HAR SPRÄKET EN ANVÄNDNING?

Enligt en utbredd uppfattning består språklig kommunikation i att talarenanvänder språkliga uttryck som ett medel att åstadkomma en effekt hosIyssnaren. Detta förutsätter att yttrandet och ta/situationen kan identifierasoberoende av varandra, dvs att relationen mel/an dem är extern, en förutsättningsom delas av behaviorister och generativgrammatiker (Chomsky). Uppsatsen ärett försök att visa att förutsättningen är ohål/bar: relationen mel/an ett yttrandeoch dess användning är intern, dvs de konstituerar varandra ömsesidigt. Aenasidan är beskrivningen av effekten av ett yttrande beroende av vilket yttrandesom gjorts, å andra sidan är det yttrande talaren kan sägas ha gjort beroende avvad talaren gjorde med yttrandet. Detta innebär att det inte är språkreglerna somsätter oss i stånd att förstå det som sägs, utan det är vår förståe/se av det somsägs som sätter oss i stånd att til/ämpa språkregler på det.Nyckelord: kommunikation, pragmatik, generativ grammatik, språkfilosofiAccording to a prevalent view, linguistic communication consists in using linguisticexpressions as a means of bringing about an effect in a listener. This view presupposesthat the utterance and the speech situation can be identified independent1y ofoneanother, i.e. the relation between them is external. This presupposition is shared bybehaviourists and generative grammarians (Chomsky). It is here argued that the presuppositionis untenable: an utterance and its use are internally related, i.e. they aremutually constitutive. On the one hand, the description of the effect of an utterance isdependent on what utterance was made, and on the other hand what utterance thespeaker can be said to have made is dependent on what the speaker was doing inspeaking. This means that mies of language are not what enables us to understand whatis said, but rather our understanding ofwhat is said enables us to apply mies of languageto it.Keywords: communication, pragmatics, generative grammar, philosophy of languag

Giving Hostages to Irrationality?

Peter Winch, following Wittgenstein, was critical of the notion that philosophy could pass judgment on matters like the sense of words, the rationality of actions, or the validity of arguments. His critique had both what we might call a local strand – the insight that criteria of thought and action are not universal but vary between cultures and between practices – and a personal strand – the insight that those local criteria are ultimately given shape through the particular applications made of them by individuals. These strands are prominent, for instance, in Winch’s discussion of cross-cultural understanding as well as his treatment of the distinction between valid reasoning and illicit persuasion

Spinoza on Ethics and Understanding, by Peter Winch

Review of Peter Winch, Spinoza on Ethics and Understanding

Salient Visual Features to Help Close the Loop in 6D SLAM

One fundamental problem in mobile robotics research is _Simultaneous Localization and Mapping_ (SLAM): A mobile robot has to localize itself in an unknown environment, and at the same time generate a map of the surrounding area. One fundamental part of SLAM algorithms is loop closing: The robot detects whether it has reached an area that has been visited before, and uses this information to improve the pose estimate in the next step. In this work, visual camera features are used to assist closing the loop in an existing 6 degree of freedom SLAM (6D SLAM) architecture. For our robotics application we propose and evaluate several detection methods, including salient region detection and maximally stable extremal region detection. The detected regions are encoded using SIFT descriptors and stored in a database. Loops are detected by matching of the images' descriptors. A comparison of the different feature detection methods shows that the combination of salient and maximally stable extremal regions suggested by Newman and Ho performs moderately

Relationships of gut microbiota, short-chain fatty acids, inflammation, and the gut barrier in Parkinson's disease

Background Previous studies have reported that gut microbiota, permeability, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), and inflammation are altered in Parkinson's disease (PD), but how these factors are linked and how they contribute to disease processes and symptoms remains uncertain. This study sought to compare and identify associations among these factors in PD patients and controls to elucidate their interrelations and links to clinical manifestations of PD. Methods Stool and plasma samples and clinical data were collected from 55 PD patients and 56 controls. Levels of stool SCFAs and stool and plasma inflammatory and permeability markers were compared between patients and controls and related to one another and to the gut microbiota. Results Calprotectin was increased and SCFAs decreased in stool in PD in a sex-dependent manner. Inflammatory markers in plasma and stool were neither intercorrelated nor strongly associated with SCFA levels. Age at PD onset was positively correlated with SCFAs and negatively correlated with CXCL8 and IL-1 beta in stool. Fecal zonulin correlated positively with fecal NGAL and negatively with PD motor and non-motor symptoms. Microbiota diversity and composition were linked to levels of SCFAs, inflammatory factors, and zonulin in stool. Certain relationships differed between patients and controls and by sex. Conclusions Intestinal inflammatory responses and reductions in fecal SCFAs occur in PD, are related to the microbiota and to disease onset, and are not reflected in plasma inflammatory profiles. Some of these relationships are distinct in PD and are sex-dependent. This study revealed potential alterations in microbiota-host interactions and links between earlier PD onset and intestinal inflammatory responses and reduced SCFA levels, highlighting candidate molecules and pathways which may contribute to PD pathogenesis and clinical presentation and which warrant further investigation.Peer reviewe

Wittgenstein on the Nature of Aesthetic Remarks

&nbsp