Points of View

An adequate evaluation of argumentation requires identification of the object to which the argumentation pertains: the point of view. What are the distinguishing features of this object? In the pragma-dialectical argumentation theory, the object of argumentation is referred to by means of the notion ‘standpoint’. In other theories concerned with argumentation, reasoning, convincing or persuading, notions are used such as ‘thesis’, ‘conclusion’, ‘opinion’ and ‘attitude’. This paper is a survey of the characterisations of the object of argumentation given in the various theories. It discusses the pragma-dialectical argumentation theory, socio-psychological research on persuasion, cognitive research on reasoning, argumentative discourse analysis, two variants of informal logic, advocacy and debate, and the theory of communicative action. Next, it explores some relations between the notions used in these theories. Finally, it outlines some starting points for further research into the problems of identification.     

复合命题理解能力的发展

采用命题-图形匹配实验法,探讨了儿童、少年和青年人三个阶段的5种类型复合命题理解能力的发展.结果表明:(1)随着年龄增长,复合命题理解能力迅速提高;(2)对复合命题理解的难易,决定于构建的心理模型的数目.理解能力的发展根据心理模型的类型呈现不同的步调,单模型命题的理解在小学阶段已经很好地获得发展,双模型命题则在初中阶段获得较好的发展,三模型命题发展较迟,直至成年仍需发展.     

Empirical Propositions and the Change of Language-Games

People unavoidably provide reasons for their words and deeds when reasoning in a language-game.Wittgenstein thinks that when people in different language-games argue with one other,they insist on adopting a doubtful attitude toward the reasons provided by the other side.His use of the term "language-game" here is a metaphor,and implies that people in different cultures can scarcely reason with one another.Indeed,according to Wittgenstein's consideration of concepts of logic in On Certainty,language-games are incompatible with one another because their internal logic and reasons are different from each other.However,in his discussion of empirical propositions Wittgenstein has also shown us the possibility that the intemal reasons of one language-game can transmit beyond its own borders and be valid in another language-game.     

数学应用题中语言成分模型的构建—— 多元随机效应项目反应理论模型的运用

数学应用题中的语言成分可能对被试问题解决过程产生复杂影响。通常, 这种影响对所有被试并非完全一致, 而是具体数学题目特征与特定被试的认知特性之间交互作用的结果。本研究采用多元随机效应项目反应理论模型的建模方法, 分析了数学应用题中语言成分对问题解决过程的影响。该方法的优势在于它不仅分析了语言成分对数学问题解决过程的平均效应, 同时给出了相应的随机效应, 揭示了相应成分对不同个体问题解决过程的具体影响程度。结果表明, 较难的项目倾向于单词更多, 命题密度更高, 要求对图/表信息进行编码和转译, 或者根据问题表述生成数学公式。项目命题密度影响效应存在着显著的个别差异。项目命题密度对能力较低的被试的影响高于对能力较高的被试的影响。     

条件推理中的二元效应初探

通过预备实验选取前件(或后件)是二元(或多元)的5种条件命题的4种推理形式作为实验材料,以大学本科生为被试,考察了五种不同条件命题类型对4种推理结果的影响.结果表明命题类型、推理规则以及两者的交互作用都非常显著.这个结果进一步验证了条件推理的集合映射模型.     

Symmetric Propositions and Logical Quantifiers

Symmetric propositions over domain and signature are characterized following Zermelo, and a correlation of such propositions with logical type- quantifiers over is described. Boolean algebras of symmetric propositions over and Σ are shown to be isomorphic to algebras of logical type- quantifiers over . This last result may provide empirical support for Tarski’s claim that logical terms over fixed domain are all and only those invariant under domain permutations.     

Propositions, Sets, and Worlds

If we agree with Michael Jubien that propositions do not exist, while accepting the existence of abstract sets in a realist mathematical ontology, then the combined effect of these ontological commitments has surprising implications for the metaphysics of modal logic, the ontology of logically possible worlds, and the controversy over modal realism versus actualism. Logically possible worlds as maximally consistent proposition sets exist if sets generally exist, but are equivalently expressed as maximally consistent conjunctions of the same propositions in corresponding sets. A conjunction of propositions, even if infinite in extent, is nevertheless itself a proposition. If sets and hence proposition sets exist but propositions do not exist, then whether or not modal realism is true depends on which of two apparently equivalent methods of identifying, representing, or characterizing logically possible worlds we choose to adopt. I consider a number of reactions to the problem, concluding that the best solution may be to reject the conventional model set theoretical concept of logically possible worlds as maximally consistent proposition sets, and distinguishing between the actual world alone as maximally consistent and interpreting all nonactual merely logically possible worlds as submaximal. I am grateful to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), for supporting this among related research projects in philosophical logic and philosophy of mathematics during my Resident Research Fellowship in 2005-2006.     

The motivations for Walter Burley’s theory of the proposition

Walter Burley (born c. 1275; died. c. 1344) claims throughout his career that the mind can make a statement (propositio) out of things. Since things include entities that exist outside of the mind, Burley appears to be claiming that the mind can form a statement out of things that exist outside of it. Most scholars of Burley offer a deflationary reading of this claim, arguing that it confuses two distinct but closely related philosophical issues: the nature of propositional content, on the one hand, and the role of facts in a compelling account of truth, on the other. But I argue that Burley means exactly what he says: that the mind can, quite literally, form statements out of things that exist outside of it. In Burley’s account, statements of this sort function as the propositional contents of our thoughts and written or uttered sentences. This account of propositional content is motivated by three more fundamental theses to which Burley is committed: referentialism, compositionality, and a claim about truth-conditionality I call intellectualism.     

Expression,Truth, Predication,and Context: Two Perspectives

Abstract

This paper considers the challenge to understanding another that comes from the view that language is, in Cristina Lafont’s phrase, ‘world‐disclosing’. If different speakers understand and refer to the world from different holistically structured worldviews, it seems to follow that there can be no mutual understanding unless there is significant overlap between ‘worlds’. Gadamer’s hermeneutics, I claim, blocks this consequence while maintaining that language is indeed world‐disclosing. By holding that language is a medium in which the distinction between interpretation and object of interpretation is paradoxically both maintained and overcome, Gadamer shows us that the interpreter always thinks the object of interpretation as both transcending and immanent in her worldview. Mutual understanding becomes a matter of mutual recognition of such worldview‐(but not language‐) transcendent objects. Truth and meaning may on this view be characterized as ‘objective’, while retaining a significant element of relativity.     

Semantic Responsibility

Abstract

In this paper I attempt to develop a notion of responsibility (semantic responsibility) that is to the notion of belief what epistemic responsibility is to the notion of justification. ‘Being semantically responsible’ is shown to involve the fulfilment of cognitive duties which allow the agent to engage in the kind of reason-laden discourses which render her beliefs appropriately sensitive to correction. The concept of semantic responsibility suggests that the notion of belief found in contemporary philosophical debates about content implicitly encompasses radically different classes of beliefs. In what follows I make those different types explicit, and sketch some implications for naturalisation projects in semantics and for accounts of the (putative) non-conceptual content of perceptual experiences.