The Challenge: Non-propositionalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Classical Logic ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Dynamic Update ◽  
Update Semantics ◽  
Language Discourse ◽  
Fundamental Challenge ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

Recent literature has presented a serious challenge for propositional accounts of content. It has been argued that certain bits of natural language discourse, in particular, modal claims, pose a fundamental challenge for propositional accounts, as they fail to express propositional content even relative to a context. The puzzling linguistic behavior of modal discourse suggests that context simply cannot determine propositional content for such claims. This appears to call for a re-thinking of the interaction between context and content, and their role in communication. Indeed, various non-propositionalist accounts that have been proposed to capture this puzzling behavior call for such re-thinking. Such accounts have received various implementations, for instance, in various expressivist and dynamic update semantics. These accounts deny that modals express ordinary propositional content, and they also deliver a non-classical logic. This chapter introduces the challenge, and the main features of non-propositional accounts that have been proposed as a solution.

Prominence Semantics for Modality

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-168
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Classical Logic ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Language Discourse ◽  
Satisfactory Account ◽  
Demonstrative Pronouns

This chapter develops a formal model of context-sensitivity of modal discourse. Much like demonstrative pronouns, modals are prominence-sensitive, selecting the most prominent candidate interpretation. The prominence ranking of candidate interpretations is recorded in the conversational record, and is maintained through the effects of discourse conventions represented in the logical form of a discourse. In this way arguments are individuated as structured discourses that underwrite a particular propositional pattern. It is shown that such account provably preserves classical logic. Further, this chapter argues that its model offers a more satisfactory account of the individuation of argument patterns in natural language discourse then the competing alternatives. Any adequate account, it is here argued, will have to take into account not just the contribution of individual sentences, but also of discourse conventions. Indeed, the contribution of discourse conventions is crucial for determining the contribution of individual sentences in the first place.

Externalizing Faith: Countering Individualism Through an Embodied Emphasis

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Dejan Aždajić
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Current Challenge ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
Embodied Theology

While the importance of an embodied theology has been recognized, in light of recent literature that sees a growing modern-day shift from emancipated individuality to ideological individualism, the aim of this article is to deepen the theological reflection on the urgent need for a more intentional embodied emphasis. This strategic approach is particularly significant, since in spite of the current challenge there remains a tendency toward a disembodied, anti-liturgical orientation that prioritizes words and cognition, locating theological truth on the inside of the autonomous individual thinking subject, who remains free to either accept or reject its propositional content. Drawing from relevant literature that provides a conceptual framework, this article argues that especially in today’s context, an overt emphasis on the externalization of faith and the embodiment of theological normatives performed together in community offers more promising pedagogical effectiveness. A bodily focus is principally important since it provides an experiential platform for the communal enactment and consequent appropriation of religious knowledge, thus potentially circumventing the present challenge of increasingly rigid individualism.

scholarly journals The Liar Without Relativism

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poppy Mankowitz
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Liar Paradox ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Truth Values ◽  
The Liar ◽  
The Liar Paradox ◽  
Semantic Relativism

AbstractSome in the recent literature have claimed that a connection exists between the Liar paradox and semantic relativism: the view that the truth values of certain occurrences of sentences depend on the contexts at which they are assessed. Sagi (Erkenntnis 82(4):913–928, 2017) argues that contextualist accounts of the Liar paradox are committed to relativism, and Rudnicki and Łukowski (Synthese 1–20, 2019) propose a new account that they classify as relativist. I argue that a full understanding of how relativism is conceived within theories of natural language shows that neither of the purported connections can be maintained. There is no reason why a solution to the Liar paradox needs to accept relativism.

Remarks on propositional nominalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 255-276
Author(s):  
Keir Moulton
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Similar Pattern ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Discourse Referent ◽  
Discourse Anaphora

Moulton’s ‘Remarks on propositional nominalization’ investigates nominalization at the highest reaches of the extended verbal projection, finite CPs. While CPs can express propositions, Moulton puts forward the novel claim that only nominalization of CPs by a semantically-contentful N can deliver reference to propositional objects. This conclusion is in contrast to the propositional nominalization operations proposed in Chierchia (1984), Potts (2002), and Takahashi (2010). Evidence comes from a correlation between two types of D+CP constructions in Spanish (Picallo, 2002; Serrano, 2014, 2015) and the kind of propositions they can describe. Moulton then shows that a similar pattern arises in the case of exophoric propositional proforms, a novel observation. Putting the two case studies together, the following picture emerges: Natural language does not permit reference to proposition-like objects directly by adding a D to a CP, but only via some content-bearing entity (e.g. Moltmann’s (2013) attitudinal objects). In the case of propositional nominalizations, this entity must come in the form a lexical N; in the case of propositional discourse anaphora, this must come in the form of a discourse referent that bears propositional content, such as an assertion event (Hacquard, 2006). <189>

