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Mind & Language / Mind and Language

Impact factor: 1.904 5-Year impact factor: 2.113 Print ISSN: 0268-1064 Online ISSN: 1468-0017 Publisher: Wiley Blackwell (Blackwell Publishing)

Subjects: Experimental Psychology, Linguistics

Most recent papers:

  • Shared modes of presentation.
    Simon Prosser.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. October 10, 2018
    --- - |2 What is it for two people to think of something under the same mode of presentation (MOP)? This has seemed a difficult question for “atomistic” theories such as the Mental Files approach or the Language of Thought hypothesis. Here I propose a simple answer. I first argue that, by parallel with the synchronic intrapersonal case, the sharing of a MOP should involve epistemic transparency between the token thoughts of the two thinkers. I then explain how shared words help bring about this transparency. Finally, I show how the account can deal with MOPs expressed using demonstratives and indexicals. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    October 10, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12219   open full text
  • Modeling practical thinking.
    Matthew Mosdell.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. September 20, 2018
    --- - |2 Intellectualists about knowledge‐how argue that knowing how to do something is knowing the content of a proposition (i.e., a fact). An important component of this view is the idea that propositional knowledge is translated into behavior when it is presented to the mind in a peculiarly practical way. Until recently, however, intellectualists have not said much about what it means for propositional knowledge to be entertained under thought's practical guise. Carlotta Pavese fills this gap in the intellectualist view by modeling practical modes of thought after Fregean senses. In this paper, I take up her model and the presuppositions it is built upon, arguing that her view of practical thought is not positioned to account for much of what human agents are able to do. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    September 20, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12218   open full text
  • Issue Information.

    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. September 11, 2018
    --- - - Mind & Language, Volume 33, Issue 4, Page 319-320, September 2018.
    September 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12155   open full text
  • Are false implicatures lies? An empirical investigation.
    Benjamin Weissman, Marina Terkourafi.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 31, 2018
    --- - |2 Lies are typically defined as believed falsehoods asserted with the intention of deceiving the hearer. A particularly problematic case for this definition is that of false implicatures. These are prototypically cases where the proposition expressed by the speaker's utterance is true, yet an implicature conveyed by this proposition in context is false. However, implicature is a diverse category and whether a blanket statement such as “false implicatures are lies,” as some have argued can account for all of them is open to investigation. We present an experimental investigation of whether naïve participants define different types of implicatures as lies. Our results show that only a couple of types of implicatures were strongly rated as lies by participants. These results suggest that participants distinguish between different types of communicated meanings on linguistic grounds, contributing both to the literature on lying, as well as to theoretical discussions of how different types of meaning are communicated. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12212   open full text
  • Gorillas in the missed (but not the unseen): Reevaluating the evidence for attention being necessary for consciousness.
    Benjamin Kozuch.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 31, 2018
    --- - |2 The idea that attention is necessary for consciousness (the “Necessity Thesis”) is frequently advocated by philosophers and psychologists alike. Experiments involving inattentional and change blindness are thought to support the Necessity Thesis, but they do so only if subjects failing to notice the target stimulus are also not conscious of it. This article uses commonsense phenomenological observations supplemented with empirical data to argue that some subjects failing to notice the target stimulus nonetheless experience its color. Since subjects not noticing the target are commonly assumed to be not attending to it, these scenarios would be instances of consciousness without attention: instead of inattentional and change blindness supporting the Necessity Thesis, they would present counterexamples to it. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12216   open full text
  • Pronominal anaphora, coreference, and closed quotation marks.
    Luca Gasparri.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 31, 2018
    --- - |2 Consider the following sentence: “Mary meditated on the sentence ‘Bill is a good friend’ and concluded that he was a good friend.” It is standardly assumed that in sentences of this sort, containing so‐called “closed” quotations, the expressions occurring between quotation marks are mentioned and do not take their ordinary referents. The quoted NP “Bill” refers, if anything, to the name ‘Bill,’ not to the individual Bill. At the same time, the pronoun “he,” apparently anaphoric on quoted “Bill,” refers to the individual Bill. The case seems thus to invalidate the intuitive principle that pronouns anaphoric on referential expressions inherit their reference from their antecedents. The paper formulates the argument, argues that sentences exhibiting the described pattern do not constitute evidence against the intuitive principle, and proposes an alternative account of the anaphoric relation involved. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12213   open full text
  • Is attending a mental process?
    Yair Levy.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 31, 2018
    --- - |2 The nature of attention has been the topic of a lively research programme in psychology for over a century. But there is widespread agreement that none of the theories on offer manage to fully capture the nature of attention. Recently, philosophers have become interested in the debate again after a prolonged period of neglect. This paper contributes to the project of explaining the nature of attention. It starts off by critically examining Christopher Mole's prominent “adverbial” account of attention, which traces the failure of extant psychological theories to their assumption that attending is a kind of process. It then defends an alternative, process‐based view of the metaphysics of attention, on which attention is understood as an activity and not, as psychologists seem to implicitly assume, an accomplishment. The entrenched distinction between accomplishments and activities is shown to shed new light on the metaphysics of attention. It also provides a novel diagnosis of the empirical state of play. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12211   open full text
  • Chess and the conscious mind: Why Dreyfus and McDowell got it wrong.
    Barbara Gail Montero.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 31, 2018
    --- - |2 Is it possible to deliberate consciously during a 1‐min‐per‐player chess game? I argue that, in contrast to views of the philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell, even 1‐min‐per‐player chess games involve conscious thought and deliberation. In making my case, I rely on experimental results from two small‐scale studies I conducted on chess players, chess players' first‐person reports, and theoretical considerations that distinguish automatic skills from consciously controlled skills. This work bolsters Yu‐Hsuan Chang and David Lane's 2016 study suggesting that simultaneous chess exhibitions and speed chess allow time for calculation. It also aims to inspire future, larger‐scale studies investigating the role of declarative thought in 1‐min‐per‐player games. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12209   open full text
  • The enigma is not entirely dispelled: A review of Mercier and Sperber's The Enigma of Reason.
    Nick Chater, Mike Oaksford.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 24, 2018
    --- - |2 Mercier and Sperber illuminate many aspects of reasoning and rationality, providing refreshing and thoughtful analysis and elegant and well‐researched illustrations. They make a good case that reasoning should be viewed as a type of intuition, rather than a separate cognitive process or system. Yet questions remain. In what sense, if any, is reasoning a “module?” What is the link between rationality within an individual and rationality defined through the interaction between individuals? Formal theories of rationality, from logic, probability theory and game theory, while not the focus of Mercier and Sperber's book, may help clarify this latter question. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 24, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12181   open full text
  • Why reason? Hugo Mercier's and Dan Sperber's The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding.
