 'bad' is dispensable in the semantic analysis and can (...) be replaced with other components without any loss or change of meaning. Discussing and illustrating some fundamental questions in the search for universal semantic primitives, the present author reconsiders these findings and finds a different answer to John Myhill's question. (shrink)

In reply to Wierzbicka's advocacy of semantic primitives we argue that talk of the semantic primitives repeats the fallacies addressed in the target article at a higher level. In reply to Malcolm's plea for a Wittgensteinian grammar of colour words, we argue that he uses words like “we” and “us” too easily, falling into the trap of “silly relativism.” In reply to McManus's science of word counts, we reiterate the nineteenth-century criticism that this method is based on an (...) illegitimate application of seemingly rigorous statistical methods. (shrink)

Thinking without Words provides a challenging new theory of the nature of non-linguistic thought. Many scientific disciplines treat non-linguistic creatures as thinkers, explaining their behavior in terms of their thoughts about themselves and about the environment. But this theorizing has proceeded without any clear account of the types of thinking available to non-linguistic creatures. One consequence of this is that ascriptions of thoughts to non-linguistic creatures have frequently been held to be metaphorical and not to be taken at face (...) value. Bermúdez offers a conceptual framework for treating human infants and non-human animals as genuine thinkers. Whereas existing discussions of thought at the non-linguistic level have concentrated on how such thoughts might be physically realized, Bermúdez approaches the problem by considering what is required in explaining behavior in psychological terms. In developing a positive account of non-linguistic thought he shows how the experimental tools used by developmental psychologists and students of animal behavior can be used to give a precise account of the way in which a human infant or non-human animal is representing the world. Much of the book is devoted to exploring the differences between thinking without words and language-based thinking. Bermúdez argues that there are clear limits to the expressive power of non-linguistic thought. Nonetheless, he identifies primitive analogues at the non-linguistic level that can be used to explain sophisticated non-linguistic behaviors. Thinking Without Words is the first full-length philosophical study of this important topic. It is written with an interdisciplinary readership in mind and will appeal to philosophers, psychologists, and students of animal behavior. (shrink)

The paper suggests a way of viewing the two Fregean principles of compositionality and contextuality as working together in the enterprise of interpretation. A third Fregean theme, that of elucidation (more precisely, the elucidation of primitive, undefinable terms of logic, mathematics and metamathematics) secures a place for some version of the context principle in Frege's later writings. When thinking about the functioning of elucidations, Frege acknowledges a principle of charitable interpretation. I argue that there is a deep connection between (...) the three themes, and that not only compositionality and contextuality, but also charity is a genuinely Fregean theme. -/- Context. Interpretation. Linguistics. Logic. Meaning. Word. (shrink)

This paper sketches a particular line of criticism targeted at Scanlon’s account of a normative reason, which is purported to kill two birds with one stone: to raise doubts about the plausibility of Scanlon’s account of a normative reason and, next, to dismiss Scanlon’s conception of what a normative reason is in the role of an argument for semantic normativism. Following Whiting I take semantic normativism to be the view, according to which linguistic meaning is intrinsically normative. The key argument (...) for semantic normativism is that a word or expression has conditions for its correct use which count, or speak in favour of using it in certain ways and not in others. Specifically, it has immediate implications for how a subject should or may employ that expression. I shall argue that if the favouring format of analysis of a normative reason is not a particularly happy proposal in itself, then it supplies a superficial support for semantic normativism. (shrink)

