Christopher Gauker

How to learn a language like a chimpanzee

Abstract This paper develops the hypothesis that languages may be learned by means of a kind of cause‐effect analysis. This hypothesis is developed through an examination of E. Sue Savage‐Rumbaughs research on the abilities of chimpanzees to learn to use symbols. Savage‐Rumbaugh herself tends to conceive of her work as aiming to demonstrate that chimpanzees are able to learn the Preferential function’ of symbols. Thus the paper begins with a critique of this way of viewing the chimpanzees achievements. The hypothesis that Savage‐Rumbaughs chimpanzees learn to use symbols by means of cause‐effect analysis is then supported through a detailed examination of the tasks they have learned to perform. Next, it is explained how language learning in humans might be conceptualized along similar lines. The final section attempts to explain how the pertinent cause‐effect analysis ought to be conceived.

Zero tolerance for pragmatics

The proposition expressed by a sentence is relative to a context. But what determines the content of the context? Many theorists would include among these determinants aspects of the speaker’s intention in speaking. My thesis is that, on the contrary, the determinants of the context never include the speaker’s intention. My argument for this thesis turns on a consideration of the role that the concept of proposition expressed in context is supposed to play in a theory of linguistic communication. To illustrate an alternative approach, I present an original theory of the reference of demonstratives according to which the referent of a demonstrative is the object that adequately and best satisfies certain accessibility criteria. Although I call my thesis zero tolerance for pragmatics, it is not an expression of intolerance for everything that might be called “pragmatics.”

Situated Inference versus Conversational Implicature

As Grice defined it, a speaker conversationally implicates that p only if the speaker expects the hearer to recognize that the speaker thinks that p. This paper argues that in the sorts of cases that Grice took as paradigmatic examples of conversational implicature there is in fact no need for the hearer to consider what the speaker might thus have in mind. Instead, the hearer might simply make an inference from what the speaker literally says and the situation in which the utterance takes place. In addition, a number of sources of the illusion of conversational implicatures in Grices sense are identified and diagnosed.

The principle of charity

Generically, the Principle of Charity is a methodological constraint on the attribution of belief. We suppose that interpretations respecting this principle yield better explanations of behavior than those that do not. Roughly, it says that, other things being equal, we ought to interpret a person as having reasonable beliefs. But what sort of reasonableness are we to attribute? And how does our adherence to this principle enhance the explanatory power of our attributions of belief? These are the questions I shall try to answer in this paper. They are important questions for two broad reasons: First, we need answers if we are to understand the nature of explanation in terms of in tentional states. Second, our account of the reasonableness we must attribute for the sake of explanation might shed some light on rationality per se. In order to give the problem some bite, I begin by considering several tempting but unsatisfactory articulations of the Principle of Charity.1 First, if we think of reason as serving truth, we might try:

Against stepping back : A critique of contextualist approaches to the semantic paradoxes

A number of philosophers have argued that the key to understanding the semantic paradoxes is to recognize that truth is essentially relative to context. All of these philosophers have been motivated by the idea that once a liar sentence has been uttered we can ‘step back’ and, from the point of view of a different context, judge that the liar sentence is true. This paper argues that this ‘stepping back’ idea is a mistake that results from failing to relativize truth to context in the first place. Moreover, context-relative liar sentences, such as ‘This sentence is not true in any context’ present a paradox even after truth has been relativized to context. Nonetheless, the relativization of truth to context may offer us the means to avoid paradox, if we can justifiably deny that a sentence about a context can be true in the very context it is about.

The Lockean Theory of Communication

As these quotations illustrate, philosophers who have little else in common may share a certain very general conception of linguistic communication. I will call this conception of communication the Lockean theory, although Lockes own account is only one of many versions. The defining tenet of the Lockean theory is that communication takes place when a hearer grasps some sort of mental object, distinct from the speakers words, that the speakers words express. This theory contrasts with the view that spoken languages are the very medium of a kind of thought of which overt speech is the most basic form. Different versions of the Lockean theory may differently define the mental objects that are supposed to be grasped in communication. Lockes own conception of these mental objects, which he called Ideas, is best understood in terms of the mental mechanisms in which they were engaged. Ideas are produced through sensation and reflection; the mind performs on them certain operations of compounding, comparing and abstracting (in a couple of senses); and they are joined together in propositions. In some ways, Locke seems to think of ideas as like pictures, to which he himself sometimes compares them (II, xxix, 8). Davidsons conception of the mental object is very different. He characterizes it as an intention, which the hearer is to recognize the speaker to have. Davidson has a great deal to say about intentions (1980), but he nowhere tells us exactly

UNIVERSAL INSTANTIATION: A STUDY OF THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN LOGIC

The rule of universal instantiation appears to be subject to counterexamples, although the rule of existential generalization is not subject to the same doubts. This paper is a survey of ways of responding to this problem, both conservative and revisionist. The conclusion drawn is that logical validity should be defined in terms of assertibility in a context rather than in terms of truth on an interpretation. Contexts are here defined, not in terms of the attitudes of the interlocutors, but in terms of the goals of conversation, and assertibility is explained in terms of cooperation.

Concepts are not icons

Carey speculates that the representations of core cognition are entirely iconic. However, this idea is undercut by her contention that core cognition includes concepts such as object and agency , which are employed in thought as predicates. If Carey had taken on board her claim that core cognition is iconic, very different hypotheses might have come into view.

Are there wordlike concepts too

Millikan proposes that there are mapping functions through which spoken sentences represent reality. Such mappings seem to depend on thoughts that words express and on concepts as components of such thoughts, but such concepts would conflict with Millikans other claims about concepts and language.

Semantics without reference.

A theory of reference may be either an analysis of reference or merely an account of the correct use of the verb «to refer». If we define the validity of arguments in the standard way, in terms of assignments of individuals and sets to the nonlogical vocabulary of the language, then, it is argued, we will be committed to seeking an analysis of reference. This paper shows how validity (i.e., semantic consequence) may be defined in a way that avoids the problems facing other alternatives to standard semantics and also permits a metalinguistic account of reference. The validity of arguments is treated as a matter of logical form, but validity for forms is defined on analogy with the definition of semantic consequence in truth-value semantics