Language thought and literal meaning

PhD ThesisThe notion of literalness in linguistics is based on the following assumptions: Linguistic expressions are vehicle-meaning p airs (since literal meaning has to be the meaning of something). Linguistic expressions have to be cognised a nd used (especially uttered) in order for their meanings to be regarded as literally theirs. "Linguistie, vehicle-meaning relations are fixed and autonomous- - rather than having particular meanings in virtue of being used to express those meanings," linguistie' vehicle-meaning p airs are used to express certain meanings in virtue of having the meanings th at they have. This thesis criticises Chomsky's and Sperber and Wilson's attempts to establish the autonomy of "linguistie'vehicle-meaning pairs. I argue that " Both Chomsky and Sperber and Wilson fail to distinguish "linguistie' semantics from the "real" semantics of what "linguistic" vehicle-meaning pairs are used to express. " They persist in the idea that "linguistic" vehicles are specifically for being uttered (physically instantiated), thus defeating their own purpose of setting the linguistic absolutely apart from what it is used for. " Neither Chomsky's internalist conception of language nor Sperber and Wilson's relevance framework is able to account for the phenomenon of "language misuse", i.e. the use of a "linguistic" vehicle to express the "wrong" meaning. Burton-Roberts' representational conjecture is applied and developed in the presentation of an alternative non/ extra-linguistic account of "literal meaning" and "language use/ misuse". This account has it that neither "linguistic" vehicles nor "linguistic" vehicle-meaning relations are actually linguistic. It avoids the problems attending the notion of linguistic expressions as objects with sortally disjoint and arbitrarily conjoint properties (i.e. physically instantiable "vehicle" and mentally constituted "meaning"), and resolves the unease within Chomsky's Minimalist Program about the inclusion of phonology in I-language. Finally, by way of this resolution, I address some seemingly unrelated issues concerning vehicle-less "meanings" and the relations between l anguage,thought and consciousness

The rise of Twelver Shi'ite externalism in Safavid Iran and its consolidation under 'Allama Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (1037/1627-1110/1699).

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Computer Simulations in Science and Engineering. Concept, Practices, Perspectives

This book addresses key conceptual issues relating to the modern scientific and engineering use of computer simulations. It analyses a broad set of questions, from the nature of computer simulations to their epistemological power, including the many scientific, social and ethics implications of using computer simulations. The book is written in an easily accessible narrative, one that weaves together philosophical questions and scientific technicalities. It will thus appeal equally to all academic scientists, engineers, and researchers in industry interested in questions related to the general practice of computer simulations

Mediated Cognition: Information Technologies and the Sciences of Mind

This dissertation investigates the interconnections between minds, media, and the cognitive sciences. It asks what it means for media to have effects upon the mind: do our tools influence the ways that we think? It considers what scientific evidence can be brought to bear on the question: how can we know and measure these effects? Ultimately, it looks to the looping pathways by which science employs technological media in understanding the mind, and the public comes to understand and respond to these scientific discourses. I contend that like human cognition itself, the enterprise of cognitive science is a deeply and distinctively mediated phenomenon. This casts a different light on contemporary debates about whether television, computers, or the Internet are changing our brains, for better or for worse. Rather than imagining media effects as befalling a fictive natural mind, I draw on multiple disciplines to situate mind and the sciences thereof as shaped from their origins through interaction with technology. Our task is then to interrogate the forms of cognition and attention fostered by different media, alongside their attendant costs and benefits. The first chapter positions this dissertation between the fields of media studies and STS, developing a case for the reality of media effects without the implication of technological determinism. The second considers the history of technological metaphor in scientific characterizations of the mind. The third section consists of three separate chapters on the history of cognitive science, presenting the core of my case for its uniquely mediated character. Across three distinct eras, what unifies cognitive science is the quest to understand the mind using computational systems, operating by turns as generative metaphors and tangible models. I then evaluate the contemporary cognitive-scientific research on the question of media effects, and the growing role of electronic media in science. My fifth and final section develops a content analysis: what is said in the media about the popular theory that media themselves, in one way or another, are causing attention deficit disorders? The work concludes with a summary and some reflections on mind, culture, technoscience and markets as recursively interwoven causal systems

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Critical Programming: Toward a Philosophy of Computing

Beliefs about the relationship between human beings and computing machines and their destinies have alternated from heroic counterparts to conspirators of automated genocide, from apocalyptic extinction events to evolutionary cyborg convergences. Many fear that people are losing key intellectual and social abilities as tasks are offloaded to the everywhere of the built environment, which is developing a mind of its own. If digital technologies have contributed to forming a dumbest generation and ushering in a robotic moment, we all have a stake in addressing this collective intelligence problem. While digital humanities continue to flourish and introduce new uses for computer technologies, the basic modes of philosophical inquiry remain in the grip of print media, and default philosophies of computing prevail, or experimental ones propagate false hopes. I cast this as-is situation as the post-postmodern network dividual cyborg, recognizing that the rational enlightenment of modernism and regressive subjectivity of postmodernism now operate in an empire of extended mind cybernetics combined with techno-capitalist networks forming societies of control. Recent critical theorists identify a justificatory scheme foregrounding participation in projects, valorizing social network linkages over heroic individualism, and commending flexibility and adaptability through life long learning over stable career paths. It seems to reify one possible, contingent configuration of global capitalism as if it was the reflection of a deterministic evolution of commingled technogenesis and synaptogenesis. To counter this trend I offer a theoretical framework to focus on the phenomenology of software and code, joining social critiques with textuality and media studies, the former proposing that theory be done through practice, and the latter seeking to understand their schematism of perceptibility by taking into account engineering techniques like time axis manipulation. The social construction of technology makes additional theoretical contributions dispelling closed world, deterministic historical narratives and requiring voices be given to the engineers and technologists that best know their subject area. This theoretical slate has been recently deployed to produce rich histories of computing, networking, and software, inform the nascent disciplines of software studies and code studies, as well as guide ethnographers of software development communities. I call my syncretism of these approaches the procedural rhetoric of diachrony in synchrony, recognizing that multiple explanatory layers operating in their individual temporal and physical orders of magnitude simultaneously undergird post-postmodern network phenomena. Its touchstone is that the human-machine situation is best contemplated by doing, which as a methodology for digital humanities research I call critical programming. Philosophers of computing explore working code places by designing, coding, and executing complex software projects as an integral part of their intellectual activity, reflecting on how developing theoretical understanding necessitates iterative development of code as it does other texts, and how resolving coding dilemmas may clarify or modify provisional theories as our minds struggle to intuit the alien temporalities of machine processes