In my dissertation I analyze the structure of fundamental physical theories. I start with an analysis of what an adequate primitive ontology is, discussing the measurement problem in quantum mechanics and theirs solutions. It is commonly said that these theories have little in common. I argue instead that the moral of the measurement problem is that the wave function cannot represent physical objects and a common structure between these solutions can be recognized: each of them is about a clear (...) three-dimensional primitive ontology that evolves according to a law determined by the wave function. The primitive ontology is what matter is made of while the wave function tells the matter how to move. One might think that what is important in the notion of primitive ontology is their three-dimensionality. If so, in a theory like classical electrodynamics electromagnetic fields would be part of the primitive ontology. I argue that, reflecting on what the purpose of a fundamental physical theory is, namely to explain the behavior of objects in three--dimensional space, one can recognize that a fundamental physical theory has a particular architecture. If so, electromagnetic fields play a different role in the theory than the particles and therefore should be considered, like the wave function, as part of the law. Therefore, we can characterize the general structure of a fundamental physical theory as a mathematical structure grounded on a primitive ontology. I explore this idea to better understand theories like classical mechanics and relativity, emphasizing that primitive ontology is crucial in the process of building new theories, being fundamental in identifying the symmetries. Finally, I analyze what it means to explain the word around us in terms of the notion of primitive ontology in the case of regularities of statistical character. Here is where the notion of typicality comes into play: we have explained a phenomenon if the typical histories of the primitive ontology give rise to the statistical regularities we observe. (shrink)

Two problems are discussed: Can and should psychological concepts be defined, and can and should they be organized in an axiomatic system? I point out that definitions in terms of physiological or behavioral measures are strictly impossible because any particular measure can mean anything, whereas phenomenological definitions always point to antecedents and consequents. I then point out that definitions of antecedents and consequents can be given either in terms of causes or in terms of reasons, and that causes and reasons (...) belong to two incompatible languages. Causes exist independently of persons and reasons exist only for persons. Only the latter belong to psychology, as I see it. The working of the system of psycho-logic is illustrated by an analysis of the conditions of trust. I conclude that psychological terms should be defined by means of semantic primitives, and that one should try to organize them in an axiomatic system. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Thinking without Words provides a challenging new theory of the nature of non-linguistic thought. Many scientific disciplines treat non-linguistic creatures as thinkers, explaining their behavior in terms of their thoughts about themselves and about the environment. But this theorizing has proceeded without any clear account of the types of thinking available to non-linguistic creatures. One consequence of this is that ascriptions of thoughts to non-linguistic creatures have frequently been held to be metaphorical and not to be taken at face (...) value. Bermúdez offers a conceptual framework for treating human infants and non-human animals as genuine thinkers. Whereas existing discussions of thought at the non-linguistic level have concentrated on how such thoughts might be physically realized, Bermúdez approaches the problem by considering what is required in explaining behavior in psychological terms. In developing a positive account of non-linguistic thought he shows how the experimental tools used by developmental psychologists and students of animal behavior can be used to give a precise account of the way in which a human infant or non-human animal is representing the world. Much of the book is devoted to exploring the differences between thinking without words and language-based thinking. Bermúdez argues that there are clear limits to the expressive power of non-linguistic thought. Nonetheless, he identifies primitive analogues at the non-linguistic level that can be used to explain sophisticated non-linguistic behaviors. Thinking Without Words is the first full-length philosophical study of this important topic. It is written with an interdisciplinary readership in mind and will appeal to philosophers, psychologists, and students of animal behavior. (shrink)

The paper builds on both a simply typed term system ${\cal PR}^\omega$ and a computation model on Scott domains via so-called parallel typed while programs (PTWP). The former provides a notion of partial primitive recursive functional on Scott domains $D_\rho$ supporting a suitable concept of parallelism. Computability on Scott domains seems to entail that Kleene's schema of higher type simultaneous course-of-values recursion (scvr) is not reducible to partial primitive recursion. So extensions ${\cal PR}^{\omega e}$ and PTWP $^e$ are (...) studied that are closed under scvr. The twist are certain type 1 Gödel recursors ${\cal R}_k$ for simultaneous partial primitive recursion. Formally, ${\cal R}_k\vec{g}\vec{H}xi$ denotes a function $f_i \in D_{\iota\to\iota}$ , however, ${\cal R}_k$ is modelled such that $f_i$ is finite, or in other words, a partial sequence. As for PTWP $^e$ , the concept of type $\iota\to\iota$ writable variables is introduced, providing the possibility of creating and manipulating partial sequences. It is shown that the PTWP $^e$ -computable functionals coincide with those definable in ${\cal PR}^{\omega e}$ plus a constant for sequential minimisation. In particular, the functionals definable in ${\cal PR}^{\omega e}$ denoted ${\cal R}^{\omega e}$ can be characterised by a subclass of PTWP $^e$ -computable functionals denoted ${\rm PPR}^{\omega e}$ . Moreover, hierarchies of strictly increasing classes ${\cal R}^{\omega e}_n$ in the style of Heinermann and complexity classes ${\rm PPR}^{\omega e}_n$ are introduced such that $\forall n\ge 0. {\cal R}^{\omega e}_n ={\rm PPR}^{\omega e}_n$ . These results extend those for ${\cal PR}^\omega$ and PTWP [Nig94]. Finally, scvr is employed to define for each type $\sigma$ the enumeration functional $E^\sigma$ of all finite elements of $D_\sigma$. (shrink)

