Review of The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker (2008) (review revised 2019)

I start with some famous comments by the philosopher (psychologist) Ludwig Wittgenstein because Pinker shares with most people (due to the default settings of our evolved innate psychology) certain prejudices about the functioning of the mind, and because Wittgenstein offers unique and profound insights into the workings of language, thought and reality (which he viewed as more or less coextensive) not found anywhere else. There is only reference to Wittgenstein in this volume, which is most unfortunate considering that he was the most brilliant and original analyst of language. In the last chapter, using the famous metaphor of Plato’s cave, he beautifully summarizes the book with an overview of how the mind (language, thought, intentional psychology) –a product of blind selfishness, moderated only slightly by automated altruism for close relatives carrying copies of our genes (Inclusive Fitness)--works automatically, but tries to end on an upbeat note by giving us hope that we can nevertheless employ its vast capabilities to cooperate and make the world a decent place to live. Pinker is certainly aware of but says little about the fact that far more about our psychology is left out than included. Among windows into human nature that are left out or given minimal attention are math and geometry, music and sounds, images, events and causality, ontology (classes of things or what we know), most of epistemology (how we know), dispositions (believing, thinking, judging, intending etc.) and the rest of intentional psychology of action, neurotransmitters and entheogens, spiritual states (e.g, satori and enlightenment, brain stimulation and recording, brain damage and behavioral deficits and disorders, games and sports, decision theory (incl. game theory and behavioral economics), animal behavior (very little language but a billion years of shared genetics). Many books have been written about each of these areas of intentional psychology. The data in this book are descriptions, not explanations that show why our brains do it this way or how it is done. How do we know to use the sentences in their various way (i.e., know all their meanings)? This is evolutionary psychology that operates at a more basic level –the level where Wittgenstein is most active. And there is scant attention to the context in which words are used = an arena which Wittgenstein pioneered. Nevertheless, this is a classic work and with these cautions is still well worth reading. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019

Locke and Leibniz on Freedom and Necessity

Locke and Leibniz are often classified as proponents of compatibilist theories of human freedom, since both maintain that freedom is consistent with determinism and that the difference between being and not being free turns on how one is determined. However, we will argue in this paper that their versions of compatibilism are essentially different and that they have significantly distinct commitments to compatibilism. To this end, we will first analyze the definitions and examples for freedom and necessity that Locke and Leibniz present in sections 8-13 of chapter 21 of the Essay on Human Understanding and the Nouveaux essais respectively, and then conjecture how Locke and Leibniz would have continued the discussion, if they had had the opportunity to engage in an exchange of opinions. In this way, we believe, one will be in a position to understand why Leibniz thinks that Locke’s discussion of freedom “est un des plus prolixes et des plus subtils de son ouvrage.

The Football of Logic

An analogy is made between two rather different domains, namely: logic, and football. Starting from a comparative table between the two activities, an alternative explanation of logic is given in terms of players, ball, goal, and the like. Our main thesis is that, just as the task of logic is preserving truth from premises to the conclusion, footballers strive to keep the ball as far as possible until the opposite goal. Assuming this analogy may help think about logic in the same way as in dialogical logic, but it should also present truth-values in an alternative sense of speech-acts occurring in a dialogue. The relativity of truth-values is focused by this way, thereby leading to an additional way of logical pluralism

Harmony and modality

It is argued that the meaning of the modal connectives must be given inferentially, by the rules for the assertion of formulae containing them, and not semantically by reference to possible worlds. Further, harmony confers transparency on the inferentialist account of meaning, when the introduction-rule specifies both necessary and sufficient conditions for assertion, and the elimination-rule does no more than exhibit the consequences of the meaning so conferred. Hence, harmony is not to be identified with normalization, since the standard modal natural deduction rules, though normalizable, are not in this sense harmonious. Harmonious rules for modality have lately been formulated, using labelled deductive systems

Lying and Certainty

In the philosophical literature on the definition of lying, the analysis is generally restricted to cases of flat-out belief. This chapter considers the complex phenomenon of lies involving partial beliefs – beliefs ranging from mere uncertainty to absolute certainty. The first section analyses lies uttered while holding a graded belief in the falsity of the assertion, and presents a revised insincerity condition, requiring that the liar believes the assertion to be more likely to be false than true. The second section analyses assertions that express graded beliefs, exploring how mitigation and reinforcement can alter the insincerity conditions for lying. The last section considers the case of lies that attack certainty (knowledge-lies), understood as attempt to alter the hearer's graded belief

Necessity, a Leibnizian Thesis, and a Dialogical Semantics

In this paper, an interpretation of "necessity", inspired by a Leibnizian idea and based on the method of dialogical logic, is introduced. The semantic rules corresponding to such an account of necessity are developed, and then some peculiarities, and some potential advantages, of the introduced dialogical explanation, in comparison with the customary explanation offered by the possible worlds semantics, are briefly discussed

Karma Theory, Determinism, Fatalism and Freedom of Will

The so-called theory of karma is one of the distinguishing aspects of Hinduism and other non-Hindu south-Asian traditions. At the same time that the theory can be seen as closely connected with the freedom of will and action that we humans supposedly have, it has many times been said to be determinist and fatalist. The purpose of this paper is to analyze in some deepness the relations that are between the theory of karma on one side and determinism, fatalism and free-will on the other side. In order to do that, I shall use what has been described as the best formal approach we have to indeterminism: branching time theory. More specifically, I shall introduce a branching time semantic framework in which, among other things, statements such as “state of affairs e is a karmic effect of agent a”, “a wills it to be the case that e” and “e is inevitable” could be properly represented

