This paper outlines an interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remark in the _Big Typescript_ in which he compares the philosopher bewitched by the workings of language to “the suffering of an ascetic”. The interpretation takes as its starting point Friedrich Nietzsche’s terse account of the philosopher, the history of philosophy, and his diagnosis of ascetic self-misunderstanding, from the Third Essay, “What do ascetic ideals mean?”, in _On the Genealogy of Morality_. In its assumption of an affinity between Wittgenstein’s remark and (...) Nietzsche’s descriptions, and in its analysis, this paper introduces a “method of voice borrowing” to approach the question: “Wittgenstein and Nietzsche?” The juxtaposition of Wittgenstein’s conception of the philosopher’s linguistic self-misunderstanding with Nietzsche’s notion of the ascetic self-misunderstanding leads finally to the question of what is gained by introducing this method, and hence by reading Wittgenstein’s remark on the suffering of an ascetic with the help of Nietzsche’s voice. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. Devitt ([2010]) replies that, in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability and grammaticality, we misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, and fail to see how our empirical results can be squared with his position. We reply in this note. Inter alia we argue that Devitt's (...) focus on grammaticality intuitions, rather than acceptability intuitions, distances his discussion from actual linguistic practice. We close by questioning a demand that drives his discussion—viz., that, for linguistic intuitions to supply evidence for linguistic theorizing, a better account of why they are evidence is required. (shrink)

An important aspect of Sellars' philosophy is his attempt to explicate the concept of thought on the "model" of the concept of speech. More specifically, Sellars has argued that the intentionality of "inner" episodes or thoughts is to be understood in terms of the "semantical" characteristics of intelligent linguistic behavior, and not the other way around as the "classical tradition" had supposed.To avoid misunderstanding, it is important to realize that Sellars' claim, as he explains, in Aristotelian terminology, is (...) a claim "in the order of conceiving" as contrasted with "the order of being." That is, Sellars accepts, as an integral part of his theory, the classical claim that meaningful speech is the manifestation or overt causal expression of ''inner" thoughts, but argues that our concept of such thoughts is a derivative concept, a concept which, in the order of theoretical reconstruction, is "modelled on," is an analogical extension of, the concept of meaningful linguistic behavior. (shrink)

Methodological questions concerning Chomsky’s generative approach to linguistics have been debated without consensus. The status of linguistics as psychology, the psychological reality of grammars, the character of tacit knowledge and the role of intuitions as data remain heatedly disputed today. I argue that the recalcitrance of these disputes is symptomatic of deep misunderstandings. I focus attention on Michael Devitt’s recent extended critique of Chomskyan linguistics and I suggest that his complaints are based on a failure to appreciate the special status (...) of Chomsky’s computational formalisms found elsewhere in cognitive science. Devitt ascribes an intentional conception of representations that Chomsky repudiates and that is independently implausible. I argue that Devitt’s proposed “linguistic reality ” as the proper subject matter of linguistics neglects the problems of tokens as opposed to types and he misses the force of Chomsky’s arguments against Behaviourism and nominalism. I suggest that Devitt’s case against intuitions as data misunderstands their standard role throughout perceptual psychology. Finally, of more general interest, I argue that Devitt’s position exemplifies compelling errors concerning mental representation seen throughout cognitive science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper is an exposition as well as a critical examination of M. Frank's response to the Derrida/Searle debate. It argues that Frank's critique of Derrida and Searle is partly justified but suffers from a number of shortcomings. The author agrees with Frank's argument that Derrida fails to explain how linguistic meaning is possible on the basis of purely differential relations between signs (différance) and supports his view that the human subject, in spite of its lack of complete self-transparency, (...) is endowed with more autonomy and semantic creativity than Derrida is willing to grant it. The paper tries to show, however, that much of Frank's critique of linguistic theory as represented by the work of Searle is unjustified because it is informed by a questionable notion of linguistic determinism rooted in Schleiermacher and Saussurean structuralism, a notion of ineffable or non-conceptual individual meaning that remains insufficiently explicated, and a generally anti-naturalist attitude towards language which leads to a misunderstanding of the role linguistics and related cognitive sciences can (and cannot) play in the hermeneutic sciences. (shrink)

When “Sinning Against Frege” was published in 1979 I thought it should have given a real turn in the discussion on Frege’s ideas. Actually the impact was less then I imagined, and the problem was that – at the end of the story – Tyler Burge’s interpretation should have posed a shadow on the direct reference theories and the Millean criticism of descriptivist theories of proper names, based on the criticism of the identification of Frege’s notion of sense with (...) class='Hi'>linguistic meaning or connotation1. In fact Burge (1979) claims that the identification of Frege’s notion of sense with the notion of linguistic meaning is a «basic misunderstanding» of Frege’s work2. This claim implies that Fregean senses are not like Mill’s connotations; therefore many direct-reference criticisms against Frege, which are grounded on Mill’s claims that proper names have no connotation, lose their efficacy. Burge, in giving specifications3, apparently accepts at least the idea that sense is an aspect of meaning, in particular «the aspect of meaning relevant to fixing the truth value of sentences». This feature is the “harmless” part of the assimilation of sense and linguistic meaning; but this assimilation becomes dangerous when context dependence is concerned. Revisiting Burge (1979), after more than two decades of debate on indexicals, may help to better understand the originality and the limitation of his claims. (shrink)

This research tried to make a contribution to the discussion around the conditions, under which the ontological shift of the philosophical hermeneutics can be done. It began with an analysis of Gadamer's well-known formula: " Being that can be understood is language. (Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache.)". Scholars interpret it differently. By means of the grammatical analysis, I showed on the one hand an interpretation of the formula from the perspective of pan‐lingualism as absurd, because they regard Being (...) and language as identical. On the other hand, an interpretation from the perspective of the linguistic ontology should be eliminated, according to which the being possesses a linguistic character, so that its unconcealment can complete itself without the effort ofunderstanding. The two interpretations come from a misunderstanding that they regard the subordinate clause of that formula as descriptive relative clause. There is still another interpretive problem, if we regard the subordinate clause as restrictive relative clause and thus interpret Gadamer's theory as linguistic idealism. However Gadamer indicates that such an interpretation remains on the level of German idealism, because it limits understanding to an intellectual grasping. Another reading of the subordinate clause as restrictive relative clause is appropriate, because it takes understanding as a practical ability (Können) into its consideration and at the same time emphasizes the non-identity between Being and language despite their ontological inseparableness. Gadamer finds out a linguistic theory, in order to support such kind of reading. He extends his principle of aesthetic non-differentiation to the range of language. By means of thislinguistic non-differentiation, the ontological shift of the hermeneutics can complete itself. (shrink)

