How to do things with things

J.L. Austin has demonstrated that people can do things—bring about social facts — with words. Here we describe how some people do things with things. This is a study of the symbolic use and situated history of material objects during a business negotiation between two German entrepreneurs: of the practical transformation of things-at-hand from objects of use into exemplars, or into forms-at-hand that can be used for the construction of transitory symbolic artifacts. Arranging boxes in a particular fashion can be the equivalent of an illocutionary act, but unlike words things remain on the scene as indexical monuments to prior interactional arrangements.

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Hallucinating real things

No particular dagger was the object of Macbeth’s hallucination of a dagger. In contrast, when he hallucinated his former comrade Banquo, Banquo himself was the object of the hallucination. Although philosophers have had much to say about the nature and philosophical import of hallucinations (e.g. Macpherson and Platchias, Hallucination, 2013) and object-involving attitudes (e.g. Jeshion, New essays on singular thought, 2010), their intersection has largely been neglected. Yet, object-involving hallucinations raise interesting questions about memory, perception, and the ways in which we have knowledge of the world around us. In this paper, I offer an account of object-involving hallucinations. Specifically, I argue that they are an unusual species of perceptual remembering.     

Logic in general philosophy of science: old things and new things

This is a personal, incomplete, and very informal take on the role of logic in general philosophy of science, which is aimed at a broader audience. We defend and advertise the application of logical methods in philosophy of science, starting with the beginnings in the Vienna Circle and ending with some more recent logical developments.     

Doing things with music

This paper is an exploration of how we do things with music—that is, the way that we use music as an “esthetic technology” to enact micro-practices of emotion regulation, communicative expression, identity construction, and interpersonal coordination that drive core aspects of our emotional and social existence. The main thesis is: from birth, music is directly perceived as an affordance-laden structure. Music, I argue, affords a sonic world, an exploratory space or “nested acoustic environment” that further affords possibilities for, among other things, (1) emotion regulation and (2) social coordination. When we do things with music, we are engaged in the work of creating and cultivating the self, as well as creating and cultivating a shared world that we inhabit with others. I develop this thesis by first introducing the notion of a “musical affordance”. Next, I look at how “emotional affordances” in music are exploited to construct and regulate emotions. I summon empirical research on neonate music therapy to argue that this is something we emerge from the womb knowing how to do. I then look at “social affordances” in music, arguing that joint attention to social affordances in music alters how music is both perceived and appropriated by joint attenders within social listening contexts. In support, I describe the experience of listening to and engaging with music in a live concert setting. Thinking of music as an affordance-laden structure thus reaffirms the crucial role that music plays in constructing and regulating emotional and social experiences in everyday life.     

Creating names for things

Ten subjects rendered names for each of 168 novel entities. The entities were quite varied. Naming strategies in this task situation were assessed with several dependent measures: (1) the structural form of the name expression (compound noun, lexically modified noun, etc.), (2) the content analysis of the name (i.e., into morphological patterns that directly convey content properties of referents), (3) statistical measures (number of syllables), and (4) comments and ratings elicited from participants. Several general strategies were induced.This is a shortened version of Carroll (1979a).     

Reminiscences of things past

A personalistic and selective view of the history of school psychology is offered. A brief biographical sketch, and some of the early personal encounters and major professional preoccupations of the author, are presented first. This is followed by an exposition centered on the development of school psychology as a specialty. Two historical streams of intellectual thought, intervention methods, and professional affiliation, along with their consequences for school psychology, are then described. Finally, some observations on the future of school psychology are made.     

Keeping things in perspective

Scientific realism holds that scientific representations are utterly objective. They describe the way the world is, independent of any point of view. In Scientific Representation, van Fraassen argues otherwise. If science is to afford an understanding of nature, it must be grounded in evidence. Since evidence is perspectival, science cannot vindicate its claims using only utterly objective representations. For science to do its epistemic job, it must involve perspectival representations. I explicate this argument and show its power.     

凡事都可行

常有信徒来到牧师面前问:这件事我可以去做吗?那件事呢?是的,对生活中一些具体的事例是否可行,有的在圣经中根本查不到针对性的教导。但是,圣经却清楚告诉了我们一些行事为人的重要的原则,就在这些原则指导之下,基督徒"凡事都可行"!     

Reevaluation of things past

The ability of rats to reevaluate previously presented information in light of subsequently provided information was evaluated using a CER (conditioned emotional response) procedure. In Experiment 1, rats suppressed responding to a compound light + tone stimulus that was repeatedly paired with shock. Groups of rats were then presented with only one element of the compound (the tone), either presented alone or paired with shock, for 15 days. During this 15-day period, two control groups received trials with the shock alone or neither stimulus nor shock. All of the rats were then tested with the other element of the compound (the light). Rats that had received the tone paired with shock during the intervening training continued to suppress to the light, whereas rats that had received the tone alone showed rapid extinction of the CER to light. The control groups showed that this effect was not due to the number of shock presentations received. A subsequent experiment also demonstrated that these results were not due to nonspecific stimulus effects. Apparently, a subsequent change in the associative strength of one element results in a similar change to the other element of a previously established compound stimulus.     

Knowing things and going places

When I say “I know Sarah,” or “I know Berlin,” what sort of knowledge am I claiming? Such knowledge of a particular is, I claim, not reducible to either propositional knowledge-that or to traditional physical know-how. Mere, bare knowledge by acquaintance also does not capture the kind of knowledge being claimed here. Using knowledge of a place as my central example, I argue that this kind of knowledge-of, or “objectual knowledge” as it is sometimes called, is of a distinctive epistemological sort. It is a genre of inherently first-personal aesthetic knowledge, but it also, like know-how, involves active skill. I end by exploring a couple of classic problems in aesthetic epistemology, applied to the case of knowledge-of as active aesthetic knowledge.