    Kim Sterelny.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 23, 2018
    --- - |2 The standard view of the function of reason is that it emerged to enable individuals to make better judgements and choices. Once individuals could think better, and once we had suitable communicative tools, individual reasoning acquired a public face; we reasoned together as well as privately, in our own mind. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argue that this gets the story the wrong way around: reasoning evolved for public purposes: to persuade, negotiate, assess. Once it was established publically, perhaps it acquired a private function too. With the exception of a few minor complaints, this evolutionary case is well made. However, Mercier and Sperber embed their evolutionary case within a modular view of the mind and suggest a modular view of public reasoning itself. While I find the evolutionary case persuasive, I am sceptical of the cognitive science framework. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 23, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12182   open full text
  • The enduring enigma of reason.
    Catarina Dutilh Novaes.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 22, 2018
    --- - |2 In The Enigma of Reason, Mercier and Sperber (M&S) present and defend their interactionist account of reason. In this piece, I discuss briefly the points of agreement between M&S and myself and, more extensively, the points of disagreement, most of which pertain to details of the evolutionary components of their account. I discuss in particular the purported modular nature of reason; their account of myside bias as an optimum/adaptation; and the claim that reason thus construed must be an individual‐level and not a group‐level adaptation. In the final section, I offer brief considerations on an alternative account of reasoning, where the focus is on how sociocultural environments may tune the social production and evaluation of arguments. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12174   open full text
  • Why a modular approach to reason?
    Dan Sperber, Hugo Mercier.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 22, 2018
    --- - |2 In their reviews, Chater and Oaksford, Dutilh Novaes, and Sterelny are critical of our modularist approach to reason. In this response, we clarify our claim that reason is one of many cognitive modules that produce intuitive inferences each in its domain; the reason module producing intuitions about reasons. We argue that in‐principle objections to the idea of massive modularity based on Fodor's peculiar approach are not effective against other interpretations that have led to insightful uses of the notion in psychology and biology. We explain how the reason module evaluates reasons on the basis of their metacognitive properties. We show how the module fulfils a social function, that of producing reasons to justify oneself and convince others and of evaluating the reasons others produce to convince us. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12208   open full text
  • Cognitive phenomenology and metacognitive feelings.
    Santiago Arango‐Muñoz.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 17, 2018
    --- - |2 The cognitive phenomenology thesis claims that “there is something it is like” to have cognitive states such as believing, desiring, hoping, attending, and so on. In support of this idea, Goldman claimed that the tip‐of‐the‐tongue phenomenon can be considered as a clear‐cut instance of nonsensory cognitive phenomenology. This paper reviews Goldman's proposal and assesses whether the tip‐of‐the‐tongue and other metacognitive feelings actually constitute an instance of cognitive phenomenology. The paper will show that psychological data cast doubt on the idea that the tip‐of‐the‐tongue and other metacognitive feelings are clear‐cut instances of cognitive phenomenology. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 17, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12215   open full text
  • The evolution and development of visual perspective taking.
    Ben Phillips.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 14, 2018
    --- - |2 I outline three conceptions of seeing that a creature might possess: “the headlamp conception,” which involves an understanding of the causal connections between gazing at an object, certain mental states, and behavior; “the stage lights conception,” which involves an understanding of the selective nature of visual attention; and seeing‐as. I argue that infants and various nonhumans possess the headlamp conception. There is also evidence that chimpanzees and 3‐year‐old children have some grasp of seeing‐as. However, due to a dearth of studies, there is no evidence that infants or nonhumans possess the stage lights conception of seeing. I outline the kinds of experiments that are needed, and what we stand to learn about the evolution and development of perspective taking. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 14, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12214   open full text
  • Remembering Jerry Fodor and his work.
    Georges Rey.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 14, 2018
    --- - |2 This is a reminiscence and short biographical sketch of the late philosopher and cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor. It includes a summary of his main proposals about the mind: his “Language of Thought” hypothesis; his rejection of analyticity and conceptual role semantics; his “mad dog nativism”; his proposal of mental modules and—by contrast—his skepticism about a computational theory of central cognition; his anti‐reductionist, but still physicalist, views about psychology; and, lastly, his attacks on selectionism. I conclude with some discussion of his idiosyncratic style and of his aesthetic and other interests. An appendix provides some memorable quotes. - Mind & Language, Volume 33, Issue 4, Page 321-341, September 2018.
    August 14, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12206   open full text
  • What is the cognitive basis of the side‐effect effect? An experimental test of competing theories.
    Marina Proft, Alexander Dieball, Hannes Rakoczy.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 09, 2018
    --- - |2 Recent work on the side‐effect effect has shown that subjects' intentionality judgments are influenced by moral evaluations. In six experiments, we tested four different candidates for the cognitive foundation derived from prominent explanatory accounts (prescriptiveness, [un‐]expectedness, blame and a shift in default attitudes) against each other in three steps. First, Study 1 showed that the effect even extends to certain descriptive norms. Second, Studies 2–5 investigated the candidates more directly. Results reveal that intentionality judgments could best be explained by underlying shifts in default attitudes. Third, Study 6 experimentally manipulated this default attitude, leading to the predicted change in intentionality judgments. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 09, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12197   open full text
  • Underdetermination, domain restriction, and theory choice.
    Mark Bowker.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 06, 2018
    --- - |2 It is often possible to know what a speaker intends to communicate without knowing what they intend to express. In such cases, speakers need not intend to express anything at all. Stanley and Szabó's influential survey of possible analysis of quantifier domain restriction is, therefore, incomplete and the arguments made by Clapp and Buchanan against Truth Conditional Compositionality and propositional speaker‐meaning are flawed. Two theories should not always be viewed as incompatible when they associate the same utterance with different propositions, as there may be many ways to interpret speakers that are compatible with their intentions. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 06, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12207   open full text
  • De Pulchritudine non est Disputandum? A cross‐cultural investigation of the alleged intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgment.