The paper builds on a simply typed term system ${\cal PR}^\omega $ providing a notion of partial primitive recursive functional on arbitrary Scott domains $D_\sigma$ that includes a suitable concept of parallelism. Computability on the partial continuous functionals seems to entail that Kleene's schema of higher type simultaneous course-of-values recursion (SCVR) is not reducible to partial primitive recursion. So an extension ${\cal PR}^{\omega e}$ is studied that is closed under SCVR and yet stays within the realm of subrecursiveness. (...) The twist are certain type 1 Gödel recursors ${\cal R}_k$ for simultaneous partial primitive recursion. Formally, the value ${\cal R}_k\vec{g}\vec{H} x i$ is a function $f_i$ of type $\iota \to \iota$ , however, ${\cal R}_k$ is modelled such that $f_i$ is a finite element of $D_{\iota\to\iota}$ or in other words, a partial sequence. It is shown that the Ackermann function is not definable in ${\cal PR}^{\omega e}$. (shrink)

Here I consider the possible role of the temporal updating system in the development of the temporal reasoning system. Using evidence from children's acquisition of time words, I argue that abstract temporal concepts are not built from primitive representations of time. Instead, I propose that language and cultural learning provide the primary sources of the temporal reasoning system.

Current models of speech motor control rely on either trajectory-based control (DIVA, GEPPETO, ACT) or a dynamical systems approach based on feedback control (Task Dynamics, FACTS). While both approaches have provided insights into the speech motor system, it is difficult to connect these findings across models given the distinct theoretical and computational bases of the two approaches. We propose a new extension of the most widely used dynamical systems approach, Task Dynamics, that incorporates many of the strengths of trajectory-based approaches, (...) providing a way to bridge the theoretical divide between what have been two separate approaches to understanding speech motor control. The Task Dynamics (TD) model posits that speech gestures are governed by point attractor dynamics consistent with a critically damped harmonic oscillator. Kinematic trajectories associated with such gestures should therefore be consistent with a second-order dynamical system, possibly modified by blending with temporally overlapping gestures or altering oscillator parameters. This account of observed kinematics is powerful and theoretically appealing, but may be insufficient to account for deviations from predicted kinematics – i.e., changes produced in response to some external perturbations to the jaw, changes in control during acquisition and development, or effects of word/syllable frequency. Optimization, such as would be needed to minimize articulatory effort, is also incompatible with the current TD model, though the idea that the speech production systems economizes effort has a long history and, importantly, also plays a critical role in current theories of domain-general human motor control. To address these issues, we use Dynamic Movement Primitives (DMPs) to expand a dynamical systems framework for speech motor control to allow modification of kinematic trajectories by incorporating a simple, learnable forcing term into existing point attractor dynamics. We show that integration of DMPs with task- based point-attractor dynamics enhances the potential explanatory power of TD in a number of critical ways, including the ability to account for external forces in planning and optimizing both kinematic and dynamic movement costs. At the same time, this approach preserves the successes of Task Dynamics in handling multi-gesture planning and coordination. (shrink)

