A Deranged Argument Against Public Languages

Are there really such things as public languages? Are things like English and Urdu mere myths? I urge that, despite an intriguing line of thought which may be extracted from Davidson’s ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’, philosophers are right to countenance such things in their final ontology. The argument rebutted, which I concede may not have been one which Davidson himself ultimately embraced, is that knowledge of a public language is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful conversational interaction, so that such shared languages are explanatorily otiose. In particular, the ability of interlocutors to communicate in the face of linguistic novelty and error seems to support this conclusion. I respond with two main points. First, initial impressions aside, knowledge of things like English and Urdu is explanatorily necessary. Second, even if successful conversation could be explained without positing such knowledge, we have other reasons to take public languages ontologically seriously. The ultimate result is that what I label a ‘deranged argument against public languages’ is unsound.     

Sociality,Expression, and This Thing called Language

Davidson’s well-known language skepticism—the claim that there is no such a thing as a language—has recognizably Gricean underpinnings, some of which also underlie his continuity skepticism—the claim that there can be no philosophically illuminating account of the emergence of language and thought. My first aim in this paper is to highlight aspects of the complicated relationship between central Davidsonian and Gricean ideas concerning language. After a brief review of Davidson’s two skeptical claims and their Gricean underpinnings, I provide my own take on how Davidson’s continuity skepticism can be resisted consistently with his rejection of the Gricean priority claim, yet without giving up some of Grice’s own insights regarding the origins of meaning.     

Arnauld's Verbal Distinction between Ideas and Perceptions

In his dispute with Malebranche about the nature of ideas, Arnauld endorses a form of direct realism. This appears to conflict with views put forward by Arnauld and his collaborators in the Port-Royal Grammar and Logic where ideas are treated as objects in the mind. This tension can be resolved by a careful examination of Arnauld's remarks on the semantics of ‘perception’ and ‘idea’ in light of the Port-Royal theory of language. This examination leads to the conclusion that Arnauld's ideas really are objects in the mind, and not perceptual acts as many commentators hold. What Arnauld denies is that these mental objects are really distinct from the external objects they represent. Instead, Arnauld holds that, by the act of conception, the external objects themselves—not copies—come to be present in the mind and are therefore called ‘ideas’.     

Coordination,Triangulation, and Language Use

In this paper, I explore two contrasting conceptions of the social character of language. The first takes language to be grounded in social convention. The second, famously developed by Donald Davidson, takes language to be grounded in a social relation called triangulation. I aim both to clarify and to evaluate these two conceptions of language. First, I propose that Davidson’s triangulation-based story can be understood as the result of relaxing core features of conventionalism pertaining to both common-interest and diachronic stability—specifically, Davidson does not require uses of language to be self-perpetuating, in the way required by conventionalism, in order to be bona fide components of linguistic systems. Second, I argue that Davidson’s objections to conventionalism from language innovation and language variation fail, and that certain kinds of negative data in language use require an appeal to diachronic social relations. However, I also argue that recent work on communication in the absence of common interests and common knowledge highlights the need for broader non-conventional social relations like triangulation. In short, I suggest that the choice between coordination and triangulation is not either/or: that we need to appeal to both if we are adequately to explain the nature of language and its use.     

Two notions of intentional action? Solving a puzzle in Anscombe’s Intention

The account of intentional action Anscombe provides in her (1957) Intention has had a huge influence on the development of contemporary action theory. But what is intentional action, according to Anscombe? She seems to give two different answers, saying first that they are actions to which a special sense of the question ‘Why?’ is applicable, and second that they form a sub-class of the things a person knows without observation. Anscombe gives no explicit account of how these two characterizations converge on a single phenomenon, leaving us with a puzzle. I solve the puzzle by elucidating Anscombe's two characterizations in concert with several other key concepts in ‘Intention’, including, ‘practical reasons’, the sui generis kind of explanation these provide, the distinction between ‘practical’ and ‘speculative’ knowledge, the formal features which mark this distinction, and Anscombe's characterization of practical knowledge as knowledge ‘in intention’.     

Lexical configuration and lexical engagement: When adults learn new words

People know thousands of words in their native language, and each of these words must be learned at some time in the person’s lifetime. A large number of these words will be learned when the person is an adult, reflecting the fact that the mental lexicon is continuously changing. We explore how new words get added to the mental lexicon, and provide empirical support for a theoretical distinction between what we call lexical configuration and lexical engagement. Lexical configuration is the set of factual knowledge associated with a word (e.g., the word’s sound, spelling, meaning, or syntactic role). Almost all previous research on word learning has focused on this aspect. However, it is also critical to understand the process by which a word becomes capable of lexical engagement—the ways in which a lexical entry dynamically interacts with other lexical entries, and with sublexical representations. For example, lexical entries compete with each other during word recognition (inhibition within the lexical level), and they also support the activation of their constituents (top-down lexical-phonemic facilitation, and lexically-based perceptual learning). We systematically vary the learning conditions for new words, and use separate measures of lexical configuration and engagement. Several surprising dissociations in behavior demonstrate the importance of the theoretical distinction between configuration and engagement.     