    Florian Cova, Christopher Y. Olivola, Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich, David Rose, Mario Alai, Adriano Angelucci, Renatas Berniūnas, Emma E. Buchtel, Amita Chatterjee, Hyundeuk Cheon, In‐Rae Cho, Daniel Cohnitz, Vilius Dranseika, Ángeles E. Lagos, Laleh Ghadakpour, Maurice Grinberg, Ivar Hannikainen, Takaaki Hashimoto, Amir Horowitz, Evgeniya Hristova, Yasmina Jraissati, Veselina Kadreva, Kaori Karasawa, Hackjin Kim, Yeonjeong Kim, Minwoo Lee, Carlos Mauro, Masaharu Mizumoto, Sebastiano Moruzzi, Jorge Ornelas, Barbara Osimani, Carlos Romero, Alejandro Rosas, Massimo Sangoi, Andrea Sereni, Sarah Songhorian, Paulo Sousa, Noel Struchiner, Vera Tripodi, Naoki Usui, Alejandro V. del Mercado, Giorgio Volpe, Hrag A. Vosgerichian, Xueyi Zhang, Jing Zhu.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. August 02, 2018
    --- - |2 Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have generally agreed that common sense does not treat aesthetic judgments in the same way as typical expressions of subjective preferences—rather, it endows them with intersubjective validity, the property of being right or wrong regardless of disagreement. Moreover, this apparent intersubjective validity has been taken to constitute one of the main explananda for philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment. But is it really the case that most people spontaneously treat aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity? In this paper, we report the results of a cross‐cultural study with over 2,000 respondents spanning 19 countries. Despite significant geographical variations, these results suggest that most people do not treat their own aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories of aesthetic judgment and the purpose of aesthetics in general. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    August 02, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12210   open full text
  • Troubles with Bayesianism: An introduction to the psychological immune system.
    Eric Mandelbaum.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 31, 2018
    --- - |2 A Bayesian mind is, at its core, a rational mind. Bayesianism is thus well‐suited to predict and explain mental processes that best exemplify our ability to be rational. However, evidence from belief acquisition and change appears to show that we do not acquire and update information in a Bayesian way. Instead, the principles of belief acquisition and updating seem grounded in maintaining a psychological immune system rather than in approximating a Bayesian processor. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    July 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12205   open full text
  • Reconstructing memories, deconstructing the self.
    Monima Chadha.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 16, 2018
    --- - |2 The paper evaluates a well‐known argument for a self from episodic memories—that remembering that I did something or thought something involves experiencing the identity of my present self with the past doer or thinker. Shaun Nichols argues that although it phenomenologically appears to be the case that we are identical with the past self, no metaphysical conclusion can be drawn from the phenomenology. I draw on literature from contemporary psychology and Buddhist resources to arrive at a more radical conclusion: that there is no phenomenological sense of identity with a past self; the sense of self in episodic memory depends on narrative construction of the self. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    July 16, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12204   open full text
  • Flesh matters: The body in cognition.
    Lawrence A. Shapiro.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 06, 2018
    --- - |2 Embodied cognition emphasizes the importance of the body to cognition, but what is the nature of this importance? For some advocates, the body provides a computational resource within the context of a larger cognitive system. For others, the body constrains cognition, such that differently embodied organisms will differ cognitively as well. I examine these distinct conceptions of embodiment, defending the greater interest of the second. I argue as well that judgments of the body's significance in cognition do not, as contestants on both sides of the debate often insist, depend on showing the body to be a constituent in cognition. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    July 06, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12203   open full text
  • Third‐person knowledge ascriptions: A crucial experiment for contextualism.
    Jumbly Grindrod, James Andow, Nat Hansen.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 05, 2018
    --- - |2 Previous experimental studies on epistemic contextualism have, for the most part, not been designed to distinguish between contextualism and one of its main competing theories, subject‐sensitive invariantism (SSI). In this paper, we present a “third‐person” experimental design that is needed to provide evidence that would support contextualism over SSI, and we then present our results using this design. Our results not only provide crucial support for contextualism over SSI, but also buck the general trend of failing to detect the kind of contextual effect that the epistemic contextualism relies upon. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    July 05, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12196   open full text
  • Implicit bias, ideological bias, and epistemic risks in philosophy.
    Uwe Peters.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 29, 2018
    --- - |2 It has been argued that implicit biases are operative in philosophy and lead to significant epistemic costs in the field. Philosophers working on this issue have focused mainly on implicit gender and race biases. They have overlooked ideological bias, which targets political orientations. Psychologists have found ideological bias in their field and have argued that it has negative epistemic effects on scientific research. I relate this debate to the field of philosophy and argue that if, as some studies suggest, the same bias also exists in philosophy then it will lead to hitherto unrecognised epistemic hazards in the field. Furthermore, the bias is epistemically different from the more familiar biases in respects that are important for epistemology, ethics, and metaphilosophy. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    June 29, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12194   open full text
  • Infer with care: A critique of the argument from animals.
    Rachael L. Brown.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 26, 2018
    --- - |2 Non‐human animal evidence is frequently invoked in debates in cognitive science. Here, I critically assess one use of such evidence in the form of the “argument from animals,” a prominent positive argument for nativism, which roughly states that non‐human cognitive development is largely nativist, and thus human cognitive development is most likely largely nativist too. I offer a number of reasons to reject this argument, and in doing so derive some important broader lessons concerning the appropriate role of non‐human animal evidence in a science of the human mind. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    June 26, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12190   open full text
  • Normativity in joint action.
    Javier Gomez‐Lavin, Matthew Rachar.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 25, 2018
    --- - |2 The debate regarding the nature of joint action has come to a stalemate due to a dependence on intuitional methods. Normativists, such as Margaret Gilbert, argue that action‐relative normative relations are inherent in joint action, while non‐normativists, such as Michael Bratman, claim that there are minimal cases of joint action without normative relations. In this work, we describe the first experimental examinations of these intuitions, and report the results of six studies that weigh in favor of the normativist paradigm. Philosophical ramifications and further extensions of this work are then discussed. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    June 25, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12195   open full text
  • Children's attitude problems: Bootstrapping verb meaning from syntax and pragmatics.
    Valentine Hacquard, Jeffrey Lidz.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 19, 2018
    --- - |2 How do children learn the meanings of propositional attitude verbs? We argue that children use information contained in both syntactic distribution and pragmatic function to zero in on the appropriate meanings. Specifically, we identify a potentially universal link between semantic subclasses of attitude verbs, their syntactic distribution and the kinds of indirect speech acts they can be used to perform. As a result, children can use the syntax as evidence about the meaning, which in turn constrains the kinds of pragmatic enrichments they do and do not make in understanding these verbs in conversation. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    June 19, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12192   open full text
  • The meaning of “I” in “I”‐thought.
    Minyao Huang.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 11, 2018
    --- - |2 “I”‐thought is often taken to have a special cognitive significance, with “I” symbolising a subjective way of thinking about oneself that is inapt for communication. In this paper I argue that the way one thinks of oneself in “I”‐thought is immaterial to the meaning of “I,” for in general the psychological role associated with a referential expression is separable from its meaning. With respect to “I,” I suggest that its meaning consists in an interpersonal way of fixing its reference in a context, which is accessible to the speaker and the hearer. Consequently, “I” would have a dual cognitive significance. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    June 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12193   open full text
  • From punishment to universalism.
