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A mind bent toward truth and against meanings and models| title | A mind bent toward truth and against meanings and models |
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| start_date | 2022/10/19 |
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| schedule | 10h30-13h - Heure de Tucson |
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| online | yes |
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| visio | https://arizona.zoom.us/j/83059854210 |
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| location_info | En ligne |
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| summary | There are twinned behaviors, reference and inference, behaviors that are data in presenting yet again Plato’s Problem (Chomsky 1986)—how do speakers know to behave as they do in response to an infinite language as consistently as they do under whatever conditions locate the invariances that there may be between the language and these found behaviors.
The competence for inference is syntactic: to parse as well-formed a proof n-lines long. A formal grammar for inference translates sentences into logical form, syntax for a proof theory defining well-formed proof. Reference comes later when formal grammar— syntax and proof theory—is integrated with multi-sensory cognition and coordinated with its sensorimotor system. The thing in which such a proof engine is installed acts with reckless confidence in whatever blind inference has formally proven for it. Planning is a bet that future actions taken in coordination between proven sentence and sensorimotor system do not end with the thing as road kill in the event that its inference that now would be a good time to cross the street is not true. That the logic must be sound for survival is enough of a commitment to truth and the truth conditions for reference, Sperber & Wilson (1986). Then deny with them that some occult process, semantic interpretation assigns sentences representations of their complete truth conditions. It is occult, because this assignment, interpretation is not the internal coordination wiring language to sensorimotor system. It is occult for the same reason to suppose that sentences have meanings the knowledge of which is the route to reference. Pivoting from interpreted languages and interpretation to coordinated languages and their coordination with perception, a language does stake out truth conditions but strictly by inheritance from the veridicality of that with which it is coordinated, perception.
Coordination coordinates some vocabulary with robust events of reference into the ambient environment—color vocabulary with color perception, for example. Across a cognitive score, coordination may be intermittent or sampling, yet enough. To synchronize narration to the events perceived in the unfolding scene, time indications indicate checkpoints as frequent as needed to maintain narrative continuity. It is rejected that there must a priori be a semantic relation for all vocabulary for “and”, “not”, “if”, and “the” to pretend that they too refer in some lame, abstract semantic relation to their interpretations or meanings.
Generative grammar is fitted to the data of semantics—reference and inference— without pretense at meanings, knowledge of meanings, or the knowledge of truth conditions as surrogate for the knowledge of meanings.
“What’s truth got to do with it? It’s second-hand perception.”[1] “Meaning, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.”[2]—contra Pietroski (2018, 2022).
Noam Chomsky. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger.
Paul Pietroski. 2018. Conjoining Meanings: Semantics without Truth Values. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paul M. Pietroski. 2022. One word, many concepts: endorsing polysemous meanings.
Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication & Cognition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
[1] Tina Turner, “What’s Love Got to do with It,” Los Angeles: Capitol Records, 1984.
[2] Edwin Starr, “War,” Detroit, MI: Gordy, 1970. |
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| responsibles | Piatelli-Palmarini, Chomsky, Bever |
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Workflow history| from state (1) | to state | comment | date |
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| submitted | published | | 2022/09/09 12:28 UTC |
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