Quantitative comparison of human language and natural animal communication requires improved conceptualizations. We argue that an infrastructural approach to development and evolution incorporating an extended interpretation of the distinctions among illocution, perlocution, and meaning can help place the issues relevant to quantitative comparison in perspective. The approach can illuminate the controversy revolving around the notion of functional referentiality as applied to alarm calls, for example in the vervet monkey. We argue that referentiality offers a poor point of quantitative comparison across (...) language and animal communication in the wild. Evidence shows that even the newborn human cry could be deemed to show functional referentiality according to the criteria typically invoked by advocates of referentiality in animal communication. Exploring the essence of the idea of illocution, we illustrate an important realm of commonality among animal communication systems and human language, a commonality that opens the door to more productive, quantifiable comparisons. Finally, we delineate two examples of infrastructural communicative capabilities that should be particularly amenable to direct quantitative comparison across humans and our closest relatives. (shrink)

The form of the sentence, as it is understood in contemporary semantics and linguistics, is functional. This paper interprets the metaphors in which Frege shows what the functional sentence means, arguing that Frege's sentence is neither an adequate translation of natural language nor of use in feminist theorizing.

According to mentalism some existing things are endowed with (subjectively) conscious minds. According to physicalism all existing things consist entirely of physical particles in fields of force. Searle holds that mentalism and physicalism are compatible and true.

The work of the late Paul Grice (1913–1988) exerts a powerful influence on the way philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists think about meaning and communication. With respect to a particular sentence φ and an “utterer” U, Grice stressed the philosophical importance of separating (i) what φ means, (ii) what U said on a given occasion by uttering φ, and (iii) what U meant by uttering φ on that occasion. Second, he provided systematic attempts to say precisely what meaning is by (...) providing a series of more refined analyses of utterer’s meaning, sentence meaning, and what is said. Third, Grice produced an account of how it is possible for what U says and what U means to diverge. Fourth, by characterizing a philosophically important distinction between the “genuinely semantic” and “merely pragmatic” implications of a statement, Grice clarified the relationship between classical logic and the semantics of natural language. Fifth, he provided some much needed philosophical ventilation by deploying his notion of “implicature” to devastating effect against certain overzealous strains of “Ordinary Language Philosophy,” without himself abandoning the view that philosophy must pay attention to the nuances of ordinary talk. Sixth, Grice undercut some of the most influential arguments for a philosophically significant notion of “presupposition.” Today, Grice’s work lies at the center of research on the semantics-pragmatics distinction and shapes much discussion of the relationship between language and mind. In a nutshell, Grice has forced philosophers and linguists to think very carefully about the sorts of facts a semantic theory is supposed to account for and to reflect upon the most central theoretical notions, notions that otherwise might be taken for granted or employed without due care and attention. To be sure, Grice’s own positive proposals have their weaknesses; but in the light of his work any theory of meaning that is to be taken at all seriously must now draw a sharp line between genuinely semantic facts and facts pertaining to the nature of human interaction.. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss a basic assumption tacitly shared by many philosophers of mind and language: that whatever can be meant, can be said. It specifically targets John Searle's account of this idea, focusing on his Principle of Expressibility . In the first part of the paper, PE is exposed underlining its analyticity and its relevance for the philosophy of language , mind , society and action . In the critical part, the notion of Background is (...) taken into account in order to re-evaluate two basic distinctions: the one between sentence and utterance meanings , and the one between native and type speakers . PE is reconsidered in the light of the previous arguments as a methodological strategy that does not prevent uses of language from eventual semantic excesses and deficits , and a complementary Principle of Expression Fallibility is finally proposed. (shrink)

