Some thoughts on lexemes, the dome, and inner speech

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Benzon
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
External World ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
The Common

Sydney Lamb’s model focuses our attention on the physicality of language, of the signs themselves as objects in the external world and the neural systems the support them. By means of the metaphor of a cognitive dome, he demonstrates that there is no firm line between linguistic and cognitive structure. In this context, I offer physically grounded accounts of Jakobson’s metalingual and emotive functions. Drawing on Vygotsky’s account of language development, I point out that inner speech, corresponding to the common sense notion of thought, originates in a circuit that goes through the external world and is then internalized.

Linguistic Philosophy and Perception

Philosophy ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 28 (107) ◽  
pp. 311-324
Author(s):  
Margaret MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Perceptual Variation ◽  
Linguistic Philosophy ◽  
As If

Philosophical theories of perception are generally admitted to be responses to certain problems or puzzles allied to the ancient dichotomy between Appearance and Reality. For they have been mainly provoked by the incompatibility of the common–sense assumption that an external, physical world exists and is revealed to the senses with the well–known facts of perceptual variation and error. If only what is real were perceived just as if only what is right were done it is possible that many of those questions would never have been asked which lead to moral philosophy and a metaphysics of the external world. But sense perceptions of the same object vary so that it appears to have contradictory qualities and are sometimes completely deceptive. Nor do illusory differ internally from veridical perceptions. Moreover, perceptual variation and error can be unmasked only by such procedures as looking more carefully, listening harder, trying to touch, asking others, in short by more sense experience. So the senses are, as it were, both accused and judge in these disputes and why should a venal judge be trusted more than the criminal he tries? Such “correction” of one experience by another of the same kind seems no more reliable than the original “error.” Philosophers have found all this very puzzling.

Buffier, Claude (1661–1737)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Manns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
External Reality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy

A French Jesuit who flourished in the early eighteenth century, Buffier developed an outlook that he referred to as common-sense philosophy. While deeply influenced by the philosophies of Descartes and Locke, he saw their reliance on the testimony of inner experience to be conducive to scepticism concerning the external world. In reaction to this, he sought to establish the irrevocable claims of various ‘first truths’, which pointed towards external reality and qualified it in various respects. His work anticipates certain themes that surfaced later in the common-sense philosophy of Thomas Reid.

Direct, Referential Realism : A Comment

Dialogue ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-453
Author(s):  
P. Rowntree Clifford
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Real World ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Physiological Data ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

Professor Sellars has invited comment on his recent article in Dialogue dealing with the problem of perception. In brief, I believe that he has formulated the question in the right way, but has reached too facile an answer to it. To begin with the area of agreement, Sellars is surely correct in rejecting the empiricism of Locke, Hume, Dewey, Russell and the rest because they either end up with sensations or ideas from which we cannot get back to the real world or else have to reduce the latter to a bewildering proliferation of sensibilia. Second, no theory of perception can be regarded as satisfactory which leaves out of account the physiological data. In this Sellars echoes the complaint of the distinguished neurologist, Russell Brain, that realist philosophers have notably neglected the part played by the body in our perception of the external world. Third, perception results from the dynamic interplay of subject and object in which sensation performs a key role. Sellars recognizes the weakness in most empiricist theories that the activity of the subject is virtually read out of the situation in order to preserve something like the common sense account of the external world.

Occam’s Razor, Dogmatism, Skepticism, and Skeptical Dogmatism

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Walker
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Common Sense View ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Occam’S Razor ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
Occam's Razor

Underdetermination arguments for skepticism maintain that our common sense view of the external world is no better, evidentially speaking, than some skeptical competitors. An important and well-known response by dogmatists, those who believe our commonsense view is justified, appeals to abduction or inference to the best explanation. The predominant version of this strategy, going back at least to Locke, invokes Occam’s razor: dogmatists claim the common sense view is simpler than any of its skeptical alternatives and so has more to recommend it, evidentially speaking. This dispute has overshadowed another possible view: skeptical dogmatism. Skeptical dogmatists hold that we are justified in believing that the common sense view is probably false. I argue that skeptical dogmatism presents some interesting complications to the dialectic between the dogmatist and the skeptic. On the one hand, even if the dogmatist’s use of Occam’s razor is sufficient to rebut skepticism, in itself it is not sufficient to refute skeptical dogmatism. On the other hand, skeptics themselves, ironically, must, given the assumptions of the paper, appeal to something like Occam’s razor in order to avoid capitulating to skeptical dogmatism.

