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Convention and intention: a defence of internationality against meaning-relativism
In the dissertation are considered a number of ways in which one may discern, write and analyse
conventions and intentions for the illocutionary forces of speech acts, and meanings, senses and
references for statements and utterances, with the objective of suggesting alternatives to what is dubbed
meaning-relativism. It is argued that the paradigm of the explicit performative is inexpedient, for it
need not be considered the model of the congruence between content and force in an illocution, and the
scepticism evinced by Derrida regarding the possibility and purpose of writing such conventions is
correlatively challenged. (Discussion of respective arguments for the writing of senses and references
for statements and utterances in truth-conditional semantics occupies most of chapter I, and develops
themes shared with the discussion of speech acts contained in the introduction, and picked up in
chapters II-IV. Derrida sets up qualitatively similar arguments in his study of the use of indexical or
demonstrative expressions, considered in relation to Fregean semantics and Husserlian phenomenology
in chapter I sections 2 and 3). The central thesis presented makes both a substantive argument and a
related metaphilosophical point: firstly, the problems of indeterminable intentions and of non-saturable
conventions can be resolved, and the fount of Derrida's (and Rorty's) work, viz. the failure of
intentionality to mediate, or orientate, communication, self-consciousness and meaning, is contested by
the theory offered, a theory, in the second point, rendering profitless Rorty's distinction between the
'objective knowledge' of traditional systematic (semantical) philosophy and less privileged discourse
('edifying' or 'historicist' philosophy).Derrida denies that the meanings given to the word 'communication', and vouchsafing the
metaphorical application to definitions in semantics, semiotics and 'real' or 'gestural' collocution, can
be settled by a priori definitions, or conventions. The consensus required to direct each such
convention of communication, he argues, could never be found, or would remain irredeemably
metaphorical, as the incomplete and illegitimate extension of a paradigm of rule or law to which it
could never attain. This may be seen in the reshaping of speech acts in indexical, demonstrative and
quantificational constructions, in the estrangement from speakers' intention brought by appearance in
quotational contexts, and in the tolerance of insincerity, conditions rendered ubiquitous, Derrida
continues, by the extensions of 'ideal' speech situations tolerated by writing. Derrida asks how writing
and communication may confront these problems, and, a related point, how intentions in writing and
communication can be read off from their reports in conventional (paradigmatically explicit
performative) formulae. The effect of the relativisation to non-literal, fictional, or quotational contexts
for Derrida, is to render incomplete all conventions and motivating intentions for locutions and
illocutions, for they are perennially spliced to constructions for which they cannot account, and to the
vocalisation of intentions indefeasibly more complex than those for which they were written. The
arguments of chapters II-IV consider the ways in which Grice, Strawson, McDowell, Searle and Lewis
address these problems, and the conclusion is drawn that conventions and intentions for locutions and
illocutions can be written, via Lewis' conventions, without presupposition of any standard to which
they must conform, and without the inevitable relativisation to literal and non-literal, fictional, or
quotational contexts. (There is, it should be said, insufficient attention given to Derrida's reasons for
holding that the explicit performative is the exemplar of a statement with illocutionary force).Rorty's arguments against theories of intentionality exhibit a similar motivation and tenor. Rorty
denies that mentality, in its functioning and in its description, carries processes apt to be described by
intentions and conventions, and his work is considered in the second section of the introduction. There
is no problem of intentionality for Rorty, because man's faculties and operations with knowledge and
language are, in their complexity, irreducible to cognitive or 'representationalisf models; there is, he
argues, nothing gained by imposing such structures. An epistemology and a philosophy of mind can be
written for man without any call upon 'representationalisf theories, and Rorty makes the case for a
Deweyan, pragmatist conception of knowledge as justified belief in conjectures, best guesses, surmises
and opinions that help '...us to do what we want to do'. (In chapter IV this is compared to the
derivation and enduring of a convention as conceived by Lewis). To suggest difficult cases for Rorty's
survey of systematic and edifying philosophy appeal is made to Leibniz as both a systematic
metaphysician and yet as a critic of the Cartesian and Lockean traditions to which Rorty objects.