For various historical, political as well as economic reasons, the English language is favoured as the universal language of science over other languages including French and German (Tardy, 2004). This naturally entails that students who are conversant in English have an advantage over those who are not in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. In relation to this, research on the misunderstanding of scientific terms in different languages shows that students who are speakers of non-western languages in particular face difficulties (...) in conceptualising scientific concepts. There is evidence to suggest that these students’ pre-existing knowledge about scientific terms and the polysemous nature of such terms are factors that influence their conceptualisation of the terms. This finding is the motivation behind the present cognitive linguistic study of the term temperature and its equivalent in Arabic, the compound دَرَجَةُ الحَرَارَة (darajatu al-ḥarara). Using a cognitive framework, namely Lakoff’s Idealised Cognitive Models (ICMs), the study analyses the conceptual similarities as well as differences between the terms. The study also analyses the English term heat as the second free morpheme of the compound دَرَجَةُ الحَرَارَة is الحَرَارَة which is the Arabic rendering of heat. The meanings and different uses of the terms are examined to analyse the ICMs that are evoked in each language. The results of the analysis reveal that the ICMs of English and Arabic terms under study overlap, and interestingly, also differ. (shrink)

The following remarks have been stimulated by Mr. A. J. Ayer's recent essay “The Terminology of Sense Data.” In this paper Mr. Ayer restates several of the points he has made in his book The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. The context of his argument is that of the traditional distinction between two kinds of things, sense data, percepts, phenomenal or direct given-nesses on the one hand and so-called physical objects on the other. In this context, Mr. Ayer's argument is, to (...) my mind, very admirable; so I do not intend to comment on it. In some other contexts, some of his formulations may, I fear, give rise to misunderstandings; these, naturally, are the points on which I wish to comment. But before specifying them, I had better make sure that we are talking about the same thing by briefly restating several of Mr. Ayer's points. With some of these, if I understand them correctly, I find myself in agreement; the merit of some others I shall presently examine. (shrink)

The British movement of Linguistic Analysis is now comparatively mature, although it has not yet greatly expanded from the private circle in which its early pioneers, Moore and Wittgenstein guided its first steps and early mistakes. Its admittedly revolutionary character lies not so much in a new statement of traditional British empiricism as in a new conception of the philosophical activity itself. It is a new philosophy about philosophy, which claims to be more ‘skilful’ in professional method and application (...) than any of its predecessors. It claims not so much to make new statements as to clarify those already and commonly made, and to remove many of them which concern problems which, Analysts allege, arise through plain misunderstanding of ‘the logic of our language’. Philosophy thus becomes a method of therapy rather than a set of fundamental doctrines and Wittgenstein considered that its work ‘is best done in piece–meal fashion in short essays and articles and, most successfully of all, in private discussion’. Hence the movement remained almost completely unknown outside Britain, while inversely it bred itself within a passing atmosphere of insular superiority. (shrink)

The Wittgensteinian thesis that “the result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions,’ but to make propositions clear” has been given various interpretations by subsequent philosophers. Thus, for example, certain British philosophers have confined themselves to the analysis of colloquial language and have developed great skill in sophistical demonstrations intended to show that there is no such thing as a philosophical problem. Another group of philosophers considers language solely as a phenomenon of human behavior and attempts to clarify (...) confusions and misunderstandings within language by utilizing the statistical techniques of contemporary behavior psychology. Still other philosophers, under the impact of logical positivism, have maintained that the clarification of propositions entails the construction of a language with precise rules of formation, transformation, and reference into which one could translate all the non-contradictory portions of ordinary spoken language. (shrink)

This article argues that there is a great divide between semantics and metaphysics. Much of what is called metaphysics today is still stuck in the linguistic turn. This is illustrated by showing how Fraser MacBride misunderstands David Armstrong's theory of modality.

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) is rightly regarded as a thinker who extended the development of the so-called expressivist conception of language and world that Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) and especially Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) initially articulated. Being immersed as Humboldt was in the intellectual climate of German Romanticism, he aimed not only to provide a systematic foundation for how he believed linguistic research as a science should be conducted, but also to attempt to rectify what he saw as the (...) deficiencies of Kant’s philosophical system. My aim in this paper is to show how an expressivist thinker like Humboldt has the conceptual resources from within his own framework and, perhaps surprisingly, with some help from the 20th century philosopher of language and mind, Donald Davidson, to reject a criticism commonly made against expressivist conceptions of language and world. This is the charge that this sort of expressivism threatens the objectivity of the world by emphasizing the role of language in the constitution and disclosure of the world. Cristina Lafont makes just this charge against Humboldt (and other philosophers in the German expressivist-hermeneutic tradition). Specifically, she argues that expressivist philosophers of language are all ultimately committed to some pernicious form of linguistic idealism and relativism. In this paper, I first present Humboldt’s reflections on language and give some textual evidence for why he is often read – mistakenly in my view – as a linguistic idealist and relativist. Second, I briefly sketch Lafont’s charge of linguistic idealism and relativism against Humboldt. Third and finally, I show how she misunderstands Humboldt’s expressivist conception of language and world by connecting my rebuttal to her criticism with Davidson’s argument that successful communication does not require the sharing of explicit rules or conventions that govern in advance the use and understanding of words. (shrink)

