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Author: N.J. Enfield
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262368773
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect. Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.
Author: N.J. Enfield
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262368773
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Get Book Here
Book Description
A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect. Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.
Author: Michael Devitt
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262540995
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
What is language? How does it relate to the world? How does it relate to the mind? Should our view of language influence our view of the world? These are among the central issues covered in this spirited and unusually clear introduction to the philosophy of language. Making no pretense of neutrality, Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny take a definite theoretical stance. Central to that stance is naturalism--that is, they treat a philosophical theory of language as an empirical theory like any other and see people as nothing but complex parts of the physical world. This leads them, controversially, to a deflationary view of the significance of the study of language: they dismiss the idea that the philosophy of language should be preeminent in philosophy. This highly successful textbook has been extensively rewritten for the second edition to reflect recent developments in the field.
Author: N. J. Enfield
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262548461
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect. Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.
Author: Wilbur Marshall Urban
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131785196X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 754
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Book Description
First published in 2002. This is Volume XV of seventeen in the Library of Philosophy series on Metaphysics. Written in 1939, this book looks at Language and Reality and the Philosophy of Language and the Principles of Symbolism and is related to the movement of Logical Positivism, initiated by Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Author: Andrea Bianchi
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030476413
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
This book celebrates the many important contributions to philosophy by one of the leading philosophers in the analytic field, Michael Devitt. It collects seventeen original essays by renowned philosophers from all over the world. They all develop themes from Devitt’s work, thus discussing many fundamental issues in philosophy of linguistics, theory of reference, theory of meaning, methodology, and metaphysics. In a long final chapter, Devitt himself replies to the contributors. In so doing, he further elaborates his views on various of these issues, for example defending his claim (in opposition to Chomskyan orthodoxy) that languages are external rather than internal; his well-known causal theory of reference; his “shocking” idea that meanings can be causal, non-descriptive, modes of presentation; his methodological naturalism; his commitment to scientific realism; and his version of biological essentialism. The volume will appeal to all scholars and students interested in contemporary theoretical analytic philosophy, and will be a must-read for any serious researcher in philosophy of language. It provides a deep insight into the work of one of the most important living philosophers, and will help readers to better understand language and reality from a naturalistic perspective.
Author: Francis Collins
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847396151
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Dr Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists, working at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God. How does he reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable? In THE LANGUAGE OF GOD he explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes the reader on a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry and biology -- indeed, reason itself -- are not incompatible with belief. His book is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of all: why are we here? How did we get here? And what does life mean?
Author: Susan D. Lima
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027230293
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 505
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Book Description
This volume presents a selection of the best papers from the 21st Annual University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Linguistics Symposium. Researchers from linguistics, psychology, computer science, and philosophy, using many different methods and focusing on many different facts of language, addressed the question of the existence of linguistic rules. Are such rules best seen as convenient tools for the description of languages, or are rules actually invoked by individual language users? Perhaps the most serious challenge to date to the linguistic rule is the development of connectionist architecture. Indeed, these systems must be viewed as a serious challenge to the foundations of all of contemporary linguistics.Four broad themes emerged from the Milwaukee conference, corresponding to the four parts of the volume. Part I centers on arguments for the existence of symbolic rules in linguistic competence and performance. Part II contains arguments against symbolic rules, presenting connectionist models and other alternatives to the symbolic paradigm. Parts III and IV take up two issues that are central to a number of language researchers: Language acquisition and learnability, and modularity. These issues are addressed from within both rule-based and non-rule-based perspectives.Contributors: Farrell Ackerman, Michael Barlow, Catherine Best, David Corina, Roberta Corrigan, Kim Daugherty, Bruce Derwing, Jeff Elman, Alice Faber, John Goldsmith, Helen Goodluck, Neil Jacobs, Richard Janda, Brian Joseph, Michael Kac, Alan Kawamoto, Suzanne Kemmer, Susan Lima, Brian MacWhinney, Steven Pinker, Alan Prince, Gerald Sanders, Hinrich Schutze, Mark Seidenberg, Royal Skousen, Nicholas Sobin, Joseph Stemberger, Gregory Stone, Ann Thyme, Robert Van Valin.
Author: John H. McWhorter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199361606
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 203
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Book Description
Japanese has a term that covers both green and blue. Russian has separate terms for dark and light blue. Does this mean that Russians perceive these colors differently from Japanese people? Does language control and limit the way we think? This short, opinionated book addresses the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which argues that the language we speak shapes the way we perceive the world. Linguist John McWhorter argues that while this idea is mesmerizing, it is plainly wrong. It is language that reflects culture and worldview, not the other way around. The fact that a language has only one word for eat, drink, and smoke doesn't mean its speakers don't process the difference between food and beverage, and those who use the same word for blue and green perceive those two colors just as vividly as others do. McWhorter shows not only how the idea of language as a lens fails but also why we want so badly to believe it: we're eager to celebrate diversity by acknowledging the intelligence of peoples who may not think like we do. Though well-intentioned, our belief in this idea poses an obstacle to a better understanding of human nature and even trivializes the people we seek to celebrate. The reality -- that all humans think alike -- provides another, better way for us to acknowledge the intelligence of all peoples.
Author: Alfred Jules Ayer
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486113094
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
"A delightful book … I should like to have written it myself." — Bertrand Russell First published in 1936, this first full-length presentation in English of the Logical Positivism of Carnap, Neurath, and others has gone through many printings to become a classic of thought and communication. It not only surveys one of the most important areas of modern thought; it also shows the confusion that arises from imperfect understanding of the uses of language. A first-rate antidote for fuzzy thought and muddled writing, this remarkable book has helped philosophers, writers, speakers, teachers, students, and general readers alike. Mr. Ayers sets up specific tests by which you can easily evaluate statements of ideas. You will also learn how to distinguish ideas that cannot be verified by experience — those expressing religious, moral, or aesthetic experience, those expounding theological or metaphysical doctrine, and those dealing with a priori truth. The basic thesis of this work is that philosophy should not squander its energies upon the unknowable, but should perform its proper function in criticism and analysis.
Author: Frank Ackerman
Publisher: South End Press
ISBN: 9780896081413
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
The best guide yet to the practical aims and consequences of Reaganomics.--Philadelphia Enquirer