scholarly journals From Perception to Subject: The Bergsonian Reversal

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-123
Author(s):  
Messay Kebede
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Sensorimotor Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Perceived Reality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Independent Existence

In lieu of an abstract, here is the opening paragraph to the essay:What singles out philosophical analyses of perception is the challenge to common sense, that is, to the spontaneous, instinctive belief that an external world exists and that it is similar to the perception we have of it. Even those theories that refrain from questioning the independent existence of the world concede that the resemblance of whatever is out there to the perceived reality is anything but assured. Henri Bergson proposes a theory of perception that not only restores the common belief in the existence of an external world, but also goes a long way in narrowing the alleged disparity between perception and the objective world. With few exceptions, Bergson’s theory of perception has been either ignored or misunderstood. Through a close reading of the first chapter of Matter and Memory, the paper argues, in addition to correcting misreadings, that the strength and originality of Bergson’s theory lie in the reversal of the method of explaining perception from the premise of a given subject, a premise shared by all idealist and realist theories as well as phenomenology. This de-subjectification proposes an approach deriving perception from the interactions of objects while countering the materialist theory of the brain as an organ of representation. The paper contends that the Bergsonian elucidation of the brain as an organ of simulation both anticipates the findings of the sensorimotor theory and overcomes its limitation by showing how simulation inserts indetermination into materiality, thereby actualizing consciousness.

The Legacy of Reid's Common Sense in Analytic Epistemology

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Mark Boespflug
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Common

The common sense that heavily informs the epistemology of Thomas Reid has been recently hailed as instructive with regard to some of the most fundamental issues in epistemology by a burgeoning segment of analytic epistemologists. These admirers of Reid may be called dogmatists. I highlight three ways in which Reid's approach has been a model to be imitated in the estimation of dogmatists. First, common sense propositions are taken to be the benchmarks of epistemology inasmuch as they constitute paradigm cases of knowledge. Second, dogmatists follow Reid in taking common sense propositions to provide boundaries for philosophical theorizing. Inasmuch as philosophical theorizing leads one to deny a common sense proposition, such theorizing is stepping outside of the bounds of what it can or should do. Third, dogmatists follow Reid in focusing heavily on the problem of skepticism and by responding to it by refusing to answer the demand for a meta-justification that the skeptic wants.

Thomas Reid on Causation and Scientific Explanation

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Barrantes ◽  
Juan M. Durán
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Common

We argue that there is no tension between Reid's description of science and his claim that science is based on the principles of common sense. For Reid, science is rooted in common sense since it is based on the (common sense) idea that fixed laws govern nature. This, however, does not contradict his view that the scientific notions of causation and explanation are fundamentally different from their common sense counterparts. After discussing these points, we dispute with Cobb's ( Cobb 2010 ) and Benbaji's ( Benbaji 2003 ) interpretations of Reid's views on causation and explanation. Finally, we present Reid's views from the perspective of the contemporary debate on scientific explanation.

Motives of espionage against ones own country in the light of idiographic studies

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Michalak
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Common

Motives of espionage against ones own country in the light of idiographic studies The money is perceived as the common denominator among people who have spied against their own country. This assumption is common sense and appears to be self-evident truth. But do we have any hard evidences to prove the validity of such a statement? What method could be applied to determine it? This article is a review of the motives behind one's resorting to spying activity which is a complex and multifarious process. I decided to present only the phenomenon of spying for another country. The studies on the motives behind taking up spying activity are idiographic in character. One of the basic methodological problems to be faced by the researchers of this problem is an inaccessibility of a control group.

Causality Then and Now

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Karen Harding
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Mechanical Model ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do becauseGod wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist becausethey ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, theanswers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to bepermanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causalare a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leadsto another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if Heceased to create it, it would no longer exist.These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in thetwentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of thephysical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of tealobjects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects isreasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandablevia logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical viewof the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings ofscience for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutatelydescribed by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriatenessof such a model has been called into question by recent scientificadvances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies thatthe physical world is actually very different from what a mechanicalmodel would predit.Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities andthe way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth centuryin response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfullyinto the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...

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