Propositions and Reasoning in Russell and Frege

Both Russell and Frege were inclined to think that there is nothing essentially linguistic about thought: any actual reliance of ours upon language is a mere psychological contingency. If so then it should be possible to formulate logic in such a way that logical relationships are not represented or expressed as principles pertaining to linguistic forms. Russell and Frege take pains to achieve this, but fail. I explain this by looking at some features of Grundgesetz and Principia . Their failure, I suggest, is due to the nature of the case.     

De l'argumentation comme métamorphose

Linguistic rhetoric and argumentative reasoning are generally identified. Certain types of problems, however, make use of non-verbal systems of representation, and, among them, image. Image is not just matter but also form, and computer processing in AI makes it possible to grasp this form by linguistic means (logico-mathematical languages). The synthesis of animated images has made it possible to represent metamorphoses, the thought of the unexpected. The fact that language produces image (and conversely) does not fail to transform the standard ways of thinking about epistemology.

     

Thought beyond language: neural dissociation of algebra and natural language

A central question in cognitive science is whether natural language provides combinatorial operations that are essential to diverse domains of thought. In the study reported here, we addressed this issue by examining the role of linguistic mechanisms in forging the hierarchical structures of algebra. In a 3-T functional MRI experiment, we showed that processing of the syntax-like operations of algebra does not rely on the neural mechanisms of natural language. Our findings indicate that processing the syntax of language elicits the known substrate of linguistic competence, whereas algebraic operations recruit bilateral parietal brain regions previously implicated in the representation of magnitude. This double dissociation argues against the view that language provides the structure of thought across all cognitive domains.     

Explaining derivational morphology as the convergence of codes

Language users have a remarkable ability to create, produce and comprehend complex words. Words such as undercut and bakery appear to be composed of units, traditionally called morphemes, that recombine in rule-like ways to form other words, such as underline and cannery. However, morphological systems are quasiregular: they are systematic and productive but admit many seemingly irregular forms. Thus, bakery is related to bake and cannery to can but what is the groce in grocery? There is no bread in sweetbreads, liver in deliver, corn in corner or ginger in gingerly. Such words exhibit partial regularities concerning the correspondences between form and meaning, the treatment of which has important implications for linguistic and psycholinguistic theories. This article describes an approach to morphological phenomena called the convergence theory, in which morphology is a graded, inter-level representation that reflects correlations among orthography, phonology and semantics.     

Linguistic and non-linguistic spatial categorization

Three experiments examine the relation between linguistic and non-linguistic categorization of spatial relations. We compare linguistic and non-linguistic responses to the same spatial stimuli. Contrary to earlier claims in the literature (Hayward, W. G. & Tarr, M. J. (1995). Spatial language and spatial representation. Cognition, 55, 39-84), we find that linguistic and non-linguistic spatial categories do not correspond. Rather, they appear to have an inverse relation such that the prototypes of linguistic categories, such as 'above', are boundaries in non-linguistic spatial categorization. Evidence for this inverse relation comes from linguistic acceptability judgments and the pattern of bias in participants' reproductions of location. Our findings suggest that while linguistic and non-linguistic spatial organization rely on a common underlying structure, that structure may play different roles in the two organizational systems.     

“What Else Can I Do But Write?” Discursive Disruption and the Ethics of Style in Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas

This essay suggests that to understand the pacifist position Woolf takes in her critique of fascism and patriarchy, it is essential to recognize how , not only why, she explores the relationship between narrative and political authority. Creating an intersection between a feminist conceptualization of Woolf's narrative technique and philosophical notions about ethical forms of representation, it argues that Woolf fragments the locus of narrative authority in Three Guineas to model a stylistic resistance to linguistic practices she thinks support totalitarian ideology.     

表征与认知发展

One of the major divergences between dynamical systems theory and symbolism lies in their views on the role of representation in cognition. From the perspective of development, the cognitive development could be divided into three levels: sensorimotor, imagery representation and linguistic representation. It is claimed that representation is not a sufficient condition though it is necessary for cognition. However, it does not mean that the authors agree with the notion of strong coupling in dynamicism that completely rejects representation. Translated by Wang Xiaolu, Xiao Jiayan and Li Hengwei from Zhongguo Shehui Kexue 中国社会科学 (Social Sciences in China), 2006, (2): 34–44     

The word and us: Implications of linguistic design for subjective experience and for the experience of subjectivity