This paper is an enquiry into some commonalities between fiction and atheism. It suggests that ‘disbelief’ may be a state of mind shared by both and asks how a meaningful semantics might be derived from the mental stance of disbelief. Albert Camus’ The Plague, published in 1947 post the trauma of two successive world wars, is a key ‘existentialist’ text that focuses on this dilemma. Not only is this work of fiction especially relevant to our current times of natural, political, (...) economic and psychological distress gone ‘viral’, it is also one in which a blunt question is posed to the atheist hero of the novel, Doctor Rieux, in Oran, a small French Algerian town fighting a terrible pandemic: ‘Do you believe in God, doctor?’. Rieux’s answer is telling: ‘No, but what does that really mean? I’m fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out.’ It is this human ‘struggle’ to discern the contours of the invisible ‘in the dark’ that could animate the thought worlds of fiction as well as of atheism. The paper seeks to draw out some of these putative similarities through the lens of ‘ordinary language philosophy’ and J.L, Austin and John Searle’s classification of basic speech-acts. It also considers the evolutionary, affective and cross-cultural appeal of the parallel narratives of science and religion. Oran’s most remarkable aspect, Camus insists, is its ‘ordinariness’; yet, it is here that the ‘extraordinariness’ of the plague strikes. Quotidian local circumstances thus paradoxically set in motion the sorts of ‘universal’ inquiries into ‘what it means to be human’ that, my paper argues, alike motivate the fiction of atheism and the atheism of fiction. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to give a general explanation of pragmatic aspects of linguistic negation. After a brief survey of classical accounts of negation within pragmatic theories (as speech act theory, argumentation theory and polyphonic theory), the main pragmatic uses of negation (illocutionary negation, external negation, lowering and majoring negation) are discussed within relevance theory. The question of the relevance of negative utterance is raised, and a general inferential schema (based on the so-called invited inference) is proposed and tested (...) for the main uses of negation discussed in the paper. (shrink)

It is customary for institutions that organize sporting competitions and events to exercise a considerable degree of authority over the participants. That authority is often manifested in the enforcement of penalties for infringements of fair play. This paper focuses on one concrete case from soccer, although I take the discussion to extend to other sports as well. I argue that not all fair play rules should be enforced by the respective organizing institutions, and that enforcing all of them indiscriminately is (...) a cause of injustice, rather than promoting fairness in sports. I propose a principled way of making the necessary distinction between those fair play rules that are enforceable and those that are not. (shrink)

Kripke’s most important arguments in Naming and Necessity against the description theory of reference of proper names are the arguments from ignorance and error concerning names of historical figures. The aim of this paper is to put forward a reply to these arguments. The answer to them is grounded on the development of one component of the version of the description theory proposed by the authors that are regarded as the classical contemporary advocates of this theory, namely Searle and Strawson; (...) one of the targets of Kripke’s arguments is precisely the version of the description theory of reference submitted by these authors. The development of that component results in a sort of description theory of reference not affected by Kripke’s arguments from ignorance and error concerning the names of historical figures, deferential descriptivism. (shrink)

In a famous passage of Naming and Necessity Kripke summarizes the core of his criticism to the description theory of natural kind terms, taking into account the theory of general terms proposed by Mill, insofar as it is applied to natural kind terms, as a paradigm of that sort of theory. The aim of this paper is to argue that Mill’s generic theory on general terms does not coincide with his theory concerning the sort of general terms that natural kind (...) terms are and that the main thesis of the latter is not subject to Kripke’s objections put forward in the aforementioned passage. (shrink)

The notion of ‘bipolar’ or ‘second‐personal’ normativity is often illustrated by such situations as that of one person addressing a complaint to another, or asserting some right, or claiming some authority. This paper argues that the presence of speech acts of various kinds in the development of the idea of the ‘second‐personal’ is not accidental. Through development of a notion of ‘illocutionary authority’ I seek to show a role for the ‘second‐personal’ in ordinary testimony, despite Darwall's argument that the notion (...) of the ‘second‐personal’ marks a divide between practical and theoretical reason. (shrink)

We propose in this paper DIAL, a framework for inter-agents dialogue, which formalize a collective decision-making process to compose divergent interests and perspectives. This framework bounds a dialectics system in which argumentative agents play and arbitrate to reach an agreement. For this purpose, we propose an argumentation-based reasoning to manage the conflicts between arguments having different strengths for different agents. Moreover, we propose a model of argumentative agents which justify the hypothesis to which they commit and take into account the (...) commitments of their interlocutors according to their reputations. In the scope of our dialectics system, a third agent is responsible of the final decision outcome which is taken by resolving the conflict between two players according to their competences and the advanced arguments. (shrink)