A pseudo-natural algorithm for the word problem of a finitely presented group is an algorithm which not only tells us whether or not a word w equals 1 in the group but also gives a derivation of 1 from w when w equals 1. In [13], [14] Madlener and Otto show that, if we measure complexity of a primitive recursive algorithm by its level in the Grzegorczyk hierarchy, there are groups in which a pseudo-natural algorithm is arbitrarily more complicated (...) than an algorithm which simply solves the word problem. In a given group the lowest degree of complexity that can be realised by a pseudo-natural algorithm is essentially the derivational complexity of that group. Thus the result separates the derivational complexity of the word problem of a finitely presented group from its intrinsic complexity. The proof given in [13] involves the construction of a finitely presented group G from a Turing machine T such that the intrinsic complexity of the word problem for G reflects the complexity of the halting problem of T, while the derivational complexity of the word problem for G reflects the runtime complexity of T. The proof of one of the crucial lemmas in [13] is only sketched, and part of the purpose of this paper is to give the full details of this proof. We will also obtain a variant of their proof, using modular machines rather than Turing machines. As for several other results, this simplifies the proofs considerably. MSC: 03D40, 20F10. (shrink)

In the Qur’ān the most significant words used to indicate settlement are diyār, qarya, madīna, miṣr and balad. Among these, qarya and madīna are the most important ones. While Qarya means, county, city, urban, land and settlement, madīna means town. Miṣr is used for a city as well as for a specific name of a country. Diyār indicates a geographic border and the places of a settlement, and balad infers a political unity of a number of settlements. Due to (...) this use in ‘Arabic, the word balad is used as a country and a state at the same time. Recently, there are some studies focusing on examining the terms of qarya and madīna. Hovewer, we cannot encompass the semantic area of these words only by looking up their dictionary meaning and how they were used in the Qur’ān. Therefore, in this study the old cities are examined as they exist in their places. In this study, we have utilised from the modern and contemporary scientific findings which were made for urbanization and its history. For a better understanding of the concept of urbanization, some prophets’ stories have been revised. In Qur’ān the words indicating urbanization are related to society, nature, place, human, art, economy, politics and reconstruction. Therefore, the concepts of the diyār, qarya, madīna, miṣr and balad used to describe the settlements point to the relationship of society with different elements and activities.Summary: Cities, the birth of the cities, sociology, history, anthropology and cultural history are the major subjects in social science. Among them, the birth of cities are especially important for history, anthropology and sociology. For some researchers, cities are the most important revolution of humanity. Cities do not merely mean the places where the human settle down or form a society. In many human languages there is a strong relation between the words expressing civilization and settlement. There is a strong connection between cities and civilization. In Turkish, the word civilization/uygarlık comes from Uygurlar/Uighurs which means those who settled down first. Again in Turkish, the word of madaniyet which is originally Arabic is derived from madīna which means city. In English and French, civilization derives from civitas which is originally Latin. Civitas means a settlement and also the people who live within it. In ‘Arabic, the word hadārī, means settling in a place, is used for civilization, In this study, the words related to urbanization to which social science like sociology, history, anthropology and cultural history attribute a great importance are investigated from the mufassirs’ perspective. As a result of the researches, it was observed that the words qarya, madīna, diyār miṣr and balad were used in the Qur’ān in close terms with the city. Before examining the words which refer to city in the Qur’ān like qarya, madīna, diyār, mıṣr and balad, the approaches of sociology, history and anthropology are investigated for comparative purposes. According to modern and contemporary researches, jobs like art writing, music and architecture appeared after urbanization. The evolution of humanity from primitive period to modernity is because of urbanization. Cities are the crops of social relationships between people. Urbanization caused wider social interactions and the formation of more complicated societies. People who constitute societies and complicated relationships founded cities. With the increase of specialization and jobs, people of one or more job were able to meet the needs of each other through social cooperation.Before the urbanization the human-nature relation was more important but in cities human-human