Compound Nominals,Context, and Compositionality

There are good reasons to think natural languages are compositional. But compound nominals (CNs) are largely productive constructions that have proven highly recalcitrant to compositional semantic analysis. I evaluate existing proposals to treat CNs compositionally and argue that they are unsuccessful. I then articulate an alternative proposal according to which CNs contain covert indexicals. Features of the context allow a variety of relations to be expressed using CNs, but this variety is not expressed in the lexicon or the semantic rules of the language. This proposal accounts for the diversity of contents CNs can be used to express while preserving compositionality. Finally, I defend this proposal against some recent anti-contextualist arguments.     

Advice for Noncognitivists

Metaethical noncognitivists have trouble arriving at a respectable semantic theory for moral language. The goal of this article is to make substantial progress toward demonstrating that these problems may be overcome. Replacing the predominant expressivist semantic agenda in metaethics with a dynamic perspective on meaning and communication allows noncognitivists to provide a satisfying analysis of negation and other constructions that have been argued to be problematic for metaethical noncognitivism, including disjunctions. The resulting proposal preserves some of the key insights from recent work on the semantics of expressivism while highlighting the widely neglected early noncognitivists' sympathies to the kind of dynamic story I intend to tell here. A comparison between the advertised dynamic semantic story and current proposals that treat expressivism as a pragmatic rather than semantic theory about moral language is provided.     

Collective Affordances

Abstract

This article develops an ecological framework for understanding collective action. This is contrasted with approaches familiar from the collective intentionality debate, which treat individuals (with collective intentions) as fundamental units of collective action. Instead, we turn to social ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory and argue that they provide a promising framework for understanding collectives as the central unit in collective action. However, we submit that these approaches do not yet appreciate enough the relevance of social identities for collective action. To analyze this aspect, we build on key insights from social identity theory and synthesize it with embodied and ecological accounts of perception and action. This results in the proposal of two new types of affordances. For an individual who enacts her “embodied social identity” of being a member of a particular collective, there can be what we call embodied social identity affordances. Moreover, when several individuals dynamically interact with each other against the background of their embodied social identities, this might lead to the emergence of a collective, which we understand as a dynamically constituted and ecologically situated perception-action system consisting of several individuals enacting relevant embodied social identity affordances. Building on previous work in social ecological psychology, we suggest that there can be genuine collective affordances, that is, affordances whose subject is not an individual, but a collective.     

Realism Detranscendentalized

John McDowell claims to find in Wittgenstein an approach to semantic notions which occupies a middle ground between antirealism and extreme forms of realism. The article sketches a proposal as to how to construe McDowell's Wittgensteinian position. The proposal exploits McDowell's suggestion that the position could be characterised as a combination of empirical realism and transcendental idealism concerning the status of semantic facts. The article argues that this combination is made possible by the fact that, when we attempt to characterise our own linguistic practices, the practice that we are trying to characterise is the very same practice that is supposed to yield the characterisation. One consequence of this is that commitment to antirealist principles requires embracing realism at the empirical level. Nevertheless, the contrast between this position and extreme realism remains problematic. The article ends by considering two proposals as to how this contrast could be rendered intelligble.     

Focaused search of semantic cases: The effects of question form and case status

The present study was designed to identify and examine some of the variables that influence the focused search of semantic cases in question answering. Singer, Parbery, and Jakobson (1988) have previously reported that people can focus on the case interrogated by a question and can largely disregard irrelevant cases. In the present study, people learned facts, such asthe pilot painted the garage with the roller, the spraygun, and the brush. One day later, they answered questions that focused on a particular case. For example, the questiondid the pilot paint with a spraygun? focuses on the instrument case. Experiment 1 revealed that people can focus on a particular case in response both to complete questions and to comparable word probes, such as “pilot spraygun.” Therefore, the given-new structure of questions is not essential to focused search. Experiment 2 revealed that people have a difficult time ignoring the agent case, even when it is irrelevant to the question. This corroborates proposals that agent and action information are closely interrelated in the representation of a fact. These results help to delineate the phenomenon of the focused search of semantic cases.     

