Relevance and Normative Conditions in the Use of Reasons

Diogenes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Ivanova ◽  
◽  
◽  

The article presents a case for the thesis that everyday linguistic ascriptions of justification depend, among other conditions, upon epistemic norms about the way in which the agent has set the scope of relevant reasons and evidence for the belief. These norms, it is argued, and not criteria for the possession of evidence, determine whether a belief is properly justified in various cases when the agent has missed some relevant and possessed by her evidence. Unlike psychological retrievability, the skill of determining the relevance permits the imposition of rational conditions. Internalist approaches to justification do not explicitly include epistemic requirements for the cognitive mechanisms of setting the scope of relevant reasons in the epistemic evaluation of beliefs but intuitions from everyday ascriptions suggest that the existence of such is likely and that further investigation is necessary to establish whether they should be incorporated.

ExELL ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Sanja Berberović ◽  
Mersina Mujagić

Abstract The paper investigates the interaction of conceptual blending and conceptual metaphor in producing figurative creativity in discourse. The phenomenon of figurative creativity is defined by Kövecses (2005) as creativity arising through the cognitive mechanisms of metonymy, metaphor, and blending. Specifically, the paper examines the use of creative figurative language in the British public discourse on the topic on Brexit. The aim of this paper is to show that conventional metaphors can be creatively stretched through conceptual blending, producing instances of creative figurative language. Specifically, applying blending theory, we will analyse innovative conceptual blends, motivated by the conventional marriage/divorce metaphor. In addition, the paper also examines the way in which creative figurative language produced in metaphorical blends provides discourse coherence at intertextual and intratextual levels.


Author(s):  
Senni Kirjavainen ◽  
Katja Hölttä-Otto

Abstract Creative ideas are a central part of solving engineering problems, generating interesting art, as well as developing successful products and innovations. Idea generation methods are a well-researched topic. Specifically, there is significant research that focuses on specific idea generation methods and how they perform. Further, some method classifications have been suggested to help understand the cognitive mechanisms involved in creative ideation as well as the differences between methods. Yet, the discourse is usually on which ideation method outperforms another or how to improve an ideation method rather than the elements, rules, constraints, and activities that comprise ideation methods. In this study 76 well-documented idea generation methods are reviewed and analyzed. We find all analyzed methods consist of 25 mechanisms. The mechanisms are discussed and classified into idea promoting and implementation mechanisms. We suggest that rather than focusing research only on methods, there should be a parallel track of research creating understanding on these mechanisms and their interactions to help increase our understanding of creativity methods, add practitioners understanding on how to get the best advantages out of creativity methods and lastly improve the way practical creativity is approached in education.


2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Senni Kirjavainen ◽  
Katja Hölttä-Otto

Abstract Creative ideas are a central part of design thinking, whether solving engineering problems, generating interesting art, as well as developing successful products and innovations. Idea generation methods are a well-researched topic, and there is significant research that focuses on specific idea generation methods and how they perform. Furthermore, several method classifications have been suggested to help understand the cognitive mechanisms involved in creative ideation as well as differences between methods. Yet, the discourse is usually on which ideation method outperforms another or how to improve an ideation method rather than the elements, rules, constraints, and activities that comprise ideation methods. In this study, 88 well-documented idea generation methods are reviewed and analyzed. We find all analyzed methods consist of 25 basic mechanisms. The mechanisms are discussed and classified into idea promoting and implementation mechanisms. We suggest that rather than focusing research only on methods, there should be a parallel track of research on these mechanisms and their interactions to help increase our understanding of creativity methods, add understanding for practitioners on how to get the best advantages out of creativity methods, and finally improve the way that practical creativity is approached in education.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 157-166
Author(s):  
Gregory Hallé Petiot ◽  
Davi Silva ◽  
Lucas Ometto

BACKGROUND: Soccer is part of the team sports games category and is characterized by the cooperation and opposition interactions between players in the same space of play and time. Thus, players must adequately decide what action to perform despite the unpredictable, random, and varying nature of the environment of play. AIM: This paper explores tactical competencies that can be appreciated in the way players play and their functioning. METHOD: The argumentation is structured over a review of sixty articles in five languages, selected from the results in an online university library with topic-related keywords. The selected papers were analyzed to identify the most frequently reported concepts related to (i) tactics and action in the play; (ii) decision-making and associated cognitive mechanisms and skills; and (iii) the teaching-learning-training process. RESULTS: The results of this review sum the three following competencies: tactical intelligence, creativity, and co-adaptability. We argue that these competencies can be built through the play's practice and that coaches should seek to use them to the advantage of player’s development. Small-sided and conditioned games reflect a compatible opportunity to nurture the competencies as long as they are configured to solicit the competencies in an environment that promotes them. CONCLUSION: Tactical intelligence, creativity, and co-adaptability can be appreciated in the tactical behavior shown by performing players. For the same reason, those also should constitute more of the player’s development curriculum, therefore leading to players who have a competitive advantage.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Ross