relation got more important. Cities caused social status to be a result of human-human relations. In these social categories, jobs like managers, merchants, guilds, soldiers and religious groups like religious leaders and darvīsh appeared. The physical features of a city are as important as their social structure. A city firstly has walls, administration, bazaar, laws, and the sense of common belonging among people.In the Qur’ān, it can be noticed that the history of settlement is developed chronologically. In the Qur’ān, the words qarya, madīna, diyār miṣr and balad are used in the meaning of the city. These words have a close relationship with people and society. For example, because societies and cities were not formed during the time of Adam, there is no word in the stories that evokes society and the city. The same is true for Idrīs. When we look at the narratives about Noah, for the first time there are words like the people, mala/the leaders of the community, erāzil/shameless, and the ship. Although no word meaning city or city is used in these stories, it is seen that society and social strata are formed. In the Hoad period, the word house, palace, building and Irem were used in addition to the word peoples/tribe. In addition to the words that express the civilized developments in the stories of Noah and Hoad, the existence of the words diyār and madīna draws attention during the reign of Ṣāleḥ. In the Qur’ān, the first terms related to urbanization were mentioned in the story of Hoad, and the words meaning settlement and city were mentioned in the story of Ṣāleḥ. Moreover, the words realm and madīna were used in the story of Ṣāleḥ. In the periods of Abraham and Moses, the words qarya and miṣr were added to this. The word Midian was used specifically for the city of Shu‘ayb, and the word balad was used for Mecca during the time of Prophet Muhammad.As mentioned in Noah’s era peoples and the states of people were present; in Hoad’s era, vineyard, garden, agriculture, houses, buildings and small scale settlements started to be constructed. In the Qur’ān, during the era of prophet Hoad, words like: vineyard, garden, agriculture, houses, building and palace, were used, however there is not a single word which means city. In Ṣāleḥ’s era the words dār and diyār were used in a general meaning? Therefore, it can be safely said that urbanization seriously started in Ṣāleḥ’s era. Additionally, dār also means house, vineyard, garden, grassland, region and home. Descriptions of dār, diyār and madīna in Ṣāleḥ’s parable point out the three directions of Thamūd peoples about urbanization. The word dār refers to the architectural features of their houses; the word diyār refers to their vineyards, gardens, houses and lands; and the word madīna refers to the largest and most important settlement in their homes. As modern and contemporary science has argued, according to the commentators, madīna is used for the settlements surrounded by walls, with its bazaar, army, ruler, tradesman and merchant.In the Qur’ān, the word qarya is closer to diyāri even if its used as madīna in some of the parables. Nevertheless, qarya is different from diyār due to its two distinctive features of political structure and intimacy. Qarya is a city or city state in some way, but it is not only a center but also a city or city state with a political structure with villages, towns, mountains, slopes and plains. So today, it refers to a city which has political integrity with its provincial borders or environment. Diyār was used for the places which were suitable for agriculture, while qarya was used for the cities of Sāmī people as a common word in Sāmī languages. For this reason, qarya was never used for the settlements of Copti, which are African communities; instead, the misr, which is a common word in Coptic and Arabic, was preferred. Even the word miṣr which means city in the Coptic language was used as a country name in the Egyptian regions. The word Balad indicates more a political formation, so it only means country. In the time period of Jahiliyyah they used balad for Mecca which owned a political formation.In the Qur’ān the words qarya and balad are used for Mecca but words like diyār, madīna and miṣr were never used for it. The use of the name qarya for Mecca indicates that it was established by a non-Arab like Abraham on the one hand and that it was the common place of all people. The word of madīna is not used to describe it because Mecca has not embody walls, bazaar, army or craftmanship. The reasons for not using diyār is because there are no vineyards or gardens. The lack of the word miṣr for Mecca also indicates that there is no influence of North African races such as Hāmī in Mecca.Briefly, Qarya is a settlement with its village and towns which is under administration. Madīna is a important center which exists inside qarya with walls, bazaar and architecture. Diyār is a settlement of the city center with houses, vineyards and gardens. Miṣr is a city where the Northern Africans are residing and Balad is a settlement where is prominences as political organization. (shrink)