    David Rose, Shaun Nichols.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 28, 2018
    --- - |2 Many philosophers have claimed that the folk endorse moral universalism. But while some empirical evidence supports the claim that the folk endorse moral universalism, this work has uncovered intra‐domain differences in folk judgments of moral universalism. In light of all this, our question is: why do the folk endorse moral universalism? Our hypothesis is that folk judgments of moral universalism are generated in part by a desire to punish. We present evidence supporting this across three studies. On the basis of this, we argue for a debunking explanation of folk judgments of moral universalism. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    May 28, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12191   open full text
  • The functions of imitative behaviour in humans.
    Harry Farmer, Anna Ciaunica, Antonia F. de C. Hamilton.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 22, 2018
    --- - |2 This article focuses on the question of the function of imitation and whether current accounts of imitative function are consistent with our knowledge about imitation's origins. We first review theories of imitative origin concluding that empirical evidence suggests that imitation arises from domain‐general learning mechanisms. Next, we lay out a selective account of function that allows normative functions to be ascribed to learned behaviours. We then describe and review four accounts of the function of imitation before evaluating the relationship between the claim that imitation arises out of domain‐general learning mechanisms and theories of the function of imitation. - Mind & Language, Volume 33, Issue 4, Page 378-396, September 2018.
    May 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12189   open full text
  • Do as I say and as I do: Imitation, pedagogy, and cumulative culture.
    Ellen Fridland.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 22, 2018
    --- - |2 Several theories, which attempt to give an account of cumulative culture, emphasize the importance of high‐fidelity transmission mechanisms as central to human learning. These high‐fidelity transmission mechanisms are thought to account for the ratchet effect, that is, the capacity to inherit modified or improved knowledge and skills rather than having to develop one's skills from the ground up via individual learning. In this capacity, imitation and teaching have been thought to occupy a special place in the explanation of cumulative culture because they are both thought to function as high‐fidelity transmission mechanisms. In contrast to this standard view, I will argue that imitation and teaching are not both best construed as primarily high‐fidelity transmission mechanisms. Rather, I will argue that though both can contribute to the high‐fidelity transmission of information, imitation and teaching make two distinct contributions to cumulative culture. I will claim that imitation functions primarily as a high‐fidelity transmission mechanism while teaching is primarily responsible for the innovation and creativity characteristic of cumulative culture. - Mind & Language, Volume 33, Issue 4, Page 355-377, September 2018.
    May 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12178   open full text
  • Two ways of relating to (and acting for) reasons.
    Caroline T. Arruda, Daniel J. Povinelli.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 21, 2018
    --- - |2 Most views of agency take acting for reasons (whether explanatory or justifying) to be an important hallmark of the capacity for agency. The problem, however, is that the standard analysis of what it is to act in light of reasons is not sufficiently fine grained to accommodate what we will argue are the myriad types of ways that agents can do so. We suggest that a full account of acting for reasons must also recognize the relationship that agents have with their reasons. We focus on two types of relationships. The first is the traditional case, where agents act in light of reasons that they take to be their own and that they endorse. We describe this as possessing an Endorsement Relationship with one's reasons. A second way of relating to reasons is what we will describe as possessing a Directed Relationship with one's reasons. This includes cases in which agents' actions are the product of reasons but toward which agents do not have an Endorsement Relationship. The Endorsement Relationship is uncontroversial. In this paper, we defend the existence and importance of the Directed Relationship. We show that it is a genuine but overlooked way of relating to, and thereby acting for, reasons. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    May 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12185   open full text
  • Subjectivity in gradable adjectives: The case of tall and heavy.
    Steven Verheyen, Sabrina Dewil, Paul Égré.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 11, 2018
    --- - |2 We present an investigation of the ways in which speakers' subjective perspectives are likely to affect the meaning of gradable adjectives like tall or heavy. We present the results of a study showing that people tend to use themselves as a yardstick when ascribing these adjectives to human figures of varied measurements: subjects' height and weight requirements for applying tall and heavy are found to be positively correlated with their personal measurements. We draw more general lessons regarding the definition of subjectivity and the ways in which a standard of comparison and a significant deviation from that standard are specified. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    May 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12184   open full text
  • Do non‐verbal number systems shape grammar? Numerical cognition and Number morphology compared.
    Francesca Franzon, Chiara Zanini, Rosa Rugani.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 11, 2018
    --- - |2 Number morphology (e.g., singular vs. plural) is a part of the grammar that captures numerical information. Some languages have morphological Number values, which express few (paucal), two (dual), three (trial) and sometimes (possibly) four (quadral). Interestingly, the limit of the attested morphological Number values matches the limit of non‐verbal numerical cognition. The latter is based on two systems, one estimating approximate numerosities and the other computing exact numerosities up to three or four. We compared the literature on non‐verbal number systems with data on Number morphology from 218 languages. Our observations suggest that non‐verbal numerical cognition is reflected as a core part of language. - Mind & Language, EarlyView.
    May 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12183   open full text
  • Imitation from a joint action perspective.
    Luke McEllin, Günther Knoblich, Natalie Sebanz.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 08, 2018
    --- - |2 Imitation research has focused on turn‐taking contexts in which one person acts and one person then copies that action. However, people also imitate when engaging in joint actions, where two or more people coordinate their actions in space and time in order to achieve a shared goal. We discuss how the various constraints imposed by joint action modulate imitation, and the close links between perception and action that form the basis of this phenomenon. We also explore how understanding imitation in the context of joint action yields new insights into cultural phenomena such as teaching and innovation. - Mind & Language, Volume 33, Issue 4, Page 342-354, September 2018.
    May 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12188   open full text
  • Singular thoughts and de re attitude reports.
    James Openshaw.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 03, 2018
    --- - |2 It is widely supposed that if there is to be a plausible connection between the truth of a de re attitude report about a subject and that subject's possession of a singular thought, then “acquaintance”‐style requirements on singular thought must be rejected. I show that this belief rests on poorly motivated claims about how we talk about the attitudes. I offer a framework for propositional attitude reports, which provides both attractive solutions to recalcitrant puzzle cases and the key to preserving acquaintance constraints. The upshot is that there is an independently motivated response to the principal argument against acquaintance. - Mind & Language, Volume 33, Issue 4, Page 415-437, September 2018.
    May 03, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12180   open full text
  • Skepticism and the acquisition of “knowledge”.
    Shaun Nichols, N. Ángel Pinillos.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. May 01, 2018
    --- - |2 Do you know you are not being massively deceived by an evil demon? That is a familiar skeptical challenge. Less familiar is this question: How do you have a conception of knowledge on which the evil demon constitutes a prima facie challenge? Recently several philosophers have suggested that our responses to skeptical scenarios can be explained in terms of heuristics and biases. We offer an alternative explanation, based in learning theory. We argue that, given the evidence available to the learner, it would be rational for the learner to infer an infallibilist conception of knowledge. - Mind & Language, Volume 33, Issue 4, Page 397-414, September 2018.
