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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.
Book Synopsis Language: A Biological Model by : Ruth Garrett Millikan
Download or read book Language: A Biological Model written by Ruth Garrett Millikan and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.
Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Many believe that it is of the essence of thought itself to follow rules, rules of inference determining the intentional contents of our concepts, and that these rules originate as internalized rules of language. However, exactly what it is for there to be such things as normative rules of language remains distressingly unclear. From what source do these norms flow? What sanctions enforce them? What happens, exactly, if you don't follow the rules? How do children learn the rules? Ruth Millikan presents a radicallly 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 behavior 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. What needs to be reproduced for discursive language forms to survive, it turns out, is not specific conceptual roles but only satisfaction conditions coupled to essential elements of hearer responses. An uncompromising rejection of conceptual analysis as a tool in philosophy results. At the same time the distinction between the propositional content and the force of a linguistic utterance comes into very sharp focus, force emerging as essential to the creation of content rather than as something added to content. The distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary force, the distinction between linguistic meaning and speaker meaning, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction are each illuminated in new and crisper ways. On the model proposed, neither the intentionality of thought nor the intentionality of language is derived from the other. Processes involved in understanding language are not Gricean but more like direct perception of the world as mediated, for example, through the natural signs contained in the structured light that allows vision. There are also startling implications for pragmatics, and for how children learn language.
Book Synopsis Language: A Biological Model by : Ruth Garrett Millikan
Download or read book Language: A Biological Model written by Ruth Garrett Millikan and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Many believe that it is of the essence of thought itself to follow rules, rules of inference determining the intentional contents of our concepts, and that these rules originate as internalized rules of language. However, exactly what it is for there to be such things as normative rules of language remains distressingly unclear. From what source do these norms flow? What sanctions enforce them? What happens, exactly, if you don't follow the rules? How do children learn the rules? Ruth Millikan presents a radicallly 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 behavior 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. What needs to be reproduced for discursive language forms to survive, it turns out, is not specific conceptual roles but only satisfaction conditions coupled to essential elements of hearer responses. An uncompromising rejection of conceptual analysis as a tool in philosophy results. At the same time the distinction between the propositional content and the force of a linguistic utterance comes into very sharp focus, force emerging as essential to the creation of content rather than as something added to content. The distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary force, the distinction between linguistic meaning and speaker meaning, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction are each illuminated in new and crisper ways. On the model proposed, neither the intentionality of thought nor the intentionality of language is derived from the other. Processes involved in understanding language are not Gricean but more like direct perception of the world as mediated, for example, through the natural signs contained in the structured light that allows vision. There are also startling implications for pragmatics, and for how children learn language.
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
Book Synopsis Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories by : Ruth Garrett Millikan
Download or read book Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories written by Ruth Garrett Millikan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1987-12-16 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
A practice-oriented survey of techniques for computational modeling and simulation suitable for a broad range of biological problems. There are many excellent computational biology resources now available for learning about methods that have been developed to address specific biological systems, but comparatively little attention has been paid to training aspiring computational biologists to handle new and unanticipated problems. This text is intended to fill that gap by teaching students how to reason about developing formal mathematical models of biological systems that are amenable to computational analysis. It collects in one place a selection of broadly useful models, algorithms, and theoretical analysis tools normally found scattered among many other disciplines. It thereby gives the aspiring student a bag of tricks that will serve him or her well in modeling problems drawn from numerous subfields of biology. These techniques are taught from the perspective of what the practitioner needs to know to use them effectively, supplemented with references for further reading on more advanced use of each method covered. The text, which grew out of a class taught at Carnegie Mellon University, covers models for optimization, simulation and sampling, and parameter tuning. These topics provide a general framework for learning how to formulate mathematical models of biological systems, what techniques are available to work with these models, and how to fit the models to particular systems. Their application is illustrated by many examples drawn from a variety of biological disciplines and several extended case studies that show how the methods described have been applied to real problems in biology.
Book Synopsis Biological Modeling and Simulation by : Russell Schwartz
Download or read book Biological Modeling and Simulation written by Russell Schwartz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-07-25 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practice-oriented survey of techniques for computational modeling and simulation suitable for a broad range of biological problems. There are many excellent computational biology resources now available for learning about methods that have been developed to address specific biological systems, but comparatively little attention has been paid to training aspiring computational biologists to handle new and unanticipated problems. This text is intended to fill that gap by teaching students how to reason about developing formal mathematical models of biological systems that are amenable to computational analysis. It collects in one place a selection of broadly useful models, algorithms, and theoretical analysis tools normally found scattered among many other disciplines. It thereby gives the aspiring student a bag of tricks that will serve him or her well in modeling problems drawn from numerous subfields of biology. These techniques are taught from the perspective of what the practitioner needs to know to use them effectively, supplemented with references for further reading on more advanced use of each method covered. The text, which grew out of a class taught at Carnegie Mellon University, covers models for optimization, simulation and sampling, and parameter tuning. These topics provide a general framework for learning how to formulate mathematical models of biological systems, what techniques are available to work with these models, and how to fit the models to particular systems. Their application is illustrated by many examples drawn from a variety of biological disciplines and several extended case studies that show how the methods described have been applied to real problems in biology.
Conceived as a cross between natural language processing methods and biological sequences in DNA, RNA and protein, biological language model is a new scientific research topic in bioinformatics that has been extensively studied by the authors. The basic theory and applications of this model are presented in this book to serve as an reference for graduate students and researchers.