Language Learning in Wittgenstein and Davidson

In this paper, I discuss language learning in Wittgenstein and Davidson. Starting from a remark by Bakhurst, I hold that both Wittgenstein and Davidson’s philosophies of language contain responses to the problem of language learning, albeit of a different form. Following Williams, I hold that the concept of language learning can explain Wittgenstein’s approach to the normativity of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations. Turning to Davidson, I hold that language learning can, equally, explain Davidson’s theory of triangulation. I sketch an account of triangulation as Davidson’s response to the problem of the normativity of meaning and explain the role that language learning plays in this account.     

Spinoza and mental health

With the proviso that Spinoza's concerns were philosophical, not medical, we examine the Ethics with a view to bringing out those aspects of it which are of import for mental health. We find that the Ethics surrounds the idea that man can be egoless in the Buddhist sense of that term. This concept provides a criterion of mental health. Further, according to Spinoza's theory of the Affections, those which are passive include some which are based on pain. These he ‘enumerates among the diseases’. And for them he provides, in Part V, specific ‘remedies’. This in turn leads him to equate ‘Mental Freedom or beatitude’ with a ‘healthy Mind’. We thus have in Part V additional possible criteria of mental health. Finally, there is the suggestion that philosophy for Spinoza was a kind of therapy.’

There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies. — The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. — A main cause of philosophical disease — a onesided diet . . .

Wittgenstein

This doctrine of knowledge first and action later is not a minor disease . . . My present advocacy of the unity of knowledge and action is precisely the medicine for that disease.

Wang Yang‐ming

When asked by two disciples which of the views of each was correct, Wang replied: both are. Which is used depends on the kind of person you are trying to help. Some persons need this one, others that.     

Transmission Failure Explained1

In this paper I draw attention to a peculiar epistemic feature exhibited by certain deductively valid inferences. Certain deductively valid inferences are unable to enhance the reliability of one’s belief that the conclusion is true—in a sense that will be fully explained. As I shall show, this feature is demonstrably present in certain philosophically significant inferences—such as GE Moore’s notorious ‘proof’ of the existence of the external world. I suggest that this peculiar epistemic feature might be correlated with the much discussed phenomenon that Crispin Wright and Martin Davies have called ‘transmission failure’—the apparent failure, on the part of some deductively valid inferences to transmit one’s justification for believing the premises.     

On Recanati’s Mental Files

Abstract

In his book Mental Files (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Francois Recanati develops a theory of mind and language based on the idea that Fregean senses should be identified with ‘mental files’, mental representations whose primary function is to store information about objects. I discuss three aspects of Recanati’s book. The first concerns his use of acquaintance relations in individuating mental files, and what this means for ‘file dynamics’. The second concerns his comments on a theory that I have elsewhere advocated, the ‘sequenced worlds’ or ‘multi-centered worlds’ theory. The third concerns how the mental file approach handles non-doxastic attitudes like imagining.     

An alternative view of the mental lexicon

An essential aspect of knowing language is knowing the words of that language. This knowledge is usually thought to reside in the mental lexicon, a kind of dictionary that contains information regarding a word's meaning, pronunciation, syntactic characteristics, and so on. In this article, a very different view is presented. In this view, words are understood as stimuli that operate directly on mental states. The phonological, syntactic and semantic properties of a word are revealed by the effects it has on those states.     

Dignity in Context,and Out: Discussion of Lynne Jacobs’ “On Dignity,a Sense of Dignity,and Inspirational Shame”

ABSTRACT

Dr. Lynne Jacobs’ “On Dignity, a Sense of Dignity, and Inspirational Shame” is an interdisciplinary integration of a priori ethics and a phenomenology of dignity. She contends that the human person’s engagement with other people—writ large in the therapeutic encounter—is inherently ethically situated. Moreover, she avers an inherent content to this ethics, namely, mutual respect for distinctively human value—dignity—between and among people. Her ethics of dignity informs her psychoanalytic exploration of experiences of dignity, indignity, and her notion of inspirational shame, among others. I join in Jacobs’ advocacy for therapeutic facilitation of a person’s sense of inherent worth, as well as her opposition to relational contexts of devaluation and degradation. However, the primordiality Jacobs grants to her ethics of dignity often obscures the constitutively cultural, familial, and personal contextuality of, first, her—and in my view, any—ethical conviction; second, what she describes as the experience of being human; third, the alleged indignity of human vulnerability; and finally, the claim that shame is the natural reaction to one’s failure to live up to personal ideals. In the end, and subject to certain clinical concerns, Jacobs’ article integrates into psychoanalysis primordial ethical duties that she and others claim inhere in us as human beings.     

