Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories
Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories

Author: Ruth Garrett Millikan

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1987-12-16

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780262631150

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Beginning with a general theory of function applied to body organs, behaviors, customs, and both inner and outer representations, Ruth Millikan argues that the intentionality of language can be described without reference to speaker intentions and that an understanding of the intentionality of thought can and should be divorced from the problem of understanding consciousness. The results support a realist theory of truth and of universals, and open the way for a nonfoundationalist and nonholistic approach to epistemology. A Bradford Book

Language
Language

Author: Ruth Garrett Millikan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780199284771

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"Ruth Millikan presents a radically different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, the norms and conventions of language. The central norms applying to language, like those norms of function and behaviour that account for the survival and proliferation of biological traits, are non-evaluative norms. Specific linguistic forms survive and are reproduced together with co-operative hearer responses because, in a critical mass of cases, these patterns of production and response benefit both speakers and hearers. Conformity is needed only often enough to ensure that the co-operative use constituting the norm - the convention - continues to be copied and hence continues to characterize some interactions of some speaker-hearer pairs."--BOOK JACKET

The Instruction of Imagination
The Instruction of Imagination

Author: Daniel Dor

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 0190256621

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The book presents a new general theory of language as a collectively-constructed communication technology - not unlike the social media on the Net today - that is dedicated to a very particular communicative function: the instruction of imagination. The theory re-frames all the major questions in the linguistic sciences, and opens the way towards the re-unification of the field.

The Functions of Law
The Functions of Law

Author: Kenneth M. Ehrenberg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-03-11

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 019166846X

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What is the nature of law and what is the best way to discover it? This book argues that law is best understood in terms of the social functions it performs wherever it is found in human society. In order to support this claim, law is explained as a kind of institution and as a kind of artefact. To say that it is an institution is to say that it is designed for creating and conferring special statuses to people so as to alter their rights and responsibilities toward each other. To say that it is an artefact is to say that it is a tool of human creation that is designed to signal its usability to people who interact with it. This picture of law's nature is marshalled to critique theories of law that see it mainly as a product of reason or morality, understanding those theories via their conceptions of law's function. It is also used to argue against those legal positivists who see law's functions as relatively minor aspects of its nature. This method of conceptualizing law's nature helps us to explain how the law, understood as social facts, can make normative demands upon us. It also recommends a methodology for understanding law that combines elements of conceptual analysis with empirical research for uncovering the purposes to which diverse peoples put their legal activities.

Language, Thought and Consciousness
Language, Thought and Consciousness

Author: Peter Carruthers

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998-02-19

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780521639996

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Peter Carruthers argues that much of human conscious thinking is conducted in the medium of natural language sentences.

Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology
Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology

Author: Stefan Linquist

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 652

ISBN-13: 135191135X

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The impact of evolutionary theory on the philosophy of science has been no less profound than its impact on the science of biology itself. Advances in this theory provide a rich set of examples for thinking about the nature of scientific explanation and the structure of science. Many of the developments in our understanding of evolution resulted from contributions by both philosophers and biologists engaging over theoretical questions of mutual interest. This volume traces some of the most influential exchanges in this field over the last few decades. Focal topics include the nature of biological functions, adaptationism as an explanatory and methodological doctrine, the levels of selection debate, the concepts of fitness and drift, and the relationship of evolutionary to developmental biology.

Language and Legal Interpretation in International Law
Language and Legal Interpretation in International Law

Author: Anne Lise Kjaer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0190855207

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Language and Legal Interpretation in International Law sheds light on the complicated process of language interpretation that adjudicators (judges and arbitrators) and legal practitioners adopt when they act within international legal systems. The book also analyzes the role that language and the diversity of languages and national legal cultures plays in different international legal systems.

Modern Philosophy of Language
Modern Philosophy of Language

Author: Maria Baghramian

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 1999-09-17

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 158243042X

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A collection of seminal writings on the philosophy of language. In our century, philosophers have become increasingly concerned with the relationship between language, the mind, and the world. Language has come to be viewed both as a source of puzzlement and as a repository for untapped knowledge. The philosophy of language is an attempt to understand the nature of language and to explore the link between what we say and what we intend. Modern Philosophy of Language brings together the most significant writings on language in twentieth-century philosophy–from the work of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and the logical positivists to the contemporary contributions of W. V. O. Quine, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Dummett. The articles collected here are benchmarks in the development of various strands in the modern analytic philosophy of language.

Biology of Cognition and Linguistic Analysis
Biology of Cognition and Linguistic Analysis

Author: Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kravchenko

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9783631566473

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This book is an attempt to re-evaluate some basic assumptions about language, communication, and cognition in the light of the new epistemology of autopoiesis as the theory of the living. Starting with a critique of common myths about language and communication, the author goes on to argue for a new understanding of language and cognition as functional adaptive activities in a consensual domain of interactions. He shows that such understanding is, in fact, what marks a variety of theoretical and empirical frameworks in contemporary non-Cartesian cognitive science; thus, cognitive science is in the process of working out new epistemological foundations for the study of language and cognition. In Part Two, the traditional concept of grammar is reassessed from the vantage point of autopoietic epistemology, and an analysis of specific grammatical phenomena in English and Russian is undertaken, revealing common cognitive mechanisms at work in linguistic categories.