The Philosophy of Generative Linguistics

Ludlow, Peter

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199258536.001.0001

Cited by 64 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…Taylor (2019, p. 43) discusses the transition from descriptive semantic considerations about semantic values and properties to metaphysical considerations about the natures of those values. In a number of publications, Ludlow (1999Ludlow ( , 2003Ludlow ( , 2011Ludlow ( , 2019 has argued that meaningful use of language involves ontological commitments and that there is a strong connection between semantics and metaphysics, proposing that we can use our knowledge of language to "gain insight into the nature of reality" (Ludlow, 1999, p. 179). On Ludlow's view (and many others; see, e.g., Kennedy and Stanley, 2009), semantic theory is about language-world relations; "semantics and metaphysics have to take place hand in hand" (Ludlow, 2019, p. 16).…”

Section: The Determination Of Semantic Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolvability of Words: On the Nature of Lexical Items in Minimalism

Clark

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Work within the minimalist program attempts to meet the criterion of evolvability: "any mechanisms and primitives ascribed to UG rather than derived from independent factors must plausibly have emerged in what appears to have been a unique and relatively sudden event on the evolutionary timescale" (Chomsky et al., 2017). On minimalist assumptions the evolution of the language faculty must have involved at least three major developments: (i) the evolution of computational atoms, lexical items, understood as bundles of features, (ii) the evolution of a single, simple recursive operation that glues together lexical items and complexes of lexical items, and (iii) externalization linking the syntactic component of the language faculty to the cognitive systems that humans use for sound and gesture. The first development, the evolution of lexical items and the lexicon, is especially poorly understood. A complete account of the evolution of lexical items will state what evolved, how, and why. The focus of this article is the first question: what evolved. What properties do lexical items have, what determines these properties, and what is the internal structure of lexical entries? The article identifies what the key open problems are for a minimalist account of the evolution of words that strives to meet the criterion of evolvability.

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Section: The Determination Of Semantic Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolvability of Words: On the Nature of Lexical Items in Minimalism

Clark

2020

Front. Psychol.

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“…It is widely recognized by philosophers of science that this kind of ease of derivation is a theoretical virtue. Some consider it to be a kind of simplicity (Baker 2013;Barrios 2015), while others take simplicity to consist in nothing more than it (Peirce 1935;Lindsay 1937;Ludlow 2011). Furthermore, shortcut terms are scientifically useful from the standpoint of what I will call 'Carnap's pragmatism', which is an important rationale for the significance project, and which I discuss in section 7.…”

Section: Now Suppose That This Same Agent Knows That R(ac) and That mentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical significance, predictive power, and explication

Surovell

2017

Synthese

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Criteria of empirical significance are supposed to state conditions under which (putative) reference to an unobservable object or property is "empirically meaningful." The intended kind of empirical meaningfulness should be necessary for admissibility into the selective contexts of scientific inquiry. I defend Justus's recent argument that the reasons generally given for rejecting the project of defining a significance criterion are unpersuasive. However, as I show, this project remains wedded to an overly narrow conception of its subject matter. Even the most cutting edge significance criteria identify empirical significance with predictive power, and thereby rule out vocabulary with legitimate scientific functions. In a nutshell, the problem is that there are ("shortcut") terms that reduce the computational burden of extracting predictions from theory, and that may therefore be scientifically useful, but that do not produce any novel predictions, and so are ruled scientifically inadmissibility by existing significance criteria. I spell out this objection by specifying shortcut terms that are ruled inadmissible by Creath's and Schurz's criteria. Having objected in this way to extant criteria, and to the equation of empirical significance with predictive power in general, I discuss an approach to defining empirical significance that is capable of avoiding my objection and, more ambitiously, that may break the cycle of "punctures and patches" that has plagued the project from the beginning. I gloss Goldfarb and Ricketts's idea of "case-by-case" delineations of empirically significant terms as the provision of special rather than general explications of the informal concept of empirical significance.

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“…I understand the concern, but I believe that it rests upon a view of cognitive science and mental representations that I resisted in Ludlow (2011;section 5.3) -it relies on a kind of Cartesian picture of mental states and a correlative view that computational states in particular are indifferent to their environmental embedding. In my view, the syntactic states of a computational system can depend upon its embedding circumstances.…”

Section: Perspectivalism and Special Relativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Tense, Perspectival Properties, and Special Relativity

Ludlow

2016

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Tensism is the view that tense is not merely a property of language and the mind (narrowly individuated), but of the world itself. Perspectivalism extends this idea to all perspectival properties be they person (e.g. first person vs. second) or locational (e.g. here vs there). One challenge that perspectivalism faces is the problem of expressing the contents of the beliefs and utterances of persons that are in other perspectival positions. One proposed solution to this problem is to allow for semantic theories that "realign" the expression of contents so that the contents expressed by persons in other perspectival positions can be re-expressed from one's own perspectival position. In this paper I argue that a similar semantic realignment strategy could be deployed in helping perspectivalists generally (and presentists in particular) come to grips with a puzzle raised by the Special Theory of Relativity. In short, the strategy is to realign the expression of contents in another inertial frame so that they are expressed from within your inertial frame. As we will see, the strategy is not puzzle free. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Thanks to Emiliano Boccardi for some very helpful comments.

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The Philosophy of Generative Linguistics

Abstract: Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford

Cited by 64 publications

References 92 publications

The Evolvability of Words: On the Nature of Lexical Items in Minimalism

The Evolvability of Words: On the Nature of Lexical Items in Minimalism

Empirical significance, predictive power, and explication

Tense, Perspectival Properties, and Special Relativity

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