Scientific Explanation: Putting Communication First

Scientific explanations must bear the proper relationship to the world: they must depict what, out in the world, is responsible for the explanandum. But explanations must also bear the proper relationship to their audience: they must be able to create human understanding. With few exceptions, philosophical accounts of explanation either ignore entirely the relationship between explanations and their audience or else demote this consideration to an ancillary role. In contrast, I argue that considering an explanation’s communicative role is crucial to any satisfactory account of explanation

The Notion of Action in Kotarbiński’s Praxeology

The aim of the paper is to recast main notions of Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s praxeolology in terms of Donald Davidson’s theory of action. The paper focuses also on ontological commitments of both theories. Though Kotarbiński did not admit events in his reistic ontology, in his praxeology conceived actions as compounded entities without any clue how to reduce the parts of action into things. I argue that Kotarbiński’s restrictive ontological reism cannot be maintained in case of praxeology, and propose to admit events as existing objects. This enables to simplify extremely complicated net of Kotarbiński’s concepts and to find the counterparts of the parts of action in Kotarbiński’s sense in Davidson’s theory of action

Epistemic Vigilance, Cautious Optimism and Sophisticated Understanding

Humans have developed a critical alertness to the believability and reliability of communication: epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al. 2010). It is responsible for trusting interlocutors and believing interpretations. But what is exactly its role in communication? This paper suggests that epistemic vigilance may trigger shifts from a default processing strategy driven by expectations of optimal relevance to more complex processing strategies. These would be enacted when hearers notice speakers’ linguistic mistakes, hearers realise that they have made interpretive mistakes or when hearers discover that speakers seek to mislead them to erroneous or unintended interpretations

Monastic hospitality : explorations

In a theoretical model, religious retreats are placed by Lynch (2005a) within the category of traditional commercial homes, noting that the essence of a commercial home is the use of the home as a vehicle for generating income. Lynch (2005b:539) describes the 'commercial home host' as "the principal contact whom the guest encounters when staying in the commercial home," and further states that "the host is central to the product experience in commercial homes. Successful stays from a guest perspective are dependent upon the quality of host-guest interactions" (Lynch 2005c:541). This chapter explores the provision of hospitality within Benedictine Monastries in order to contribute to insights on the commercial home, and starts by locating them within the context of literature on religious tourism and the umbrella term 'religious retreat house'

Communication strategies in Edward Albee's and Martin Walser's work : a comparative study

This thesis is based on a comparative study of plays by two contemporary authors: Die Zimmerschlacht and Ein fliehendes Pferd by the German author Martin Walser and A Delicate Balance by the American playwright Edward Albee. Critics have stressed the emphasis which both playwrights lay on dialogue as the driving force of their dramatic art. Hence an analysis with pragmatics appears particularly pertinent. I demonstrate that methods and findings from linguistic pragmatics applied to ordinary language are equally relevant to critical analysis of dramatic action. My work draws in a broad but targeted way on pragmatic devices mainly from three different studies: G. Leech, The Principles of Pragmatics, P. B. Brown and S. C. Levinson, Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage and P. Watzlawick, J. B. Bavelas, D. D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication. A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes. I elaborate on how the tenets of pragmatics expose levels of meanings and character’s motivations not immediately derivable from the surface structure of utterances. I aim to provide pragmatic devices to explore a character’s behaviour and communicational targets and also focus on the level of communication between playwrights and audiences. Not withstanding their cultural differences both authors reveal similarities in their approach. They are concerned with social reality and its effect on human relations. Although not overtly political the plays by the two authors clearly denounce the refusal of individuals to engage beyond their own interests as social conformism thereby suggesting the necessity of embracing a more tolerant and empathetic attitude. Language is shown to illustrate the individual struggle between social demands, private desire and demands of contemporary society

Greeting and leave-taking in Texas : perception of politeness norms by Mexican-Americans across sociolinguistic divides

textThe present study sheds light on how 16 Mexican-Americans residing in Texas perceive and follow politeness norms (e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1987; Fraser, 1990; Terkourafi, 2005) related to greetings and leave-takings in different cultural and linguistic contexts. Data from online questionnaires identify a significant difference in perceived level of social expectation (i.e. politeness) for employing the speech acts with Spanish- versus non-Spanish speakers. The data support previous research in identifying a sense of solidarity among Mexican-American extended families, but go further in suggesting that this bond extends to other Spanish-speaking acquaintances. Better understanding of these norms should facilitate inter-cultural exchanges between linguistic in- and out-group members.Spanish and Portugues

Taxonomy for Humans or Computers? Cognitive Pragmatics for Big Data

Criticism of big data has focused on showing that more is not necessarily better, in the sense that data may lose their value when taken out of context and aggregated together. The next step is to incorporate an awareness of pitfalls for aggregation into the design of data infrastructure and institutions. A common strategy minimizes aggregation errors by increasing the precision of our conventions for identifying and classifying data. As a counterpoint, we argue that there are pragmatic trade-offs between precision and ambiguity that are key to designing effective solutions for generating big data about biodiversity. We focus on the importance of theory-dependence as a source of ambiguity in taxonomic nomenclature and hence a persistent challenge for implementing a single, long-term solution to storing and accessing meaningful sets of biological specimens. We argue that ambiguity does have a positive role to play in scientific progress as a tool for efficiently symbolizing multiple aspects of taxa and mediating between conflicting hypotheses about their nature. Pursuing a deeper understanding of the trade-offs and synthesis of precision and ambiguity as virtues of scientific language and communication systems then offers a productive next step for realizing sound, big biodiversity data services

Counselor Formation and Gatekeeping Best Practices

Counselor educators and supervisors contribute to students’ development while determining fitness for the profession. How we intervene can either help students work through internal conflicts that prevent them from embracing professional skills and dispositions or undermine that process. Facilitators will interactively engage participants in the application of a developmental framework that maximizes students’ dissonance in service to their counselor identity development process