The current paper expands on previous work done on the influence of learners’ language and preexisting knowledge on understanding physics terminology by exploring the concept of ACCELERATION in Arabic and English. The study attempts to answer two questions: (1) what are the similarities and differences between the polysemy of Arabic تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) (acceleration) and the polysemy of English acceleration, and (2) to what extent do prototypes and factors motivating the conceptualization of تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) and the conceptualization of acceleration converge or (...) diverge? To this end, Arabic and English dictionaries and corpora, the ArabiCorpus (Arabic Corpus Search Tool) and the British National Corpus (BNC), were employed. The dictionaries were surveyed to explore the various meanings of تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) and acceleration, while the ArabiCorpus and the BNC were employed to investigate the senses and to identify the most frequent collocates and so the prototypes of these terms. The meaning extension of the terms is examined on the basis of the cognitive mechanisms which appear in the corpora. Theoretically, the paper is informed by the prototype theory (Rosch, 1973; 1975), image schemas (Johnson, 1987), and conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003). The results show that تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) (acceleration) and acceleration generally overlap in terms of polysemy, prototype, and images schemas as well as conceptual metaphor that organize the conceptualization of these terms. It was also found that both Arab and English speakers mix ACCELERATION up with SPEED and so misunderstand them in a scientific setting. The present findings have several implications for science curriculum design, education, and research on universal and culture-specific properties of language. (shrink)

The current paper expands on previous work done on the influence of learners’ language and preexisting knowledge on understanding physics terminology by exploring the concept of ACCELERATION in Arabic and English. The study attempts to answer two questions: (1) what are the similarities and differences between the polysemy of Arabic تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) (acceleration) and the polysemy of English acceleration, and (2) to what extent do prototypes and factors motivating the conceptualization of تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) and the conceptualization of acceleration converge or (...) diverge? To this end, Arabic and English dictionaries and corpora, the ArabiCorpus (Arabic Corpus Search Tool) and the British National Corpus (BNC), were employed. The dictionaries were surveyed to explore the various meanings of تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) and acceleration, while the ArabiCorpus and the BNC were employed to investigate the senses and to identify the most frequent collocates and so the prototypes of these terms. The meaning extension of the terms is examined on the basis of the cognitive mechanisms which appear in the corpora. Theoretically, the paper is informed by the prototype theory (Rosch, 1973; 1975), image schemas (Johnson, 1987), and conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003). The results show that تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) (acceleration) and acceleration generally overlap in terms of polysemy, prototype, and images schemas as well as conceptual metaphor that organize the conceptualization of these terms. It was also found that both Arab and English speakers mix ACCELERATION up with SPEED and so misunderstand them in a scientific setting. The present findings have several implications for science curriculum design, education, and research on universal and culture-specific properties of language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 145 Luther on Thomas Aquinas: The Angelic Doctor in the Thought of the Reformer. By DENIS R. JANZ. Veroffentlichungen des Instituts fiir Europiiische Geschichte Mainz, Abt. Religionsgeschichte, Bd. 140. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989. Pp. ii + 124. DM 38 {cloth). As Denis Janz, specialist in the late medieval context of Luther's thought (Luther and Late Medieval Thomism, 1983), points out in the "Prospectus," a study of (...) Luther's understanding of Thomas has an inherent appeal, for, " rightly or wrongly, Thomas and Luther are inevitably regarded as the standard-bearers of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism" {p. 1). The recent completion of the necessary critical indices has made the task possible, and the result is a fine and necessary contribution to the work of all scholars interested in the thought of these two pivotal Christian thinkers. The method of Janz is straightforward: assemble the references to Thomas in Luther's works, organize them into appropriate categories, exegete their meanings, and discern important tendencies or perspectives common to these texts. Then "the accuracy of Luther's understanding and the cogency of his critique " can be evaluated from the perspective of twentieth cenrtury historical knowledge {p. 2). Janz recognizes that there are significant hermeneutical difficulties inherent in such a study and that any evaluation " may well imply a notion of history as progress, perhaps even a confidence in the intellectual superiority of modernity over the past " (p. 3). The result bears out the soundness of his approach. Chapter I examines "Luther on the Person of Thomas." Luther, sharing in and contributing to his time's distinctive theological polemic, had no shortage of epithets for Thomas, from " Sophist " to " beggarly paunch " {p. 4). The remarkable thing is the surprising number of complimentary things he has to say. At different times of his career Luther referred to Thomas as " this holy man " or " a man of ' great genius '... woefully misunderstood " {p. 5). A most interesting example is the different uses he makes of a story of Thomas's struggle with despair when near death, when Thomas faced his Anfechtung by holding the Bible and saying "I believe what is in this book" (p. 8). Sometimes Luther cites it as an example of the weakness of implicit faith; but other times he makes no critical comment on Thomas, and the story implies the victory of faith over despair. These different uses show the ambiguity of Luther's attitude toward Thomas as a person, and what in balance seems to be " grudging respect " for an " example of how great persons can at the same time be seriously mistaken " (p. 10). 146 BOOK REVIEWS Chapter U, which comprises the bulk of the hook, carefully examines the substantive issues on which Luther mentions and responds to Thomas: experience, the use of Aristotle, Scripture, penance and indulgences, the Lord's Supper, monasticism, justification, law, baptism, angels, papal authority, purgatory, and the veneration of images. On some of these issues Janz sees only a minor critique of Thomas by Luther and sometimes little real difference between their positions. Both Luther and Thomas give primacy to the literal sense of Scripture, and "both teach that the Church and theology stand under the authority of Scripture" (p. 30). On this question Luther's critique has more to do with the Thomists than Thomas. In regard to penance and indulgences Luther criticizes Thomas's view, though here again there is distortion of Thomas by the Thomists, which Luther correctly suspects (pp. 44-45). Though Luther disagrees with Thomas's understanding of the Lord's Supper, he feels Thomas was entitled to his opinion; what he cannot bear is how Thomas has been raised " to the level of an infallible teacher," with his opinions transformed "into articles of faith" (p. 48). Justification, the heart of Luther's thought, is "a relatively insignificant issue " in his critique of Thomas, as Luther eventually comes to understand better the key place Thomas gave grace (pp. 60, 61). Luther sees Christ as the " abrogation " of the law and criticizes Thomas for not seeing it this way; however, this is a linguistic misunderstanding of Thomas, probably based on Gabriel Bicl's teaching, so that Thomas and Luther are... (shrink)

