scholarly journals ALTRUISM AS A THICK CONCEPT

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schefczyk ◽  
Mark Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Thick Concept ◽  
Linguistic Usage

In this paper, we examine different forms of altruism. We commence by analysing the ‘behavioural’ definition and, after clarifying its conditions for altruism, we argue that it is not in ‘reflective equilibrium’ with everyday linguistic usage of the term. We therefore consider a ‘psychological’ definition, which we likewise refine, and argue that it better reflects ordinary language use. Both behavioural and psychological approaches define altruism descriptively and thus fail to capture an important aspect of altruism, namely its normative component. Altruism, we argue, is a ‘thick concept’, i.e. one which embodies both positive and normative components. We discuss and compare various formulations of this normative component.

scholarly journals Meanderings Around the Notion of ‘Contact’ in Reference to Languages, their Dynamics, and to ‘we’

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-548
Author(s):  
Robert Nicolaï
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Classical Sense ◽  
Communication Practices ◽  
As If

This paper is a linguistic, anthropological and philosophical exploration of language, with particular focus on language contact. The goal is not to address linguistic phenomena from a descriptive perspective, in the classical sense of the term, nor as if they were a “given”, and nothing further. Nor is the goal to craft a model. Instead it is an attempt to account for all relevant elements which (empirically) come into play in ordinary language use, considering them both in terms of language dynamics and in terms of language usage; this necessarily entails taking into consideration our own practices, as actors of communication and as builders of knowledge. We are ever stakeholders in this play (and its plays) because we are the ones who identify and/or attribute relevance. In other words, this text is a reflection on the (our) frameworks established through communication practices (frameworks which naturally have an impact on the form of our tools, including languages!) It highlights that the objectivization of phenomena which underlies our practices (whether academic or not) is closely dependent on the means by which we grasp the phenomena—this is nothing new but is worth noting afresh. Methodologically speaking, observing this point is an essential element in the elaboration of a theory to account for how phenomena are empirically grasped, and more particularly what it entails in the field of ‘language contact’.

scholarly journals On the Formal Approach to Describing Natural Language. Notes on the Margin of Leśniewski’s Ontology

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Halina Święczkowska
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Formal Theory ◽  
Formal Approach ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Ethnic Language ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
Theory Of Language

Abstract This article is an attempt to recreate the intuitions which accompanied Leśniewski when he was creating his calculus of names called Ontology. Although every reconstruction is to some extent an interpretation, and as such may be defective, still, there are reasons justifying such reconstruction. The most important justification is the fact that both Leśniewski and his commentators stressed that ontology originated from reflections about ordinary language, in which sentences such as A is B appear in one of the meanings associated with them in Ontology, and that the users of the Polish language use such sentences accordingly and properly identify them. Assumed it is so, let us try, based on Leśniewski’s guidelines as well as comments and elaborations on Ontology (Leśniewski 1992: 364-382, 608-609; Kotarbiński 1929: 227-229; Rickey 1977: 414-229; Simons 1992: 244; Lejewski 1960: 14-29), to evaluate the accuracy of this approach, referring also to certain knowledge of the Polish language. To make it clear, this article is not about Ontology as a formal theory of language. It is solely an attempt to assess whether some syntactical constructs of the Polish language and this language’s properties are significant conditions of a proper understanding of Ontology, and whether Ontology is, in fact, in a relationship with the ethnic language of its author.

scholarly journals Recycling utterances: A speaker's guide to sentence processing

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Dąbrowska
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Fluent Speech ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Language Representation ◽  
Large Numbers

AbstractIn recent years, there has been a growing consensus that speakers store large numbers of preconstructed phrases and low-level patterns, even when these can be derived from more abstract constructions, and that ordinary language use relies heavily on such relatively concrete, lexically specific units rather than abstract rules or schemas that apply “across the board”. One of the advantages of such an approach is that it provides a straightforward explanation of how grammar can be learned from the input; and in fact, previous work (e.g. Dąbrowska and Lieven 2005) has demonstrated that the utterances children produce can be derived by superimposing and juxtaposing lexically specific units derived directly from utterances that they had previously experienced. This paper argues that such a “recycling” account can also explain adults' ability to produce complex fluent speech in real time, and explores the implications of such a view for theories of language representation and processing.

Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskari Kuusela
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
The Status ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Philosophical Progress ◽  
The Ideal

This book is an examination of Wittgenstein’s early and late philosophies of logic in relation to accounts of logic and its philosophical significance in early and middle analytic philosophy, with particular reference to Frege, Russell, Carnap, and Strawson. It argues that not only the early but also the later Wittgenstein sought to further develop the logical-philosophical approaches of Frege and Russell. Throughout his career Wittgenstein’s aim was to resolve problems with and address the limitations of Frege’s and Russell’s accounts of logic and their logical methodologies so as to achieve the philosophical progress that originally motivated the logical-philosophical approach. By re-examining the roots and development of analytic philosophy, the book seeks to open up covered-up paths for the further development of analytic philosophy. It explains how Wittgenstein extends logical methodology beyond calculus-based logical methods and how his novel account of the status of logic enables one to do justice to the complexity and richness of language use and thought while retaining rigour and ideals of logic such as simplicity and exactness. The book also outlines the new kind of non-empiricist naturalism developed in Wittgenstein’s later work as well as explaining how Wittgenstein’s account of logic can be used to dissolve the longstanding methodological dispute between the ideal and ordinary language schools of analytic philosophy.

Reconstructing Arguments

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Brun
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Standard Form ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Feedback Loops ◽  
Valid Inference ◽  
Logical Reconstruction ◽  
Logical Formalism

Traditional logical reconstruction of arguments aims at assessing the validity of ordinary language arguments. It involves several tasks: extracting argumentations from texts, breaking up complex argumentations into individual arguments, framing arguments in standard form, as well as formalizing arguments and showing their validity with the help of a logical formalism. These tasks are guided by a multitude of partly antagonistic goals, they interact in various feedback loops, and they are intertwined with the development of theories of valid inference and adequate formalization. This paper explores how the method of reflective equilibrium can be used for modelling the complexity of such reconstructions and for justifying the various steps involved. The proposed approach is illustrated and tested in a detailed reconstruction of the beginning of Anselm’s De casu diaboli.

Galen's Wounds: Dissolutions and the Theoretical Structure of Galen's Disease Taxonomy

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-297
Author(s):  
Luis Alejandro Salas
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Medical Writing ◽  
The Body ◽  
Disease Classification ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Theoretical Structure ◽  
Starting Point

Galen conceives of wounds, fractures, and similar conditions as belonging to one of the highest genera in his taxonomy of disease. This classification is puzzling, as much from an ancient Greco-Roman perspective as from a contemporary one. In what sense are wounds and other injuries diseases? The classification appears more perplexing in light of Galen's method of conceptual analysis, which takes ordinary language use as a starting point. What, then, motivated Galen's departure from common Greek conceptions of disease? This article examines the class of disease that Galen called “dissolutions of continuity” in the broader context of his system of nosological definition and classification. It concludes that Galen's analysis of wounds is driven by his theory of causation, and by his localization of disease and its mechanism inside the body, a conceptualization typical of Greco-Roman medical writing. This conclusion sheds further light on Galen's method of disease classification and the role of dissolutions within it.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Race ◽  
Literature And Film

This book examines the nature of philosophical methodology, defined as the study of philosophical method: how to do philosophy well. It considers a number of hypotheses that explain the nature of philosophical methodology, including eliminativism, epistemologism, theory selectionism, necessary preconditionalism, and hierarchicalism. It also tackles a range of topics such as ‘ordinary language philosophy’, the role of logic in philosophical methodology, phenomenology, philosophical heuristics, and methods in the philosophy of literature and film. Other chapters discuss the method of reflective equilibrium, the notions of conceivability and possibility, naturalistic approaches to philosophical methodology, the methodology of legal philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of art as branches of analytic philosophy, issues and methods in the philosophy of mathematics, how and whether faith conflicts with reason, and critical philosophy of race.

What Is Social and What Is Mediated in “Social Media”?

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Göran Sonesson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Simple Model ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Communication Model ◽  
Making Sense

Reflecting the multiple ambiguities of its ordinary language use, the current scholarly use of the term(s) “medium”/“media” is fraught with contradictions. Starting out from the insight that the nucleus of any kind of communication is an act, in which an addresser presents an artefact and a task of interpretation to an addressee, which the latter is called upon to fulfil, anything else that accrues to this simple model (including “transport” and “encoding,” which defines the classic communication model) constitutes further levels of mediation and thus involves kinds of factors which come in between the addresser and the addressee. Any semiotically informed media theory needs to account for the different nature of these mediations, which can here only be done summarily. On this basis, the paper will embark on the task of making sense of the popular notion of “social media,” asking in what sense it is a medium (or perhaps several distinct media), and in what sense it is social.

scholarly journals Expression unleashed: The evolutionary & cognitive foundations of human communication

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Christophe Heintz ◽  
Thom Scott-Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Social Ecology ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Partner Choice ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Cognitive Foundations ◽  
The Many

Abstract Human expression is open-ended, versatile and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how they are unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species’ social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use but novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society and culture.

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