Analogues of the details of Leibniz's response to dualism are found in Deleuze, and the role and
importance, in any theory of intentionality countenancing possiblia, of notions of compatibility,
incompatibility, compossibility and incompossibility, are presented. The applications of a possible
worlds theory of intentionality are explored in chapter I sections 3 and 4, and the discussions raise an
incidental matter of some importance: the desire throughout equally to consider the lessons of the
semantical and the phenomenological traditions, with the ambition of, at the very least, intimating that
Rorty's caricatures do no useful work. One example must suffice for illustration: in section 2 Evans'
arguments concerning the notion of the mediation of sense by reference in Frege's semantics are
considered, and, in section 3, an application of his conclusions made to matters derived from a
discussion of Husserlian noema. It is shown that one can, by the selfsame reasoning, derive a case,
contra Derrida, for conventions of meaning in a truth-conditional semantics.In chapter I section 1 the case is made for an extensional semantics as conceived by Davidson, by
way of intimating a means of defining conventions for language without the presupposition of standard,
constituent or enduring meanings. Anomalous monism is presented as a theory of intentionality holding
none of the concerns that, Rorty argues, such theories inevitably raise; it is palpably not a
'representationalisf or dualist theory, and is a powerful response to typically Rortyan post-structuralist
scepticism concerning meaning and truth. The debts of anomalous monism to Tarski's truth definition,
and of the informational theory advocated in chapter I section 3 to principles of charity, are defined,
and the prospect mooted of describing a possible worlds theory of intentionality for distributed systems
as a development of models provided by Tarski semantics. (Reasons for advocating an informational
theory are explored also in relation to Lewis' description of the structures of convention and of possible
worlds). In recommending anomalous monism as a theory of intentionality Davidson allows no strict
psychophysical laws between mental and physical; the mental and the physical perennially fulfil
'disparate commitments'; the irreducibility of the mental derives neither from the property of
intentionality, for such interdependence is compatible with there being a correct way to interpret
speakers without relativisation to conflicting translation manuals, nor from the existence of many
equally plausible manuals, for this is compatible with their arbitrary selection: the contrast aptly sets up
the choice between Kripke or situation semantics and Tarski semantics.In section 2 Evans' arguments for the role of singular terms in Fregean semantics are presented, the
better to make a case, in section 3, against Derrida's objections to the possibility of achieving the
mediation of sense by reference or context in Husserlian phenomenology. The notion, central to
Fregean semantics, of the context of a sentence as the modulus of meaning, is soundly challenged by
Evans, for, he shows, the sense of singular terms in Fregean semantics need not be given in the
determination by a reference: singular terms (empty or not) can carry sense without the mediation of a
reference, in literal and fictional contexts alike. In section 3 the correspondence between Fregean Sinn
and Husserlian noema is presented, specifically to make the case that intentional acts do not require the
mediation to which Derrida objects. Conditions as strict as Derrida demands of Sinne and noema do
indeed make Fregean semantics and Husserlian phenomenology unworkable as theories of
intentionality, but one need not countenance such strictness. It is argued that Hintikka shows a way in
which Husserl's difficulties with a foundational phenomenological notion, namely that reduction reveal
all mediating noematic acts as open to consciousness and reflection, can be resolved, and consequently
that Husserl's equivocations regarding the presence and importance of hyle in connecting up sensation
and sense can be eliminated. Arguing against a conception of intentionality as mediated or directed
there is suggested, as a sound and fruitful alternative, an informational (or intensional) theory, one, it is
noted, allaying the fears of Sartre and Ricoeur regarding hyle and the presentness to consciousness and
cognition of perceptual acts. A connection to Merleau-Ponty and his work on intentionality and the
situated body is ventured, aiming to compel the abandonment of Husserl's form-matter distinction; for
