Contemporary architecture is increasingly grounded in science and mathematics. Architectural discourse has shifted radically from the sometimes disorienting Derridean deconstruction, to engaging scientific terms such as fractals, chaos, complexity, nonlinearity, and evolving systems. That's where the architectural action is -- at least for cutting-edge architects and thinkers -- and every practicing architect and student needs to become conversant with these terms and know what they mean. Unfortunately, the vast majority of architecture faculty are unprepared to explain them to students, not (...) having had a scientific education themselves. Here is an architecture book by an architect/scientist, just in time to help architects in the new millennium. Alexander discusses many of the scientific terms arising in cutting-edge architecture, and explains them to those who don't have scientific training or advanced mathematical knowledge. We find discussions of the evolution of forms; the importance of process in design; iteration; genetic algorithms; sequences of transformations; different levels of scale (i.e. fractals); etc. They are explained here by an architect who is also a scientist, because he wants to change the way architects think and build. Alexander is not merely popularizing other scientists' results and making them accessible to architects: he is in fact presenting new and original scientific work that ties many of these concepts together in a way that will be useful to architects. (shrink)

Expressions in a language, whether words, phrases, or sentences, have meanings. So it seems reasonable to suppose that there are meanings that expressions have. Of course, it is fashionable in some philosophical circles to deny this.

In a recent paper, Pickel and Rabern (2016) argue that a dynamic Tarskian semantics resolves Fine’s antinomy of the variable without the radical consequences for semantics proposed by Fine (2003, 2007). While Pickel and Rabern’s basic insight—a parameter of discourse context that tracks occurrences of variable-binding expressions—is important, I will argue that their own Tarskian theory faces a destructive dilemma: either their theory does not resolve Fine’s antinomy as they propose, or their theory does not reflect the intuitive motivation for (...) what they call structured meanings. I suggest that in response to this dilemma we should reject one of the principles that generates Pickel and Rabern’s version of the antinomy. Here Pickel and Rabern’s insight has surprising, but salutary, foundational consequences for semantics. (shrink)

This paper is about the most important technical problem faced by Structured Meanings Semantics: the reiteration of hyperintensional functors (i.e., functors of -categorial languages of the sort defined by Max Cresswell in [6]). A way to solve this problem in a general and natural way by using Scott's Domains is both suggested and shown. The result is a semantics which unrestrictedly allows reiterations of hyperintensional functors. The semantics is also extended to accommodate -categorial languages with variables.

In the logical, philosophical and linguistic literature, a number of theoretical frameworks have been proposed for the meaning of questions (see Ginzburg (1995), Groenendijk & Stokhof (1997) for recent overviews). I will concentrate on two general approaches that figured prominently in linguistic semantics, which I will call the proposition set approach and the structured meaning approach (sometimes called the “propositional” and the “categorial” or “functional” approach). I will show that the proposition set approach runs into three problems: It does (...) not always predict the right focus structure in answers, it is unable to distinguish between polarity (yes/no) and a certain type of alternative questions, and it does not allow to formulate an important condition for a type of multiple constituent questions. On the other hand, I will show that the main argument brought forward against the structured meaning framework, namely that it does not give us an elegant way to account for embedded questions, does not withstand closer scrutiny. In this I will take up an issue raised in von Stechow (1990), namely, that the greater expressive power of the structured meaning approach might be necessary for the proper treatment of semantic phenomena like question formation and focusation. (shrink)

Logical semantics includes once again structured meanings in its repertoire. The leading idea is that semantic and syntactic structure are more or less isomorphic. A key motive for reintroducing sensitivity to semantic structure is to obtain fine‐grained meanings, which are individuated more finely than in possible‐world semantics, namely up to necessary equivalence. Just getting the truth‐conditions right is deemed insufficient for a full semantic analysis of sentences. This paper surveys some of the most recent contributions to the (...) program of structured meaning, while providing historical background. I suggest that to make substantial advances the program needs to solve the problem of propositional unity and develop an intensional mereology of abstract objects. (shrink)

This 1994 book develops a way of representing the meanings of linguistic expressions which is independent of any particular language, allowing the expressions to be manipulated in accordance with rules related to their meanings which could be implemented on a computer. It begins with a survey of the contributions of linguistics, logic and computer science to the problem of representation, linking each with a particular type of formal grammar. A system of graphs is then presented, organized by scope (...) relations in which linguistic constituents are sub-graphs whose configuration is determined by their categories. In developing this system, the author extends the notion of scope and argues that anaphoric and relative pronouns are structural signs not linguistic constituents. Certain count nouns are made the basis of this system and an account of proper names relating the count nouns, is given. (shrink)

