Language-Mastery and the Sorites Paradox

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-102
Author(s):  
Crispin Wright
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Positive Answer ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Basic Level ◽  
Language Mastery

This chapter, originally written for Gareth Evans’s and John McDowell’s edited anthology of papers, Truth and Meaning, on the philosophical issues raised by Davidsonian truth-theoretic semantics for natural language, reprises the key arguments of Chapter 1, but with a more explicit focus on the question: what is the nature of linguistic competence? Can it, at least at the most basic level, be viewed as consisting in propositional knowledge of, and a consequent ability to follow, semantic and syntactic rules? The suggestion is that the Davidsonian programme is implicitly invested in a positive answer to that question, and that one lesson of the Sorites is to make that answer seriously doubtful, mandating a ‘more purely behaviouristic’ conception of basic linguistic competence.

The Riddle of Vagueness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crispin Wright
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Borderline Case ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Pure Mathematics ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Critical Overview ◽  
Original Treatment

This anthology includes fourteen of Crispin Wrights’s highly influential essays on the phenomenon of vagueness in natural language, collectively representing almost half a century of cutting-edge systematic research. Key issues addressed include whether or under what assumptions vague expressions’ apparent tolerance of marginal changes in things to which they apply indicates that they are governed by inconsistent semantic rules, the varieties of Sorites paradox and the roots of the plausibility of their respective major premises, what it is for something to be a borderline case of a vague expression, whether vagueness should be viewed as fundamentally a semantic or an epistemic phenomenon, whether there is ‘higher-order’ vagueness, and what should be the appropriate logic for vague statements. The essays reprinted here jointly document the development of a distinctively original treatment of the philosophy and logic of vagueness, broadly analogous to the intuitionistic philosophy and logic for pure mathematics. Richard Kimberly Heck contributes an extended introductory essay, providing both an insightful critical overview of the development of the distinctive elements of Wright’s thought about vagueness, and indeed an invaluable advanced introduction to the topic.

Semantics as Model-Based Science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Yalcin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Natural Language Semantics ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Language Semantics ◽  
The World

This chapter critiques a number of standard ways of understanding the role of the metalanguage in a semantic theory for natural language, including the idea that disquotation plays a nontrivial role in any explanatory natural language semantics. It then proposes that the best way to understand the role of a semantic metalanguage involves recognizing that semantics is a model-based science. The metalanguage of semantics is language for articulating features of the theorist’s model. Models are understood as mediating instruments—idealized structures used to represent select aspects of the world, aspects the theorist is seeking some theoretical understanding of. The aspect of reality we are seeking some understanding of in semantics is a dimension of human linguistic competence—informally, knowledge of meaning.

Ethics and Values

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Coghlan
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Tourism ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Moral Compass ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Tourism Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
Daily Interactions ◽  
Basic Level ◽  
Sustainable Relationships

Ethical concerns underpin the sector of sustainable tourism. Ethics is what allows us to make decisions about daily interactions with others and the world around us – it is fundamental to constructing the types of sustainable relationships that we have already discussed in Chapter 1. At its most basic level ethics distinguishes right from wrong. Its place in sustainable tourism is so important that an ethics-based platform has been suggested as an extension of the advocacy à cautionary à adaptancy à knowledge-based platforms that we reviewed in Chapter 1. Macbeth (2005) calls for a sixth platform in tourism studies, an ethics platform – he places this even after a fifth sustainability platform. An ethics platform provides us with the moral compass to make decisions about all our travel-related decisions, especially the hard ones that we don’t like to think about.

scholarly journals Multilingual competence of Adam Mickiewicz

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-138
Author(s):  
Helena Błazińska
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Multi Stage ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Basic Level ◽  
Adam Mickiewicz

This article aims to show multi-stage acquisition of linguistic competence by Adam Mickiewicz as a phenomenon of his era. It is also intended to bring closer political relations and cultural traditions of numerous environments, among which the poet stayed during his travels around multiple countries. It will also be important to show the usefulness of subsequent languages that our bard faced as an erudite and genius of the nineteenth century. Mastery of 11 foreign languages, apart from Polish as a mother tongue, including some used only for communication purposes, even at the basic level, can certainly raise admiration, also among posterity. In this respect, therefore, Adam Mickiewicz still appears to be an unsurpassed authority.

Internalism, Externalism, and Autonomous Belief

2021 ◽  
pp. 26-59
Author(s):  
J. Adam Carter
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Belief Condition ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Mental Structure ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Externalist Approach

What must be the case for an autonomous belief condition on knowledge (motivated in Chapter 1) to be satisfied by a knower? Chapter 2 takes up this question by investigating whether or not the knowledge-relevant (viz., epistemic) autonomy of a belief is determined entirely by the subject’s present mental structure. What I’ll call ‘internalists’ about epistemically autonomous belief say ‘yes’, and externalists say ‘no.’ Internalism about epistemic autonomous belief turns out to be problematic for reasons entirely independent from those we might have for rejecting internalist approaches to epistemically justified belief. What is shown to fare much better is a kind of ‘history-sensitive’ externalist approach to epistemically autonomous belief. On the particular account I go in for, which draws from externalist thinking about attitudinal autonomy more generally (as well as from virtue epistemology), a belief lacks the kind of epistemic autonomy that’s needed for propositional knowledge if the subject comes to possess the belief in a way that (put simply) bypasses or pre-empts the subject’s cognitive abilities and is such that the subject lacks easy (enough) opportunities to competently shed that belief.

Further Reflections on the Sorites Paradox

2021 ◽  
pp. 107-166
Author(s):  
Crispin Wright
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter revisits certain of the issues of Chapters 1 and 2. It is argued that Dummett’s ‘incoherentist’ response to the Sorites is unacceptable, and urges that we should distinguish a variety of types of Sorites, as individuated by the differing motivations for their various respective major premises, including what are here termed the No Sharp Boundaries paradox and the Tachometer paradox. The chapter rejects Christopher Peacocke’s contention that the major premises for Sorites can be motivated under the aegis of a behaviouristic conception of linguistic competence, so that jettison of the Governing View is beside the point as a response to Sorites paradoxes. It musters six objections to Peacocke’s own treatment of the Sorites, as representative of degree-theoretic approaches to vagueness in general. The chapter includes further discussion of the relationship between tolerance and observationality.

Machine Translation Systems Athanasios Tryferidis Electrical and Computer Engineer, MLS SA, Greece

2008 ◽  
pp. 211-220
Author(s):  
Athanasios Tryferidis ◽  
Theofanis Korlos
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Machine Translation ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
European Association ◽  
Computer Software ◽  
Linguistic Typology ◽  
Simple Substitution ◽  
Translation Systems ◽  
Basic Level

Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the acronym MT, is a subfield of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another. At its basic level, MT is performed as a simple substitution of atomic words in one natural language for words in another. Using corpus techniques, more complex translations may be attempted, allowing for better handling of differences in linguistic typology, phrase recognition, and translation of idioms, as well as the isolation of anomalies (Mitkov, 2003). The European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) defines machine translation (MT) as “the application of computers to the task of translating texts from one natural language to another.”

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