Anti-Normativism Evaluated

Abstract

I argue that recent attempts to show that meaning and content are not normative fail. The two most important arguments anti-normativists have presented are what I call the ‘argument from constitution’ and the ‘argument from guidance’. Both of these arguments suffer from the same basic problem: they overlook the possibility of focusing on assessability by norms, rather than compliance with norms or guidance by norms. Moreover, I argue that the anti-normativists arguments fail even if we ignore this basic problem. Thus, we have not been given good reasons to think that normativism is false.     

Plural Logic and Sensitivity to Order

Sentences that exhibit sensitivity to order (e.g. John and Mary arrived at school in that order and Mary and John arrived at school in that order) present a challenge for the standard formulation of plural logic. In response, some authors have advocated new versions of plural logic based on fine-grained notions of plural reference, such as serial reference [Hewitt 2012] and articulated reference [Ben-Yami 2013]. The aim of this article is to show that sensitivity to order should be accounted for without altering the standard formulation of plural logic. In particular, sensitivity to order does not call for a fine-grained notion of plural reference. We point out that the phenomenon in question is quite broad and that current proposals are not equipped to deal with the full range of cases in which order plays a role. Then we develop an alternative and unified account, which locates the phenomenon not in the way in which plural terms can refer, but in the meaning of special expressions such as in that order and respectively.     

Unique Best Deserver Theory and Arguments From Misclassification

It is a core commitment of Epistemic Two-Dimensionalism (E2D) that an utterance is 1-necessary iff it is a priori. But Jeff Speaks's Argument from Misclassification proves that, on a natural interpretation, E2D assigns necessary 1-intensions to many utterances that speakers deem a posteriori. Given that 1-intensions are meant to formalize a speaker's own understanding of the words she utters, this proof raises serious difficulties for E2D. In response, Elliott, McQueen, and Weber point out that the Argument from Misclassification presupposes a controversial theory of reference-fixation for proper names and argue that E2Dists ought to reject this theory. They discuss three alternatives to the theory that render E2D immune to the Argument from Misclassification. I demonstrate here that each of these alternatives either (i) replicates the faults of the original theory by assigning necessary 1-intensions to a posteriori utterances, or (ii) makes 1-intensions creatures of darkness. I argue that, although the Argument from Misclassification does indeed rely on a controversial theory of reference-fixation, Elliott, McQueen, and Weber have indicated no promising alternative to this theory.     

The Appeal to Expert Opinion: Quantitative Support for a Bayesian Network Approach

The appeal to expert opinion is an argument form that uses the verdict of an expert to support a position or hypothesis. A previous scheme‐based treatment of the argument form is formalized within a Bayesian network that is able to capture the critical aspects of the argument form, including the central considerations of the expert's expertise and trustworthiness. We propose this as an appropriate normative framework for the argument form, enabling the development and testing of quantitative predictions as to how people evaluate this argument, suggesting that such an approach might be beneficial to argumentation research generally. We subsequently present two experiments as an example of the potential for future research in this vein, demonstrating that participants' quantitative ratings of the convincingness of a proposition that has been supported with an appeal to expert opinion were broadly consistent with the predictions of the Bayesian model.     

Word Senses as Clusters of Meaning Modulations: A Computational Model of Polysemy

Most words in natural languages are polysemous; that is, they have related but different meanings in different contexts. This one-to-many mapping of form to meaning presents a challenge to understanding how word meanings are learned, represented, and processed. Previous work has focused on solutions in which multiple static semantic representations are linked to a single word form, which fails to capture important generalizations about how polysemous words are used; in particular, the graded nature of polysemous senses, and the flexibility and regularity of polysemy use. We provide a novel view of how polysemous words are represented and processed, focusing on how meaning is modulated by context. Our theory is implemented within a recurrent neural network that learns distributional information through exposure to a large and representative corpus of English. Clusters of meaning emerge from how the model processes individual word forms. In keeping with distributional theories of semantics, we suggest word meanings are generalized from contexts of different word tokens, with polysemy emerging as multiple clusters of contextually modulated meanings. We validate our results against a human-annotated corpus of polysemy focusing on the gradedness, flexibility, and regularity of polysemous sense individuation, as well as behavioral findings of offline sense relatedness ratings and online sentence processing. The results provide novel insights into how polysemy emerges from contextual processing of word meaning from both a theoretical and computational point of view.     