The paradigm case argument is a widely employed, yet controversial, weapon in the armory of contemporary analytical philosophers. It has been hailed as a philosophical panacea, resolving paradoxes from perception to ethics; and it has been scorned as both unsound and useless. I hope in this paper to help determine its proper use: I will try to show that it can be helpful, particularly at the initial stage of clearing up linguistic misunderstandings. But I must conclude that it is (...) unequal to the more grandiose tasks assigned to it. (shrink)

_A timely call for recovering the true meanings of the nineteenth‑century terms that are hobbling current political debates__ “Masterful.... James cuts through the tangled terminological and conceptual jungle of modern globalist discourse... [with] fascinating discussions of the origins and meanings of the words.”—G. John Ikenberry, ___Foreign Affairs___ “James delves into the often-surprising intellectual origins of key concepts in the arguments about globalisation—and illuminates the debate in the process.”—Gideon Rachman, _Financial Times_, "Best Books of 2021: Politics"_ Nationalism, conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and (...) capitalism are among the most fiercely debated ideas in contemporary politics. Since these concepts hark back to the nineteenth century, much of their nuanced meaning has been lost, and the words are most often used as epithets that short-circuit productive discussion. In this insightful book, Harold James uncovers the origins of these concepts and examines how the problematic definition and meaning of each term has become an obstacle to respectful communication. Noting that similar linguistic misunderstandings accompany such newer ideas as geopolitics, neoliberalism, technocracy, and globalism, James argues that a rich historical knowledge of the vocabulary surrounding globalization, politics, and economics—particularly the meaning and the usefulness that drove the original conceptions of the terms—is needed to negotiate the gaps between different understandings and make fruitful political debate once again possible. (shrink)

Metaphors can be used as crucial tools for reaching shared understanding, especially where an epistemic imbalance of knowledge is at stake. However, metaphors can also represent a risk in intercultural or cross-cultural interactions, namely in situations characterised by little or deficient common ground between interlocutors. In such cases, the use of metaphors can lead to misunderstandings and cause communicative breakdowns. The conditions defining when metaphors promote, and hinder understanding have not been analyzed in detail, especially in intracultural contexts. This study (...) proposes an analysis of metaphors identified within an Italian corpus of diabetes care interviews. Through a coding scheme capturing the types and the probative weights of the linguistic evidence that can be used to detect misunderstandings, the communicative effectiveness of metaphors is indirectly assessed. The quantitative and qualitative analyses show a positive correlation between metaphor use and problematic understanding. A more detailed scrutiny of the interlocutors’ roles and topics of the metaphors points out that most of the problematic metaphors are used by patients, while most of the problematic ones used by providers concern non-clinical matters. These results can be explained as resulting from incorrect presumptions of common ground between the interlocutors. (shrink)

This paper defends the normativity of meaning thesis by clearing up a misunderstanding about what the thesis amounts to. The misunderstanding is that according to it, failing to use an expression in accordance with the norms which constitute its meaning amounts to changing the expression’s meaning. If this was what the thesis claimed, then it would indeed be easy to show that meaning norms do not yield prescriptions and cannot be followed. However, there is another reading: what is (...) constitutive of meaning is not the norm’s being followed, but the norm’s being applicable. On this reading, some standard arguments against the thesis lose their force. After discussing the alternative reading and its consequences, the paper goes on to sketch a model of how norms of meaning become applicable in the first place. This model supports the view that talk of meaning has its pragmatic home in contexts of linguistic calibration. (shrink)

Structuralism was the major intellectual concern of French philosophy during the 1960s and 1970s. Elsewhere it was not, except in circles influenced by French thought. Lévi‐Strauss seemed to embody this theoretical trend; actually, he was simply its most outstanding figure. That situation was a strange one, in several respects: Lévi‐Strauss was not the initiator of structuralism as such, nor did he aim to cause any upheaval in the field of philosophy. But it is undeniable that most of the thinkers who (...) were (often wrongly and against their will) deemed to be structuralists, or post‐structuralists, or neo‐structuralists, such as derrida (see Article 50), althusser (Article 48), foucault (Article 49), deleuze (Article 51), Serres, lyotard (Article 52), Barthes, lacan (Article 47), Marin, entertained a special relationship with structural linguistics and with Lévi‐Strauss's anthropology. This is what needs to be understood. Thus the following sets of questions will be addressed: (1) Why, and because of what methodological requirements, did Lévi‐Strauss seek explanatory models for some anthropological problems in structural linguistics? (2) How and why did this choice made by Lévi‐Strauss have a decisive influence upon some of the major philosophers in France at that time? What were the fruits, and what were the limits and misunderstandings of the structuralist inspiration, particularly in its anthropological version, in philosophy. In other words, what assessment can be made today of the relationships between philosophy and Lévi‐Strauss's anthropology? (shrink)

My paper defends the use of the poverty of stimulus argument (POSA) for linguistic nativism against Cowie's (1999) counter-claim that it leaves empiricism untouched. I first present the linguistic POSA as arising from a reflection on the generality of the child's initial state in comparison with the specific complexity of its final state. I then show that Cowie misconstrues the POSA as a direct argument about the character of the pld. In this light, I first argue that the (...) data Cowie marshals about the pld does not begin to suggest that the POSA is unsound. Second, through a discussion of the so-called `auxiliary inversion rule', I show, by way of diagnosis, that Cowie misunderstands both the methodology of current linguistics and the complexity of the data it is obliged to explain. (shrink)

This short reply seeks to clarify the concept of linguistic norm circles and to correct some misunderstandings of it implicit in Sealey & Carter's response. It also reinforces some doubts over their version of the linguistic system. Norm circles, it argues, provide an important part of the explanation for linguistic practices, but always in conjunction with other interacting causal powers.

