Russellian and Wittgensteinian Atomism

One difference between Russell's logical atomism in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism and Wittgenstein's in the Tractatus is that Russell's doctrine is explicitly epistemological, whereas Wittgenstein's is not; another difference is that Wittgenstein gives an a priori argument for the doctrine of logical atomism whereas Russell gives no such argument. I argue that these two differences are instructively connected: Russell's focus on epistemology prevents him from being able to give a motivated argument for the truth of logical atomism. Furthermore, I argue that this is not just a contingent failure of Russell's system: no primarily epistemological atomism can avail itself of Wittgenstein's style of a priori argument for the truth of atomism. An important suggestion of the argument, illuminating with respect to the subsequent history of analytic philosophy, is that Russell's logical atomism already contains the seeds of verificationism in a nascent form, whereas Wittgenstein's atomism has no tendency toward verification.     

Between Atomism and Superatomism

Journal of Philosophical Logic - There are at least three vaguely atomistic principles that have come up in the literature, two explicitly and one implicitly. First, standard atomism is the claim...     

Atomism, Pluralism, and Conceptual Content

Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that have been thought to support atomism and show that they are inconclusive. The evidence that allegedly backs atomism is equally compatible with a localist position on which concepts are structured representations with complex semantic content. I lay out such a localist position and argue that the appropriate position for a non-atomist to adopt is a pluralist view of conceptual structure. I show several ways in which conceptual pluralism provides an advantage in satisfying the empirical and philosophical demands on a theory of conceptual structure and content.     

Anti‐Atomism about Color Representation

According to anti‐atomism, we represent color properties (e.g., red) in virtue of representing color relations (e.g., redder than). I motivate anti‐atomism with a puzzle involving a series of pairwise indistinguishable chips. I then develop two versions of anti‐atomism.     

Dispositions Indisposed: Semantic Atomism and Fodor's Theory of Content

According to Jerry Fodor's atomistic theory of content, subjects' dispositions to token mentalese terms in counterfactual circumstances fix the contents of those terms. I argue that the pattern of counterfactual tokenings alone does not satisfactorily fix content; if Fodor's appeal to patterns of counterfactual tokenings has any chance of assigning correct extensions, Fodor must take into account the contents of subjects' various mental states at the times of those tokenings. However, to do so, Fodor must abandon his semantic atomism. And while Fodor has recently qualified his atomism, the cognitively holistic nature of dispositions continues to undermine his view.     

Good-Fast-Cheap: Pick Any Two: Dilemmas About the Value of Applicable Research1

Questions of internal validity vs. external validity have long been of concern to social and organizational psychologists. In recent years, the issue of applicability of research data has been emphasized as well. The present paper distinguishes between basic, applied, and applicable research. It is concluded that sufficient criteria for judging basic and applied research are available. However, there appears to be little agreement about the value and the quality of most applicable research. To help alleviate this problem, criteria for judging applicable research are suggested. The potential contributions of basic, applied, and applicable research to policy formation and to the search for solutions which are relevant to social, organizational, and governmental problems are considered.     

Talking About Talking About Patients

Several years ago, I talked about a case in a clinical seminar. I presented the work in a style that is different from usual because I was experimenting with how to best evoke the experience of being with this patient for my listeners. This paper is a continuation of that presentation, now through written rather than spoken word. In writing it, I struggled with the same dilemma of how to evoke the ambience, the feel of being with this patient. I begin with a discussion of some of the dilemmas involved in writing up clinical work when the aim is to stay close to the experience rather than to illustrate theoretical or technical points. I present a few sample vignettes of my work with this patient and then an analysis of how my writing style, including use of sounds, grammar, and word placement, contributes to evoking experience. I continue with a brief discussion of my experiences in presenting the case in the seminar and use these experiences to highlight aspects of the case. I ask the reader to become personally involved in the experiment by paying attention to what is evoked when reading the material.     

说谶

在中国历史上,尤其是秦、汉两朝,一种颇为神秘的迷信形式——以谶预示凶吉的活动大行其道。什么是谶?按商务印书馆2005年版的《现代汉语词典》的解释,是迷信的人指将来要应验的预言、预兆。最早的谶出于何时恐怕已不可考,有案可查的较早的一个例子是秦始皇时一块石头上面写有:“亡秦者胡也”的谶文。当时认为是胡人要灭     

Knowledge About Hand Shaping and Knowledge About Objects

Our two experiments investigated associations between cognitive representations of objects and hand-shape categories. Hand configurations were partitioned according to prehensility and the size of the contacting surface, resulting in the classes: pinch, poke, palm, and clench. Experiment 1 elicited object names in response to configuration-name cues, provided ratings of the relevance of each configuration to a set of objects, and probed for the functions determining such relevance. Cueing with a configuration class elicited an associated object category with substantial intersubject agreement, and vice versa. Both the object categories and the functions associated with the four hand-configuration classes differed substantially, although the same object could be associated to some extent with multiple configurations, given variations in function. Experiment 2 elicited the names of hand-configuration classes in response to unfamiliar forms, which varied systematically in depth and the size of the projecting picture-plane surface. The modal response, response time, and degree of intersubject agreement were directly related to these variables. These structural variables, however, did not adequately predict shaping responses to real objects, as ascertained from Experiment 1. The results have implications for cognitive representation of motor categories and hand shaping in response to objects.