Mind, World and Language: McDowell and Kovesi

The ideas of John McDowell concerning the relations between mind, world and language are brought into contact with those of Julius Kovesi, with a view to seeing whether the latter can illuminate and flesh out the former. McDowell's dialectic in Mind and World is expounded and reviewed, hinging on the notion of 'conceptual second nature' as his suggested way of showing that there is nothing mysteriously non–natural in human animals learning to find their way about both in a world characterised by lawlike connections and in one characterised by rational connections. Kovesi's redrawing, in Moral Notions , of the Aristotelian material/formal metaphysical distinction as one between the logical elements of concepts, is adduced to show how the world is 'shot through' with concepts and reasons: the formal elements of concepts are nothing other than the reasons we have for collecting varied features of the material world under a concept, to meet our bodily and social needs. The mind can then be treated as a set of acquired capacities and dispositions to become conversant with these features and with the corresponding needs. Some possible objections to this bringing together of the two sets of ideas are briefly examined, and overall conclusions drawn.     

从心灵到语言 ——语言研究与人文科学

该文概述西方学术主流从“心灵”到“语言”的范式转换;清理以语言为批评范式的思想家们对语言“本质”的不同理解以及由此而产生的不同学术立场;凸显语用学对人文学术之重构的巨大影响;指出乔姆斯基的“普遍语法”以及与之似乎针锋相对的“认知语言学”,都在相当程度上代表了索绪尔之前的本质主义语言观对语言决定论的抵制。     

Handbook of adult resilience,edited by John W. Reich,Alex J. Zautra,and John Stuart Hall

This study investigated differences in adolescents’ life satisfaction (LS), apprehension of personal and non-personal events, and the influence of recalled life events on LS. The affective temperament (AFT) classification was the framework for the research. Seventy male and 65 female adolescents participated. AFTs were developed through self-reported affect, generating four temperaments: self-actualizing, high affective, low affective, and self-destructive. LS was also self-reported. Apprehension for events was assessed through two tasks: (1) life event recollection and (2) interpretation and recognition of words in a short story. High and low affectives interpreted and remembered events as both self-actualizers and self-destructives. All AFTs, with the exception of self-destructives, showed positive biases. Only individuals with high positive affect were positively primed for non-personal events. Life events predicted self-destructives’ and low affectives’ LS. Self-actualizers showed higher LS, measured for a second time in a sub-sample, than self-destructives. The importance of the AFTs is discussed.     

Animal Brains and the Work of Words: Daniel Dennett on Natural Language and the Human Mind

Topoi - In this article I discuss Daniel Dennett’s view of the role of natural language in the evolution of the human mind. In contrast with defenders of the Language of Thought Hypothesis,...