Linguist, critic, poet, psychologist, I. A. Richards was one of the great polymaths of the twentieth century. He is best known, however, as one of the founders of modern literary critical theory. Richards revolutionized criticism by turning away from biographical and historical readings as well as from the aesthetic impressionism. Seeking a more exacting approach, he analyzed literary texts as syntactical structures that could be broken down into smaller interacting verbal units of meaning. Practical Criticism, first published in 1929, is (...) a landmark volume in demonstrating this method.Practical Criticism was born of an experiment Richards undertook to discern the psychological foundations of reading and interpretation and a means for readers to discover how they think and feel about poetry. He submitted thirteen poems for analysis, without date or author given, to some four hundred of his Cambridge students. Poets of stature went in undifferentiated from obscure and forgotten figures. The results were mixed at best, with many of the interpretations shockingly bad. These readings were based, in large part, not on the texts themselves but on then-current opinions, presuppositions, theories, and beliefs. The results led Richards to define a set of interrelated mental obstacles to intelligent and accurate reading including "irrelevant associations," "stock responses," "sentimentality," and a general misunderstanding of the purpose or "doctrine" of poetry.Richards' concerns in Practical Criticism went well beyond the merely formal. In the humanist tradition, he believed that the ability to read critically and use language truthfully was culturally regenerative, a necessary skill in the modern world of mass-produced art and advertising. This classic volume will be of interest to teachers of literature, cultural studies specialists, and intellectual historians. (shrink)

A common misunderstanding is that there is something logically amiss with the classical square of opposition, and that the problem is related to Aristotle’s and medieval philosophers’ rejection of empty terms. But [Parsons 2004] convincingly shows that most of these philosophers did not in fact reject empty terms, and that, when properly understood, there are no logical problems with the classical square. Instead, the classical square, compared to its modern version, raises the issue of the existential import of words (...) like all; a semantic issue. I argue that the modern square is more interesting than Parsons allows, because it presents, in contrast with the classical square, notions of negation that are ubiquitous in natural languages. This is an indirect logical argument against interpreting all with existential import. I also discuss some linguistic matters bearing on the latter issue. (shrink)

The foundations of linguistics continue to generate philosophical debate. Jerrold Katz claims that the subject matter of linguistics consists of abstract objects and that, as a consequence, the discipline cannot be viewed as part of psychology. I respond by arguing (1) that Katz misinterprets work in the philosophy of mathematics which he believes sheds light on foundational questions in linguistics; (2) that he misunderstands aspects of Noam Chomsky's position, against whose conception of linguistics many of his claims are directed; (3) (...) that Katz fails to dispose of a much more plausible analysis, according to which linguistics remains an empirical inquiry in spite of its abstract subject matter; and, finally, (4) that his arguments against what he calls‘generativism’, appealing to the existence of an infinitely long grammatical sentence of English, are flawed. (shrink)

Content-externalism is the view that a subject’s relations to a context can play a role in individuating the content of her mental states. According to social content-externalists, relations to a socio-linguistic context can play a fundamental individuating role. Åsa Wikforss has suggested that ‘social externalism depends on the assumption that individuals have an incomplete grasp of their own concepts’ (Wikforss 2004, p. 287). In this paper, I show that this isn’t so. I develop and defend an argument for social (...) content-externalism which does not depend on this assumption. The argument is animated by strands of thought in the later work of Wittgenstein. In addition to demonstrating that social externalists are not necessarily committed to thinking that a subject can have thoughts involving concepts which she incompletely understands, this argument is important insofar as it: (1) supports a form of content-externalism with extended scope; (2) avoids the controversy surrounding the claim that subjects can think with concepts which they incompletely understand; and (3) situates Wittgenstein’s later work with respect to contemporary debates about content-externalism. (shrink)

This would have been a better book if Sampson had argued his main point, the usefulness of the Simonian principle as an explanation of the evolution, structure, and acquisition of language, on its own merits, instead of making it subsidiary to his attack on ‘limited-minders’ (e.g., Noam Chomsky). The energy he has spent on the attack he might then have been willing and able to employ in developing his argument at reasonable length and detail. He might then have found that (...) argument faulty, or even wrong. Underdeveloped as it is, however, his point about the Simonian principle does seem to have thepossibility of some significance in understanding the empirical issues of this book (and the dichotomy of ‘limited’ and ‘creative’ minds is certainly not one of these).What Sampson has done inMaking Sense has the appearance of science, and theoretical linguistics, and therefore it is somewhat puzzling to find the conclusions that the human mind cannot be scientifically studied (p. 10), and that theoretical linguistics is a “mirage” (p. 210). His statement that It may still seem worthwhile to some to work out the exact implications for present-day linguistic structure of the fact that languages are evolved systems, but I cannot see that there is much glamour or, indeed, much substance in this task (p. 210) would surely be surprising to a geneticist or ethologist. We hope his apparent misunderstanding on this point will not lead him to give up his profession, in which he seems willing and able to make a significant contribution.What in particular is required is a clear indication of how the Simonian principle imposes itself in the ontogenesis of language. Consider Chomsky's example of the rule for forming questions in English. For sentence (1) below, children able to deal with such examples would give (2) but not (3) as the corresponding question (Chomsky, 1975, p. 31).The man who is tall is in the room.Is the man who is tall in the room?*Is the man who tall is in the room?Now compare Sampson's evolutionary explanation for the structure-dependence of rules which is illustrated in (1)-(3): “once a behavior-pattern has become thoroughly established, it will tend to be treated as a fixed given when used as a constituent of a more complex, later-learned behavior-pattern” (p. 183). In order for this to account for Chomsky's example it would have to be the case that children learn relative clauses before they learn questions, which simply isn't true.In conclusion, we wish not to seem unaware of the problems with the position Sampson is attacking, or unaware of the sometimes dogmatic way it too has been presented. Chomsky's hypothesis of innate linguistic ideas seems, fundamentally, to derive from the claimed rapidity and uniformity of language acquisition in the face of limited and degenerate data. Chomsky appears to have been unwilling to argue these points directly or to show their relation to others, for which he has argued, for example, the implausibility of some abstract constraint's having been learned (cf. 1971, pp. 22–44; 1975, pp. 30–33; 1980, pp. 35–52). And almost from his first invoking of rationalism in support of his linguistic method, Chomsky has himself resorted to an unnecessarily polemical attack on empiricism (cf. 1965, p. 58, n. 33). The innateness issue is just not clear or simple enough to justify so much animus, or even conviction. (shrink)

