Condorcet and communitarianism: Boghossian’s fallacious inference

This paper defends the communitarian account of meaning against Boghossian’s (Wittgensteinian) arguments. Boghossian argues that whilst such an account might be able to accommodate the infinitary characteristic of meaning, it cannot account for its normativity: he claims that, since the dispositions of a group must mirror those of its members, the former cannot be used to evaluate the latter. However, as this paper aims to make clear, this reasoning is fallacious. Modelling the issue with four (justifiable) assumptions, it shows that Condorcet’s ‘Jury Theorem’ can be used to prove that the dispositions of the majority of the members of a group can differ from those of any individual member in a way that makes it possible to use communal dispositions as a standard with which individual dispositions can be assessed. Moreover, the argument of the paper is also shown to have general implications for the use of formal methods in the explanation of the nature of certain fallacious inferences.     

Wittgenstein on the duration and timing of mental phenomena: episodes,understanding and rule-following

ABSTRACT

Wittgenstein’s later works are full of questions about the timing and duration of mental phenomena. These questions are often awkward ones, and Wittgenstein seems to take their awkwardness to be philosophically revealing, but if we ask what it is that these questions reveal then different interpretations are possible. This paper suggests that there are at least six different ways in which the timing of mental phenomena can be awkward. By identifying these we can give sense to some of Wittgenstein’s more cryptic remarks, and doing this enables us to clarify some obscure elements in his picture of the mind, including the distinction between sensations and feelings, and his account of the rational status of those processes out of which rule-following is built.     

The Metaphysics of Meaning: Hopkins on Wittgenstein

Abstract

Jim Hopkins (2012 Hopkins, Jim (2012) ‘Rules, Privacy, and Physicalism’, in Jonathan Ellis and Daniel Guevara (eds) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) defends a ‘straight’ (non-skeptical) response to Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, a response he ascribes to Wittgenstein himself. According to this response, what makes it the case that A means that P is that it is possible for another to (correctly) interpret A as meaning that P. Hopkins thus advances a form of interpretivist judgment-dependence about meaning. I argue that this response, as well as a variant, does not succeed.     

Does Wittgenstein Actually Undermine the Foundation of Artificial Intelligence?

Wittgenstein is widely viewed as a potential critic of a key philosophical assumption of the Strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) thesis,namely,that it is in principle possible to build a programmed machine which can achieve real intelligence.Stuart Shanker has provided the most systematic reconstruction of the Wittgensteinian argument against AI,building on Wittgenstein's own statements,the "rule-following" feature of language-games,and the putative alliance between AI and psychologism.This article will attempt to refute this reconstruction and its constituent arguments,thereby paving the way for a new and amicable rather than agonistic conception of the Wittgensteinian position on AI.     

A Modest Solution to the Problem of Rule-following

A modest solution to the problem(s) of rule-following is defended against Kripkensteinian scepticism about meaning. Even though parts of it generalise to other concepts, the theory as a whole applies to response-dependent concepts only. It is argued that the finiteness problem is not nearly as pressing for such concepts as it may be for some other kinds of concepts. Furthermore, the modest theory uses a notion of justification as sensitivity to countervailing conditions in order to solve the justification problem. Finally, in order to solve the normativity problem, it relies on substantial specifications of normal conditions such as those that have been proposed by Crispin Wright and Mark Johnston, rather than on Philip Pettit's functionalist specification. This theory is modest in that it does not meet the demands of Kripke's sceptic in full. Arguments are provided as to why this is not needed.     

Inferential Transitions

This paper provides a naturalistic account of inference. We posit that the core of inference is constituted by bare inferential transitions (BITs), transitions between discursive mental representations guided by rules built into the architecture of cognitive systems. In further developing the concept of BITs, we provide an account of what Boghossian [2014] calls ‘taking’—that is, the appreciation of the rule that guides an inferential transition. We argue that BITs are sufficient for implicit taking, and then, to analyse explicit taking, we posit rich inferential transitions (RITs), which are transitions that the subject is disposed to endorse.     

Rule Following,Error Theory and Eliminativism

Abstract

In this paper, I argue for three main claims. First, that there are two broad sorts of error theory about a particular region of thought and talk, eliminativist error theories and non-eliminativist error theories. Second, that an error theory about rule following can only be an eliminativist view of rule following, and therefore an eliminativist view of meaning and content on a par with Paul Churchland’s prima facie implausible eliminativism about the propositional attitudes. Third, that despite some superficial appearances to the contrary, non-eliminativist error theory does not provide a plausible vehicle for understanding the ‘sceptical solution’ to the sceptical paradox about rule-following developed in Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.     

Exploring a Training IRAP as a single participant context for analyzing reversed derived relations and persistent rule-following

Rule-governed behavior and derived stimulus relations have always shared strong conceptual links within behavior analysis. However, experimental analysis linking the two domains remains limited. The current study consisted of three experiments that aimed to continue to bridge this experimental gap. The first experiment sought to establish the extent to which a training version of the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) could be used to establish and successfully reverse experimentally established derived relations. The results suggested that the Training IRAP could successfully produce derived reversals. Experiments 2 and 3 explored the extent to which reversed derived relations would control rule-governed behavior when the contingencies for rule-following competed with the rule. In Experiment 2, the task contingencies were immediately in opposition to the (reversed) derived rule, and participants generally responded in accordance with the task contingencies, rather than the rule. In Experiment 3, the task contingencies were initially rule-consistent before a contingency reversal that later made them rule-inconsistent. Here evidence of rule-persistence emerged. The results of the research are considered within the context of a recent framework that has emerged out of RFT for analyzing the dynamics involved in derived relational responding.