    May 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/mila.12179   open full text
  • Logical Form and the Vernacular Revisited.
    Andrew Botterell, Robert J. Stainton.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 31, 2017
    We revisit a debate initiated some 15 years ago by Ray Elugardo and Robert Stainton about the domain of arguments. Our main result is that arguments are not exclusively sets of linguistic expressions. Instead, as we put it, some non‐linguistic items have ‘logical form’. The crucial examples are arguments, both deductive and inductive, made with unembedded words and phrases. … subsentential expressions such as singular terms and predicates… cannot serve as premises or conclusions in inferences (R. Brandom, 2000, p. 40).
    July 31, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12151   open full text
  • Dendrophobia in Bonobo Comprehension of Spoken English.
    Robert Truswell.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 23, 2017
    Data from a study by Savage‐Rumbaugh and colleagues on comprehension of spoken English requests by a bonobo (Kanzi) and a human infant (Alia) supports Fitch's hypothesis that humans exhibit dendrophilia, or a propensity to manipulate tree structures, to a greater extent than other species. However, findings from language acquisition suggest that human infants do not show an initial preference for certain hierarchical syntactic structures. Infants are slow to acquire and generalize the structures in question, but they can eventually do so. Kanzi, in contrast, is dendrophobic: even though his non‐hierarchical strategy impairs comprehension, he never acquires the hierarchical structure.
    July 23, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12150   open full text
  • Attention and Mental Primer.
    Jacob Beck, Keith A. Schneider.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 14, 2017
    Drawing on the empirical premise that attention makes objects look more intense (bigger, faster, higher in contrast), Ned Block has argued for mental paint, a phenomenal residue that cannot be reduced to what is perceived or represented. If sound, Block's argument would undermine direct realism and representationism, two widely held views about the nature of conscious perception. We argue that Block's argument fails because the empirical premise it is based upon is false. Attending to an object alters its salience, but not its perceived intensity. We also argue that salience should be equated with mental primer, a close cousin of mental paint that reintroduces difficulties for direct realism and representationism. The upshot is that direct realism and representationism are still in trouble, but not for the reason that Block thinks.
    July 14, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12148   open full text
  • The Perception‐Action Model: Counting Computational Mechanisms.
    Thor Grünbaum.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 14, 2017
    Milner and Goodale's Two Visual Systems Hypothesis (TVSH) is regarded as common ground in recent discussions of visual consciousness. A central part of TVSH is a functional model of vision and action (a functional perception‐action model, PAM for short). In this paper, I provide a brief overview of these current discussions and argue that there is ambiguity between a strong and a weak version of PAM. I argue that, given a standard way of individuating computational mechanisms, the available evidence cannot be used to distinguish between these versions. This not only has consequences for philosophical theories of the role of visual consciousness but also for the role of experimental evidence in model testing in cognitive neuroscience.
    July 14, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12147   open full text
  • A Gricean Theory of Malaprops.
    Elmar Unnsteinsson.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. July 14, 2017
    Gricean intentionalists hold that what a speaker says and means by a linguistic utterance is determined by the speaker's communicative intention. On this view, one cannot really say anything without meaning it as well. Conventionalists argue, however, that malapropisms provide powerful counterexamples to this claim. I present two arguments against the conventionalist and sketch a new Gricean theory of speech errors, called the misarticulation theory. On this view, malapropisms are understood as a special case of mispronunciation. I argue that the Gricean theory is supported by empirical work in phonetics and phonology and, also, that conventionalism inevitably fails to do this work justice. I conclude, from this, that the conventionalist fails to show that malapropisms constitute a counterexample to a Gricean theory.
    July 14, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12149   open full text
  • Does Perceptual Consciousness Overflow Cognitive Access? The Challenge from Probabilistic, Hierarchical Processes.
    Steven Gross, Jonathan Flombaum.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 02, 2017
    Does perceptual consciousness require cognitive access? Ned Block argues that it does not. Central to his case are visual memory experiments that employ post‐stimulus cueing—in particular, Sperling's classic partial report studies, change‐detection work by Lamme and colleagues, and a recent paper by Bronfman and colleagues that exploits our perception of ‘gist’ properties. We argue contra Block that these experiments do not support his claim. Our reinterpretations differ from previous critics' in challenging as well a longstanding and common view of visual memory as involving declining capacity across a series of stores. We conclude by discussing the relation of probabilistic perceptual representations and phenomenal consciousness.
    June 02, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12144   open full text
  • Morality Without Mindreading.
    Susana Monsó.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 02, 2017
    Can animals behave morally if they can't mindread? Does morality require mindreading capacities? Moral psychologists believe that mindreading is contingently involved in moral judgements. Moral philosophers argue that moral behaviour necessarily requires the possession of mindreading capacities. In this paper, I argue that while the former may be right, the latter are mistaken. Using the example of empathy, I show that animals with no mindreading capacities could behave on the basis of emotions that possess an identifiable moral content. Therefore, at least one type of moral motivation does not require mindreading. This means that, a priori, non‐mindreading animals can be moral.
    June 02, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12146   open full text
  • What is the Role of Experience in Children's Success in the False Belief Test: Maturation, Facilitation, Attunement or Induction?
    Marco Fenici.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 02, 2017
    According to a widely shared view, experience plays only a limited role in children's acquisition of the capacity to pass the false belief test: at most, it facilitates or attunes the development of mindreading abilities from infancy to early childhood. Against the facilitation—and also the maturation—hypothesis, I report empirical data attesting that children and even adults never come to understand false beliefs when deprived of proper social and linguistic interaction. In contrast to the attunement hypothesis, I argue that alleged mindreading abilities in infancy differ significantly from those required to pass the false belief test at age four. I conclude that children's success in the false belief test reflects the acquisition of a novel psychological competence, and argue that social experience in the form of conversation about mental states teaches children to exploit belief reports to predict intelligent behaviour, and induces their acquisition of a capacity to recognize and track others' beliefs across contexts.
    June 02, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12145   open full text
  • ‘I Don't Know’: Children's Early Talk About Knowledge.
    Paul L. Harris, Bei Yang, Yixin Cui.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 02, 2017
    Children's utterances from late infancy to 3 years of age were examined to infer their conception of knowledge. In Study 1, the utterances of two English‐speaking children were analysed and in Study 2, the utterances of a Mandarin‐speaking child were analysed – in both studies, for their use of the verb know. Both studies confirmed that know and not know were used to affirm, query or deny knowledge, especially concerning an ongoing topic of conversation. References to a third party were rare. By implication, 2‐year‐olds have a conception of knowledge that underpins their exchange of information in conversation. Implications for the child's developing theory of mind are discussed.