非参数认知诊断方法下诊断结果的概率化表征

非参数认知诊断分类方法非常适合课堂评估,其诊断结果采用0-1形式而缺乏概率化表征,不能精细地区分被试属性掌握程度的差异或变化,还缺乏可用于评价真实测验分类结果的信度和效度指标。要刻画被试属性掌握程度的差异,首要的问题是要为非参数认知诊断方法提供一种可以量化属性掌握概率的方法。针对此问题,基于二项分布和玻尔兹曼分布提出非参数认知诊断方法下诊断结果的概率化表征方法,并用于构建分类准确性和分类一致性指标。模拟研究与实测数据分析结果显示：概率化表征方法与非参数认知诊断方法的分类结果高度一致;概率化表征方法与认知诊断模型所得的属性掌握概率十分接近;概率化表征方法所得的属性（模式）掌握概率可用于计算属性（模式）分类准确性和分类一致性指标,在实际测验情景下可作为信度和效度指标,评价诊断结果的重测一致率和判准率。     

The illocutionary force of laws

This article provides a speech act analysis of ‘crime-enacting’ provisions in criminal statutes, focusing on the illocutionary force of these provisions. These provisions commonly set out not only particular crimes and their characteristics but also their associated penalties. Enactment of a statute brings into force new social facts, typically norms, through the official utterance of linguistic material. These norms are supposed to guide behaviour: they tell us what we must, may, or must not do. Our main claim is that the illocutionary force of such provisions is primarily ‘world-creating’, i.e. effective, or declarational, rather than directive (behaviour-guiding). We assume that directive illocutionary force is either direct or indirect, showing that provisions need not contain the linguistic items that make for direct directives and that according to standard tests no indirect directive is present. A potential counter-argument is that any utterance serving to direct behaviour is necessarily a directive. We show that this behaviour-directing property is shared by some clear non-directives.     

认知灵活性对概率类别学习的影响

本研究采用“数字-字母转换任务”区分高低认知灵活性者, 构建概率配对模式相同但形式不同的两个概率类别学习任务, 借助ERP技术探讨认知灵活性对概率类别学习任务的作用特点与机制。结果发现, 本研究的两个任务中, 高认知灵活性组的规则习得水平均优于低认知灵活性组, 认知灵活性能促进概率类别的学习。同时, 对不同学习阶段的ERPs分析结果显示, 高认知灵活性者在概率类别学习中的优势源于反馈加工过程。     

What matters is the underlying experience: Similar motor responses during processing observed hand actions and hand-related verbs

It is well-accepted that processing observed actions involves at some extent the same neural mechanisms responsible for action execution. More recently, it has been forwarded that also the processing of verbs expressing a specific motor content is subserved by the neural mechanisms allowing individuals to perform the content expressed by that linguistic material. This view is also known as embodiment and contrasts with a more classical approach to language processing that considers it as amodal. In the present study, we used a go/no-go paradigm, in which participants were requested to respond to real words and pictures and refrain from responding when presented stimuli were pseudowords and scrambled images. Real stimuli included pictures depicting hand- and foot-related actions and verbs expressing hand- and foot-related actions. We, therefore, directly compared the modulation of hand motor responses during the observation of actions and the presentation of verbs, expressing actions in the same category. The results have shown that participants gave slower hand motor responses during the observation of hand actions and the processing of hand-related verbs as than observed foot actions and related verbs. These findings support embodiment showing that whatever the modality of presentation (observed action or verb), the modulation of hand motor responses was similar, thus suggesting that processing seen actions and related verbs shares common mechanisms most likely involving the motor system and the underlying motor experience.     

文化视域下文化神经科学学科主张与检讨

文化神经科学是在宏大的文化背景下来全面深入考察个体的"心理、行为与脑认知机制"之间规律的一门学科。文化神经科学所倡导的神经-文化交互作用模型表明该学科以融合视野引领心理学研究范式的变革成为可能。同时,从文化学视野来审视,亦折射出其在文化学层面的短板,即人文精神与文化意蕴在"文化"名义下日渐式微。