As language evolved in the history of civilization, a verbal form of communication became not only possible but prevalent. Inherent in the linguistic communication system is symbolization, the representation, by means of words, of what exists or occurs.The subject addressed in the present work involves the implications of the linguistic symbol system, first, for the subjective experiences of emotion and consciousness, and second, for the experience of subjectivity, that is, the experience of being somebody psychologically. Further considerations are those regarding solutions to the psychological consequences of verbal symbolization.In the process of sorting out issues and avenues of approach to the subjects mentioned, the thought occurred that I and myself and me were taking a journey into the field of language, in order to find out whatthe word might mean forus. This thought is reflected in the main title of this paper.Francina Middelman, M.D., is a retired (September 1984) psychiatrist. She received her medical education at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and her psychiatric training in the Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati. Her last position was that of medical director, Athens Mental Health Center, Athens, Ohio.     

Faithful contrastive features in learning

This article pursues the idea of inferring aspects of phonological underlying forms directly from surface contrasts by looking at optimality theoretic linguistic systems (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). The main result proves that linguistic systems satisfying certain conditions have the faithful contrastive feature property: Whenever 2 distinct morphemes contrast on the surface in a particular environment, at least 1 of the underlying features on which the 2 differ must be realized faithfully on the surface. A learning procedure exploiting the faithful contrastive feature property, contrast analysis, can set the underlying values of some features, even where featural minimal pairs do not exist, but is nevertheless fundamentally limited in what it can set. This work suggests that observation of surface contrasts between pairs of words can contribute to the learning of underlying forms, while still supporting the view that interaction with the phonological mapping will be necessary to fully determine underlying forms.     

Language Reflects “Core” Cognition: A New Theory About the Origin of Cross‐Linguistic Regularities

The underlying structures that are common to the world's languages bear an intriguing connection with early emerging forms of “core knowledge” (Spelke & Kinzler, 2007), which are frequently studied by infant researchers. In particular, grammatical systems often incorporate distinctions (e.g., the mass/count distinction) that reflect those made in core knowledge (e.g., the non‐verbal distinction between an object and a substance). Here, I argue that this connection occurs because non‐verbal core knowledge systematically biases processes of language evolution. This account potentially explains a wide range of cross‐linguistic grammatical phenomena that currently lack an adequate explanation. Second, I suggest that developmental researchers and cognitive scientists interested in (non‐verbal) knowledge representation can exploit this connection to language by using observations about cross‐linguistic grammatical tendencies to inspire hypotheses about core knowledge.     

Converging evidence for the functional significance of imagery in problem solving

Two kinds of explanations have been offered for the process by which three-term series problems are solved, one in terms of linguistic principles and the other in terms of visual-spatial imagery. Two experiments are reported in which three different classes of operations are brought to bear on the problem: (1) Manipulation of stimulus attributes (characteristics of problems), (2) manipulation of variables that selectively encourage or inhibit the use of imagery (facilitating instructions; the suppression of visualization by reading), and (3) measurement of relevant individual differences (spatial-reasoning ability). All of the results indicate that imagery plays a functional but not a necessary role in the solution of three-term series problems; it is suggested that imaginal representation is functional because it reduces the load on memory. An adequate explanation of problem-solving will have to address certain general issues, such as the diversity of forms of cognitive representation and differences within and between individuals in the choice of problem-solving strategies.     

The acquisition of allophonic rules: statistical learning with linguistic constraints

Phonological rules relate surface phonetic word forms to abstract underlying forms that are stored in the lexicon. Infants must thus acquire these rules in order to infer the abstract representation of words. We implement a statistical learning algorithm for the acquisition of one type of rule, namely allophony, which introduces context-sensitive phonetic variants of phonemes. This algorithm is based on the observation that different realizations of a single phoneme typically do not appear in the same contexts (ideally, they have complementary distributions). In particular, it measures the discrepancies in context probabilities for each pair of phonetic segments. In Experiment 1, we test the algorithm's performances on a pseudo-language and show that it is robust to statistical noise due to sampling and coding errors, and to non-systematic rule application. In Experiment 2, we show that a natural corpus of semiphonetically transcribed child-directed speech in French presents a very large number of near-complementary distributions that do not correspond to existing allophonic rules. These spurious allophonic rules can be eliminated by a linguistically motivated filtering mechanism based on a phonetic representation of segments. We discuss the role of a priori linguistic knowledge in the statistical learning of phonology.     

