scholarly journals Application: Predication and Commitment

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-136
Author(s):  
Herman Cappelen ◽  
Josh Dever
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

The previous chapters have given us ways of thinking about how an AI system might use names and predicates. But language use involves more than simply tokening expressions. It also involves predicating, or asserting, or judging: applying predicates to terms to make a claim. How can AI do that, even granting it can name things and express predicates? This chapter proposes an answer, by melding together two popular theories: the act-theory of propositional content, and teleosemantics. In a now familiar way, it abstracts from human-centric features of extant theories to show how we can understand AI predication.

Phenomenological Commitments

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Inkpin
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Formal System ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
The World

This chapter identifies some general features that characterize a conception of language as phenomenological. Taking Heidegger’s nondualist view of ‘being-in-the-world’ as a model, it suggests that this involves conceiving language as ‘language-in-the-world’, as characterized by an antireductionist attitude and rejection of the ideas that language is a ‘formal’ system of signs and that it sustains an inside-outside opposition. It is then argued that critically assessing the significance of a phenomenology of language in relation to other philosophical conceptions of language requires a specific focus, and that this is provided by Heidegger’s emphasis (chapter 1) on the derivative nature of predication and the possibility of prepredicative language use. Hence the chapter also examines the idea of prepredicative foundation, arguing that this refers to factors that are functionally and structurally presupposed by propositional content.

scholarly journals On the Inscrutability of Logic in Certain Natural Language Contexts

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-121
Author(s):  
Horst Ruthrof
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Logic ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Technical Language ◽  
Implicit Form ◽  
Sign Systems

The paper opens by defining 'logical universality' as the retention of the propositional content of expressions under any enunciative circumstances. Universality in this sense, the paper claims, cannot be demonstrated in the same manner across different discursive domains and sign systems. Unlike in geometry, arithmetic, algebraic and mathematical logic, where logical universality can be shown to be non-controversial, the concept of universality becomes problematic as soon as natural language terms and syntax are employed. The paper shows the main reasons for this difficulty to lie in the extensional features of natural language, which cannot be adequately captured by intentional means. Intentional descriptions are claimed to apply only to semiotically homogeneous sign systems of a formal kind. Natural language expressions, in contrast, are semiotically heterogeneous, or heterosemiotic, characterised as they are by quasi-perceptual ingredients. Nevertheless, the paper argues, there are three cases in which logical universality can be demonstrated to hold in spite of natural language being employed, one of which is strictly technical language. In contrast, culturally fully saturated natural language use is shown to escape the constraints of logical universality as defined, on the grounds that some of its essential features, such as referential background, reference, and deixis, especially in its implicit form, effectively undermine the retention of identical propositional contents across cultures and time.

The “Place” of Language

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Inkpin
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Determinate Form

This chapter sets out a general Heideggerian framework for conceiving language by extracting an overall picture of language’s role in world disclosure from Being and Time. Having introduced Heidegger’s account of how human understanding takes on determinate form, it identifies two problems in understanding where language fits into this account, problems linked with the interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of Articulacy (Rede) and its relation to intelligent nonlinguistic behaviors. Based on Heidegger’s discussion of predicative judgments (‘statements’ or ‘assertions’), particularly the relation between language and content this implies, it then argues that these two problems can be solved by interpreting Articulacy as having distinct purposive and predicative modes. This has the important consequence that a Heideggerian framework allows for ‘prepredicative’ language use that underlies and is irreducible to predication or propositional content.

Attitude Markers and Conversational Implicatures in Turkana Speech Acts

1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Closed Set ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Conversational Implicatures ◽  
Lexical Items

Turkana has a set of particles expressing attitudes on the part of the speaker towards the propositional content of utterances in which such markers are used. Attitude markers in Turkana form a closed set whose distributional behavior partly follows from syntactic principles of the language. The absence of these attitude markers from certain syntactic positions follows from their lexical meaning and from pragmatic structure. Their current meaning is argued to have emerged through metonymic extension in certain lexical items, and through conventionalisation of their conversational implicatures. In addition some methodological issues are discussed concerning the interaction between grammar and culture-specific language use, by means of a comparison with similar markers in a number of other languages.

Introduction

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book focuses on two main facets of the philosophy of language: its contribution to the development of a theoretical framework for studying language; and the investigation of foundational concepts—truth, reference, meaning, possibility, propositions, assertion, and implicature—that are needed for this investigation, and important for philosophy as a whole. Part 1 traces major milestones in the development of the theoretical framework for studying the semantic structure of language. Part 2 explores new ways of thinking about what meaning is, and how it is distinguished from aspects of language use.

Speaking of disease and death

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-76
Author(s):  
Réka Benczes ◽  
Kate Burridge
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Displacement Effect ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Euphemistic Language ◽  
Hiv Aids

This chapter investigates the euphemistic language use associated with disease—in particular, HIV/AIDS, cancer, and mental illness—and death. Fear and superstition have enjoyed a long attachment to our beliefs surrounding disease and death; the challenge of confronting the biological limits of our own bodies have brought forth a vast repository of euphemistic language in connection with both subjects. This euphemistic language heavily relies on metaphorical conceptualizations in order to best achieve the displacement effect. By examining the figurative language related to disease and death, the chapter also explores whether the metaphorical conceptualizations merely reflect our ways of thinking about illnesses and death, or whether they can change or control our attitudes to possible health risks and what choices we can make to avert them.

Grace Abounding

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-49
Author(s):  
Ita Mac Carthy
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

This chapter situates the emergence of grace within three contexts. The humanist revival of antiquity, the quarrels about religion, and the debate about language each sought intellectual rupture with the immediate past and a radical rethinking of the secular and the sacred. With these new ways of thinking came new ways of talking: intellectual change wrought changes in language use, and vice versa. Changes in how grace was used at this time were inextricably bound up with the broader problems its early modern users were trying to resolve. To do justice to the semantic abundance of Renaissance grace, therefore, the chapter views it first within those contexts that privileged it as a focal point for their conversations about culture and society. In this way, this chapter shows just how key grace was and to chart the semantic quarry from which later sixteenth-century understandings were mined.

Linguistic Competence in Aphasia

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-92
Author(s):  
Leonard L. LaPointe
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Feral Children ◽  
Performance Factors ◽  
Performance Loss ◽  
Linguistic Rules ◽  
Communication Goals ◽  
Aphasia Treatment ◽  
And Performance

Abstract Loss of implicit linguistic competence assumes a loss of linguistic rules, necessary linguistic computations, or representations. In aphasia, the inherent neurological damage is frequently assumed by some to be a loss of implicit linguistic competence that has damaged or wiped out neural centers or pathways that are necessary for maintenance of the language rules and representations needed to communicate. Not everyone agrees with this view of language use in aphasia. The measurement of implicit language competence, although apparently necessary and satisfying for theoretic linguistics, is complexly interwoven with performance factors. Transience, stimulability, and variability in aphasia language use provide evidence for an access deficit model that supports performance loss. Advances in understanding linguistic competence and performance may be informed by careful study of bilingual language acquisition and loss, the language of savants, the language of feral children, and advances in neuroimaging. Social models of aphasia treatment, coupled with an access deficit view of aphasia, can salve our restless minds and allow pursuit of maximum interactive communication goals even without a comfortable explanation of implicit linguistic competence in aphasia.

Review of Critical Essays on Language Use and Psychology.

1991 ◽  
Vol 36 (7) ◽  
pp. 641-641
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  
Language Use
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