I defend the non-cognitivist outlook on knowledge of grammar from the criticisms levelled against it by Jonathan Knowles. The first part of the paper is largely critical. First, I argue that Knowles's argument against Christopher Peacocke and Martin Davies's non-cognitivist account of the psychological reality of grammar fails, and thus that no reason has been given to think that cognitivism is integral to an understanding of Chomskyan theoretical linguistics. Second, I argue that cognitivism is philosophically problematic. In particular, I argue (...) (a) that Knowles misunderstands Stephen Stich and Gareth Evans's points about inferential integration; and (b) that Knowles misunderstands the philosophical status and demands of Evans's Generality Constraint. In the final, non-critical part of the paper, I try to show that the Stich and Evans's constraints, together with a Self-Knowledge Constraint, are genuine constitutive constraints by showing how they have rationality as their underlying organizing principle. I argue further that recognizing the constitutive character of these constraints allows one to distinguish two kinds of psychological explanation; in this sense, the constraints mark a genuine boundary in our theorizing about the mind. (shrink)

In a memorable paper, Donald Davidson (1986, p. 446) insists that "there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed". I have always taken this as an exaggeration, albeit an apt exaggeration that might be philosophically helpful. Now when it comes to predication, what I would have expected to hear from the same author would be along the lines of "there is no such thing as predication ... (...) ". But instead of this I hear something very different (Davidson, 2005, p. 77): [I]f we do not understand predication, we do not understand how any sentence works, nor can we account for the structure of the simplest thought that is expressible in language. At one time there was much discussion of what was called the "unity of proposition"; it is just this unity that a theory of predication must explain. The philosophy of language lacks its most important chapter without such a theory, the philosophy of mind is missing its crucial first step if it cannot describe the nature of judgment; and it is woeful if metaphysics cannot say how a substance is related to its attributes. I find myself at odds with just about everything written in this paragraph; and what is worse, my disagreement stems from a notion of language which I believe I have acquired also by reading Davidson. Reading this passage, I desperately sought for an indication that it was leading up to some catch, and not meant to be taken at face value. But, alas, I am afraid there is none. To avoid misunderstanding: I see nothing wrong in understanding predication as a clearly delimited linguistic phenomenon. We put together one kind of expression, which we have come to call the subject, with a different kind of expression, called the predicate, possibly.. (shrink)

I explore a strand of reception history that follows Rudolf Carnap’s shift from a purely syntactical analysis of constructed languages to his conception of pure semantics. My exploration focuses on Gustav Bergmann’s and Everett Hall’s interpretation of pure semantics, their understanding of what constitutes a ’formal’ investigation of language, and their arguments concerning the relationship between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents. I argue that Bergmann and Hall strongly misread Carnap’s semantic project and, subsequently, their misunderstanding is passed down (...) through colleagues and students. (shrink)

The official definition of ‘pain’ by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) hasn’t seen much revision since its publication in 1979. There have been various criticisms of the definition in the literature from different quarters: that the definition implies a dubious metaphysical dualism, that it requires a strong form of consciousness as well as linguistic abilities, that it excludes many vulnerable groups that are otherwise perfectly capable of experiencing pain, that it has therefore unacceptable practical as (...) well as ethical consequences, that it is unhelpful to the health-care professional as an operational definition, that it is too narrow, and many others. In my view, most of these criticisms depend on misunderstandings or on uncharitable interpretations. My aim is to go over the definition, clarify some potential ambiguities, and argue that these criticisms don’t cut much ice. At the end, I will present a few slightly reworded versions of the definition that I claim are more felicitous and capture the original intended meaning by the members of the taxonomic committee in a much better and transparent way that avoids all the major extant criticisms in the literature. (Written for interdisciplinary audiences.). (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;A study of three concepts of liberty, the thesis argues that Isaiah Berlin's text 'Two Concepts of Liberty', seeks to expand the limits of the contemporary Anglo-American debate on the idea of liberty by linguistically shifting the terrain of the debate such that its participants are prompted to view the nineteenth century French Post-Revolutionary debate on the idea of liberty. The first section, dealing with Berlin's text and the contemporary Anglo-American debate (...) on the idea of liberty, contends that the misunderstanding of Berlin's text is due to an empiricist epistemology that sees liberties as causally grounded rather than grounded through social norms. In this respect, the intention of Berlin's text is lost. The second section, dealing with the French nineteenth century Post-Revolutionary debate on the idea of liberty, analyses the importance of language in the formation of a new socio-political order and in the conceptualisation of new forms of liberty that are constitutive of that order. The third section deals with Tocqueville's sociological analysis of the profound historical tendency of equality that marks the new socio-political order of Democracy and how that tendency can be linked to the concrete realisation of the forms of liberty conceptualised within the Post-Revolutionary debate. A brief conclusion argues that the very nature of democracy is such that the concrete realisation of the forms of liberty viewed within the French nineteenth century Post-Revolutionary debate and by Tocqueville, will furnish humanity with a greater understanding of itself. (shrink)

This article suggests a model of uttering/énonciation as representational activity (Energeia) throughout the observable case of both impersonal injunctions and collaborative interaction. Being a dynamic relation at the intersection of notions, language and world, reference, this model integrates a new paradigm into the realm of discursive linguistics, the described morphodynamic language phenomenon instead of the described hypothesis emanating from “structuralized” grammars. We thus discuss one aspect of the interaction adjustment/distortion beyond mere projection (stasis of both virtual social markers and uttered (...) stable forms), considering distortion as a relevant marker of the described observable (an interaction from a translation course for instance). Henceforth, beyond the speech act frame, we present a mathematical attempt to study the variation of the pragmatic impact taking place between projection and result; this last implies two sources positions and praxical levels. As a conclusive note, we expose a brief insight into the phenomenon misunderstanding between both neurocognitive and linguistic studies. (shrink)

Those who disturb the hornets’ nest better be thick skinned. Keeping that in mind, thus far I kept my silence in the face of the adverse reactions my essay “On What One Knows” has provoked in the literature. As to the merits of the various objections, moreover, I trusted the judgement of the philosophical community to sort them out, and either recognize their futility, or make the necessary adjustments in my arguments without the need to reject the conclusions.In the case (...) of Dunn and Suter, however, I decided to make an exception. The reason is that they indeed succeeded in pointing out certain difficulties in my position, which are not due to misunderstandings, conflicting linguistic intuitions, or other superficial sources. And, second, meeting their objections gives me the opportunity of proposing a significant refinement of my theory, the need for which I increasingly felt in the meanwhile myself. (shrink)