Book Synopsis Biological Language Model: Theory And Application by : Qiwen Dong
Download or read book Biological Language Model: Theory And Application written by Qiwen Dong and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2020-06-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conceived as a cross between natural language processing methods and biological sequences in DNA, RNA and protein, biological language model is a new scientific research topic in bioinformatics that has been extensively studied by the authors. The basic theory and applications of this model are presented in this book to serve as an reference for graduate students and researchers.
Millikan provides the first in-depth discussion on the psychological act of reidentification.
Book Synopsis On Clear and Confused Ideas by : Ruth Garrett Millikan
Download or read book On Clear and Confused Ideas written by Ruth Garrett Millikan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-07-31 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millikan provides the first in-depth discussion on the psychological act of reidentification.
Argues that biology plays a more central role in language acquisition than teaching or learning.
Book Synopsis Biolinguistics by : Lyle Jenkins
Download or read book Biolinguistics written by Lyle Jenkins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that biology plays a more central role in language acquisition than teaching or learning.
Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory, that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets this criterion: grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process. All human societies have language. As far as we know they always did; language was not invented by some groups and spread to others like agriculture or the alphabet. All languages are complex computational systems employing the same basic kinds of rules and representations, with no notable correlation with technological progress: the grammars of industrial societies are no more complex than the grammars of hunter-gatherers. Within societies, individual humans are proficient language users regardless of intelligence, social status, or level of education. Children are fluent speakers of complex grammatical sentences by the age of three, without benefit of formal instruction. [...]
Book Synopsis Foundations of Language: A Biological Paradigm by : Ashraf Bhat
Download or read book Foundations of Language: A Biological Paradigm written by Ashraf Bhat and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory, that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets this criterion: grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process. All human societies have language. As far as we know they always did; language was not invented by some groups and spread to others like agriculture or the alphabet. All languages are complex computational systems employing the same basic kinds of rules and representations, with no notable correlation with technological progress: the grammars of industrial societies are no more complex than the grammars of hunter-gatherers. Within societies, individual humans are proficient language users regardless of intelligence, social status, or level of education. Children are fluent speakers of complex grammatical sentences by the age of three, without benefit of formal instruction. [...]
This book presents a current, interdisciplinary perspective on language requisites from both a biological/comparative perspective and from a developmental/learning perspective. Perspectives regarding language and language acquisition are advanced by scientists of various backgrounds -- speech, hearing, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and language intervention. This unique volume searches for a rational interface between findings and perspectives generated by language studies with humans and with chimpanzees. Intended to render a reconsideration as to the essence of language and the requisites to its acquisition, it also provides readers with perspectives defined by various revisionists who hold that language might be other than the consequence of a mutation unique to humans and might, fundamentally, not be limited to speech.
Book Synopsis Biological and Behavioral Determinants of Language Development by : Norman A. Krasnegor
Download or read book Biological and Behavioral Determinants of Language Development written by Norman A. Krasnegor and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a current, interdisciplinary perspective on language requisites from both a biological/comparative perspective and from a developmental/learning perspective. Perspectives regarding language and language acquisition are advanced by scientists of various backgrounds -- speech, hearing, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and language intervention. This unique volume searches for a rational interface between findings and perspectives generated by language studies with humans and with chimpanzees. Intended to render a reconsideration as to the essence of language and the requisites to its acquisition, it also provides readers with perspectives defined by various revisionists who hold that language might be other than the consequence of a mutation unique to humans and might, fundamentally, not be limited to speech.
This essay reflects on the fact that as we learn more about the biological underpinnings of our language faculty, the dominant evolutionary narrative coming out of the linguistic tradition most explicitly oriented towards biology ("biolinguistics") appears increasingly implausible. This text offers ways of opening up linguistic inquiry and fostering interdisciplinarity, taking advantage of new opportunities to provide quantitative, testable hypotheses concerning the complex evolutionary path that led to the modern human language faculty. The essay is structured around three main themes: (i) renewed appreciation for the comparative method applied to cognitive questions, leading to the identification of elementary but fundamental abstractions in non-linguistic species relevant to language; (ii) awareness of the conceptual gaps between disciplines, and the need to carefully link genotype and phenotype without bypassing any "intermediate" levels of description (certainly not the brain); and (iii) adoption of a "philosophical" outlook that puts the complexity of biological entities front and center.
Book Synopsis Reflections on language evolution by : Cedric Boeckx
Download or read book Reflections on language evolution written by Cedric Boeckx and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essay reflects on the fact that as we learn more about the biological underpinnings of our language faculty, the dominant evolutionary narrative coming out of the linguistic tradition most explicitly oriented towards biology ("biolinguistics") appears increasingly implausible. This text offers ways of opening up linguistic inquiry and fostering interdisciplinarity, taking advantage of new opportunities to provide quantitative, testable hypotheses concerning the complex evolutionary path that led to the modern human language faculty. The essay is structured around three main themes: (i) renewed appreciation for the comparative method applied to cognitive questions, leading to the identification of elementary but fundamental abstractions in non-linguistic species relevant to language; (ii) awareness of the conceptual gaps between disciplines, and the need to carefully link genotype and phenotype without bypassing any "intermediate" levels of description (certainly not the brain); and (iii) adoption of a "philosophical" outlook that puts the complexity of biological entities front and center.
