Psychologism in Semantics

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McKinsey

There is an unresolved conflict in points of view that continues to fester in contemporary semantics and philosophy of mind. According to one influential outlook, an adequate theory of semantic properties and relations would provide us with a better understanding of those psychological acts and states called the propositional attitudes. A theory of such semantic concepts as that of a sentence's meaning something, or that of a term's referring to something would, according to this point of view, be capable of yielding explications of such analogous psychological concepts as that of a thought's having a certain propositional content, or of a beliefs being about something. This program is sometimes called the ‘Analogy Theory’ of thought; since Wilfrid Sellars is the most forceful and creative proponent of this point of view, I will call it ‘Sellars's Program.’

In the article the analysis of nonsense, absurdity and paradox from the standpoint of linguistics is giv-en. Different points of view on these categories in relation to the meaning are considered. An attempt is made to reveal the commonality and specificity of nonsense, absurdity and paradox. Some researchers consider nonsense and paradox as a kind of absurdity. There is a dichotomous point of view on nonsense as one of the components of absurdity. However, there are works where these categories are differentiat-ed, for example, absurdity is understood as an ontological category, and nonsense as an epistemological category. There is a view of these categories through the allocation of "non-sense", "out-sense" and 136 "counter-sense" there is also a view that in the case of nonsense we are talking about the incompatibility of representations, and in the case of absurdity-the incompatibility of objects. If there are criteria that allow us to consider the presence of this phenomenon as natural, absurdity ceases to exist. Consequently, the view is expressed that nonsense, absurdity and paradox are different categories of thinking. Paradox is a contradiction arising from the presence of two or more common sense. The absurdity can be seen as a" counter-sense» opposing common sense and putting forward the concept of active impossibility of the latter's existence. As for nonsense, it is the meaning of metaphysical level – a meaning that goes beyond the ordinary meaning and creates new meanings. It is concluded that nonsense, absurdity and paradox are independent categories of human thinking, which is a manifestation of the cognitive function of hu-man consciousness.


1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Fodor

AbstractThe paper explores the distinction between two doctrines, both of which inform theory construction in much of modern cognitive psychology: the representational theory of mind and the computational theory of mind. According to the former, propositional attitudes are to be construed as relations that organisms bear to mental representations. According to the latter, mental processes have access only to formal (nonsemantic) properties of the mental representations over which they are defined.The following claims are defended: (1) That the traditional dispute between “rational” and “naturalistic” psychology is plausibly viewed as an argument about the status of the computational theory of mind. Rational psychologists accept a formality condition on the specification of mental processes; naturalists do not. (2) That to accept the formality condition is to endorse a version of methodological solipsism. (3) That the acceptance of some such condition is warranted, at least for that part of psychology which concerns itself with theories of the mental causation of behavior. This is because: (4) such theories require nontransparent taxonomies of mental states; and (5) nontransparent taxonomies individuate mental states without reference to their semantic properties. Equivalently, (6) nontransparent taxonomies respect the way that the organism represents the object of its propositional attitudes to itself, and it is this representation which functions in the causation of behavior.The final section of the paper considers the prospect for a naturalistic psychology: one which defines its generalizations over relations between mental representations and their environmental causes, thus seeking to account for the semantic properties of propositional attitudes. Two related arguments are proposed, both leading to the conclusion that no such research strategy is likely to prove fruitful.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-242
Author(s):  
K. Galiyeva ◽  
◽  
S. Isakova ◽  

The article is devoted to the definition of concept in modern linguistics. Various points of view and definitions of the basic concepts are considered: "concept", "conceptual sphere", "content". The aim of the article is to describe and explain such a complex unit as a concept from the point of view of linguistics. The object of research is studied in its various manifestations, the combination of verbal and nonverbal means of information expression in the conceptual sphere is revealed. the relevance of this topic is due to the need for a detailed consideration of the concept of concept based on the works of prominent scientists and linguists. Researchers treat the concept as a cognitive, psycholinguistic, linguocultural, cultural and linguistic phenomenon. The concept is an umbrella term because it "covers" the subject areas of several scientific fields: primarily cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ii (15) ◽  
pp. 146-182
Author(s):  
Haroula Hatzimihail ◽  
Ioannis Pantelidis

In this announcement, the various –linguistic and non-linguistic- symbols used in the literary work 'Around the world in 80 days', written by Jules Verne, are examined from an intertemporal and contemporary point of view. The references through these points of view, in matters of multiculturalism and multilingualism, are becoming classical in nature: they concern the necessity of the applied ability to communicate between individuals who belong to different social classes and age groups, speak the same or different languages, come from different cultures, with rights and obligations in their various areas of life, etc. Key-words: linguistics, multilingualism, multiculturalism, semiotics, semiotic systems, symbols


Author(s):  
Yulia Fanilevna Aitova ◽  

The article analyzes the issue of determining the legal status of the individual management body of a limited liability company. The author begins his research with the concept of legal status existing in the general theory of law, and then proceeds to consider the issue from the point of view of philosophical categories. In addition, the work explores the diversity of points of view existing in the doctrine regarding the legal status of the individual management body of economic societies.