I examine the radical contextualists’ two main arguments for the semantic underdeterminacy thesis, according to which all, or almost all, English sentences lack context-independent truth conditions. I show that both arguments are fallacious. The first argument, which I call the fallacy of the many understandings , mistakenly infers that a sentence S is semantically incomplete from the fact that S can be used to mean different things in different contexts. The second argument, which I call the open texture fallacy , (...) wrongly concludes that a sentence S lacks context-independent truth conditions from the fact that there are circumstances in which the truth value of S would be indeterminate. I do however defend the claim that a certain class of sentences not containing any indexicals do lack context-independent truth conditions, and put forward an argument to that effect. But this argument, as I show, does not generalize to all sentences, and thus fails to support the semantic underdeterminacy thesis. (shrink)

In this contribution we will explore some of the implications of the vision of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) for law and legal philosophy. AmI creates an environment that monitors and anticipates human behaviour with the aim of customised adaptation of the environment to a person’s inferred preferences. Such an environment depends on distributed human and non-human intelligence that raises a host of unsettling questions around causality, subjectivity, agency and (criminal) liability. After discussing the vision of AmI we will present relevant research (...) in the field of philosophy of technology, inspired by the post-phenomenological position taken by Don Ihde and the constructivist realism of Bruno Latour. We will posit the need to conceptualise technological normativity in comparison with legal normativity, claiming that this is necessary to develop democratic accountability for the implications of emerging technologies like AmI. Lastly we will investigate to what extent technological devices and infrastructures can and should be used to achieve compliance with the criminal law, and we will discuss some of the implications of non-human distributed intelligence for criminal liability. (shrink)

There are countless occasions when we find people’s thought or action intelligible, or anticipate what they will think or do, or are at least unsurprised by what they think or do, despite our having little if any information about their attitudes other than what we can gather from their situation and non-verbal behaviour. This article explores the role of practices, conceived as essentially rule-governed activities, is making this possible. Consideration is given to practicies for the use of words.

In this paper I provide a theory of the speech act of assertion according to which assertion is a species of joint action. In doing so I rely on a theory of joint action developed in more detail elsewhere. Here we need to distinguish between the genus, joint action, and an important species of joint action, namely, what I call joint epistemic action. In the case of the latter, but not necessarily the former, participating agents have epistemic goals, e.g., the (...) acquisition of knowledge. It is joint epistemic action that assertion is a species of. (shrink)

Lewis’s view of the way conventions are passed on may have some especially interesting consequences for the study of language. I’ll start by briefly discussing agreements and disagreements that I have with Lewis’s general views on conventions and then turn to how linguistic conventions spread. I’ll compare views of main stream generative linguistics, in particular, Chomsky’s views on how syntactic forms are passed on, with the sort of view of language acquisition and language change advocated by usage-based or construction grammars, (...) which seem to fit better with Lewis’s ideas. Then I will illustrate the interest of Lewis’s perspective on the dissemination of conventions with a variety of linguistic examples. (shrink)

Taking as its exegetic point of departure Peirce's outline of a semiotic theory of cognition from the mid 1890s, this paper explores the relevance of this outline to a theory of learning and also to a broader, normative vision of education. Firstly, besides providing for fallibilism in philosophical inquiry Peirce's outline accords with critical strategies of his fellow pragmatists, such as William James's detection of the ‘psychologist's fallacy’ and John Dewey's rejection of the ‘philosophical fallacy’. It is pointed out that (...) this merit of Peirce's outline is due to his abstract and often neglected notion of a prespecialised scientific intelligence. Secondly, the paper shows that Peirce's semiotic approach to prescientific learning processes conditioning all kinds of theoretical activity may indeed complement James's and Dewey's contributions: giving careful attention to the work of linguistic and paralinguistic signs in such learning processes Peirce's analysis captures indexical and iconic aspects, as well as symbolic aspects of linguistic interaction and experientially constrained dialogue. Following Peirce's analysis the paper considers how the iconicity of linguistic structure, ostensive acts and the practical situatedness of language use are pre‐conditions of experiential learning in every day life as well as in scientific learning. It is also shown how this semiotic analysis is connected with Peirce's important notion of abduction. Finally, it is pointed out that a broader vision of education may issue from Peirce's semiotic analysis and that such a vision would emphasise that the life experience of individuals entering educational institutions should be made to bear on the objectives as well as the teaching practices of educational institutions. (shrink)