John Jewel, regarded as the principal apologist and theologian for the Elizabethan Church, was also esteemed as one of England’s most important authority on the subject of usury, and therefore was cited frequently by opponents of usury towards the end of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth century. One of the most sustained interpretations of Jewel as a theologian on the subject of usury was by Christoph Jelinger, who observed that the late bishop of Sarum employed the same theological (...) method in opposing usury as he did in defending the doctrines and practices of the Church of England against its Catholic opponents, that is, by appealing to the Scriptures, the Church Fathers, Church Councils, and the example of the primitive church. This article seeks to confirm the opinion of Jelinger, and in doing so show that Jewel’s opposition to usury stemmed primarily from the conviction that it was both a vice and heresy that eroded the unifying attribute of Christian society which was love. (shrink)

Pouca atenção foi dada pelos estudiosos para a função da Palavra de Deus no relato da pesca milagrosa em Lucas, tanto em nível literário, quanto teológico. Diante disso, o objetivo deste trabalho foi analisar a perícope de Lc 5,1-11, com enfoque na Palavra de Deus, proclamada em Jesus e por ele. A metodologia utilizada foi a análise e interpretação de textos, privilegiando o método histórico-crítico e os seus elementos essenciais, além do uso de outros métodos, baseados na ciência da linguagem. (...) Pode-se dizer que a Palavra de Deus ocupa um lugar central na trama, dando cadência ao relato e elucidando o sentido teológico que Lucas pretende imprimir, o que fica evidente pelas alterações feitas pelo autor no relato original. Na perícope da pesca milagrosa, a Palavra é proclamada por Jesus em caráter performativo, faz o milagre acontecer, conduz Pedro à conversão e dá a ele uma nova missão. Na teologia de Lucas ouvimos o eco das comunidades primitivas, nascidas ao redor da Palavra do Senhor. Palavras-chave : Lucas. Pesca. Milagre. Pedro. Palavra.The scholars haven’t given too much attention to the function of the Word of God in the report of the miraculous catch of fish in Luke, at the literary and theological level. Thus, the objective of this paper was to analyze the pericope of Luke 5:1-11, with emphasis on the Word of God proclaimed in Jesus and through Him. The methodology used was the analysis and interpretation of texts, focusing on the historical-critical method and its essential elements, besides the use of other methods, based on the science of language. It’s possible to say that the Word of God occupies a central place in the plot, giving cadence to the report and elucidating the theological sense that Luke wanted to print, which is evidenced by the changes he has made in the original report. In the pericope of the miraculous catch of fish, the Word is proclaimed by Jesus in a performative way; it makes the miracle happen, leads Peter to conversion and gives him a new mission. In Luke's theology, one hears the echo of primitive communities, born around the word of the Lord. Key-words: Luke. Fishing. Miracle. Peter. Word. (shrink)