    June 02, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12143   open full text
  • On Proprioception in Action: Multimodality versus Deafferentation.
    Hong Yu Wong.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 02, 2017
    Recent research on proprioception reveals that it relies on a systematically distorted model of bodily dimensions. This generates a puzzle about proprioception in action control: action requires accurate bodily parameters. Proprioception is crucial for ordinary action, but if it relies on a systematically distorted body model, then proprioception should contain systematic errors. But we cannot respond by discarding proprioception from motor control, since we know from the severe problems deafferented agents face in acting that ordinary action requires proprioception. The solution is that the possibility of bodily action is provided for by multimodal body representations for action (the ‘body schema’).
    June 02, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12142   open full text
  • Motor Intentions: How Intentions and Motor Representations Come Together.
    Chiara Brozzo.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 03, 2017
    What are the most detailed descriptions under which subjects intend to perform bodily actions? According to Pacherie (2006), these descriptions may be found by looking into motor representations—action representations in the brain that determine the movements to be performed. Specifically, for any motor representation guiding an action, its subject has an M‐intention representing that action in as much detail. I show that some M‐intentions breach the constraints that intentions should meet. I then identify a set of intentions—motor intentions—that represent actions in as much detail as some motor representations while meeting the constraints that intentions should meet.
    April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12140   open full text
  • Hume's Table, Peacocke's Trees, the Tilted Penny and the Reversed Seeing‐in Account.
    Robert Schroer.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 03, 2017
    In seeing a tilted penny, we are experientially aware of both its circularity and another shape, which I dub ‘β‐ellipticality’. Some claim that our experiential awareness of the intrinsic shapes/sizes of everyday objects depends upon our experiential awareness of β‐shapes/β‐sizes. In contrast, I maintain that β‐property experiences are the result of what Richard Wollheim calls ‘seeing‐in’, but run in reverse: instead of seeing a three‐dimensional object in a flat surface, we see a flat surface in a three‐dimensional object. Using this new account, I re‐examine the phenomenological directness of visual experience and undermine an argument for skepticism about β‐property experiences.
    April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12141   open full text
  • Intrusive Uncertainty in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
    Tom Cochrane, Keeley Heaton.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 03, 2017
    In this article we examine obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We examine and reject two existing models of this disorder: the Dysfunctional Belief Model and the Inference‐Based Approach. Instead, we propose that the main distinctive characteristic of OCD is a hyperactive sub‐personal signal of being in error, experienced by the individual as uncertainty about his or her intentional actions (including mental actions). This signalling interacts with the anxiety sensitivities of the individual to trigger conscious checking processes, including speculations about possible harms. We examine the implications of this model for the individual's capacity to control his or her thoughts.
    April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12139   open full text
  • Grades of Multisensory Awareness.
    Casey O'Callaghan.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 03, 2017
    Psychophysics and neuroscience demonstrate that different sensory systems interact and influence each other. Perceiving involves extensive cooperation and coordination among systems associated with sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Nonetheless, it remains unclear in what respects conscious perceptual awareness is multisensory. This article distinguishes six differing varieties of multisensory awareness, explicates their consequences, and thereby elucidates the multisensory nature of perception. It argues on these grounds that perceptual awareness need not be exhausted by that which is associated with each of the respective sensory modalities along with whatever accrues thanks to simple co‐consciousness.
    April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12137   open full text
  • Glyn Humphreys: Attention, Binding, Motion‐Induced Blindness.
    Martin Davies.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 03, 2017
    Glyn Humphreys' research on attention and binding began from feature‐integration theory, which claims that binding together visual features, such as colour and orientation, requires spatially selective attention. Humphreys employed a more inclusive notion of binding and argued, on neuropsychological grounds, for a multi‐stage account of the overall binding process, in which binding together of form elements was followed by two stages of feature binding. Only the second stage of feature binding, a re‐entrant (top‐down) process beginning in posterior parietal cortex and returning to early visual areas, required attention. In line with his commitment to converging evidence, Humphreys considered that investigating the role of attention in motion‐induced blindness could be a route to better understanding of the cognitive role of the attention‐dependent second stage of feature binding. He suggested that this role might be to resolve ambiguity and to generate a single consistent interpretation of the perceptual input.
    April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12136   open full text
  • Glyn Humphreys (28 December 1954 – 14 January 2016).

    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 03, 2017
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    April 03, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12135   open full text
  • Knowing the Meaning of a Word: Shared Psychological States and the Determination of Extensions.
    Timothy Pritchard.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. February 06, 2017
    What is it to know the meaning of a word? The traditional view is that it involves the possession of a concept that determines the extension of a word, with the concept corresponding to a single psychological state. Millikan criticizes this view, denying not only that concepts determine extensions but also that sharing a concept means sharing a psychological state. The purpose of this article is to defend a modified version of the traditional view. I argue that Millikan's claims do not translate directly into a thesis about word meaning. Her arguments relate to an extra‐linguistic approach to extension, which we can distinguish from a linguistically oriented notion of extension.
    February 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12134   open full text
  • Cladistic Parsimony, Historical Linguistics and Cultural Phylogenetics.
    Frank Cabrera.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. February 06, 2017
    Here, I consider the recent application of phylogenetic methods in historical linguistics. After a preliminary survey of one such method, i.e. cladistic parsimony, I respond to two common criticisms of cultural phylogenies: (1) that cultural artifacts cannot be modeled as tree‐like because of borrowing across lineages, and (2) that the mechanism of cultural change differs radically from that of biological evolution. I argue that while perhaps (1) remains true for certain cultural artifacts, the nature of language may be such as to side‐step this objection. Moreover, I explore the possibility that cladistic parsimony can be justified even if (2) is true by appealing to the inference pattern known among philosophers as ‘Inference to the Best Explanation’ (IBE).
    February 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12133   open full text
  • Subjective Misidentification and Thought Insertion.
    Matthew Parrott.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. February 06, 2017
    This essay presents a new account of thought insertion. Prevailing views in both philosophy and cognitive science tend to characterize the experience of thought insertion as missing or lacking some element, such as a ‘sense of agency’, found in ordinary first‐person awareness of one's own thoughts. By contrast, I propose that, rather than lacking something, experiences of thought insertion have an additional feature not present in ordinary conscious experiences of one's own thoughts. More specifically, I claim that the structure of an experience of thought insertion consists of two distinct elements: a state of ordinary first‐person awareness and a sense that this state of awareness is highly unusual. In addition to modeling the experience of thought insertion, I also explain how a delusional pattern of thinking could lead someone who has this kind of experience to adopt a belief that some other entity is inserting thoughts into her mind. Finally, I briefly sketch a neurocomputational framework that could be developed to explain the sense that one's state of first‐person awareness is highly irregular.
