Future Contingency and Classical Indeterminism

A position that has been called ‘classical indeterminism’ has recently been developed in order to model vagueness: this approach appeals to an object-language ‘determinately’ operator, the semantics of which are defined in such a way as to preserve the principle of bivalence. I suggest that a prominent argument against this strategy, which I call the Field–Williamson argument, fails. The classical indeterminist position in its general form was anticipated by the Aristotelian commentators in their discussions of Aristotle’s famous ‘sea battle’ passage concerning future contingency. But I maintain that, ironically enough, the strategy is less happily applied in this case, where a version of the Field–Williamson argument succeeds.

HOW TO NOT MIX WORDS AND OBJECTS

В статье я излагаю свои соображения по поводу статьи Евгения Борисова, помещённой в этом выпуске журнала. Попутно я излагаю своё видение проблем кросс-мировой предикации и кросс-идентификации. Я полагаю, что межмировое тождество невозможно и что главная задача состоит в обеспечении идентификации. Для этого можно использовать либо метод поддержания когнитивного контакта либо метод двойников, отождествляемых по набору существенных признаков. Он определяется прагматически. Метод жёстких десигнаторов также ведёт к интенсиональной логике, поскольку в языке-объекте должны присутствовать релятивизованные к мирам имена объектов. Борисов пытается построить логику кросс-мировой предикации сразу на нескольких основаниях, которые плохо совместимы друг с другом. Он квантифицирует по возможным индивидам, но при этом пытается опереться на метаязыковые имена индивидов как на основание для кросс-идентификации, метаязыковое имя индивида становится аргументом для функции значения, хотя не является жёстким десигнатором. Ключевая операция системы Борисова - назначение двойника в возможном мире - спрятана за функцией f, которая выступает в роли условия идентификации, т. е. прочерчивает кросс-мировую линию. На мой взгляд, система имеет потенциал, но нуждается в додумывании и уточнении. In this article, I present my comments on the article by Evgeny Borisov, which is included in this issue of the journal. Along the way, I set out my vision of the problems of cross-world predication and cross-identification. I believe that cross-world identity is impossible, and that the main task is to provide identification. To do this, you can use either the method of keeping cognitive contact, or the method of counterparts identified by a set of essential features, which is defined pragmatically. The method of rigid designators leads to intensional logic, since the object language must contain object names that are relativized to worlds. Borisov is trying to build the logic of cross-world predication on several bases at once, which are poorly compatible with each other. He quantifies over the domain of possible individuals, but at the same time he tries to rely on the metalinguistic names of individuals as a basis for cross-identification, the metalinguistic name of an individual becomes an argument for the value function, although it is not a rigid designator. The key operation of Borisov’s system is the appointment of a counterpart in a possible world. It is hidden behind the function f, which acts as a condition for identification, that is, it draws a cross-world line. In my opinion, the system has some good prospects, but it needs to be thought out and refined.

Writing about French in French: Discourse features of a scientific article on linguistics

The paper examines the features of the linguistic discourse in French-language texts of modern scientific papers. The study proves that within the framework of studying linguistic texts, it is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of object-language, scientific theory, metalanguage, scientific discourse and metadiscourse. The analysis of 50 scientific articles based on the results of the World Congress in French Linguistics 2020, revealed metalinguistic, discursive and metadiscursive units that correspond to the levels and components of linguistic theory.

LinGAN: an Advanced Model for Code Generating based on Linformer

Parsing natural language to corresponding programming language attracts much attention in recent years. Natural Language to SQL(NL2SQL) widely appears in numerous practical Internet applications. Previous solution was to convert the input as a heterogeneous graph which failed to learn good word representation in question utterance. In this paper, we propose a Relation-Aware framework named LinGAN, which has powerful semantic parsing abilities and can jointly encode the question utterance and syntax information of the object language. We also propose the pre-norm residual shrinkage unit to solve the problem of deep degradation of Linformer. Experiments show that LinGAN achieves excellent performance on multiple code generation tasks.