Recently, the practice of deciding legal cases on purely statistical evidence has been widely criticised. Many feel uncomfortable with finding someone guilty on the basis of bare probabilities, even though the chance of error might be stupendously small. This is an important issue: with the rise of DNA profiling, courts are increasingly faced with purely statistical evidence. A prominent line of argument—endorsed by Blome-Tillmann 2017; Smith 2018; and Littlejohn 2018—rejects the use of such evidence by appealing to epistemic norms that apply to individual inquirers. My aim in this paper is to rehabilitate purely statistical evidence by arguing that, given the broader aims of legal systems, there are scenarios in which relying on such evidence is appropriate. Along the way I explain why popular arguments appealing to individual epistemic norms to reject legal reliance on bare statistics are unconvincing, by showing that courts and individuals face different epistemic predicaments (in short, individuals can hedge when confronted with statistical evidence, whilst legal tribunals cannot). I also correct some misconceptions about legal practice that have found their way into the recent literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-110
Author(s):  
Eric Hochstein

Abstract This paper explores the current obstacles that a cognitive theory of humor faces. More specifically, I argue that the nebulous and ill-defined nature of humor makes it difficult to tell what counts as clear instances of, and deficits in, the phenomenon.Without getting clear on this, we cannot identify the underlying cognitive mechanisms responsible for humor. Moreover, being too quick to draw generalizations regarding the ubiquity of humor, or its uniqueness to humans, without substantially clarifying the phenomenon and its occurrences is not only unwise but can actually be a detriment to our study of humor. As such, these sorts of claims must be resisted. I conclude the paper by pointing the way forward to addressing these obstacles.


2019 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 187-202
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Calle Rosingana

This paper deals with the way in which certain meanings originate from the participation of a multiplicity of cues that emerge from different modalities. The analysis is based on the implementation of specific linguistic and cognitive mechanisms that trigger the generation of the audience’s unconscious construction of meaning. The corpus of the analysis concentrates on an excerpt of David Hare’s script (2002) of the movie The Hours: three women’s lives, by Stephen Daldry, that acts as the backbone of the analysis. The analysis is cross-referenced with parallel modality inputs (Kress 2009), such as specific filmic or visual details, found either in the scene or the rest of the movie. The approach of this qualitative study is mainly cognitive making special emphasis on the three types of underspecification proposed by Radden (2007a). It also draws from Langacker’s (2008) proposals related to attention and perspective to identify figure-ground relations as determinant in the molding of the characters and their ideological standpoints in the scene.


1999 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez

Discovering the nature and role of inferential mechanisms in language understanding is a distinctly common concern in work carried out both within Cognitive Linguistics and Relevance Theory. Cognitive linguists increasingly tend to see language-related inferences as a matter of the activation of relevant conceptual structures. This is generally accepted by relevance theorists; however, they tend to play down the importance of such structures in favour of pragmatic principles. This is evident in their treatment of phenomena like metaphor and metonymy, which are explained by them as a question of deriving strong and weak implicatures. In this paper we revise this treatment and argue in favour of dealing with metaphor and metonymy as cognitive mechanisms which provide us with explicit meaning or, as relevance theorists would put it, with sets of "explicatures". This allows us to reformulate the implicature/explicature distinction and to reconsider the way it works in relation to other phenomena which are also of concern to relevance theorists, like disambiguation in conjoined utterances.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Babińska ◽  
Michal Bilewicz

AbstractThe problem of extended fusion and identification can be approached from a diachronic perspective. Based on our own research, as well as findings from the fields of social, political, and clinical psychology, we argue that the way contemporary emotional events shape local fusion is similar to the way in which historical experiences shape extended fusion. We propose a reciprocal process in which historical events shape contemporary identities, whereas contemporary identities shape interpretations of past traumas.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnon Lotem ◽  
Oren Kolodny ◽  
Joseph Y. Halpern ◽  
Luca Onnis ◽  
Shimon Edelman

AbstractAs a highly consequential biological trait, a memory “bottleneck” cannot escape selection pressures. It must therefore co-evolve with other cognitive mechanisms rather than act as an independent constraint. Recent theory and an implemented model of language acquisition suggest that a limit on working memory may evolve to help learning. Furthermore, it need not hamper the use of language for communication.


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