Taking as its exegetic point of departure Peirce's outline of a semiotic theory of cognition from the mid 1890s, this paper explores the relevance of this outline to a theory of learning and also to a broader, normative vision of education. Firstly, besides providing for fallibilism in philosophical inquiry Peirce's outline accords with critical strategies of his fellow pragmatists, such as William James's detection of the ‘psychologist's fallacy’ and John Dewey's rejection of the ‘philosophical fallacy’. It is pointed out that (...) this merit of Peirce's outline is due to his abstract and often neglected notion of a prespecialised scientific intelligence. Secondly, the paper shows that Peirce's semiotic approach to prescientific learning processes conditioning all kinds of theoretical activity may indeed complement James's and Dewey's contributions: giving careful attention to the work of linguistic and paralinguistic signs in such learning processes Peirce's analysis captures indexical and iconic aspects, as well as symbolic aspects of linguistic interaction and experientially constrained dialogue. Following Peirce's analysis the paper considers how the iconicity of linguistic structure, ostensive acts and the practical situatedness of language use are pre‐conditions of experiential learning in every day life as well as in scientific learning. It is also shown how this semiotic analysis is connected with Peirce's important notion of abduction. Finally, it is pointed out that a broader vision of education may issue from Peirce's semiotic analysis and that such a vision would emphasise that the life experience of individuals entering educational institutions should be made to bear on the objectives as well as the teaching practices of educational institutions. (shrink)

Quine’s general approach is to treat ontology as a matter of what a theory says there is. This turns ontology into a question of which existential statements are consequences of that theory. This approach is contrasted favourably with the view that takes ontological commitment as a relation to things. However within the broadly Quinean approach we can distinguish different accounts, differing as to the nature of the consequence relation best suited for determining those consequences. It is suggested that Quine’s own (...) narrowly formal account fails. Then a consideration of the necessitation approach championed by Jackson and Lewis shows that it does not do justice to the role of acknowledging consequences in determining rationality. I suggest that an approach which puts a priori consequence as the key relation does a better job. The task of spelling out the nature of a priori consequence is sketched, along with reasons to doubt the adequacy of the double indexing approach to analysing the a priori. The sorts of relations we can stand in to theories which allow us to inherit ontological commitments are touched on with a number of important philosophical strategies for introducing belief-like attitudes which nevertheless avoid ontological commitment. (shrink)

Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) deals with computational systems where several intelligent components interact in a common environment. This paper is aimed at pointing out and fostering the exchange between DAI and cognitive and social science in order to deal with the issues of interaction, and in particular with the reasons and possible strategies for social behaviour in multi-agent interaction is also described which is motivated by requirements of cognitive plausibility and grounded the notions of power, dependence and help. Connections with (...) human-computer interaction are also suggested. (shrink)

When people speak about “communication barriers”, what they usually think about are such things as the limitations set by human nature itself, or the constraints that are inherent in the tools we use for communicating. As an example of the first, consider the limited range of the naked human voice; for the second, we may think of the limitations imposed by such primitive communicative devices as the bonfire, the heliograph, or an old-fashioned megaphone.Our contribution draws attention to the fact that, (...) despite enormous advances on the technological side of human communication (such as demonstrated by the existence and use of computers as communication devices), there still are some barriers to be removed as far as the human side is concerned. We call these barriers the “stumble-blocks of the mind”. Their existence is demonstrated by the study of two case stories, which show that understanding the communicative implications of computerizing information is more important than increased emphasis on ever fancier and more expensive hardware products.The next question has to do with the reasons for these “stumbling blocks” to occur. Current communicative and linguistic theoretical findings are used in an effort to explain and solve the communicative dilemmas that are encountered in the organization of our communication, among others in the area of human-computer interface. In particular, the notion of “privacy” in speech acting is suggested as an overlooked aspect, and the notion of “information transfer” is replaced by that of “creating mental activity”.Finally, some conclusions are drawn, and a number of practical applications are offered. (shrink)

. One of the most powerful accounts of the necessary connection between law and morality grounded on the openness of communication is provided by Robert Alexy, who builds a discourse theory of law on the basis of Habermas’ theory of general practical discourse. In this article I argue that the thesis based on the openness of legal discourse is problematic in that it does not provide a convincing account of the differentiation of legal discourse from other practical discourses. I offer (...) an understanding of the institutionalisation of legal discourse as the tacit commitment of the participants to their shared normative experience and in particular in: 1) the possibility of containing normative force in space, 2) the possibility of transforming word into deed, 3) the possibility of grasping and controlling time and 4) the possibility of transforming deed into word. That commitment of participants in legal discourse is revealed as a set of fundamental assumptions embedded in all legal utterances, which provide the necessary bedrock that makes communication possible. It also provides a basis for the institution of legal discourse, to the effect that their problematisation signifies a departure from the latter. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ : Dans la tradition logique de la philosophie analytique, comprendre la signification d’un énoncé, c’est comprendre ses conditions de vérité. Dans la tradition du langage naturel, la signification est liée à l’usage du langage. Depuis Grice, elle est liée aux attitudes et aux actions des interlocuteurs. Selon Austin, Searle et Vanderveken, signifier c’est utiliser des mots avec l’ intention d’accomplir des actes illocutoires. Pareils actes ont des conditions de félicité plutôt que des conditions de vérité. Selon nous, signifier c’est (...) essentiellement tenter d’accomplir des actes illocutoires. Et comme toute tentative est une action intentionnelle plutôt qu’une attitude, signifier c’est agir intentionnellement. ABSTRACT: In the logical tradition of analytical philosophy, to understand the meaning of an utterance is to understand its truth conditions. In the tradition of natural language analysis, meaning is related to language use. Since Grice, meaning is linked to speakers’ attitudes and actions. Following Austin, Searle, and Vanderveken, to mean is to use words with the intention of performing illocutionary acts. Such acts have felicity conditions instead of truth conditions. The aim of my work is to clarify the nature of meaning in the second tradition. In my view, to mean something is mainly to attempt to perform illocutionary acts. Any attempt is an intentional action rather than an attitude. (shrink)

Biodiversity sciences witness a double dynamic. Whereas the need for interdisciplinary approaches is increasingly appreciated, most disciplinary studies are still confined to developing operational, discipline-specific indices. We show that a reassessment of the general notion of biodiversity is needed to clarify this situation. We advocate a new approach, according to which the main usefulness of this notion is not to capture quantitatively biological objects or processes, but to organize meaningful and coherent interdisciplinary interactions by constructively criticizing disciplinary studies. We apply (...) this approach to ecological-economic models, in the hope of launching more fruitful critical dialogs between economists and biologists. (shrink)

In a September 2004 interview, Donald Trump agreed with Howard Stern’s statement that his daughter Ivanka is “a piece of ass.” This utterance is a synecdochical utterance targeting women, by which I mean that its form is such that a term for an anatomical part is predicated of, or could be used by a speaker to refer to, a woman. I propound a theory of what SUTW speakers do in undertaking an SUTW on which the SUTW speaker prompts the hearer (...) to engage in a certain derogatory pattern of associational thinking—that is, taking a “perspective” in Elisabeth Camp’s sense—on the female subject. This perspective is one that reduces her to the bodily part in question—that is, fragments her and biologizes her. Essentially, the hearer thinks of the woman as a “piece of meat.”. (shrink)

The overwhelming consensus amongst epistemologists is that there is no salient epistemological difference between the addressees of a speaker’s testimony and non-addressees. I argue that this overwhelming consensus is mistaken. Addressees of a speaker’s testimony are entitled to pass the epistemic buck or defer justificatory responsibility for their beliefs back to the testimonial speaker, while non-addressees are not. I then develop a provisional account of address that is in a position to mark this epistemic distinction between addressees and non-addressees.

This paper surveys critical discourse studies to the present and claims that, to avoid lapsing into comfortable orthodoxy in its mature phase, CDS needs to reassert its transformative radical teleology. The initial part of the paper reasserts the need for a strong social theory given the materialist and context-bound nature of discourse in daily activity. From this basis, the paper then characterizes the “new times” in which contemporary discourse occurs, and briefly surveys those issues typically analyzed, namely political economy, race (...) and gender, and critical literacy. By considering people's ordinary lives, the paper then suggests that subject and agency, and calculative technologies of management deserve, and new modalities need, more research. Transdisciplinarity is encouraged, particularly with social psychology and critical management studies. (shrink)

The target of this paper is the ‘simple’ knowledge account of assertion, according to which assertion is constituted by a single epistemic rule of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p’. My aim is to argue that those who are attracted to a knowledge account of assertion should prefer what I call the ‘complex’ knowledge account, according to which assertion is constituted by a system of rules all of which are, taken together, constitutive of assertion. One (...) of those rules—which, following John Searle, I call the ‘preparatory condition’—is of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p.’ All else being equal, simple accounts are preferable to complex accounts. I argue in this paper that all else isn't equal. While the simple knowledge account provides an elegant explanation of certain data, it is hard to see how to integrate the simple knowledge account into a more general theory of illocutionary acts. Because the complex knowledge account avoids this objection whil.. (shrink)

Catharine MacKinnon claims that pornography silences women in a way that violates the right to free speech. This claim is, of course, controversial, but if it is correct, then the very free speech reasons for protecting pornography appear also to afford reason to restrict it. For this reason, it has gained considerable attention. The philosophical literature thus far focuses on a type of silencing identified and analyzed by Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton (H&L). This article identifies, analyzes, and argues for (...) the importance of a different type of silencing. As we shall see, there are compelling reasons in favor of regarding H&L silencing as a free speech violation and, as I argue here, the same can be said for sincerity silencing. Although additional work needs to be done to show that either one actually is a free speech violation, I demonstrate here that both types of silencing equally warrant this further attention. Moreover, I show that sincerity silencing is a fairly widespread phenomenon; so, therefore, is the harm it constitutes. As a result of these considerations, then, we can safely conclude that sincerity silencing also requires our attention. (shrink)

This paper is a critical response to Eli Hirsch’s recent work in metaontology. Hirsch argues that several prominent ontological disputes about physical objects are verbal, a conclusion he takes to vindicate common sense ontology. In my response, I focus on the debate over composition (van Inwagen’s special composition question). I argue that given Hirsch’s own criterion for a dispute’s being verbal – a dispute is verbal iff charity requires each side to interpret the other sides as speaking the truth in (...) their own languages –his case for verbalness comes up short. Hirsch ignores an important facet of charity, which I call charity to expressibility, viz. that we ought ceteris paribus to interpret linguistic communities as not speaking expressively impoverished languages. In fact, I argue that given his criterion, the debate over composition turns out nonverbal. I close by suggesting that even if the dispute over composition is nonverbal, the sides can arrive at a kind of limited conciliation through charitable interpretation of one another. Each side ought to interpret a great many of the other sides claims as “factual” even if false. (shrink)

Uptake is typically understood as the hearer’s recognition of the speaker’s communicative intention. According to one theory of uptake, the hearer’s role is merely as a ratifier. The speaker, by expressing a particular communicative intention, predetermines what kind of illocutionary act she might perform. Her hearer can then render this act a success or a failure. Thus the hearer has no power over which act could be performed, but she does have some power over whether it is performed. Call this (...) the ratification theory of uptake. Several philosophers have recently endorsed an alternative theory of uptake, according to which the hearer can determine the nature of the act the speaker performs. According to this theory, if the hearer regards an utterance as illocutionary act y, then it is act y, even if the speaker intended to perform act x. Call this the constitution theory of uptake. The purported advantage of this theory is that it identifies a common but underanalysed way in which speakers can be silenced. I argue that despite its initial intuitive pull, the constitution theory of uptake should be rejected. It is incompatible with ordinary intuitions about speech, it entails a conceptual impossibility, and it has unsavoury political implications, entailing that marginalised speakers barely qualify as agents. (shrink)