Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
  • Publication
    The case of the missing generalizations
    (De Gruyter Mouton, 2008)
    Crain, Stephen
    ;
    Thornton, Rosalind
    ;
    This review discusses several kinds of linguistic generalizations that pose a challenge for the constructionist approach to linguistic generalizations advocated by Adele Goldberg. It is difficult to see, for example, how such an account can explain the wide-ranging linguistic phenomena governed by structural properties, such as c-command, or semantic properties, such as downward entailment. We also argue against Goldberg's rejection of formal semantics in favour of an account of meaning based primarily on information structure and discourse function.
  • Publication
    Semantic Challenges to Realism
    (Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Information, 2004)
    According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independently of how humans take it to be. The objects the world contains, together with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the world's nature and these objects exist independently of our ability to discover they do. Unless this is so, realists argue, none of our beliefs about our world could be objectively true since true beliefs tell us how things are and beliefs are objective when true or false independently of what anyone might think. The issue of objectivity affects all of us deeply - when we think the State has an obligation to provide adequate health care to all its citizens we mean to be describing what the State's obligations really are, independently of what anyone might think about the matter. If someone disagrees with us over this matter, we think they've got it wrong - are mistaken about how things are as regards the State and its obligations. If there can be no objectivity without a mind-independent world, as realists claim, then there had better be a mind-independent world.Henceforth, by 'realism' I shall mean metaphysical realism unless otherwise stated. Many philosophers believe realism is just plain common sense. Others believe it to be a direct implication of modern science which paints humans as fallible creatures adrift in an inhospitable world not of their making. Nonetheless, realism is controversial. There are epistemological problems connected with it - how can we obtain knowledge of a mind-independent world? There are also prior semantic problems - how are the links between our beliefs and the mind-independent states of affairs they allegedly represent set up? This is the Representation Problem.
  • Publication
    Mental states: Evolution, function, nature
    (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007) ;
    This volume presents a rich diversity of views from researchers in cognitive science and associated disciplines - archaeology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology - on the nature, function and evolution of "mental" or "cognitive" states. A quick glance at the titles of the contributions and/or the disciplinary backgrounds of the contributors might lead one to suspect little commonality in theoretical interests. However, this would be a mistake. Although the contributions differ markedly in approach and methodology, common questions about mind and cognition unite them.
  • Publication
    Mental States - Volume 2: Language and cognitive structure
    (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007) ;
    This volume is the second of a two-volume collection on mental states. The contributions to this volume focus on the question what language and language use reveals about cognitive structure and underlying cognitive categories, whereas the first volume is concerned with evolutionary and functional aspects of certain mental states in an effort to understand their nature. The contributions to this volume address the question what insights conceptual categorisation can give us into the organisation and structure of the mind and thus of mental states. Topics and linguistic phenomena investigated under this view include narratives and story telling, language development, figurative language, questions of linguistic categorisation, linguistic relativity, and more generally the linguistic coding of mental states (such as perceptions and attitudes). The volume comprises contributions from psychologists and linguists who explore the interaction between language and cognition. This reflects the provenance of the chapters, versions of which were presented at the 'International Language and Cognition Conference', held in September 2004 at Pacific Bay Resort in Coffs Harbour, Australia.
  • Publication
    Anti-realist assumptions and challenges in philosophy of mind
    (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007)
    The plausibility of Naturalism - the view that the mind is a purely natural phenomenon that can be explained scientifically (if explained at all) - is a hotly contested topic in cognitive science, as every philosopher and cognitive scientist knows. It is not widely recognised, however that some of the more popular arguments against naturalism rest upon anti-realist metaphysical assumptions. This is a problem since the most plausible defences of naturalism presuppose a realist metaphysics. In this chapter, I shall chart one of these anti-realist assumptions and show how it features as a crucial premise in a leading anti-naturalist argument, the Knowledge Argument.
  • Publication
    What in the World Could Correspond to Truth?
    (National Centre for Logical Investigation, 2000)
  • Publication
    Moral Realism, Meta-Ethical Pyrrhonism and Naturalism
    (Springer, 2008)
    This paper argues that naturalistic moral realism is vulnerable to a 'Hard Problem' that has gone largely unrecognised. This problem is to explain how natural moral properties are detected by the folk. I argue that Thomas Nagel's persuasive case for moral realism founded on the priority of first-order moral evaluations over second-order reflection is not conclusive - a certain type of moral agnosticism which I call Meta-Ethical Pyrrhonism can account for our inability to think of first-order moral evaluations as merely subjective or relative. Although unsatisfactory as metaphysics, Meta-Ethical Pyrrhonism is arguably all that a moral naturalist is entitled to by way of a meta-ethical theory.
  • Publication
    Mental States - Volume 1: Evolution, function, nature
    (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007) ;
    This volume is the first of a two-volume collection on mental states. The contributions to this volume focus on evolutionary and functional aspects of certain mental states in an effort to understand their nature, whereas the second volume is concerned with the question what language and language use reveals about cognitive structure and underlying cognitive categories. Questions that are addressed in this volume include: (i) how early did cognitive states of a sort rich enough to support communication and planning appear in the evolutionary history of hominids?; (ii) is it possible to infer the existence of sophisticated cognitive states from evidence of tool use?; (iii) how do mental states represent situations or events or actions?; (iv) how can we theoretically model mental states?; (v) how can we simulate mental states and their functions?; and (vi) what insights can conceptual categorisation - both linguistic and non-linguistic - give us into the organisation and structure of the mind and hence of mental states? The volume contains contributions from psychologists, linguists, artificial intelligence researchers, neuroscientists, archaeologists and philosophers, bringing together scholars from the diverse fields of cognitive science, or more specifically, the study of language and cognition. This reflects the provenance of the chapters, most of which were presented at the 'International Language and Cognition Conference', held in September 2004 at Pacific Bay Resort in Coffs Harbour, Australia.
  • Publication
    Truthmaker and its Variants
    (National Centre for Logical Investigation, 2002) ;