    February 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12132   open full text
  • Attentive Visual Reference.
    E. J. Green.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. February 06, 2017
    Many have held that when a person visually attends to an object, her visual system deploys a representation that designates the object. Call the referential link between such representations and the objects they designate attentive visual reference. In this article I offer an account of attentive visual reference. I argue that the object representations deployed in visual attention—which I call attentive visual object representations (AVORs)—refer directly, and are akin to indexicals. Then I turn to the issue of how the reference of an AVOR is determined relative to a context. After raising problems for existing accounts, I propose a mechanism of reference determination that is both causal and descriptive: For an AVOR to refer to a particular object, the object must appropriately cause the deployment of the AVOR, and the AVOR must be associated with descriptive information about some of the object's geometrical and mereological properties.
    February 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/mila.12131   open full text
  • Semantics, Coherence, and Intentions: Reply to Carston, Collins and Hawthorne.
    Ernie Lepore, Matthew Stone.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. November 03, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12125   open full text
  • Putting Syntax First: On Convention and Implicature in Imagination and Convention.
    John Collins.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. November 03, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12124   open full text
  • Some Remarks on Imagination and Convention.
    John Hawthorne.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. November 03, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12123   open full text
  • Linguistic Conventions and the Role of Pragmatics.
    Robyn Carston.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. November 03, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12122   open full text
  • Embodied Conceivability: How to Keep the Phenomenal Concept Strategy Grounded.
    Guy Dove, Andreas Elpidorou.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. November 03, 2016
    The Phenomenal Concept Strategy (PCS) offers the physicalist perhaps the most promising means of explaining why the connection between mental facts and physical facts appears to be contingent even though it is not. In this article, we show that the large body of evidence suggesting that our concepts are often embodied and grounded in sensorimotor systems speaks against standard forms of the PCS. We argue, nevertheless, that it is possible to formulate a novel version of the PCS that is thoroughly in keeping with embodied cognition, focuses on features of physical concepts, and succeeds in explaining the appearance of contingency.
    November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12121   open full text
  • Motivating the Relevance Approach to Conditionals.
    Niels Skovgaard‐Olsen.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. November 03, 2016
    The aim is to motivate theoretically a relevance approach to (indicative) conditionals in a comparative discussion of the main alternatives. In particular, it will be argued that a relevance approach to conditionals is better motivated than the suppositional theory currently enjoying wide endorsement. In the course of this discussion, an argument will be presented for why failures of the epistemic relevance of the antecedent for the consequent should be counted as genuine semantic defects (as opposed to be relegated to pragmatics). Furthermore, strategies for dealing with compositionality and the perceived objective purport of indicative conditionals will be put forward.
    November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12120   open full text
  • Rational Learners and Moral Rules.
    Shaun Nichols, Shikhar Kumar, Theresa Lopez, Alisabeth Ayars, Hoi‐Yee Chan.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. November 03, 2016
    People draw subtle distinctions in the normative domain. But it remains unclear exactly what gives rise to such distinctions. On one prominent approach, emotion systems trigger non‐utilitarian judgments. The main alternative, inspired by Chomskyan linguistics, suggests that moral distinctions derive from an innate moral grammar. In this article, we draw on Bayesian learning theory to develop a rational learning account. We argue that the ‘size principle’, which is implicated in word learning, can also explain how children would use scant and equivocal evidence to interpret candidate rules as applying more narrowly than utilitarian rules.
    November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12119   open full text
  • Generics, Covert Structure and Logical Form.
    Rachel Katharine Sterken.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. November 03, 2016
    The standard view amongst philosophers of language and linguists is that the logical form of generics is quantificational and contains a covert, unpronounced quantifier expression Gen. Recently, some theorists have begun to question the standard view and rekindle the competing proposal, that generics are a species of kind‐predication. These theorists offer some forceful objections to the standard view, and new strategies for dealing with the abundance of linguistic evidence in favour of the standard view. I respond to these objections and show that their strategies fail. I offer a novel argument in favour of the standard view that I call the binder argument. The upshot of this argument is that if one rejects the existence of Gen, then one is committed to rejecting the existence of covert structure in general (including domain variables and implicit argument places).
    November 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12118   open full text
  • The Lying Test.
    Eliot Michaelson.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. September 04, 2016
    As an empirical inquiry into the nature of meaning, semantics must rely on data. Unfortunately, the primary data to which philosophers and linguists have traditionally appealed—judgments on the truth and falsity of sentences—have long been known to vary widely between competent speakers in a number of interesting cases. The present article constitutes an experiment in how to obtain some more consistent data for the enterprise of semantics. Specifically, it argues from some widely accepted Gricean premises to the conclusion that judgments on lying are semantically relevant. It then endeavors to show how, assuming the relevance of such judgments, we can use them to generate a useful, widely acceptable test for semantic content.
    September 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12115   open full text
  • Solving the Puzzle about Early Belief‐Ascription.
    Katharina A. Helming, Brent Strickland, Pierre Jacob.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. September 04, 2016
    Developmental psychology currently faces a deep puzzle: most children before 4 years of age fail elicited‐response false‐belief tasks, but preverbal infants demonstrate spontaneous false‐belief understanding. Two main strategies are available: cultural constructivism and early‐belief understanding. The latter view (unlike the former) assumes that failure at elicited‐response false‐belief tasks need not reflect the inability to understand false beliefs. The burden of early‐belief understanding is to explain why elicited‐response false‐belief tasks are so challenging for most children under 4 years of age. The goal of this article is to offer a pragmatic framework whose purpose is to discharge this burden.
    September 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12114   open full text
  • The Varieties of Parsimony in Psychology.
    Mike Dacey.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. September 04, 2016
    Philosophers and psychologists make many different, seemingly incompatible parsimony claims in support of competing models of cognition in nonhuman animals. This variety of parsimony claims is problematic. Firstly, it is difficult to justify each specific variety. This problem is especially salient for Morgan's Canon, perhaps the most important variety of parsimony claimed. Secondly, there is no systematic way of adjudicating between particular claims when they conflict. I argue for a view of parsimony in comparative psychology that solves these problems, based on Sober's (1994) view that parsimony claims are claims that one model is more plausible given background theory.
    September 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12113   open full text
  • Full‐On Stating.
