The ontology of words: Realism, nominalism, and eliminativism

Miller, J. T. M.

doi:10.1111/phc3.12691

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…88I talk as if inner speech constitutes the actual use of language ‘in the head’ (Gregory, 2016) as opposed to the mere auditory imagery of language use (Machery, 2005). This is in line with recent work on the metaphysics of words (Miller, 2020). However, this assumption is not crucial to my conclusion.…”

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confidence: 91%

Why are you talking to yourself? The epistemic role of inner speech in reasoning

Munroe

2021

Nous

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People frequently report that, at times, their thought has a vocal character. Thinking commonly appears to be accompanied or constituted by silently 'talking' to oneself in inner speech. In this paper, we explore the specifically epistemic role of inner speech in conscious reasoning. A plausible position-but one I argue is ultimately wrong-is that inner speech plays a solely facilitative role that is exhausted by (i) serving as the vehicle of representation for conscious reasoning, and/or (ii) allowing one to focus on certain types of objects or relations, e.g., causal relations, abstracta, counterfactuals, etc., or to consciously entertain structured propositional contents that it would be hard (or impossible) to focus on or entertain with representations in other (e.g., imagistic) formats. According to this position, inner speech doesn't figure as a justificatory element in our reasoning or as the partial epistemic basis of our conclusionsit merely facilitates reasoning through (i) and/or (ii). In contrast to the view that inner speech is a mere facilitator, I establish that (outside of potentially playing roles (i) and/or (ii)) the language we use itself serves as a crucial source of information in reasoning. In other words, we reason from propositions about the language we use in inner speech as opposed to exclusively reasoning from the semantic contents of the speech. My conclusion follows from how we use language as a cognitive tool to

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confidence: 91%

Why are you talking to yourself? The epistemic role of inner speech in reasoning

Munroe

2021

Nous

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“…That is, a token of the word 'table' can be analysed as being a collection of phonetic, orthographic, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, inferential, and other properties that we might want to attribute to words. This builds on the more general defence and outline of a bundle view of words I have provided elsewhere (Miller 2021a). There are, though, two key differences between that prior work, and the view defended in this paper.…”

Section: Towards a New Sort Of Solutionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Drawing on some of my other work (Miller 2021a), I will argue that by shifting the resemblance relation from words qua objects to the properties of those words, we can provide a new (and in my view better) solution to the problem of the sameness of word.…”

Section: A Common Problemmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…3 However, it is well recognised, even by supporters of the type-realist view, that there is no such property. None of the orthographic, semantic, syntactic, or historical properties that particular tokens instantiate are shared by all tokens of that type, let alone uniquely by tokens of that type (see Miller 2020a), and the problems facing attempts to individuate types through their origin or other historical properties are well known (see Hawthorne and Lepore 2011;Miller 2020b;Hughes Ms.). This would, of course, not be a problem if we did not posit genuinely existing types (as I will explore in later sections).…”

Section: Type-realismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sameness of Word

Miller

2022

EuJAP

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Iako metafizika riječi ostaje relativno nedovoljno proučavano područje, jedna od tema o kojoj se više raspravlja bilo je pitanje kako objasniti prividnu istovjetnost riječi. Jednostavnije rečeno, pitanje se odnosi na to što dvije riječi-instance (ili primjerci) čini instancama iste riječi. U ovom radu tvrdim da sva postojeća rješenja problema nisu uspješna jer problem istovjetnosti riječi smatraju problemom odnosa jednog predmeta prema drugom. Predlažem alternativno rješenje problema istovjetnosti riječi koje je umjesto toga usredotočeno na intrinzičnu prirodu svojstava koja posjeduju riječi. Rezultat je temeljitija verzija nominalizma nego što trenutno postoji u literaturi.

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“…See Miller (2020b) for an overview. My focus is on essentialism within this ontological or metaphysical approach to words.…”

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confidence: 99%