My purpose is to explain, first, that there is an alternative to Harnad's version of the symbol grounding problem, which is known as the problem of primitives; second, that there is an alternative to his solution (which is externalist) in the form of a dispositional conception (which is internalist); and, third, that, while the TTT, properly understood, may provide partial and fallible evidence for the presence of similar mental powers, it cannot supply conclusive proof, because more than observable symbolic manipuation (...) and robotic behavior is involved here, as he admits (Harnad 1991). Carrying the problem further appears to require inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Index to Volume Fifty-SixArticlesBernier, Bernard, National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, 1 : 84-105Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, Chai-sik Chung, 2 : 253-280Buxton, Nicholas, The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, 3 : 392-408Chan, Sin Yee, The Confucian Notion of Jing (Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : (...) 229-252Chong, Kim-chong, Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, 3 : 370-391Chung, Chai-sik, Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, 2 : 253-280The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, Chenyang Li, 4 : 583-603The Confucian Notion of Jing.(Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : 229-252The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? Jay L. Garfield, 2 : 201-228The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'āmirī, Paul L. Heck, 1 : 106-135The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, Nicholas Buxton, 3 : 392-408De Reu, Wim, Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, 2 : 281-300The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhaga-vadgītā, Christopher Framarin, 4 : 604-617Framarin, Christopher, The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhagavadgītā, 4 : 604-617Garfield, Jay L., The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? 2 : 201-228Heck, Paul L., The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'ā mirī, 1 : 106-135Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel, 4 : 519-566Ho, Chien-hsing, Saying the Unsayable, 3 : 409-427Kantor, Hans-Rudolf, Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538-597) Tiantai Buddhism, 1 : 16-68Lai, Karyn, Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, 1 : 69-83Li, Chenyang, The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, 4 : 583-603Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, Karyn Lai, 1 : 69-83Ma, Lin, and Jaap van Brakel, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, Bernard Bernier, 1 : 84-105Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538- 597) Tiantai Buddhism, Hans-Rudolf Kantor, 1 : 16-68Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, Wim De Reu, 2 : 281-300The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, Jinmei Yuan, 1 : 136-152Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, Jonathan Stoltz, 4 : 567-582Saying the Unsayable, Chien-hsing Ho, 3 : 409-427Schiltz, Elizabeth, Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, 3 : 451-468Spackman, John, The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, 3 : 428-450Stevenson, Frank W., Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, 2 : 301-331Stoltz, Jonathan, Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, 4 : 567-582The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, John Spackman, 3 : 428-450 [End Page 709]Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, Elizabeth Schiltz, 3 : 451-468van Brakel, Jaap, and Lin Ma, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566Yuan, Jinmei, The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, 1 : 136-152Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, Kim-chong Chong, 3 : 370-391Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, Frank W. Stevenson, 2 : 301-331Book NotesFenner, David E. W., Introducing Aesthetics (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516Introducing Aesthetics, by David E. W. Fenner (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516McRae, James, a book... (shrink)

The square of a language L is the set of all words pp where p ∈ L. The square of a regular language may be regular too or context-free or none of both. We give characterizations for each of these cases and show that it is decidable whether a regular language has one of these properties.

Paul Horwich (1998), following a number of others, proposes a schematic compositional format for the specification of the meanings of complex expressions. The format is schematic in the sense that it identifies grammatical schemata that do not presuppose any particular account of primitive word meanings: whatever the nature of meanings, the application of the schemata to them will serve to explain compositionality. This signals, for Horwich, that compositionality is a non-substantive constraint on theories of meaning. Drawing on a range (...) of linguistic data, the present paper argues that while the bare idea of compositionality indeed does not presuppose any account of meaning, Horwich's format is empirically inadequate. The argument here goes back to Chomsky's early position on the descriptive inadequacy of rewrite grammars and the consequent need for transformations. It will also be seen that the data militates for a general claim that meaning relevant structure is projected from words rather than imposed on them schematically. Finally, it will be indicated how this reasoning from syntactic considerations is flush with a more traditional philosophical understanding of compositionality. (shrink)

This paper is a research around an aspect of contemporary history of culture, regarding modern fascination for the primitive word and the search for the primitive through study of the artistic productions of the mentally ill. In my work this problem is analyzed by the point of view of the book of Robert Volmat _L’art psychopathologique_. _L’art psyichopathologique _is a remarkable example to observe the problem of primitivism in its connections with psychology, anthropology and philosophical research on artistic (...) expression. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with the mischaracterization of avowals of experience as descriptions of experience and the misconception of avowals and reports of experience as a matter of reading a description off the facts presented to one in introspection. One paradigm of description which Wittgenstein often employed as an object of comparison is giving a word‐picture of perceptible states of affairs, events or objects. To view avowals of pain as forms of pain‐behaviour akin to moans or cries of pain is (...) not to identify pain with pain‐behaviour. The affinity between spontaneous avowals and natural expressive behaviour must not mask the fact that the uses of first‐person psychological sentences are heterogeneous. Some approximate to primitive cries and gestures, and others are far removed from those paradigms. The spectrum of uses of first‐person psychological sentences to which Wittgenstein drew attention involves subtle gradations. (shrink)