Wittgenstein and the Animal Origins of Linguistic Communication

Wittgenstein's notorious sample of a ‘complete primitive language’ (viz. the builders’ game of the Philosophical Investigations) is often thought to be closer in kind to animal forms of communication than human language. Indeed, it has been criticised on precisely these grounds. But such debates make little sense if we take seriously Wittgenstein's idea that language is a family resemblance concept. So, rather than argue that the builders’ game ‘really is a language’ (or not), I propose to turn the debate on its head and welcome the comparison. By changing our perspective in this way, I suggest that we can see that the learning of language is crucially dependent on forms of communication that are animal in nature. I then discuss how these lessons might shed light on empirical research into both the ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins of linguistic communication.     

Relations between mental verb and false belief understanding in Cantonese-speaking children

Previous research has shown that linguistic forms that codify mental contents bear a specific relation with children’s false belief understanding. These forms include mental verbs and their following complements, yet the two have not been considered separately. The current study examined the roles of mental verb semantics and the complement syntax in children’s false belief understanding. Independent tasks were used to measure verb meaning, complements, and false belief understanding such that the verbs in question were present only in the verb meaning test, and no linguistic devices biased toward false belief were used in the false belief test. We focused on (a) some mental verbs that obligatorily affirm or negate what follows and (b) sentential complements, the content of which is to be evaluated against the mind of another person, not reality. Results showed that only (a) predicted false belief understanding in a group of Cantonese-speaking 4-year-olds, controlling for nonverbal intelligence and general language ability. In particular, children’s understanding of the strong nonfactive semantics of the Cantonese verbs /ji5-wai4/ (“falsely think”) predicted false belief understanding most strongly. The current findings suggest that false belief understanding is specifically related to the comprehension of mental verbs that entail false thought in their semantics.     

How children make language out of gesture: morphological structure in gesture systems developed by American and Chinese deaf children

When children learn language, they apply their language-learning skills to the linguistic input they receive. But what happens if children are not exposed to input from a conventional language? Do they engage their language-learning skills nonetheless, applying them to whatever unconventional input they have? We address this question by examining gesture systems created by four American and four Chinese deaf children. The children's profound hearing losses prevented them from learning spoken language, and their hearing parents had not exposed them to sign language. Nevertheless, the children in both cultures invented gesture systems that were structured at the morphological/word level. Interestingly, the differences between the children's systems were no bigger across cultures than within cultures. The children's morphemes could not be traced to their hearing mothers' gestures; however, they were built out of forms and meanings shared with their mothers. The findings suggest that children construct morphological structure out of the input that is handed to them, even if that input is not linguistic in form.     

Concepts and Intuitions: Adorno After the Linguistic Turn

Adorno's conception of conceptually articulated experience can be defended and made fruitful for a critical philosophy after the so-called linguistic turn. The aim is both to answer the criticisms raised by Jürgen Habermas and others that Adorno's philosophy remains bound by the premises of a subject-centred philosophy, and to criticize social-pragmatism from the vantage-point of Adorno's philosophy of language. It is shown that Adorno is committed to a picture of experience very much in line with the recent views of John McDowell, which extends the space of reasons beyond the space of concepts. Further, it is shown that non-inferential justification can be combined with an expressivist picture of judgment. Finally, it is argued that what is called the extended space of reasons is ultimately social; that representation, the aboutness of thought, serves expressive roles in a socially articulated space of reason-giving. The advantage of Adorno's position vis-à-vis a one-sided social-pragmatism consists in his defence of what is called subjective-material proprieties of judgment. Adorno's idea that the extended space of reasons implies the acknowledgement of what he refers to as the non-identical within conceptually articulated experience is thus reconstructed and defended. Such non-identity, it is claimed, is exhibited in successful art-works which thereby ought to be counted as forms of reasoning. On this basis, Adorno's philosophy acquires critical and normative significance after the linguistic turn.     

A model theory of induction

Theories of induction in psychology and artificial intelligence assume that the process leads from observation and knowledge to the formulation of linguistic conjectures. This paper proposes instead that the process yields mental models of phenomena. It uses this hypothesis to distinguish between deduction, induction, and creative forms of thought. It shows how models could underlie inductions about specific matters. In the domain of linguistic conjectures, there are many possible inductive generalizations of a conjecture. In the domain of models, however, generalization calls for only a single operation: the addition of information to a model. If the information to be added is inconsistent with the model, then it eliminates the model as false: this operation suffices for all generalizations in a Boolean domain. Otherwise, the information that is added may have effects equivalent (a) to the replacement of an existential quantifier by a universal quantifier, or (b) to the promotion of an existential quantifier from inside to outside the scope of a universal quantifier. The latter operation is novel, and does not seem to have been used in any linguistic theory of induction. Finally, the paper describes a set of constraints on human induction, and outlines the evidence in favor of a model theory of induction.