Author(s):  
Anastasia O. Shabalina ◽  

The article considers the main arguments against the neurobiological theory of consciousness from the point of view of the enactivist approach within the philosophy of mind. The neurobiological theory of consciousness, which reduces consciousness to neural activity, is currently the dominant approach to the mind-body problem. The neurobiological theory emerged as a result of advances in research on the phenomena of consciousness and through the development of technologies for visualizing the internal processes of mind. However, at the very heart of this theory, there is a number of logical contradictions. The non-reductive enactivist approach to consciousness, introduced in this article, contributes to the existing argumentation against the reduction of consciousness to neural processes with remonstrations that take into account the modern neuroscientific data. The article analyzes the argumentation of the sensorimotor enactivism developed by A. Noe and offers the account of the teleosemantic approach to the concept of information provided by R. Cao. The key problems of the neurobiological theory of consciousness are highlighted, and the objections emerging within the framework of the enactivist approach are analyzed. Since the main concepts on which the neural theory is based are the concepts of neural substrate, cognition as representation, and information as a unit of cognition, the author of the article presents three key enactivist ideas that oppose them. First, the enactivist concept of cognition as action allows us to consider the first-person experience as a mode of action, and not as a state of the brain substrate. Second, the article deals with the “explanatory externalism” argument proposed by Noe, who refutes the image of cognition as a representation in the brain. Finally, in order to critically revise the concept of information as a unit of cognition, the author analyzes Cao’s idea, which represents a teleosemantic approach, but is in line with the general enactivist argumentation. Cao shows that the application of the concept “information” to neural processes is problematic: no naturalized information is found in the brain as a physical substrate. A critical revision of beliefs associated with the neural theory of consciousness leads us to recognize that there are not enough grounds for reducing consciousness to processes that take place in the brain. That is why Noe calls expectations that the visualization of processes taking place in the brain with the help of the modern equipment will be able to depict the experience of consciousness the “new phrenology”, thus indicating the naive character of neural reduction. The article concludes that natural science methods are insufficient for the study of consciousness.


2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (27) ◽  
pp. 1403-1410 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. ALLARIA ◽  
R. MEUCCI ◽  
D. MUGNAI ◽  
A. RANFAGNI ◽  
C. RANFAGNI

The question of the superluminal speed of information was stopped at crossroads in the last few years. According to one point of view, this speed must be limited to the light velocity in vacuum, whereas a different point of view is more open in this respect and, under specific conditions, this limit is considered surmountable. Very recently, a third approach (based on the hypothesis of a local broken Lorentz-invariance) was proposed and, if confirmed, would go beyond the controversy of the two points of view mentioned above. It is therefore worthwhile to recall attention to this problem, which is far from having a definite solution. The present paper reports some experimental results (similar to those of Ref. 1) which can contribute to these discussions, and also considers the fact that they seem to give some support to the aforesaid third approach, although revised in terms of decaying waves.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 01003
Author(s):  
Victor Sinitsyn ◽  
Pavel Menshikov ◽  
Vyacheslav Kutuev

The article deals with the question of the effect of explosive characteristics of emulsion explosives on the shotpile width. Currently, there are two main points of view to select an efficient type of explosive, which contributes to the qualitative destruction (fragmentation) of coarse clastic rocks. The first is based on the assumption that the detonation velocity of explosives must correspond to the break-down point of the rock (dynamic compression). Another point of view is that the detonation pressure of explosives determines only the head part of the pulse, on which the rock fragmentation is dependent only near the charge, in the contact zone around the borehole. The fragmentation of the entire rock volume within a given borehole array depends on the total magnitude of the explosion pulse, determined not by the detonation velocity, but by the total energy reserve of the explosive charge. Experimental explosions with some of the most common industrial explosives have been carried out in the current conditions of blasting of borehole charges by various types of industrial explosives from the point of view to select the most important parameter, which determines its influence on the shotpile width The investigations have been carried out according to the data obtained to establish that the energy properties of explosives (heat of explosive transformation and density of explosives) determine the decisive influence on the shotpile width, and the operability, the volume of the released gases, the detonation velocity for the change in the shotpile width have very little effect and may not be taken into account in calculations for the prediction of the shotpile.


Author(s):  
Patrick Emonts ◽  
Erez Zohar

In these lecture notes, we review some recent works on Hamiltonian lattice gauge theories, that involve, in particular, tensor network methods. The results reviewed here are tailored together in a slightly different way from the one used in the contexts where they were first introduced. We look at the Gauss law from two different points of view: for the gauge field, it is a differential equation, while from the matter point of view, on the other hand, it is a simple, explicit algebraic equation. We will review and discuss what these two points of view allow and do not allow us to do, in terms of unitarily gauging a pure-matter theory and eliminating the matter from a gauge theory, and relate that to the construction of PEPS (Projected Entangled Pair States) for lattice gauge theories.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document