Davidson,correspondence truth and the frege-Gödel—church argument

This paper argues for a conditional claim concerning a famous argument—developed by Church in elucidation of some remarks by Frege to the effect that the bedeutung of a sentence is the sentence’s truth-value—the Frege–Gödel–Church argument, or FGC for short. The point we make is this :if, and just to the extent that, Arthur Smullyan’s argument against Quine's use of FGC is sound, then essentially the same rejoinder disposes also of Davidson's use of FGC against ‘correspondence’ theories of truth. We thus dispute a contention by Professor Davidson that it is coherent to accept that Smullyan’s rejoinder takes away the force of Quine’s version of FGC, while still consistently using FGC to establish that if true sentences (or utterances) correspond to anything, they all correspond to the same thing. We show that the differences between the cases discussed by Smullyan and Davidson’s version of FGC on which Davidson relies for his contention are irrelevant to the point under dispute     

Reply to Nadler: Spinoza and the metaphysics of suicide

Steven Nadler has argued that Spinoza can, should, and does allow for the possibility of suicide committed as a free and rational action. Given that the conatus is a striving for perfection, Nadler argues, there are cases in which reason guides a person to end her life based on the principle of preferring the lesser evil. If so, Spinoza’s disparaging statements about suicide are intended to apply only to some cases, whereas in others (such as the case of Seneca) he would grant that suicide is dictated by reason. Here, I object to Nadler’s interpretation by showing that it conflicts with Spinoza’s metaphysical psychology. Even given Nadler’s interpretation of the conatus doctrine, the possibility that reason could guide a person to commit suicide is incompatible with the conatus of the mind. Spinoza holds that the mind cannot contain an adequate idea ‘that excludes the existence of our body’ (E3p10). Yet, as I argue, in order for reason to guide a person voluntarily to end her life, she would need to have an adequate idea representing her death – an idea that excludes the existence of her body. For this reason, Spinoza's system rules out the possibility of rational suicide.     

Against Propositionalism

‘Propositionalism’ is the widely held view that all intentional mental relations—all intentional attitudes—are relations to propositions or something proposition‐like. Paradigmatically, to think about the mountain is ipso facto to think that it is F, for some predicate ‘F’. It seems, however, many intentional attitudes are not relations to propositions at all: Mary contemplates Jonah, adores New York, misses Athens, mourns her brother. I argue, following Brentano, Husserl, Church and Montague among others, that the way things seem is the way they are, and that propositionalism must be abandoned.     

Poetics in the shadow of the other's language: The melancholic discourse of the trilingual poet Amelia Rosselli

In this paper, I propose a psychoanalytic reading of some of the writings of Amelia Rosselli, a trilingual poet who, at the age of seven, lost her father Carlo, who was persecuted and murdered by Mussolini's regime. History and her history conflate into personal and collective trauma which defies human possibilities to work through and mourn. Rosselli's work testifies to such predicament of the human subject of the 20th century, his/her dislocation, alienation and internal irreconcilable divisions. In particular I examine Diary in three tongues, which is the most autobiographical of her works and a self‐analytic piece, written after the conclusion of her second analysis. In the Diary, Rosselli employs textual strategies which convey the fragmentation and destructuring of language, where her traumatic experience resides as a wound inflicted to the symbolic order. I propose that her writings contain her unconscious memories in an estranged and melancholic language which becomes the crucible to express her impossible mourning, in a complex mixture of Eros and Thanatos which allowed her to survive psychically and to create a very personal experimental poetic discourse which made her a literary figure of international acclaim. My primary engagement will be with Freud's theory of mourning and melancholia and its successive elaboration by Kristeva, who maintains that the melancholic discourse finds its expression in the pre‐verbal and infra‐verbal aspects of language, which she calls ‘semiotics’, in dialectic articulation with its symbolic components. Drawing on literary texts, significant inferences can be made on the psychoanalytic listening to the prosodic aspects of language as the carrier of inchoate forms of representation of that which exceeds language: trauma, raw affects, mnemic traces, that is, the unrepresented and/or unrepresentable.     

ACTIONS,HABITS AND CONSTITUTION

In this paper I offer a critique of the view made popular by Davidson that rationalization is a species of causal explanation, and propose instead that in many cases the explanatory relation is constitutive. Given Davidson’s conception of rationalization, which allows that a huge range of states gathered under the heading ‘pro attitude’ could rationalize an action, I argue that whilst the causal thesis may have some merit for some such ‘attitudes’, it has none for others. The problematic ‘attitudes’ are those which can be attributed to the agent only on the basis of her history of doing a certain sort of thing. In other words, they are among the agent’s habits. I argue that such temporally extended states cannot be the causes of any present occurrence. Instead, I suggest we should think of the present action as partly constituting the state in question, and give a corresponding interpretation of the explanatory relation. Such explanations invite us to abandon a conception of agency narrowly based on psychology, in favour of an enriched one which takes an agent’s habits to partly constitute the agent.     

Antiracist Moral Identities,or Iris Murdoch in South Africa

Abstract

I argue that Samantha Vice understates the moral resources white people have available to them to minimize their falling into distorted ways of perceiving and responding to the world caused by bare white advantage. In doing so, she paints an unjustifiably pessimistic picture of white civic involvement in South Africa, and anywhere where white people are unjustly advantaged, such as the United States. I delineate two similar but distinct antiracist moral identities—the ‘white ally’ and the ‘person committed to racial justice’—that can guide civic engagement, as well as provide a counterweight to the distortions of whiteness. I argue that Vice’s recommendation of withdrawal from public engagement in humble silence is not the most morally appropriate response to white privilege.