Merleau-Ponty matter always contains and precedes form; the perceived world constitutes the basis of
rationality, value and existence, even a 'nascent logos'. (There is missing a compelling argument to say
that the intrinsic intentionality or mediation of hyle allows that senses may arise without the mediation
of a noema as do singular terms in Fregean semantics, as per the discussion of section 2).The description of possible states of affairs in worlds as instantiating, with greater or lesser success,
the constitution of the actual world {viz. that of the speaker), requires a means of discerning the ways in
which reports of states of affairs can be declared true of the world or incorrect or false, and it is the
burden of section 4 to suggest a way in which this may be provided. Developing Hintikka's possible
worlds theory in which descriptions of sense are descriptions of possible states of affairs, the picture
theory of the early Wittgenstein is considered for its contention that statements reporting possible states
of affairs can be proxies for the state of affairs themselves, or substitutes for their direct experience,
sharing as they do, the logical form of the atomic structure of the world in which the statements are
made. If accurate, a report both mirrors, with all due Leibnizean conditions on compossibility, the state
of affairs described, and, it is argued, limns the forms in which sense-data may cognitively be received:
in Wittgensteinian terms, as always under the aspect of states of affairs or ways of seeing. (This is,
again in response to Rorty, an avowedly 'representationalist' theory. There are, it should be said, a
number of equivocations, in both sections 3 and 4, on 'sense-data', 'sensation' and 'sense'). The
argument of Hintikka and Hintikka, that the lessons of Husserlian phenomenology are evident in the
work of the early Wittgenstein is broached, and some of the themes of the theory of intentionality as
developed in his middle period works considered.Another source of arguments against Rorty is examined in chapter I section 5, arising from his
advocating Quine's holism as the best response to theories of intentionality countenancing necessary
conditions of linguistic and mental representation and analyticity, and from Quine's reply that his claim
that there is no first philosophy is not a naturalistic but a holistic claim. Quine's stimulus and response
theory of meaning is presented, and the argument made that he cannot disregard intentionality, but
must appeal to what Christopher Norris calls 'a priori structures of mind', provided in Quine's late
acquiescence to anomalous monism. Quine is, on Rorty's terms, an historicist, offering, in his holistic
theory of meaning and knowledge, an eminently pragmatist position, and it is argued that while this
should be well taken, it need not engender scepticism about meanings and intentions or repudiation of
the semantical tradition. The voices of the excluded for which Rorty makes the case are surely to be
heard, but not at the price of an unthinking relativism or anti-realism. The debt of Davidsonian holism
to semantical and pragmatic theories for the writing of the cooperative function of the principle of
charity (in which there is equally no first philosophy but in which there are conventions of practice),
reveals Davidson's debt to Grice, and the details of Grice's work are considered in chapter II.
A number of ways in which the content and force of a speech act may be written, divined and
analysed are surveyed in chapter H The discussion is focused by examination and criticism of Grice's
theory of meaning intentions and of critical work on Grice and Gricean theory, and the need is
established for enduring (or, as per Grice, 'timeless') conventions for meanings in communication.
There are a number of matters which would be recast in a differently formulated argument, but the
important matter to be taken from the discussion arises in Strawson's response to Grice in his work on
truth theories and speech act conventions and intentions. Strawson writes that Austin's notion of the
form of the explicit performative is not the unequivocal, unambivalent formulation to which Derrida
cleaves in interpretation, and that there are two pertinent facts to be noted regarding Austin's theory of
illocutions. Firstly, it is sufficient but not necessary that a verb being the name of an illocutionary act
permits it to appear in the first person indicative as an explicit performative: Strawson illustrates his
point with reference to a plethora of counter-examples to make the case that there are prototypical
illocutionary acts that can have no performative formula. (Skinner gives a taxonomy of central cases).