Granular Causality Applications

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 88-108
Author(s):  
Rutu Mulkar-Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Language Discourse ◽  
Important Phenomenon ◽  
Multiple Meanings

Causal markers, syntactic structures and connectives have been the sole identifying features for automatically extracting causal relations in natural language discourse. However, various connectives such as “and”, prepositions such as “as”, and other syntactic structures are highly ambiguous in nature, as they have multiple meanings besides causality. As a result, one cannot solely rely on lexico-syntactic markers for detection of causal phenomenon in discourse. This paper introduces the Theory of Granular Causality and describes a new approach to identify causality in natural language. Causality is often granular in nature (Mulkar-Mehta, 2011; Mazlack, 2004), and this property of causality is used to discover and infer the presence of causal relations in text. This is compared with causal relations identified using just causal markers. A precision of 0.91 and a recall of 0.79 is achieved using granularity for causal relation detection, as compared to a precision of 0.79 and a recall of 0.44 using text-based causal words for causality detection. Next, the author presents the findings for discovering causal relations between two sentences in an article. The system achieves a precision of 0.60 for discovering causality between two sentences using granular causality markers as features. The results are encouraging, and show that the granular causality is an important phenomenon in natural language

scholarly journals Presupposition, negation and trivalence

2000 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
PIETER A. M. SEUREN
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Natural Language Semantics ◽  
Close Inspection ◽  
Presupposition Failure ◽  
Language Semantics ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Classical Truth

Close inspection of presupposition(= P-)cancelling and other metalinguistic negation data shows that natural language semantics must be (at least) trivalent, with the values ‘true’, ‘minimally false’ (assertion failure) and ‘radically false’ (presupposition failure). It is argued that presupposition is a semantic phenomenon originating in a distinction between two kinds of satisfaction conditions for predicates, the PRECONDITIONS generating presuppositions, and the UPDATE CONDITIONS generating classical entailments. The trivalence of language is a natural consequence of the acceptance of occasion sentences in an incremental Discourse Semantics. The logical properties of sentences are considered secondary and derived from their semantic properties. These include, besides propositional content, a speech act quality, specifying the personal commitment taken on by the speaker not only in respect of the propositional content, but also with regard to the linguistic forms selected. It is suggested that the classical truth-functional operators should be redefined as instructions under speech act commitment. The negation operator is singled out: it is redefined as an instruction to reject either an incrementable sentence, which may be a comment about a form used or to be used (P-preserving negation), or an already incremented sentence to be removed from the discourse along with some presupposition (P-cancelling negation).

Adaptive value within natural language discourse

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Best
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Selective Advantage ◽  
Online Environment ◽  
Word Usage ◽  
Fitness Advantage ◽  
Language Discourse ◽  
Adaptive Value

A trait is of adaptive value if it confers a fitness advantage to its possessor. Thus adaptiveness is an ahistorical identification of a trait affording some selective advantage to an agent within some particular environment. In results reported here we identify a trait within natural language discourse as having adaptive value by computing a trait/fitness covariance; the possession of the trait correlates with the replication success of the trait’s possessor. We show that the trait covaries with fitness across multiple unrelated discursive groups. In our analysis the trait in question is a particular statistically derived word-in-context, that is, a word set. Variation of the word-usage is measured as the relative presence of the word set within a particular text, that is, the percentage of the text devoted to this set of words. Fitness is measured as the rate in which the text is responded to, or replicates, within an online environment. Thus we are studying the micro-evolutionary dynamics of natural language discourse.

Negation in Event Semantics

2020 ◽  
pp. 300-332
Author(s):  
Barry Schein
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Classical Logic ◽  
Logical Connective ◽  
Negative Events ◽  
Event Semantics ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
Special Meaning

With events as dense as time, negation threatens to be trivial, unless ‘not’ is noughtly, an adverb of quantification. So revised, classical puzzles of negation in natural language are revisited, in which deviation from the logical connective, violating Excluded Middle, appears to prompt a special condition or special meaning. The language of events also contains negative event descriptions—After the flood, it not drying out ruined the basement and one could smell it not drying out—and these appear to founder on the logic of the constructions in which they occur and on reference to suspect negative events, events of not drying out. A language for event semantics with ‘not’ as noughtly resolves the puzzles surveyed—within classical logic, without ambiguity or special conditions on the meaning of ‘not’, and without a metaphysics of negative events.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document