Few areas of study have led to such close and intense interactions among computer scientists, psychologists, and philosophers as the area now referred to as cognitive science. Within this discipline, few problems have inspired as much debate as the use of notions such as meaning, intentionality, or the semantic content of mental states in explaining human behavior. The set of problems surrounding these notions have been viewed by some observers as threatening the foundations of cognitive science as currently conceived, and (...) by others as providing a new and scientifically sound formulation of certain classical problems in the philosophy of mind. The chapters in this volume help bridge the gap among contributing disciplines-computer science, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience-and discuss the problems posed from various perspectives. (shrink)

In this paper we present Drama, a distributed model of analogical mapping that integrates semantic and structural constraints on constructing analogies. Specifically, Drama uses holographic reduced representations (Plate, 1994), a distributed representation scheme, to model the effects of structure and meaning on human performance of analogical mapping. Drama is compared to three symbolic models of analogy (SME, Copycat, and ACME) and one partially distributed model (LISA). We describe Drama's performance on a number of example analogies and assess the model in (...) terms of neurological and psychological plausibility. We argue that Drama's successes are due largely to integrating structural and semantic constraints throughout the mapping process. We also claim that Drama is an existence proof of using distributed representations to model high‐level cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

In Meaning and Structure, Peregrin argues that recent and contemporary (post)analytic philosophy, as developed by Quine, Davidson, Sellars and their followers, is largely structuralistic in the very sense in which structuralism was originally tabled by Ferdinand de Saussure. The author reconstructs de Saussure's view of language, linking it to modern formal logic and mathematics, and reveals close analogies between its constitutive principles and the principles informing the holistic and neopragmatistic view of language put forward by Quine and his followers. Peregrin (...) also indicates how this view of language can be made compatible with what is usually called 'formal semantics'. Drawing on both the Saussurean tradition and recent developments in analytic philosophy of language, this book offers a unique study of the ways in which the concept of meaning can be seen as consisting in the concept of structure. (shrink)

This essay proposes to view networks as sociocultural structures. Following authors from Leopold von Wiese and Norbert Elias to Gary Alan Fine and Harrison White, networks are configurations of social relationships interwoven with meaning. Social relationships as the basic building blocks of networks are conceived of as dynamic structures of reciprocal (but not necessarily symmetric) expectations between alter and ego. Through their transactions, alter and ego construct an idiosyncratic "relationship culture" comprising symbols, narratives, and relational identities. The coupling of social (...) relationships to networks, too, is heavily laden with meaning. The symbolic construction of persons is one instance of this coupling. Another instance is the application of social categories (like race or gender), which both map and structure social networks. The conclusion offers an agenda for research on this "meaning structure of social networks.". (shrink)

Husserl’s Logical Grammar is intended to explain how complex expressions can be constructed out of simple ones so that their meaning turns out to be determined by the meanings of their constituent parts and the way they are put together. Meanings are thus understood as structured contents and classified into formal categories to the effect that the logical properties of expressions reflect their grammatical properties. As long as linguistic meaning reduces to the intentional content of pre-linguistic representations, (...) however, it is not trivial to account for how semantics relates to syntax in this context. In this paper, I analyze Husserl’s Logical Grammar as a system of recursive rules operating on representations and suggest that the syntactic form of representations contributes to their semantics because it carries information about semantic role. I further discuss Husserl’s syntactic account of the unity of propositions and argue that, on this account, logical form supervenes on syntactic form. In the last section I draw some implications for the phenomenology of thought and conjecture that the structural features it displays are likely to convey the syntactic structures of an underlying language-like representational system. (shrink)

Katz offers such a grammatical account, in which makes it possible for the first time to explain the illocutionary potential of sentences within grammar.

We investigated the implicit learning of a linguistically relevant variable in a natural language context . Trial by trial subjective measures indicated that exposure to a form–animacy regularity led to unconscious knowledge of that regularity. Under the same conditions, people did not learn about another form–meaning regularity when a linguistically arbitrary variable was used instead of animacy . Implicit learning is constrained to acquire unconscious knowledge about features with high prior probabilities of being relevant in that domain.