TEACHER’S DIRECTIVE SPEECH ACT ON STRENGTHENING THE STUDENTS’ CHARACTER AT SMPS BUNDA MULIA SILIMAKUTA

Penelitian ini berkaitan dengan analisis tindak tutur direktif dari tuturan guru BK selama proses pembelajaran. Hal ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui jenis-jenis tindak tutur direktif guru terhadap penguatan karakter siswa dan jenis tindak tutur direktif guru yang paling dominan terhadap penguatan karakter siswa. Desain penelitian penelitian ini adalah deskriptif kualitatif. Ruang lingkup penelitian ini adalah fokus pada tindak tutur direktif. Penulis mengambil data dari ucapan-ucapan guru bimbingan dan konseling selama proses pembelajaran. Data penelitian ini adalah tipe urutan sajian frekuensi dominan dari kedua belas tipe tindak tutur direktif. Tindak tutur direktif menurut Searle & Vanderveken, (1985:37) menyatakan bahwa tindak tutur direktif mempunyai maksud adalah berusaha menyuruh orang lain melakukan sesuatu. Mereka mengungkapkan apa yang diinginkan pembicara. Dari analisis tersebut peneliti menemukan hasil; Terdapat 148 data atau ujaran dengan 12 jenis tindak tutur direktif yang diwujudkan sebagai berikut: memerintahkan 21 ucapan (14.18%), menceritakan 16 ucapan (10.81%), meminta 15 ucapan (10.13%), mengarahkan 14 ucapan (9.45%), melarang 14 ucapan (9,45%), melarang 14 ucapan (9,45%), menasihati 13 ucapan (8,78%), meminta 13 ucapan (8,78%), menyarankan 10 ucapan (6,75%), mendesak 8 ucapan (5,40%), memperingatkan 6 ucapan (4,05%), dan merekomendasikan 4 ungkapan (2,70%). Dan jenis tindak tutur direktif yang paling dominan digunakan guru BK dalam proses belajar mengajar adalah perintah dengan jumlah tuturan sebanyak 21 kali (14,18%)

Act-Aware Slot-Value Predicting in Multi-Domain Dialogue State Tracking

As an essential component in task-oriented dialogue systems, dialogue state tracking (DST) aims to track human-machine interactions and generate state representations for managing the dialogue. Representations of dialogue states are dependent on the domain ontology and the user's goals. In several task-oriented dialogues with a limited scope of objectives, dialogue states can be represented as a set of slot-value pairs. As the capabilities of dialogue systems expand to support increasing naturalness in communication, incorporating dialogue act processing into dialogue model design becomes essential. The lack of such consideration limits the scalability of dialogue state tracking models for dialogues having specific objectives and ontology. To address this issue, we formulate and incorporate dialogue acts, and leverage recent advances in machine reading comprehension to predict both categorical and non-categorical types of slots for multi-domain dialogue state tracking. Experimental results show that our models can improve the overall accuracy of dialogue state tracking on the MultiWOZ 2.1 dataset, and demonstrate that incorporating dialogue acts can guide dialogue state design for future task-oriented dialogue systems.Comment: Published in Spoken Dialogue Systems I, Interspeech 2021. Code is now publicly available on Github: https://github.com/youlandasu/ACT-AWARE-DS

Directive Illocutionary Act Produce by the Characters in Cruella Movie

AbstractThis study aims to determine the types of the directive act and its function found in the American Disney movie Cruella, released in 2021. The study was conducted with the observation method and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. The researcher collected the data through several steps, such as watching the movie several times, taking note of the utterance indicated as a directive act, and classifying the utterance into the types of the directive. The theory proposed by Searle (1979) was applied to analyze the data. Therefore, this study found that 51 utterances were considered directive acts. The data is divided into five types, including ask (16), suggest (10), forbid (7), order (9), and request (3). From the total data, asking became the most frequent frequency in the movie since the character frequently used the question to get the hearer to give an answer or the information. The occurrence of suggestions on the second rank of total data found follows it. The speaker produces the type of suggestion to suggest the hearer do an action. AbstrakTindak Ilokusi Directif yang Diucapkan oleh Tokoh pada Film Cruella Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menemukan tipe tindak ilokusi direktif dan fungsinya pada film produksi Disney, Amerika yang berjudul Cruella yang tayang di tahun 2021. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan metode observasi dan dianalisis menggunakan metode kuantitatif dan kualitatif. Peneliti mengumpulkan data melalui berbagai tahapan, seperti menonton film Cruella beberapa kali, mencatat ucapan yang terindikasi sebagai tindak ilokusi direktif, dan mengklasifikasikan ucapan tersebut kedalam tipe-tipe tindak ilokusi direktif. Teori yang dicetuskan oleh Searle (1979) diaplikasikan untuk menganalisis data. Dengan demikian, hasil penelitian menunjukan terdapat 51 ujaran yang dianggap sebagai tindak tutur direktif. Data dibagi menjadi lima tipe yaitu pertanyaan (16), saran (10), larangan (7), perintah (9), permintaan (3). Dari total data, tipe pertanyaan menjadi tipe yang paling sering muncul di film karena tokoh pada film sering menggunakan pertanyaan untuk membuat pendengar memberikan jawaban atau informasi. Jumlah tipe pertanyaan diikuti oleh penggunaan dari tipe saran yang berada pada posisi kedua sebagai tipe yang paling sering muncul dari total data. Pembicara menyampaikan sesuatu dengan saran untuk menyarankan pendengar dalam melakukan sesuatu