This paper is inspired by the 1995 dispute between the philosophers Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls in the Journal of Philosophy about the role of the philosopher in the public sphere. I am criticizing Habermas in his attempt to depict Rawls as a kind of justice expert. I am grounding my defence of Rawls in an argument that parallels Quine’s indeterminacy argument.This crossover of argumentative strategies taken from analytic philosophy into moral and political theory maybe can account for the relevance (...) of this paper to post-linguistic-turn philosophy, firstly, because the syncretistic nature of such an attempt bears a certain affinity to postmodern fashions of thinking. Secondly, I believe that a thinker such as Quine who is firmly rooted in the analytic tradition nevertheless surpasses this tradition in a way that in some respects may be seen as paralleling the developments in post-structuralist and postmodern thought.In Quine and some of his contemporaries and disciples, analytic philosophy turns away from the positivist assumptions of its fathers. It no longer stipulates a single way of representing the positive world in the one and only true theory. Truth, in fact, comes to be looked at as relative to a theory of which there can be many. However, if many theories serve the same purpose equally well, then truth, as theory dependent, becomes a pluralistic concept itself.This much I think I should say to guard against the misunderstanding that all analytic philosophy is positivistic and hence that all moral and political theory that avails itself of argumentative strategies from the analytic school is infected by positivism. Analytic philosophy has of course inherited the scepticism of the positivists with respect to classical metaphysics. It refused to tackle metaphysical problems directly because it very often dismissed them as merely a confused way of speaking.In order to assess where the problem is real or where, in fact, there is no problem at all, analytic philosophy turned towards our common way of speaking about the problem in question. Instead of directly asking, for example, whether human beings have a free will, analytic philosophers would ask: how do we talk about freedom? Or: what do we mean by the word 'freedom' in our everyday conversation?Consequently, either the metaphysical problem would go away or it had to be reformulated and clarified in terms of a language that we do understand. Asking these kinds of questions is of course critical of classical metaphysics, but it is not necessarily positivistic.Thus, it seems that we have to distinguish two kinds of philosophical schools both operating under the paradigm of the linguistic turn: the early positivist and the later non-positivist schools of analytic philosophy. Both share the view that reflection upon language is the primary step in philosophical investigation. They differ in their respective monistic and pluralistic conceptions of science and truth.Now, the question arises as to where to place moral and political theory within this paradigm. Until the early seventies when Rawls's Theory of Justice appeared, it was commonly held among analytic philosophers that moral and political theory had no place at all in modern post-metaphysical philosophy. It was either not scientific enough or it would be subsumed under the social sciences.It is Rawls, precisely, who made this view obsolete demonstrating that moral and political theory can operate outside the whole paradigm of post-linguistic-turn analytic philosophy and still not fall prey to the inadequacies of the old-fashioned metaphysics that had been dismissed. I would therefore call Rawls an early post-linguistic-turn philosopher. (shrink)

Christia (2015) argues that my criticism of Sellars -- that for Sellars, all intentionality is what I call "discursive intentionality" -- relies on a misunderstanding of Sellarsian intuitions (see Sachs 2014). Here I respond to Christias by pointing that that while is correct that Sellars has a distinction between full-blown linguistic intentionality and perceptual takings, Sellars's theory of perceptual takings cannot do justice to the figure/ground structure of embodied perception stressed by Merleau-Ponty.

One of the most important aspects of Grice’s theory of conversation is the drawing of a borderline between what is said and what is implic- ated. Grice’s views concerning this borderline have been strongly and influentially criticised by relevance theorists. In particular, it has become increasingly widely accepted that Grice’s notion of what is said is too lim- ited, and that pragmatics has a far larger role to play in determining what is said than Grice would have allowed. (See for (...) example Bezuidenhuit 1996; Blakemore 1987; Carston 1991; Recanati 1991, 1993, 2001; Sperber and Wilson 1986; Wilson and Sperber 1981.) In this paper, I argue that the rejection of Grice has moved too swiftly, as a key line of objection which has led to this rejection is flawed. The flaw, we will see, is that relevance theorists rely on a misunderstanding of Grice’s project in his theory of conversation. I am not arguing that Grice’s versions of saying and implicating are right in all details, but simply that certain widespread reasons for rejecting his theory are based on misconceptions. (shrink)

