books — The Brains Blog

2. Psychological and Computational Models of Sentence Processing

David Pereplyotchik December 3, 2017 December 3, 2017 AI / computation AI / David Pereplotchik: Psychosyntax / metaphysics of mind / Models, AI, Robotics / philosophy of language / Philosophy of Mind / Philosophy of Science

Last time, I argued that there are substantive open questions about whether the theoretical constructs of formal linguistics play any role in the psychological processes underlying language use. Let’s now address those questions. When people talk about “the psychological reality of syntax”, there are (at least) two importantly different types …

1. The Ontology, Epistemology, and Methodology of Linguistics

David Pereplyotchik December 1, 2017 December 1, 2017 analytical philosophy / David Pereplotchik: Psychosyntax / Epistemology / philosophy of language / Philosophy of Mind / Philosophy of Science

There are, broadly speaking, three competing frameworks for answering the foundational questions of linguistic theory—cognitivism (e.g., Chomsky 1995, 2000), platonism (e.g., Katz 1981, 2000), and nominalism (e.g., Devitt 2006, 2008). Platonism is the view that the subject matter of linguistics is an uncountable set of abstracta—entities that are located outside …

Psychosyntax: The Nature of Grammar and Its Place in the Mind (Intro)

David Pereplyotchik November 28, 2017 November 28, 2017 David Pereplotchik: Psychosyntax

In his groundbreaking Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Noam Chomsky first made explicit what is now arguably the dominant view concerning the aims and objects of linguistic inquiry. Rather than studying the sounds and inscriptions that we produce and comprehend, or the social conventions that govern linguistic usage, Chomsky …

Now Featured

John Schwenkler November 27, 2017 December 4, 2017 books

We are pleased to have David Pereplyotchik (Kent State University) blogging this week on his book Psychosyntax: The Nature of Grammar and its Place in the Mind (Springer, 2017).

To view his posts on a single page, click here.

4. Conceptual Emergence and Neural Networks

Paul Humphreys November 16, 2017 November 16, 2017 AI / Neuroscience / Paul Humphreys: Emergence / Philosophy of Science

Conceptual emergence occurs when, in order to understand or effectively represent some phenomenon, a different representational apparatus must be introduced at the current working level. Such changes in representation are common in the sciences but it has usually been considered in connection with changes in synchronic representations. Here, I’ll consider …

3. Two Types of Fundamentality

Paul Humphreys November 15, 2017 November 15, 2017 Paul Humphreys: Emergence / Philosophy of Science

Today’s entry addresses a type of argument that will be familiar to most of you, the argument that all higher level natural facts in our world logically supervene on the fundamental physical facts.[1] Consider a very simple world, which we can call Checkers World. It behaves exactly like a game …

2. The Origin of the Universe Argument

Paul Humphreys November 14, 2017 November 15, 2017 Paul Humphreys: Emergence / Philosophy of Science / reduction

Yesterday we saw, via an example from social psychology, that diachronic approaches to emergence can avoid some of the major problems of synchronic approaches. That motivating example is not wholly convincing as an example of transformational emergence. Here is what I believe is a more robustly ontological example. The Standard …