The argument from absence of analysis (AAA) infers primitivism about some x from the absence of a reductive analysis ofx. But philosophers use the word ‘primitive’ to mean many distinct things. I argue that there is a robust sense of ‘primitive’ present in the metaphysics literature that cannot be inferred via the AAA. Successfully demonstrating robust primitivism about somexrequires showing two things at once: that a reduction ofxis not possible and that an explanatorily deep characterization ofxis not available. (...) In order to secure this second explanatory claim, the AAA must wrongly assume that reductive analysis is our only source of explanatory characterization. I argue that this is false by offering a distinct way of providing explanatory characterizations backed by suitably understood metaphysical constraints. While there remains a minimal sense of ‘primitive’ inferable via the AAA, this sense is exhausted by the denial of reduction. With minimal primitivism as its target, the AAA is uninteresting. (shrink)

One of the tasks faced by young children is the segmentation of a continuous stream of speech into discrete linguistic units. Early in development, syllables emerge as perceptual primitives, and the wholesale storage of syllable chunks is one possible strategy for bootstrapping the segmentation process. Here, we investigate what types of chunks children store. Our method involves selecting syllabified utterances from corpora of child-directed speech, which we vary according to (a) their length in syllables, (b) the mutual predictability of their (...) syllables, and (c) their frequency. We then use the number of utterances within which words are contained to predict the time course of word learning, arguing that utterances which perform well at this task are also more likely to be stored, by young children, as undersegmented chunks. Our results show that short utterances are best-suited for predicting when children acquire the words contained within them, although the effect is rather small. Beyond this, we also find that short utterances are the most likely to correspond to words. Together, the two findings suggest that children may not store many complete utterances as undersegmented chunks, with most of the units that children store as hypothesized words corresponding to \textit{actual} words. However, dovetailing with an item-based account of language-acquisition, when children do store undersegmented chunks, these are likely to be short sequences -- not frequent or internally predictable multi-word chunks. We end by discussing implications for work on formulaic multi-word sequences. (shrink)

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

Preliminary words One important feature of Poincaré's conventionalism of geometry is linked to the relation between the abstract notion of space geometry and the representations of the free mobility of our bodies. In this sense «the group of rigid motions» identified by Helmholtz and Lie as the foundation of geometries of constant curvature is, according to Poincaré, an idealization of the primitive experience that acquaints us with the properties of space in the first place. 2 Furthermore, since Poincaré (...) thinks that the only adequate candidates for physical geometry – the geometries of constant curvature – are equivalent from a mathematical point of view (they are homeomorphic), we can choose any one of these. Actually, according to Poincaré, the idealization involved in passing from our own local motions to the group of motions makes use of temporal intuition: our notion of the large-space structure of space assumes that our displacements are infinitely iterables and this assumes temporal intuition. 3 Thus, it looks as Poincaré's notion of convention assumes some kind of idealization process. Indeed, the notion of convention involved in this cases seems to assume that in relation to a target system the choice between two idealizations is determined by some kind of equivalence relation, which in our case is displayed 1. (shrink)

The word “organism” represents an original keyword of the early-modern philosophical world. As it was first developed by Leibniz, it seems to blend together two different conceptual paradigms: the Cartesian model of the “machines” and the Aristotelian legacy of the “individual natures”. According to the first, nature represents itself the prototype of any good mechanical functioning, but at the same time its inner development is explained by the occurrence of a normative dimension that rules the world of primitive forces (...) in the dynamics. For such reasons, the “organism” lexicon is affected by an internal stress that is extremely interesting to analyze for it seems to posit a normative turn acting from the within of a mechanically conceived notion of life. (shrink)

Relational structure is a primitive notion of Heidegger’s Dasein. By analyzing the concept of pros-ti as it emerges from the Heidegger’s 1924 course dedicated to Plato’s Sophist, I outline the Platonic and Aristotelic roots of Heideggerian Mitsein. Arguably the Mitsein makes explicit the instances of the pros ti — in other words, the instances of Aristotle’s concept of relatedness/intentionality that Heidegger ascribes to Plato’s heteron — but giving them an existential value, having Heidegger pursued the shift from realism (...) to phenomenologyexistentialism. The article concludes by emphasizing the relevance of these themes for social ontology. (shrink)