Скандал Ф. Достоевского и М. Бахтина

Scandal of F. Dostoevsky and M. Bakhtin. Article is dedicated to analysis of relations between Dostoevsky’s artistic works, journalism and Bakhtin’s books about Dostoevsky poetics on the basis of frequency of word scandal. Scandal as word of Dostoevsky artistic language (object language), as element of analytical language of Dostoevsky as journalist (autometalanguage) and as notion for analysis of Dostoevsky poetics in the book of Bakhtin (metalanguage) raises methodological question about flexibility of metalanguage in situations where a same word can function simultaneously on all levels of description of research object.

Essence and Nominalism

After sketching Kit Fine’s deflationary approach to modality, I argue for a similar approach to essentialism. I argue that nominalizing strategies regarding truth, predication, and similarity permit us to give priority to object language formulations of essentialist claims, thus making essentialism safe for nominalists.

Sensation, Relation and Neoconcrete Poetics

Chapter 2 discusses the 1960s interdisciplinary movement known as neoconcretism. It argues for a relational poetics in which language is plastic and what’s plastic is language. Analysing examples of poetry and art that either calls itself poetry or makes use of the book form – including poet Ferreira Gullar’s ‘Buried Poem’ (an underground poem-room that invites the ‘reader’ to enter), artist Lygia Pape’s Book of Creation (a language without words which the ‘reader’ can order) and artist Hélio Oiticica’s Secret Poetics (a lyric that stills the sensible for the ‘reader’ to perceive) – this chapter shows that language powerfully shapes the history of what neoconcrete artist Lygia Clark calls the ‘relational object’. Not just a score which would guide, from the outside, the co-creation of an object, language, in a relational poetics, joins the creator and participant in becoming the object created. This conclusion also points towards one way in which avant-garde experimentation (often accused of being apolitical) can engage the political sphere – by creating the opportunity for an engagé poetics that takes shape inside sensory engagement itself.

Handling De Re and A Posteriori Modal Claims

This chapter aims to show how the modal normativist approach may accommodate the Kripkean idea that there are certain de re necessities (apparently attributing modal properties to individuals) and necessary truths that can only be known a posteriori. It begins by arguing, contrary to Putnam and others who defend purely causal theories of reference, that we do have reason to think that names and natural kind terms are governed by certain semantic rules, even if these rules are conditionalized and revisable. It goes on to show how the rules we need to accept in any case enable us to see even de re and a posteriori necessities as object-language reflections of semantic rules and their consequences. Modal normativists can thus account for de re and a posteriori necessities as long as they allow that the semantic rules may be conditionalized, schematic, and world-deferential.

The Function of Modal Discourse

This chapter begins to develop a neo-pragmatist view of modal discourse that (contrary to most work in the recent metaphysical tradition) denies that talk of what is possible or necessary serves a descriptive function. Instead, the chapter argues that the modal terminology serves a normative function. More particularly, having modal terms in our language enables us to convey norms and rules in useful ways, for it enables us to make explicit that an expression has a regulative status, to express conditionals that make explicit our ways of reasoning with rules, and to express permissions as well as requirements. Metaphysical modal discourse in particular (it is argued) serves to convey semantic rules and their consequences in the useful form of object-language indicatives. The chapter also discusses how one should understand semantic rules, and in what ways they are analogous and disanalogous to rules of games.

Linguistics and communication

This essay begins by identifying what communication is and what linguistics is in order to establish the relationship between them. The characterization of linguistics leads to discussion of the nature of language and of the relationship between a theory of language, i. e., linguistic theory, and the object language it models. This, in turn, leads to a review of speculations on the origins of human language with a view to identifying the motivation for its creation and its primary function. After considering a host of data, it becomes clear that, contrary to some approaches, the primary function of human language is to function as a vehicle of communication. Thus, linguistics studies what for humans is their primary vehicle of communication.