Computational Representation of Practical Argument

In this paper we consider persuasion in the context of practical reasoning, and discuss the problems associated with construing reasoning about actions in a manner similar to reasoning about beliefs. We propose a perspective on practical reasoning as presumptive justification of a course of action, along with critical questions of this justification, building on the account of Walton. From this perspective, we articulate an interaction protocol, which we call PARMA, for dialogues over proposed actions based on this theory. We outline an axiomatic semantics for the PARMA Protocol, and discuss two implementations which use this protocol to mediate a discussion between humans. We then show how our proposal can be made computational within the framework of agents based on the Belief-Desire-Intention model, and illustrate this proposal with an example debate within a multi agent system.     

Frege's Puzzle is About Identity After All

Many philosophers have argued or taken for granted that Frege's puzzle has little or nothing to do with identity statements. I show that this is wrong, arguing that the puzzle can only be motivated relative to a thinker's beliefs about the identity or distinctness of the relevant object. The result is important, as it suggests that the puzzle can be solved, not by a semantic theory of names or referring expressions as such, but simply by a theory of identity statements. To show this, I sketch a framework for developing solutions of this sort. I also consider how this result could be implemented by two influential solutions to Frege's puzzle, Perry's referential‐reflexivism and Fine's semantic relationism.     

Contrary-to-duty obligations

We investigate under what conditions contrary-to-duty (CTD) structures lacking temporal and action elements can be given a coherent reading. We argue, contrary to some recent proposals, that CTD is not an instance of defeasible reasoning, and that methods of nonmonotonic logics are inadequate since they are unable to distinguish between defeasibility and violation of primary obligations. We propose a semantic framework based on the idea that primary and CTD obligations are obligations of different kinds: a CTD obligation pertains to, or pre-supposes, a certain context in which a primary obligation is already violated. This framework is presented initially as an extension of Standard Deontic Logic (SDL), a normal modal logic of type KD, and is illustrated by application to a series of examples. The concluding section is concerned with some resemblances between CTD and defeasible reasoning. We show first that the SDL-based framework contains a flaw and must be adjusted. A discussion of possible adjustments, including an alternative treatment in terms of a preference-based semantics, reveals difficulties that are reminiscent of problems in defeasible reasoning and intensional accounts of defeasible conditionals.     

“If you’d wiggled A,then B would’ve changed”

This paper deals with the truth conditions of conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular class of problematic examples for semantic theories for these sentences. I will argue that the examples show the need to refer to dynamic, in particular causal laws in an approach to their truth conditions. More particularly, I will claim that we need a causal notion of consequence. The proposal subsequently made uses a representation of causal dependencies as proposed in Pearl (2000) to formalize a causal notion of consequence. This notion inserted in premise semantics for counterfactuals in the style of Veltman (1976) and Kratzer (1979) will provide a new interpretation rule for conditionals. I will illustrate how this approach overcomes problems of previous proposals and end with some remarks on remaining questions.     

Wahrheit und Selbstrückbezüglichkeit

This paper is intended to discuss the problems occurring in the relation between the notion of truth and the question of self-reference. To do this, we shall review Tarski's (T) convention and its related terminology. We shall clarify the relation between truth and extension in order to lead into the question of semantic paradoxes appearing in the theoretical models concerned with truth. Subsequently, we shall review the logical system which develops in the reformulation of the modal proposal of the (T) convention. In closing, we shall critically examine Kripke's interpretation from the proposals made by Tarski.     

Can Explanatory Reasons Be Good Reasons for Action?

What kind of thing is a reason for action? Are reasons for action subjective states of the agent, such as desires and/or beliefs? Or are they, rather, objective features of situations that favor certain actions? The suggestion offered in this article is that neither strategy satisfies. What is needed is a third category for classifying reasons which makes them out to be neither purely subjective nor purely objective. In brief: a reason for action is a feature of the situation that matters to the agent. On this proposal, subjective states of the agent are indeed indispensable in characterizing reasons for action. Precisely which set of situational features matter to an agent—precisely what shape the agent experiences the situation as having—depends on the agent's psychological makeup. Those features themselves are not psychological states, however, and it is precisely those features that constitute the agent's reasons for action.     