    Robert J. Stainton.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. September 04, 2016
    What distinguishes full‐on stating a proposition from merely communicating it? For instance, what distinguishes claiming/asserting/saying that one has never smoked crack cocaine from merely implying/conveying/hinting this? The enormous literature on ‘assertion’ provides many approaches to distinguishing stating from, say, asking and commanding: only the former aims at truth; only the former expresses one's belief; etc. But this leaves my question unanswered, since in merely communicating a proposition one also aims at truth, expresses a belief, etc. My aim is not to criticize extant accounts of the state‐versus‐merely‐convey contrast, but rather to draw on clues from Dummett, functional linguistics and moral theory, to offer a novel one. The main idea is that full‐on stating is distinctively conventionalized in a way that conversationally implicating, hinting, giving to understand, etc., are not. Specifically, full‐on stating is constitutively tied to a particular conventional, linguistic, function‐bearing device, the declarative sentence. To full‐on state that p is to hit that ‘target speech act’ which owes its existence to that special‐purpose device. It is therefore also to make one's action lie‐prone. Nonetheless, once that sui generis target is there to be aimed for, a person may reach it without using the special‐purpose tool—e.g. one may full‐on state using a mere word or phrase, or coded hand signals, or semaphore. I end by considering several philosophical implications of this means of capturing the contrast.
    September 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12112   open full text
  • Making Sense of the Cotard Syndrome: Insights from the Study of Depersonalisation.
    Alexandre Billon.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 06, 2016
    Patients suffering from the Cotard syndrome can deny being alive, having guts, thinking or even existing. They can also complain that the world or time have ceased to exist. In this article, I argue that even though the leading neurocognitive accounts have difficulties meeting that task, we should, and we can, make sense of these bizarre delusions. To that effect, I draw on the close connection between the Cotard syndrome and a more common (and better studied) condition known as depersonalisation. Even though they are not delusional, depersonalised patients seem to have experiences that are quite similar to those of Cotard patients. I argue that these experiences are essentially characterised by a (more or less important) lack of subjective character and of two other structural features of experience, which I call ‘the present character’ and ‘the actual character’. Cotard's nihilistic delusions simply consist in taking these anomalous experiences at face value.
    June 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12110   open full text
  • Exploding Explicatures.
    Emma Borg.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 06, 2016
    ‘Pragmaticist’ positions posit a three‐way division within utterance content between: (i) the standing meaning of the sentence, (ii) a somewhat pragmatically enhanced meaning which captures what the speaker explicitly conveys (following Sperber and Wilson, I label this the ‘explicature’), and (iii) further indirectly conveyed propositions which the speaker merely implies. Here I re‐examine the notion of an explicature, asking how it is defined and what work explicatures are supposed to do. I argue that explicatures get defined in three different ways and that these distinct definitions can and do pull apart. Thus the notion of an explicature turns out to be ill‐defined.
    June 06, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12109   open full text
  • Defending Simulation Theory Against the Argument from Error.
    Timothy L. Short, Kevin J. Riggs.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 04, 2016
    We defend the Simulation Theory of Mind against a challenge from the Theory Theory of Mind. The challenge is that while Simulation Theory can account for Theory of Mind errors, it cannot account for their systematic nature. There are Theory of Mind errors seen in social psychological research with adults where persons are either overly generous or overly cynical in how rational they expect others to be. There are also Theory of Mind errors observable in developmental data drawn from Maxi‐type false belief tests. We provide novel responses to several examples showing that Simulation Theory can answer these challenges.
    April 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12103   open full text
  • Method and Evidence: Gesture and Iconicity in the Evolution of Language.
    Elizabeth Irvine.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 04, 2016
    The aim of this article is to mount a challenge to gesture‐first hypotheses about the evolution of language by identifying constraints on the emergence of symbol use. Current debates focus on a range of pre‐conditions for the emergence of language, including co‐operation and related mentalising capacities, imitation and tool use, episodic memory, and vocal physiology, but little specifically on the ability to learn and understand symbols. It is argued here that such a focus raises new questions about the plausibility of gesture‐first hypotheses, and so about the evolution of language in general. After a brief review of the methodology used in the article, it is argued that existing uses of gesture in hominid communities may have prohibited the emergence of symbol use, rather than ‘bootstrapped’ symbolic capacities as is usually assumed, and that the vocal channel offers other advantages in both learning and using language. In this case, the vocal channel offers a more promising platform for the evolution of language than is often assumed.
    April 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12102   open full text
  • A New Angle on the Knobe Effect: Intentionality Correlates with Blame, not with Praise.
    Frank Hindriks, Igor Douven, Henrik Singmann.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 04, 2016
    In a celebrated experiment, Joshua Knobe showed that people are much more prone to attribute intentionality to an agent for a side effect of a given act when that side effect is harmful than when it is beneficial. This asymmetry has become known as ‘the Knobe Effect’. According to Knobe's Moral Valence Explanation (as we call it), bad effects trigger the attributions of intentionality, whereas good effects do not. Many others believe that the Knobe Effect is best explained in terms of the high amount of blame attributed in the harm condition, and the low amount of praise attributed in the help condition. This Blame Hypothesis (as we call it) explains the high number of intentionality attributions in the harm condition in terms of the high degree of blame people ascribe, and the low number of intentionality attributions in the help conditions in terms of the low degree of praise people attribute. We replicated Knobe's original experiment and conducted a logistic regression on the results to probe more deeply into the relationship between attributions of intentionality and responsibility. The statistical analysis revealed a hitherto unknown interaction effect: intentionality correlates with blame, but not with praise. This interaction effect is consistent with the Moral Valence Hypothesis, but inconsistent with the Blame Hypothesis, as well as with two of the three other hypotheses discussed here.
    April 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12101   open full text
  • The Evolution of Primate Communication and Metacommunication.
    Joëlle Proust.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 04, 2016
    Against the prior view that primate communication is based only on signal decoding, comparative evidence suggests that primates are able, no less than humans, to intentionally perform or understand impulsive or habitual communicational actions with a structured evaluative nonconceptual content. These signals convey an affordance‐sensing that immediately motivates conspecifics to act. Although humans have access to a strategic form of propositional communication adapted to teaching and persuasion, they share with nonhuman primates the capacity to communicate in impulsive or habitual ways. They are also similarly able to monitor fluency, informativeness and relevance of messages or signals through nonconceptual cues.
    April 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12100   open full text
  • Is Implicit Theory of Mind the ‘Real Deal’? The Own‐Belief/True‐Belief Default in Adults and Young Preschoolers.
    Lu Wang, Alan M. Leslie.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 04, 2016
    Recent studies reveal spontaneous implicit false‐belief understanding in infancy. But is this early ability genuine theory‐of‐mind? Spontaneous tasks may allow early success by eliminating the selection‐response bias thought to underlie later failure on standard (verbal) tasks. However, using anticipatory eye gaze, we find the same bias in non‐verbal tasks in both preschoolers and adults. We argue that the bias arises from theory‐of‐mind competence itself and takes the form of a rational prior to attribute one's own belief to others. Our discussion then draws attention to a number of other inferential hallmarks of early belief‐desire reasoning that together suggest it is the real deal.
    April 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/mila.12099   open full text
  • