Paraconsistent logics are characterized by rejection of ex falso quodlibet, the principle of explosion, which states that from a contradiction, anything can be derived. Strikingly these logics have found a wide range of application, despite the misgivings of philosophers as prominent as Lewis and Putnam. Such applications, I will argue, are of significant philosophical interest. They suggest ways to employ these logics in philosophical and scientific theories. To this end I will sketch out a ‘naturalized semantic dialetheism’ following Priest’s (...) early suggestion that the principles governing human natural language may well be inconsistent. There will be a significant deviation from Priest’s work, namely, the assumption of a broadly Chomskyan picture of semantics. This allows us to explain natural language inconsistency tolerance without commitment to contentious views in formal logic. (shrink)

In his famous work on vagueness, Russell named “fallacy of verbalism” the fallacy that consists in mistaking the properties of words for the properties of things. In this paper, I examine two (clusters of) mainstream paraconsistent logical theories – the non-adjunctive and relevant approaches –, and show that, if they are given a strongly paraconsistent or dialetheic reading, the charge of committing the Russellian Fallacy can be raised against them in a sophisticated way, by appealing to the intuitive reading of (...) their underlying semantics. The meaning of “intuitive reading” is clarified by exploiting a well-established distinction between pure and applied semantics. If the proposed arguments go through, the dialetheist or strong paraconsistentist faces the following Dilemma: either she must withdraw her claim to have exhibited true contradictions in a metaphysically robust sense – therefore, inconsistent objects and/or states of affairs that make those contradictions true; or she has to give up realism on truth, and embrace some form of anti-realistic (idealistic, or broadly constructivist) metaphysics. Sticking to the second horn of the Dilemma, though, appears to be promising: it could lead to a collapse of the very distinction, commonly held in the literature, between a weak and a strong form of paraconsistency – and this could be a welcome result for a dialetheist. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, Graham Priest has ably presented and defended dialetheism, the view that certain sentences are properly characterized as true with true negations. Our goal here is neither to quibble with the tenability of true, assertable contradictions nor, really, with the arguments for dialetheism. Rather, we wish to address the dialetheist's treatment of cases of semantic pathology and to pose a worry for dialetheism that has not been adequately considered. The problem that we present (...) seems to have broader bite, afflicting both consistent and inconsistent proposals for resolving semantic pathology. Thus, while our primary goal is to uncover some important connections between dialetheism, semantic pathology, and other, more general issues, the problem that we pose might be a worry for anyone who aims to resolve semantic pathology - consistently or not. (shrink)

Approaches to paraconsistency can be arranged on a spectrum similar to the way in which approaches to vagueness are often understood. On the left are the metaphysical realists; those who think that there are real contradictory facts, that are mind and language independent. On the right are those who think that although we can have inconsistent beliefs and inconsistent theories — and we need a paraconsistent logic to deal with them — the world itself is perfectly consistent. In the middle (...) are the semantic dialetheists, who claim that there are true contradictions, but that these come about because of particular features of our use of language. This chapter outlines a particular version of semantic dialetheism based on a four-valued logic. It contends that although we need such a logic to deal with our current language, we could regiment our uses of predicates (and other expressions) to eliminate all true contradictions. (shrink)

Noniterative approaches to the sorites paradox accept single steps of soritical reasoning, but deny that these can be combined into valid chains of soritical reasoning. The distributed sorites is a puzzle designed to undermine noniterative approaches to the sorites paradox, by deriving an inconsistent conclusion using only single steps, but not chains, of soritical reasoning. This paper shows how a dialetheist version of the noniterative approach, the strict-tolerant approach, also solves the distributed sorites paradox, at no further cost, by accepting (...) the inconsistent conclusion. (shrink)

Logical paradoxes – like the Liar, Russell's, and the Sorites – are notorious. But in Paradoxes and Inconsistent Mathematics, it is argued that they are only the noisiest of many. Contradictions arise in the everyday, from the smallest points to the widest boundaries. In this book, Zach Weber uses “dialetheic paraconsistency” – a formal framework where some contradictions can be true without absurdity – as the basis for developing this idea rigorously, from mathematical foundations up. In doing so, Weber directly (...) addresses a longstanding open question: how much standard mathematics can paraconsistency capture? The guiding focus is on a more basic question, of why there are paradoxes. Details underscore a simple philosophical claim: that paradoxes are found in the ordinary, and that is what makes them so extraordinary. (shrink)

Dialetheism is the view that there exists a true contradiction. This paper ventures to suggest that Priest’s argument for Dialetheism from Gödel’s theorem is unconvincing as the lesson of Gödel’s proof (or Rosser’s proof) is that any sufficiently strong theories of arithmetic cannot be both complete and consistent. In addition, a contradiction is derivable in Priest’s inconsistent and complete arithmetic. An alternative argument for Dialetheism is given by applying Gödel sentence to the inconsistent and complete theory of (...) arithmetic. We argue, however, that the alternative argument raises a circularity problem. In sum, Gödel’s and its related theorem merely show the relation between a complete and a consistent theory. A contradiction derived by the application of Gödel sentence has the value of true sentences, i.e. the both-value, only under the inconsistent models for arithmetic. Without having the assumption of inconsistency or completeness, a true contradiction is not derivable from the application of Gödel sentence. Hence, Gödel’s and its related theorem never can be a ground for Dialetheism. (shrink)

This paper reflects on metametaphysics and as such develops a metametameta-physical view: that quietist metametaphysics requires dialetheism, and in turn a paraconsistent logic. I demonstrate this using Carnap’s metametaphysical position in his 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' as an example, with regard to how it exhibits self-reference and results in inconsistency. I show how applying Carnap’s position to itself produces a dilemma, both horns of which lead to a contradiction. Such inconsistency commonly arises from meta-theories with global scope, (...) as the 'meta' approach aims to transcend the scope of that which it is theorizing about, whilst the global nature will place itself back within the scope of that which it is theorizing about, which together result in the theory referring to itself whilst refuting itself. I argue that any global metametaphysical theory that draws a limit to thought will face self-reference problems leading to contradictory realms. My conclusion is conditional: If we want to meta-philosophize in such a way and treat quietist meta-theories as being true, then we need to be dialetheist and utilize a paraconsistent logic in order to accommodate the contradictions that result from such theorizing. (shrink)

According to the dialetheist argument from the inconsistency of informal mathematics, the informal version of the Gödelian argument leads us to a true contradiction. On one hand, the dialetheist argues, we can prove that there is a mathematical claim that is neither provable nor refutable in informal mathematics. On the other, the proof of its unprovability is given in informal mathematics and proves that very sentence. We argue that the argument fails, because it relies on the unjustified and unlikely (...) assumption that the informal Gödel sentence is informally provable. (shrink)

Though the social world is real and objective, the way that social facts arise out of other facts is in an important way shaped by human thought, talk and behaviour. Building on recent work in social ontology, I describe a mechanism whereby this distinctive malleability of social facts, combined with the possibility of basic human error, makes it possible for a consistent physical reality to ground an inconsistent social reality. I explore various ways of resisting the prima facie case for (...) social inconsistency. I conclude, however, that the prima facie case survives scrutiny, and draw out some of the ramifications. (shrink)

Do inconsistent laws, which are in the form of inconsistent legal obligations, provide us with good reasons for accepting the possibility of legal gluts, which are true legal statements whose negations are also true? Given the contingencies of the law, it is unlikely that many will deny the possibility of inconsistent legal obligations, but it remains an ongoing debate whether these lead to any legal gluts. In a recent debate, Graham Priest [Priest, G. 2006. In ‘Contradiction’. In First printed by (...) Martinus Nijhoff in 1987. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Priest, G. 2017. ‘Where Laws Conflict: An Application of the Method of Chunk and Permeate’. In Law and the New Logics, edited by H. Glenn, and L. Smith, 168–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] has argued from inconsistent obligations to legal gluts and JC Beall [Beall, JC 2017. ‘On inconsistent laws and gluts’. In Law and the New Logics, edited by H. Glenn, and L. Smith, 199–207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.], while he has acknowledged that there are inconsistent obligations, has argued against Priest’s arguments for legal gluts. In this paper, after reviewing the debate, I adjudicate it and provide reasons for resisting Beall’s arguments again Priest thereby providing a possibility for legal gluts. (shrink)

This book presents the state of the art in the fields of formal logic pioneered by Graham Priest. It includes advanced technical work on the model and proof theories of paraconsistent logic, in contributions from top scholars in the field. Graham Priest’s research has had a considerable influence on the field of philosophical logic, especially with respect to the themes of dialetheism—the thesis that there exist true but inconsistent sentences—and paraconsistency—an account of deduction in which contradictory premises do not (...) entail the truth of arbitrary sentences. Priest’s work has regularly challenged researchers to reappraise many assumptions about rationality, ontology, and truth. This book collects original research by some of the most esteemed scholars working in philosophical logic, whose contributions explore and appraise Priest’s work on logical approaches to problems in philosophy, linguistics, computation, and mathematics. They provide fresh analyses, critiques, and applications of Priest’s work and attest to its continued relevance and topicality. The book also includes Priest’s responses to the contributors, providing a further layer to the development of these themes. (shrink)

After introducing Fitch’s paradox of knowability and the knower paradox, the paper critically discusses the dialetheist unified solution to both problems that Beall and Priest have proposed. It is first argued that the dialetheist approach to the knower paradox can withstand the main objections against it, these being that the approach entails an understanding of negation that is intolerably weak and that it commits dialetheists to jointly accept and reject the same thing. The lesson of the knower paradox, according to (...) dialetheism, is that human knowledge is inconsistent. The paper also argues that this inconsistency has not been shown by dialetheists to be wide enough in its scope to justify their approach to Fitch’s problem. The connection between the two problems is superficial and therefore the proposed unified solution fails. (shrink)

In a recent article M. Colyvan has argued that Quinean forms of scientific realism are faced with an unexpected upshot. Realism concerning a given class of entities, along with this route to realism, can be vindicated by running an indispensability argument to the effect that the entities postulated by our best scientific theories exist. Colyvan observes that among our best scientific theories some are inconsistent, and so concludes that, by resorting to the very same argument, we may incur a commitment (...) to inconsistent entities. Colyvan's argument could be interpreted, and in part is presented, as a reductio of Quinean scientific realism; yet, Colyvan in the end manifests some willingness to bite the bullet, and provides some reasons why we shouldn't feel too uncomfortable with those entities. In this paper we wish to indicate a way out to the scientific realist, by arguing that no indispensability argument of the kind suggested by Colyvan is actually available. To begin with, in order to run such an indispensability argument we should be justified in believing that an inconsistent theory is true; yet, in so far as the logic we accept is a consistent one it is arguable that our epistemic predicament could not be possibly one in which we are justified in so believing. Moreover, also if our logic admitted true contradictions, as Dialetheism does, it is arguable that Colyvan's indispensability argument could not rest on a true premise. As we will try to show, dialetheists do not admit true contradictions for cheap: they do so just as a way out of paradox, namely whenever we are second-level ignorant as to the metaphysical possibility of evidence breaking the parity among two or more inconsistent claims; Colyvan's examples, however, are not of this nature. So, even under the generous assumption that Dialetheism is true, we will conclude that Colyvan's argument doesn't achieve its surprising conclusion. (shrink)

Graham Priest introduces an informal but presumably rigorous and sharp ‘provability predicate’. He argues that this predicate yields inconsistencies, along the lines of the paradox of the Knower. One long-standing claim of Priest’s is that a dialetheist can have a complete, decidable, and yet sufficiently rich mathematical theory. After all, the incompleteness theorem is, in effect, that for any recursive theory A, if A is consistent, then A is incomplete. If the antecedent fails, as it might for a dialetheist, then (...) the consequent may also fail to hold. One somewhat friendly purpose of my ‘Incompleteness and inconsistency’ was to improve the technical situation for the dialetheist, eschewing reliance on an informal provability predicate. Another, less friendly purpose was to bring out what I took to be some untoward consequences of the situation. It seems that Priest accepted at least some of the improvements that I attempted. In the second edition of In contradiction, he responded to the alleged untoward consequences. One purpose of this note is to revisit the technical and philosophical situation. There were some errors in my original presentation, brought out by discussion with Priest and by Hartry Field’s analysis of the second incompleteness theorem in such contexts. A second task here is to present a sort of Curry version of the Gödel incompleteness situation. I tentatively conclude that even for a dialetheist, an interesting and complete theory is not as easy to come by as it may look—at least not for theories of arithmetic that are plausible for a dialetheist. (shrink)

The present paper focuses on Graham Priest’s claim that even primitive recursive relations may be inconsistent. Although he carefully presented his claim using the expression “may be,” Priest made a definite claim that even numerical equations can be inconsistent. His argument relies heavily on the fact that there is an inconsistent model for arithmetic. After summarizing Priest’s argument for the inconsistent primitive recursive relation, I first discuss the fact that his argument has a weak foundation to explain that the existence (...) of a model for some relations does not guarantee that they are primitive recursive. Moreover, since his identity relation is a combination of a standard identity and a congruence relation, it does not simply represent the standard identity function. Then, I argue that his identity relation cannot be both inconsistent and primitive recursive. Furthermore, I extend the argument to the general case that there is no inconsistent primitive recursive relation. These arguments show that the standard notions of “function” and “primitive recursive function” do not fit Priest’s inconsistent model. New definitions are necessary to show the existence of a dialetheic primitive recursive relation. (shrink)

This book is an outstanding contribution to the philosophical study of language and mind, by one of the most influential thinkers of our time. In a series of penetrating essays, Chomsky cuts through the confusion and prejudice which has infected the study of language and mind, bringing new solutions to traditional philosophical puzzles and fresh perspectives on issues of general interest, ranging from the mind-body problem to the unification of science. Using a range of imaginative and deceptively simple linguistic (...) analyses, Chomsky defends the view that knowledge of language is internal to the human mind. He argues that a proper study of language must deal with this mental construct. According to Chomsky, therefore, human language is a 'biological object' and should be analyzed using the methodology of the sciences. His examples and analyses come together in this book to give a unique and compelling perspective on language and the mind. (shrink)

Graham Priest's In Contradiction (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987, chapter 3) contains an argument concerning the intuitive, or ‘naïve’ notion of (arithmetic) proof, or provability. He argues that the intuitively provable arithmetic sentences constitute a recursively enumerable set, which has a Gödel sentence which is itself intuitively provable. The incompleteness theorem does not apply, since the set of provable arithmetic sentences is not consistent. The purpose of this article is to sharpen Priest's argument, avoiding reference to informal notions, consensus, or (...) Church's thesis. We add Priest's dialetheic semantics to ordinary Peano arithmetic PA, to produce a recursively axiomatized formal system PA★ that contains its own truth predicate. Whether one is a dialetheist or not, PA★ is a legitimate, rigorously defined formal system, and one can explore its proof‐theoretic properties. The system is inconsistent (but presumably non‐trivial), and it proves its own Gödel sentence as well as its own soundness. Although this much is perhaps welcome to the dialetheist, it has some untoward consequences. There are purely arithmetic (indeed, Π0) sentences that are both provable and refutable in PA★. So if the dialetheist maintains that PA★ is sound, then he must hold that there are true contradictions in the most elementary language of arithmetic. Moreover, the thorough dialetheist must hold that there is a number g which both is and is not the code of a derivation of the indicated Gödel sentence of PA★. For the thorough dialetheist, it follows ordinary PA and even Robinson arithmetic are themselves inconsistent theories. I argue that this is a bitter pill for the dialetheist to swallow. (shrink)

Scientific pluralism is the view according to which there is a plurality of scientific domains and of scientific theories, and these theories are empirically adequate relative to their own respective domains. Scientific monism is the view according to which there is a single domain to which all scientific theories apply. How are these views impacted by the presence of inconsistent scientific theories? There are consistency-preservation strategies and inconsistency-toleration strategies. Among the former, two prominent strategies can be articulated: Compartmentalization and (...) Information restriction. Among the inconsistency-toleration strategies, we have: Paraconsistent compartmentalization and Dialetheism. In this paper, I critically assess the adequacy of each of these four views. (shrink)

In this paper we present a philosophical motivation for the logics of formal inconsistency, a family of paraconsistent logics whose distinctive feature is that of having resources for expressing the notion of consistency within the object language in such a way that consistency may be logically independent of non-contradiction. We defend the view according to which logics of formal inconsistency may be interpreted as theories of logical consequence of an epistemological character. We also argue that in order to (...) philosophically justify paraconsistency there is no need to endorse dialetheism, the thesis that there are true contradictions. Furthermore, we show that mbC, a logic of formal inconsistency based on classical logic, may be enhanced in order to express the basic ideas of an intuitive interpretation of contradictions as conflicting evidence. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss a family of arguments that show the inconsistency of the concept of omniscience, which is one of the central attributes of the theistic God. We introduce three member of this family: Grim’s Divine Liar Paradox, Milne’s Paradox and our own Divine Curry. They can be seen as theological counterparts of well-known semantic paradoxes. We argue that the very simple dialetheist response to these paradoxes doesn’t work well and then introduce our own response based on (...) a framework that we call Logic of Impossible Truths. LIT is a non-dialetheist paraconsistent logic designed to represent divine ominiscience and to preserve the transparency of the truth predicate and which semantics rests on the concept of situation. Since some rules of classical logic are not valid in LIT, we are in a position to block the derivation of the paradoxes. Thus, LIT offers a way out of the dilemma of accepting that there are true contradictions or giving up the idea that there is an all-powerful, omniscient and perfectly good being. (shrink)

There is a principle in things, about which we cannot be deceived, but must always, on the contrary, recognize the truth – viz. that the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be": with these words of the Metaphysics, Aristotle introduced the Law of Non-Contradiction, which was to become the most authoritative principle in the history of Western thought. However, things have recently changed, and nowadays various philosophers, called dialetheists, claim that this Law does not (...) hold unrestrictedly – that in peculiar circumstances the same thing may at the same time be and not be, and contradictions may obtain in the world. This book opens with an examination of the famous logical paradoxes that appear to speak on behalf of contradictions (e.g., the Liar paradox, the set-theoretic paradoxes such as Cantor’s and Russell’s), and of the reasons for the failure of the standard attempts to solve them. It provides, then, an introduction to paraconsistent logics – non-classical logics in which the admission of contradictions does not lead to logical chaos –, and their astonishing applications, going from inconsistent data base management to contradictory arithmetics capable of circumventing Gödel’s celebrated Incompleteness Theorem. The final part of the book discusses the philosophical motivations and difficulties of dialetheism, and shows how to extract from Aristotle’s ancient words a possible reply to the dialetheic challenge. How to Sell a Contradiction will appeal to anyone interested in non-classical logics, analytic metaphysics, and philosophy of mathematics, and especially to those who consider challenging our most entrenched beliefs the main duty of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

In his recent Philosophers’ Imprint paper “The (mostly harmless) inconsistency of knowledge attributions” [Weiner, 2009], Matt Weiner argues that the semantics of the expression “knows that”, as it is used in attributions of knowledge like “Hannah knows that the bank will be open,” are inconsistent, but that this inconsistency is “mostly harmless.” He presents his view as an alternative to the invariantist, contextualist and relativist approaches currently prevalent in the literature, (e.g. [Stanley, 2005], [DeRose, 1995], [Hawthorne, 2006], [MacFarlane, (...) 2005]) and argues that it avoids important disadvantages of each. Yet in calling the supposed inconsistency of knowledge attributions “mostly harmless”, Weiner implies that his view does not have new disadvantages of its own. My purpose in the present paper is to argue that the inconsistency and harmlessness theses cannot be jointly maintained: if we accept that the semantics of ‘know’—or indeed any word—are inconsistent, then we face a dilemma: one horn is dialetheism, the view that there there are true contradictions, the other is the view that that semantic competence in English requires belief in, or similar commitment to, falsehoods. I will argue that neither of these options is well described as “mostly harmless.” The paper is structured as follows: in the first part I present Weiner’s view and his arguments for it. Then in section 2 I compare the question of whether the semantics of ‘knows that’ are inconsistent to the much older controversy over whether the semantics of the expression ‘is true’ are inconsistent. In section 3 I will present Hans Herzberger’s arguments from the 1960s for thinking that no expression in a natural language can have inconsistent semantics. Finally, in section 4 I argue that although Herzberger’s argument seems anachronistic today, both contemporary ways of avoiding his conclusion have significant disadvantages. (shrink)

Attempts to indentify the fundamental concepts of language, argues that the study of language reveals hidden facts about the mind, and looks at the impact of propaganda.

Noam Chomsky's book on syntactic structures is a serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within the tradition of scientific theory-construction ...

From interpreting the world to changing it, this book is a synthesis of Chomsky's early work on philosophy, linguistics, and politics.

Featuring an essay by the author on the role of intellectuals in society and government, a fascinating volume sheds light on the relation between language, mind ...

In everyday language, we can call someone ‘consistent’ to say that they’re reliable, that they don’t change over time. Someone who’s consistently on time is always on time. Similarly, we can call someone ‘inconsistent’ to say the opposite: that they’re changeable, mercurial. A student who receives inconsistent grades on her tests throughout a semester has performed better on some than on others. With our philosophy hats on, though, we mean something quite different by ‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’. Something consistent is simply (...) something that’s not contradictory. There’s nothing contradictory about being on time, so anyone who’s on time at all is consistently on time, in this sense of ‘consistent’. And only a student with an unusual teacher can receive inconsistent grades on her tests throughout a semester, in this sense of ‘inconsistent’. In this paper, I’ll use ‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’ in their usual philosophical sense: to mark the second distinction. By contrast, I’ll use ‘constant’ and ‘inconstant’ to mark the first distinction. And although we can, should, and do sharply distinguish the two distinctions, they are related. In particular, they have both been used to account for some otherwise puzzling phenomena surrounding vague language. According to some theorists, vague language is inconstant. According to others, it is inconsistent. I do not propose here to settle these differences; only to get a bit clearer about what the differences amount to, and to show what it would take to settle.. (shrink)

In this paper we present a philosophical motivation for the logics of formal inconsistency, a family of paraconsistent logics whose distinctive feature is that of having resources for expressing the notion of consistency within the object language in such a way that consistency may be logically independent of non- contradiction. We defend the view according to which logics of formal inconsistency may be interpreted as theories of logical consequence of an epistemological character. We also argue that in order (...) to philosophically justify paraconsistency there is no need to endorse dialetheism, the thesis that there are true contradictions. Furthermore, we argue that an intuitive reading of the bivalued semantics for the logic mbC, a logic of formal inconsistency based on classical logic, fits in well with the basic ideas of an intuitive interpretation of contradictions. On this interpretation, the acceptance of a pair of propositions A and ¬A does not mean that A is simultaneously true and false, but rather that there is conflicting evidence about the truth value of A. (shrink)

World politics, international relations, representative government. Author's works in demand.

Chomsky proposes a reformulation of the theory of transformational generative grammar that takes recent developments in the descriptive analysis of particular ...

A single-volume compendium of seminal writings by a forefront philosopher and critic includes selections from such best-selling works as Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, and Failed States, in an anthology that explores such subjects as the media, human rights, and intellectual freedom. 20,000 first printing.

In Rules and Representations, first published in 1980, Noam Chomsky lays out many of the concepts that have made his approach to linguistics and human cognition so instrumental to our understanding of language.Chomsky arrives at his well-known position that there is a universal grammar, structured in the human mind and common to all human languages. Based on Chomsky's 1978 Woodbridge Lectures, this edition contains revised versions of the lectures and two new essays.

At its core, this exhilarating collection of essays, interviews, and correspondence spanning the years 1988 through 2018, and reaching back a decade or more previous is about the simple concept that ideas matter. And not only that ideas matter. But that ideas in this case, through the lens of two engaged intellectuals mutate, inform, inspire, and ultimately provide more fuel for thought, the actions that follow such thought, and for carrying on, and doing the work.

Chomsky’s principle of epistemological tolerance says that in theoretical linguistics contradictions between the data and the hypotheses may be temporarily tolerated in order to protect the explanatory power of the theory. The paper raises the following problem: What kinds of contradictions may be tolerated between the data and the hypotheses in theoretical linguistics? First a model of paraconsistent logic is introduced which differentiates between week and strong contradiction. As a second step, a case study is carried out which exemplifies (...) that the principle of epistemological tolerance may be interpreted as the tolerance of week contradiction. The third step of the argumentation focuses on another case study which exemplifies that the principle of epistemological tolerance must not be interpreted as the tolerance of strong contradiction. The reason for the latter insight is the unreliability and the uncertainty of introspective data. From this finding the author draws the conclusion that it is the integration of different data types that may lead to the improvement of current theoretical linguistics and that the integration of different data types requires a novel methodology which, for the time being, is not available. (shrink)

The book from which these sections are excerpted is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated structures along (...) an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term. (shrink)

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

La obra compuesta de dos (2) partes, permite conocer acerca de los avances de la linguística contemporánea, en diversos aspectos de investigación sobre la mente humana, en que medida la mente y el le nguaje se cosideran fenómenos naturales, profundización en lo supuestos e implicaciones del programa minimalista y temas relacionados.

The elections of 1994 are described as a "political earthquake," a "triumph of conservatism" that reflects the continuing "drift to the right" on the part of the American population. The victorious Gingrich army of welltrained, well-funded "conservatives" call for a Contract with America that will finally "get government off our backs" so that we can return to the happy days when the free market reigned. They will restore "family values," ridding us of "the excesses of the welfare state" and the (...) other residues of the failed "big government" policies of New Deal liberalism and Johnson's "Great Society." By dismantling the "nanny state" they will succeed, where the Democrats have failed, to achieve the shared goal of all elite and leadership elements: to "create jobs for Americans" and win security and freedom for the "middle class." And they will take over and successfully lead the crusade to establish the American Dream of free market democracy, worldwide. (shrink)

All new, unpublished interviews with world-renowned dissident Noam Chomsky.