Secondly, Strawson considers that Austin was fully aware ofthis, for he sees that, in the affirmation of
the conventional nature of illocutions, explicitly in contrast to the production of perlocutionary effects,
Austin is never unequivocal. Indeed, on the first statement of the conventionality of illocutions,
Austin's profound insights regarding the performative and its functions are importantly qualified: he
writes that illocutionary force is conventional in the sense that it can in some singular cases be made
explicit by the performative formula, and, with regard to prototypical illocutions without performative
constructions, Strawson examines the verity that there exists an insufficiently understood
supererogation in the potential force of an illocution, a surplus of what is called, in an awkward
portmanteau, extra-linguistic convention.Strawson draws a distinction in light of these remarks between the semantically-determined
conventions of a locution, those, say, determining a single, unitary illocutionary force, and their nonsemantically-determined conventions (being those that permit the designation of an illocution when no
performative is appropriate, or compel its capacity to articulate other illocutionary forces when used in
different contexts, or in quantificational, demonstrative constructions). As Strawson writes, the forces
not exhausted by semantically-determined meaning (the non-semantically determined conventions)
may themselves be determined by conventions (those of mutual, social coordination, collocution and,
following Davidson, of charity), and it is discussions arising from matters relating to this thesis that
occupy the rest of the dissertation. Chapter IV describes Lewis' account of the emergence of
conventions for communication and for tensed and mood-relative language from such elemental
notions of mutual, social coordination, but to complete chapter II an argument is considered to the end
that in cases in which expression in no abiding conventional, performative formula is applicable or
possible, a speaker can make clear his intended meaning. Millikan writes that speakers may be thought
of as fulfilling not intentions but 'purposes', the latter being reproduced functions or figures good for
communication, and completed by further repeated acts of mutual recognition by hearers; by virtue of
being repeated and disseminated such figures become established as means of achieving relevant
purposes, while requiring nothing of a paradigm or archetype of literal or semantically-determined
illocutionary force. New means of achieving communication may emerge or become attached to
established means, but this is only by grant of mutual agreement on terms, and not to the discerning of
a priori standards; non-literal illocutions are, for Millikan, divined in context or found to do no
enduring, useful work and classified accordingly. The Millikan arguments are given too much space,
their points being better made by Strawson and Lewis, to the discussion of whose work they still serve
as a prelude. The argument of the chapter, and indeed the deeper exploration of themes from Derrida,
might better have examined the debt of McDowell's work on meaning and intentions to Tarskian truth
theories, a debt that significantly tempers Strawson's doubts regarding Davidson's anomalous monism;
nevertheless, the strength of the argument made against Derrida and Rorty is that Davidson, Grice and
Lewis write an analogue of Strawson's distinction into their theories, while it yet eludes Derrida, and
vitiates his work on convention and intention.Chapter in is an examination both of the detail of Searle's theory of illocutionary force, and, with
greater focus, of the roles of conventions of semantically and non-semantically determined illocutions.
It is shown that Searle's theory contains a core, fundamental ambiguity. One is asked to consider again
illocutions articulated in locutions, both those whose force is fully denoted in a description of their
semantically-determined content (that is, paradigmatically, in explicit performative formulae), and
those locutions that may instantiate more than one illocutionary force in discrepant contexts (or the
illocutionary forces of which may fulfil more than one non-semantically-determined role). A summary
of the argument made against Searle follows: a sentence (Sa), the semantical rules of which fully
determine or exhaust the force of the utterance (U), may also determine the force of an utterance (Sb)
in a context (C), one which may, in another context, articulate another illocutionary, non-semantically
determined force. This is so by Searle's principle of expressibility, to every detail of which the
argument holds Searle; the principle says that for any meaning and for any speaker, whenever the
speaker intends the meaning in a speech act, it is the case that there may be given an exact expression
or formulation of the meaning (one might suppose that this is, again, the explicit performative). On this
the meaning of (Sb) in C is fully determined by the sentence of (Sa), or the 'exact expression' of the
force of the utterance (Sb) in C. By an application of a Leibniz's law type equation, that (Sa) is an
utterance which fully determines the illocutionary force of (Sb) in C entails that the meaning of the
utterance (Sa) is equivalent to the meaning of the utterance of (Sa) in C. From Searle's addition, viz.