Concepts are basic elements of thought. Piaget has a conception of the nature of concepts as informational or computational operations performed in an inner milieu and enabling the child to understand the world in which it lives and acts. Concepts are, however, not merely logico?mathematical but are also conceptually linked to the mastery of language which itself involves the appropriate use of words in social and interpersonal settings. In the light of Vygotsky's work on the social and interactive nature of (...) children's thinking and the nature of language as an essentially public currency of rule?governed signs, we are led to reconstrue conceptual mastery as the acquisition of an interactive and interpersonal repertoire of tools which introduces the child to the world of those who educate it. In this way we come to see the elements of mind as constitutively involving that activity in which the determinants of meaning constrain and direct the child's linguistic development. (shrink)

Drawing on findings in psychology, neuroscience, and utilising the perspective of cognitive linguistics, this work argues that our experience of time may...

Interpretation of the Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, work on Vedanta philosophy.

Henry M. Sheffer: a bibliography (p. xv-xvi)--Structure: A formulation of the logic of sense and denotation, by A. Church. Notes on the logic of intension, by C.I. Lewis. The logic of terms, by J.W. Miller. Two-valued truth tables for modal functions, by H.S. Leonard. N-valued Boolean algebra, by P. Henle. Triangular matrices determined by two sequences, by L.L. Silverman. The ordered pair in number theory, by W.V. Quine.

By comparing some founding concepts underlying developing interest in the role of signs and symbols in social life, such as the nature of the sign in Charles Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure and in Emile Durkheim and George Herbert Mead, and then exploring recent developments in structuralism and symbolic interactionism, a critical appraisal of their theories of meaning is made in the context of an emerging semiotic sociology.

One way to recast the problem of cultural explanation in historical inquiry is to distinguish two conceptualizations involving culture: cultural meanings as contents of signification that inform meaningful courses of action in historically unfolding circumstances; and cultural structures as institutionalized patterns of social life that may be elaborated in more than one concrete construction of meaning. This distinction helps to suggest how explanation can operate in accounting for cultural processes of meaning-formation, as well as in other ways that transcend (...) specific meanings, yet are nonetheless cultural. Examples of historical explanation involving each construct are offered, and their potential examined. (shrink)

This paper scrutinizes the topic of meaning manifestation and signification made known by the act of interpretation, which amounts to finding the organising principles of a text and rules of combination. The language of narrativity is a set of generational and transformational instances disguising textual content and initiating interpretation as such. The paper discusses the levels of description which assist in tackling the concept of change, or difference in degrees, as the result of both the artificial operation of rewriting the (...) text on various methodological grounds and real dynamics justified by the obvious layers of the plot. The elementary units of meaning articulation covered by this article run the gamut from Roland Barthes’ distributional and integrational narrative units to Algirdas Julien Greimas’ deep and surface structures with special stress on the narrative programs and narrative analysis, which is of primary interest here. The Greimassian narrative grammar successfully describes what exists and how to capture the process of signification. In the end, analytical instruments elaborated by Greimas are effectively adapted to interpret the case of Edgar Allan Poe’s story William Wilson. The story itself is retold and interpreted through narrative formalisation, which consists in speaking of the plot transformations in terms of utterances of states and utterances of doing. Within the framework of narrative structures that emerge on the way to the formalisation of William Wilson, small changes in narrative trajectories seem to be out of sight, not even readable. Contrariwise, Barthes’ touch on what the text is all about enables the reader to be engaged in looser textual interpretations, to gain more variable, highly detailed experience in noticing the slightest movement and tasting each nuance of the overall setting. This paper first and foremost takes on board the structural narrative analysis as it is set out in Greimas’ narrative grammar leading to a special kind of severe narrative absolutism; on top of that, the paper gives a clue of a couple of alternative views on the problem, views represented by Barthes. (shrink)

Review of Timothy Potts, *Structures and Categories for the Representation of Meaning* (CUP).

Understanding how meaning mechanisms are unleashed in film has been at the center of numerous theoretical surveys of the last few years. Emphasis has especially fallen on seeing as a constructive, meaningful activity and on the diegetic implications of vision. This book is an attempt to extend film theorizing into a new realm, where hearing proves as important as seeing and where the relevance of filmic narrative is differently explored. New paths for future research are suggested by means of associations (...) with the works of linguists or philosophers who have never addressed film theory directly in their writings. Nonetheless, several concepts posited by them (relevance, natural versus non-natural meaning or the notion of Mental spaces) find their application in the present survey. A wide range of examples starting with point-of-view and editing occurrences, passing through the use of music and sound and culminating with the study of whole filmic ensembles, enables the reader to re-examine code-bound or, on the contrary, deviational structures. These are often drawn from familiar sources, proving that not only art films of the Eisenstein or Godard type enhance innovative meaning spaces. Finally, the viewer is seen as a «silly little kitty», an active not passive receiver of textual structures who relies on patterns of known visual or aural backgrounds open to an unlimited field of perspectives. (shrink)