Analytical commentary -- Fruits upon one tree -- The continuation of the early draft into philosophy of mathematics -- Hidden isomorphism -- A common methodology -- The flatness of philosophical grammar -- Following a rule 185-242 -- Introduction to the exegesis -- Rules and grammar -- The tractatus and rules of logical syntax -- From logical syntax to philosophical grammar -- Rules and rule-formulations -- Philosophy and grammar -- The scope of grammar -- Some morals -- Exegesis 185-8 -- Accord (...) with a rule -- Initial compass bearings -- Accord and the harmony between language and reality -- Rules of inference and logical machinery -- Formulations and explanations of rules by examples -- Interpretations, fitting and grammar -- Further misunderstandings -- Exegesis 189-202 -- Following rules, mastery of techniques and practices -- Following a rule -- Practices and techniques -- Doing the right thing and doing the same thing -- Privacy and the community view -- On not digging below bedrock -- Private linguists and private linguists : Robinson Crusoe sails again -- Is a language necessarily shared with a community of speakers? -- Innate knowledge of a language -- Robinson Crusoe sails again -- Solitary cavemen and monolinguists -- Private languages and private languages -- Exegesis 203-37 -- Agreement in definitions, judgements, and form of life -- The scaffolding of facts -- The role of our nature -- Forms of life -- Agreement : consensus of human beings and their actions -- Exegesis 238-42 -- Grammar and necessity -- Setting the stage -- Leitmotifs -- External guidelines -- Necessary propositions and norms of representation -- Concerning the truth and falsehood of necessary propositions -- What necessary truths are about illusions of correspondence : ideal objects, kinds of reality, and ultra-physics -- The psychology of the A priori -- Knowledge -- Belief -- Certainty -- Surprise -- Discoveries and conjectures -- Compulsion -- Propositions of logic and laws of thought -- Alternative forms of representation -- The arbitrariness of grammar -- A kinship to the non-arbitrary -- Proof in mathematics -- Conventionalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Non-Cartesian Frameworks”Rom Harré (bio)There are three points in Dr. Berger’s paper that seem to me to call for immediate comment:1. There is the familiar (but in Berger’s case, only a partial) misunderstanding of the upshot of the third phase of Wittgenstein’s private-language argument. Having shown that expressive and descriptive discourse are radically different, and that expressive discourse can be learned only in contexts of action in (...) which there are natural expressions of personal feeling, experience, and so on, Wittgenstein goes on to show that whatever furnishes the mind, it is not thing-like. He does this by showing that “sameness” of thoughts and feelings cannot be spelled out in the same terms as sameness of things, that is, in terms of numerical and qualitative identity. Yet there is a proper use for the concept of sameness of thoughts and feelings. It is to be found in the role that expressions of feelings and declarations of thoughts play in the language games that constitute a form of life. There is no “unresolved tension,” as Berger seems to think. Although pains are not thing-like, they do have a location, do endure, and do differ from one another.The introduction of the powerful expressive/descriptive distinction is the key to the fallacies of representationalism. Expressive acts do not represent but descriptive acts might. But we can draw on the demonstration that mental “somethings” are not thing-like to eliminate that possibility. The root of representationalism is the seventeenth-century conception of the mind as a container of mental entities: ideas. Ideas are to psychology what atoms are to physics. According to Hume, ideas are copies of impressions. In that disastrous thesis, representationalism was born, as a generalization of Locke’s grounding principle that the ideas of primary qualities resembled primary qualities. The cure for this complex mesh of mistakes must be deeply philosophical. It must not be confined to easy criticisms of Locke’s resemblance doctrine, not yet to more subtle Berkleyan strictures on the supposed distinction between ideas and qualities. It must cut at the very deepest assumption of representationalism—that there are mental entities. And on that matter, Wittgenstein’s analysis will, one hopes, prove to be final.2. With representationalism cast onto the midden of history, what account are we to give of mentation? In a sense, Wittgenstein’s insights abolish the inner/outer distinction, an offshoot of the concept of the container-mind. But they leave standing the distinction between what is done privately and what is done publicly. Yet these domains must be of the same nature, since in the expressive use of signs, we find a holism encompassing what we feel and our disposition to express it. Linguistic substitutes for natural forms [End Page 185] of expression must share that holism. But there are no natural expressions of propositional thoughts. Why? Because we are capable of private propositional thinking just insofar as we have mastered public uses of the instruments of propositional thought. These instruments are cultural products.The practice of psychotherapy can be nothing other than discursive. The quotations concerning praxis that Berger offers are disconcertingly vague. To add, as Berger does, that we must take theory into account does not cure the vagueness. We do not know what Berger takes theory to be, only that it is not theory as physicists have it; i.e., systems of hypotheses about hidden processes which bring about that which can be observed. Following Wittgenstein one step farther, we can say that the only thing that could be theory-like in the enterprises of psychotherapists would be grammars. Grammars express the often unformulated norms of discourses. Psychoanalytic theories could then be addressed as expressions of the norms of certain kinds of discourses. Incorporating a “theory” would then be nothing but determining to adopt a certain grammar in one’s therapeutic discourses. Freed of the idea that one of some set of theories must be true and preferred to all others, one is free to adopt and adapt grammars to occasions. Some grammars are tied to natural expressions and so to the ethology of the human form of life... (shrink)

This article examines the primacy of real-world bodily experience for understanding the human mind. I defend the idea that the peculiarities of the living human brain and body, and the bodily experiences they sustain, are essential ingredients of human sense-making and conceptual systems. Conceptual systems are created, brought forth, understood and sustained, through very specific cognitive mechanisms ultimately grounded in bodily experience. They don't have a transcendental abstract logic independent of the species-specific bodily features. To defend this position, I focus (...) on a case study: the fundamental concept of time flow. Using tools of cognitive linguistics, I analyse the foundations of this concept, as it is manifested naturally in everyday language. I show that there is a precise conceptual metaphor whose inferential structure gives an account of a huge variety of linguistic expressions, semantic contents, and unconscious spontaneous gestures: Time Events Are Things In Space. I discuss various special cases of this conceptual metaphor. This mapping grounds its source domain in specific spatial bodily experiences and projects its inferential structure onto a target domain making inferences in that domain possible. This mechanism allows us to unconsciously, effortlessly, and precisely understand expressions such as ‘the year 2000 is approaching’ or ‘the days ahead of us’. The general form of the mapping seems to be universal. The analysis raises important issues which demand a deeper and richer understanding of cognition and the mind: a view that sees the mind as fully embodied. In order to avoid misunderstandings with a general notion of ‘embodiment’ which has become fashionable in contemporary cognitive science, I describe what I mean by ‘full embodiment’: an embodied-oriented approach that has an explicit commitment to all of cognition, not just to low-level aspects of cognition such as sensory-motor activity or locomotion . I take embodiment to be a living phenomenon in which the primacy of bodily grounded experience is inherently part of the very subject matter of the study of the mind. (shrink)

Figurative communication (the use of metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole and irony) provides economy of expression, clarity, persuasiveness, politeness, evaluation, and communication of emotions. However, it also increases the potential for misunderstanding in situations when people lack shared background knowledge. This book combines theoretical frameworks with empirical studies that measure the effectiveness of different approaches to the use of figurative language in advertisements, to show how to maximise the benefits of creative metaphor and metonymy in global advertising. It highlights how subtle (...) differences in colour, layout, and combinations of different kinds of figurative language affect the reception and appreciation of creative advertising, shedding new light on the nature of figurative communication itself. With a balance between theory, experiments and practical case studies, this book is accessible for academics in linguistics and communication studies, as well as advertising and marketing professionals. (shrink)

While a surprising number of people, both religious and non-religious, have had deep and significant mystical experiences, scholars have reached little agreement about their cause and character. Many analyze mystical experiences as if they are formed by the same linguistic processes that shape ordinary experiences. This paper shows that this is based on a misunderstanding, for these experiences result from letting go of language. The paper concludes that we need to think about mystical experiences - and what they (...) have to teach about consciousness and reality - in a new light. (shrink)