that all sentences contain at least one illocutionary act device, and the argument that the proposition of
(Sa) entails that of (Sb) in C, a similar determination of illocutionary force (from (Sb) to (Sa)) does not
follow, (Sb) bearing the force of potentially many locutions. In the idioms of critical work on Searle, a
speaker may mean more than he says in a speech act, owing to the articulation of illocutionary force in
discrepant contexts, but he must always mean as much as he says: as Searle has it, he must report at
least the force of one illocutionary act device. By the argument, the meaning of (Sb) in C is exactly
expressed by an utterance of (Sa), and if the proposition (p) expressed by (Sa) entails the proposition
expressed by (Sb) in C, then pU(Sa) is equivalent to pU(Sb). The thesis motivating the argument
questions whether Searle could accept that the utterance of a sentence (fully semantically-determined)
can determine the forces of utterances in non-semantically determined contextsThe chapter concludes with an uneven consideration of Searle's later work on speech act
conventions. Searle argues that a type of speech acts, dubbed declarations, and in which semantically determined content fully determines the act's illocutionary force, function as models of the way in
which conventions arise for locutions and illocutions. Again, the fullest treatment of the ways in which
illocutions may be conventional is taken up in chapter IV; in III the structure of declarations is
examined for its consequences for study of the conventionality of locutions. Declarations may, Searle
continues, require the Austinian (extra-linguistic) conditions on appropriate utterance, viz. that speakers
be
Evaluation of the Heritage Lottery Fund Landscape Partnership Programme: report to the Heritage Lottery Fund
Performance, emissions, and physical characteristics of a rotating combustion aircraft engine
The RC2-75, a liquid cooled two chamber rotary combustion engine (Wankel type), designed for aircraft use, was tested and representative baseline (212 KW, 285 BHP) performance and emissions characteristics established. The testing included running fuel/air mixture control curves and varied ignition timing to permit selection of desirable and practical settings for running wide open throttle curves, propeller load curves, variable manifold pressure curves covering cruise conditions, and EPA cycle operating points. Performance and emissions data were recorded for all of the points run. In addition to the test data, information required to characterize the engine and evaluate its performance in aircraft use is provided over a range from one half to twice its present power. The exhaust emissions results are compared to the 1980 EPA requirements. Standard day take-off brake specific fuel consumption is 356 g/KW-HR (.585 lb/BHP-HR) for the configuration tested
An extreme ultraviolet spectrometer experiment for the Shuttle Get Away Special Program
An extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectrometer experiment operated successfully during the STS-7 mission in an experiment to measure the global and diurnal variation of the EUV airglow. The spectrometer is an F 3.5 Wadsworth mount with mechanical collimator, a 75 x 75 mm grating, and a bare microchannel plate detector providing a spectral resolution of 7 X FWHM. Read-out of the signal is through discrete channels or resistive anode techniques. The experiment includes a microcomputer, 20 Mbit tape recorder, and a 28V, 40 Ahr silver-zinc battery. It is the first GAS payload to use an opening door. The spectrometer's 0.1 x 4.2 deg field of view is pointed vertically out of the shuttle bay. During the STS-7 flight data were acquired continuously for a period of 5 hours and 37 minutes, providing spectra of the 570 A to 850 A wavelength region of the airglow. Five diurnal cycles of the 584 A emission of neutral helium and the 834 A emission of ionized atomic oxygen were recorded. The experiment also recorded ion events and pressure pulses associated with thruster firings. The experiment is to fly again on Mission 41-F
Scanning Electron Microscopic Observations of the Canine Inner Ear
The sensory epithelia of the inner ear of the dog have been investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The surface appearance of the cristae ampullares of the semicircular canals and of the macula utriculi are very similar to other mammalian species. The crista ampullaris of the anterior vertical semicircular canal is divided by a non-sensory septum cruciatum, found in cats and rats but not, for example, in man. The vestibular sensory cells possess two distinct types of stereocilia, one is thick and rigid appearing, the other is thin and limp. Neither type of stereocilium is restricted to a particular hair cell type.