Sentence context effects and the timecourse of lexical ambiguity resolution in nonfluent aphasia

In the current neurolinguistic literature, two proposals have been put forth to account for the deficit in ambiguous word processing observed in nonfluent aphasic patients. One proposal maintains that these individuals are impaired in the selective access of ambiguous word meanings, while the other argues that they are impaired in the process of contextual selection. In the present study, nonfluent aphasic patients and elderly control subjects participated in a semantic priming experiment, in which ambiguous words were presented in different biasing contexts at both a 0- and 750-ms ISI. At both ISIs, control subjects showed context-selective access, in that only contextually appropriate meanings were activated. In contrast, at the 0-ms ISI, the nonfluent aphasic patients showed activation of both meanings of the ambiguous word regardless of context. Only at the 750-ms ISI did they exhibit context-selective access. These results are consistent with the proposal that left hemisphere damage causing nonfluent aphasia results in an impairment in rapidly integrating lexical-semantic information into context.     

Steps Towards a Proof-Theoretical Semantics

The aim of this paper is to reconsider several proposals that have been put forward in order to develop a Proof-Theoretical Semantics, from the by now classical neo-verificationist approach provided by D. Prawitz and M. Dummett in the Seventies, to an alternative, more recent approach mainly due to the work of P. Schroeder-Heister and L. Halln?s, based on clausal definitions. Some other intermediate proposals are very briefly sketched. Particular attention will be given to the role played by the so-called Fundamental Assumption. We claim that whereas, in the neo-verificationist proposal, the condition expressed by that Assumption is necessary to ensure the completeness of the justification procedure (from the outside, so to speak), within the definitional framework it is a built-in feature of the proposal. The latter approach, therefore, appears as an alternative solution to the problem which prompted the neo-verificationists to introduce the Fundamental Assumption.     

Psychology at a crossroads

The current state of psychology is examined from the perspective that academic psychology and the private practice of psychology are faced with threats of their own obsolescence. Factors contributing to tensions in the discipline, as well as some hopeful signs, are reviewed. Three linked proposals are presented for the long-term resolution of these problems. An appropriate setting and a comprehensive model for graduate education are suggested. The third proposal concerns changes in our view of ourselves. A restoration of a sense of community is seen as a precondition for any constructive action.     

A STIT Logic for Reasoning About Social Influence

In this paper we propose a method for modeling social influence within the STIT approach to action. Our proposal consists in extending the STIT language with special operators that allow us to represent the consequences of an agent’s choices over the rational choices of another agent.     

Ethnic categorisation of faces is not independent of face identity

Is the extraction of a visually derived semantic code from faces (ethnicity) affected by face identity (familiarity) or not? The traditional view considers that this operation is made independently of face identity, and in parallel with the recognition of identity. However, some recent studies cast doubt on this parallel thesis regarding other visually derived semantic codes, namely: facial expression, facial speech, apparent age, and gender. Twenty-eight Caucasian participants were enrolled in an 'ethnic-decision' task on morphed faces made of an Asiatic source face and a Caucasian source face, in the proportion of 70%-30%. Half of the original faces were previously made familiar by a learning procedure (associating the face, surname, occupation, and city of residence of the person displayed), while the remaining half were unfamiliar. The results showed clearly that ethnic decision was affected by face familiarity. This adds support to the thesis according to which the identification of identity and the extraction of visually derived semantic codes are not made independently from each other and that the 'parallel-route' hypothesis becomes weakly supported.     

A review of literature on the link between action observation and action language: advancing a shared semantic theory

Understanding each other is a core concept of social cohesion and, consequently, has immense value in human society. Importantly, shared information leading to cohesion can come from two main sources: observed action and/or language (word) processing. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework for the link between action observation and action verb processing. Based on the activation of common semantic representations of actions through semantic resonance, this model can account for the neurophysiological, behavioral and neuropsychological domains in the link between action observation and language. Semantic resonance is hypothesized to play a role beyond that of the mere observation of others and can benefit future studies trying to connect action production and language.     

Grounding Causal Closure

What does it mean to say that mind‐body dualism is causally problematic in a way that other mind‐body theories, such as the psychophysical type identity theory, are not? After considering and rejecting various proposals, I advance my own, which focuses on what grounds the causal closure of the physical realm. A metametaphysical implication of my proposal is that philosophers working without the notion of grounding in their toolkit are metaphysically impoverished. They cannot do justice to the thought, encountered in every introductory class in the philosophy of mind, that dualism has a special problem accounting for mental causation.