[PDF] Skeptical Linguistic Essays eBook

Author : Paul M. Postal
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 442 pages
File Size : 21,97 MB
Release : 2004-01-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780195343663

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This volume consists of an introduction and two groups of essays by Paul M. Postal, each with a connecting theme. The first, positive group of papers, contains five previously unpublished studies of English syntax. These include a long study of so-called "locative inversion," two investigations related to raising to non-subject status, an argument for the existence of a hitherto ignored nominal grammatical category and a study of vulgar negative polarity items. Each investigation of specific English details is argued to have significant theoretical consequences. The second, negative group of papers, contains seven essays each of which seeks to show that aspects of contemporary linguistic activity are in part contaminated by elements of what is called "junk linguistics." Postal uses the term to denote work which advances proposals, puts forward claims and asserts deep results which, he argues, can only be accepted by ignoring serious standards of inquiry and scholarship. Postal claims that much of this work is nonetheless currently considered not only serious but prestigious reveals the problem to exist at the core of the field, not its periphery. These chapters include documentation of "junk linguistic" aspects in National Science Foundation refereeing, work on the foundations of linguistics, and even in widespread terminological usages. The final chapter briefly lists personal suggestions for dealing with this problem.

Author : Anthony Brueckner
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 409 pages
File Size : 44,87 MB
Release : 2010-08-19
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0199585865

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Anthony Brueckner is recognized as one of the leading contemporary investigators of the problem of skepticism. This collection brings together Brueckner's most important work in this area, providing a connected and comprehensive guide to the complex state of play on this intensively studied area of philosophy.

Author : Christina Behme
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 45,93 MB
Release : 2018-07-26
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027263949

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This book contains new articles by leading philosophers and linguists discussing a promising philosophical framework distinct from currently dominant ones: Linguistic Realism. As opposed to Nominalism and Chomskyian Conceptualism, this approach distinguishes between use of language, knowledge of language, and language as such. The latter is conceived as part of the realm of abstract objects. The authors show how adopting Linguistic Realism overcomes entrenched problems with other frameworks and suggest that Linguistic Realism will best serve those interested in formal linguistics, the cognitive dimension of natural language, and linguistic philosophy. The essays offer different perspectives on Linguistic Realism, either supporting this paradigm or taking it as a starting point for developing modified conceptions of linguistics and for further tying linguistics to the kind of formal theories of sensory cognition that were pioneered in visual perception by David Marr—whose work is predicated on exactly the object/knowledge distinction made by Linguistic Realists.

Author : Benson Mates
Publisher :
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 32,34 MB
Release : 1981-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780226509860

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"In philosophy," the author writes in his preface, "we have learned to get our satisfaction from showing that the other fellow is mistaken rather than from establishing the truth of our own positive tenets." The impeccably professional work of a mature and distinguished logician and scholar, Skeptical Essays propounds the view that the principal traditional problems of philosophy are genuine intellectual knots; they are intelligible enough, but at the same time the are absolutely insoluble. The problems Mates discusses are: the Liar paradox and Russell's Antinomy of the class of all nonself-membered classes; the problem of determinism and moral responsibility; and the existence of the external world. Clearly written and effectively organized, the book will be an excellent text for advanced students.

Author : Paul Kjellberg
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 43,59 MB
Release : 1996-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780791428917

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The Chinese philosophical text Zhuangzi was written by Zhuangzi in the fourth century BCE. With humor and relentless logic Zhuangzi attacks claims to knowledge about the world, especially evaluative knowledge of what is good and bad or right and wrong. This book is about the man and the text.

Author : James Conant
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 31,94 MB
Release : 2014-04-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 3110336790

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This volume brings out the varieties of forms of philosophical skepticism that have continued to preoccupy philosophers for the past of couple of centuries, as well as the specific varieties of philosophical response that these have engendered — above all, in the work of those who have sought to take their cue from Kant, Wittgenstein, or Cavell — and to illuminate how these philosophical approaches are related to and bear upon one another. The philosophers brought together in this volume are united by the thought that a proper appreciation of the depth of the skeptical challenge must reveal it to be deeply disquieting, in the sense that skepticism threatens not just some set of theoretical commitments, but also-and fundamentally-our very sense of self, world, and other. Second, that skepticism is the proper starting point for any serious attempt to make sense of what philosophy is, and to gauge the prospects of philosophical progress.