The Philosophy of Charles Travis

The Philosophy of Charles Travis PDF

Author: John Collins

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0191086509

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This volume offers a collective critical engagement with the thought of Charles Travis, a leading contemporary philosopher of language and mind, and a scholar of the history of analytical philosophy. The work of Charles Travis is fundamentally situated in the analytical tradition, yet is also radically at odds with many assumptions characteristic of the tradition, especially as regards the nature of language and perception as representational capacities. Twelve philosophers explore themes in his work, and Travis gives extended responses. The editors provide an introductory chapter which situates Travis's ideas in the context of contemporary philosophy of language and mind. The volume divides into three sections, relating to language, thought, and perception. Topics covered in detail include: the nature of linguistic and perceptual representation; Frege; Wittgenstein; the role of context in fixing speech content; and the structure of thought.

Cognition and Perception

Cognition and Perception PDF

Author: Athanassios Raftopoulos

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2009-07-17

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 0262258412

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An argument that there are perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in cognitively and conceptually unmediated ways and that this sheds light on various philosophical issues. In Cognition and Perception, Athanassios Raftopoulos discusses the cognitive penetrability of perception and claims that there is a part of visual processes (which he calls “perception”) that results in representational states with nonconceptual content; that is, a part that retrieves information from visual scenes in conceptually unmediated, “bottom-up,” theory-neutral ways. Raftopoulos applies this insight to problems in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, and examines how we access the external world through our perception as well as what we can know of that world. To show that there is a theory-neutral part of existence, Raftopoulos turns to cognitive science and argues that there is substantial scientific evidence. He then claims that perception induces representational states with nonconceptual content and examines the nature of the nonconceptual content. The nonconceptual information retrieved, he argues, does not allow the identification or recognition of an object but only its individuation as a discrete persistent object with certain spatiotemporal properties and other features. Object individuation, however, suffices to determine the referents of perceptual demonstratives. Raftopoulos defends his account in the context of current discussions on the issue of the theory-ladenness of perception (namely the Fodor-Churchland debate), and then discusses the repercussions of his thesis for problems in the philosophy of science. Finally, Raftopoulos claims that there is a minimal form of realism that is defensible. This minimal realism holds that objects, their spatiotemporal properties, and such features as shape, orientation, and motion are real, mind-independent properties in the world.

Semantic Perception

Semantic Perception PDF

Author: Jody Azzouni

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-10

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0190275545

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Jody Azzouni argues that we involuntarily experience certain physical items, certain products of human actions, and certain human actions themselves as having meaning-properties. We understand these items as possessing meaning or as having (or being capable of having) truth values. For example, a sign on a door reading Drinks Inside strikes native English speakers as referring to liquids in the room behind the door. The sign has a truth value--if no drinks are found in the room, the sign is misleading. Someone pointing in a direction has the same effect: we experience her gesture as significant. Azzouni does not suggest that we don't recognize the expectations or intentions of speakers (including ourselves); we do recognize that the person pointing in a certain direction intends for us to understand her gesture's significance. Nevertheless, Azzouni asserts that we experience that gesture as having significance independent of her intentions. The gesture is meaningful on its own. The same is true of language, both spoken and written. We experience the meanings of language artifacts as independent of their makers' intentions in the same way that we experience an object's shape as a property independent of the object's color. There is a distinctive phenomenology to the experience of understanding language, and Semantic Perception shows how this phenomenology can be brought to bear as evidence for and against competing theories of language.

The Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory

The Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory PDF

Author: Warren Mansell

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2020-05-16

Total Pages: 682

ISBN-13: 0128189495

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Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory Volume II: Living in the Loop brings together the latest research, theory, and applications from W. T. Powers’ Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) that proposes that the behavior of a living organism lies in the control of perceived aspects of both itself and its environment. Sections cover theory, the application of PCT to a broad range of disciplines, why perceptual control is fundamental to understanding human nature, a new way to do research on brain processes and behavior, how the role of natural selection in behavior can be demystified, how engineers can emulate human purposeful behavior in robots, and much more. Each chapter includes an author biography to set the context of their work within the development of PCT. Presents case studies that show how PCT can be applied in different disciplines Illustrates the Test for the Controlled Variable (TCV) and the construction of functional models as fruitful alternatives to mainstream experimental design when studying behavior Shows how theory illuminates structure and functions in brain anatomy Compares and contrasts PCT with other contemporary, interdisciplinary theories

Perception and Cognition in Language and Culture

Perception and Cognition in Language and Culture PDF

Author: Alexandra Aikhenvald

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2013-01-23

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9004233679

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Every language has a way of talking about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. This can be done through lexical means, and through grammatical evidentials. The studies presented here focus on the experssions of perception and cognition in languages of Africa, Oceania, and South America.

Speech Perception, Production and Acquisition

Speech Perception, Production and Acquisition PDF

Author: Huei‐Mei Liu

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-09-14

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 9811576068

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This book addresses important issues of speech processing and language learning in Chinese. It highlights perception and production of speech in healthy and clinical populations and in children and adults. This book provides diverse perspectives and reviews of cutting-edge research in past decades on how Chinese speech is processed and learned. Along with each chapter, future research directions have been discussed. With these unique features and the broad coverage of topics, this book appeals to not only scholars and students who study speech perception in preverbal infants and in children and adults learning Chinese, but also to teachers with interests in pedagogical applications in teaching Chinese as Second Language.