From SEM views of the undersurface of the tectorial membrane of the cochlea we show evidence that some inner hair cell stereocilia may be attached to the tectorial membrane. This observation is made only in middle to upper cochlear regions (those subserving transduction of low frequencies of sound)
Visible and near-ultraviolet spectroscopy at Thule AFB (76.5 N) from January 28 - February 15, 1988
Near-ultraviolet and visible spectrographs identical to those employed at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (77.8 S) during the austral spring seasons of 1986 and 1987 were used to study the stratosphere above Thule, Greenland (76.5 N) during early spring, 1988. Observations were carried out both at night using the direct moon as a light source, and during the day by collecting the scattered light from the zenith sky when solar zenith angles were less than about 94.5 degrees. Excellent meteorological conditions prevailed in the troposphere and stratosphere at Thule. Surface weather was extremely clear over most of the period, facilitating measurements of the direct light from the moon. The lower stratospheric arctic polar vortex was located very near Thule throughout the observing period, and temperature at the 30 mbar level were typically below -80 C above Thule, according to the National Meteorological Center daily analyses. Thus conditions were favorable for polar stratospheric cloud formation above Thule. Total column ozone abundances were about 350 to 400 Dobson units, and did not suggest a clear temporal trend over the observing period. Stratospheric nitrogen dioxide measurements were complicated by the presence of a large component of tropospheric pollution on many occasions. Stratospheric nitrogen dioxide could be identified on most days using the absorption in the scattered light from the zenith sky, which greatly enhances the stratospheric airmass while suppressing the tropospheric contribution. These measurements suggest that the total vertical column abundance of nitrogen dioxide present over Thule in February was extremely low, sometimes as low as 3 x 10 to the 14th per sq cm. The abundance of nitrogen dioxide increased systemically from about 3 x 10 to the 14th in late January to 1.0 x 10 to the 15th per sq cm in mid-February, perhaps because of photolysis of N2O5 in the upper part of the stratosphere, near 25 to 35 km
Near UV atmospheric absorption measurements from the DC-8 aircraft during the 1987 airborne Antarctic ozone experiment
During the Airborne Antarctic Ozone Experiment from 28 August to 30 September 1987 near UV zenith scattered sky measurements were made over Antarctic from the NASA DC-8 aircraft using a one third m spectrograph equipped with a diode-array detector. Scattered sky light data in the wavelength range 348 nm to 388 nm was spectrally analyzed for O3, NO2, OClO, and BrO column abundances. Slant column abudances of O3, NO2, OClO and BrO were determined, using a computer algorithm of non-linear and linear least square correlation of Antarctic scattered sky spectra to laboratory absorption cross section data. Using measured vertical electrochemical sonde ozone profiles from Palmer, Halley Bay, and the South Pole Stations the slant columns of O3 were converted into vertical column abundances. The vertical column amounts of NO2, OClO, and BrO were derived using vertical profiles calculated by a chemical model appropriate for Antarctica. NO2 vertical column abundances show steep latitudinal decrease with increasing latitude for all 13 flights carried out during the mission. In the regions where NO2 abudances are low, OClO and BrO were observed. The spatial and temporal vertical column abundances of these species are discussed in the context of the chemistry and dynamics in the antarctic polar vortex during the austral spring
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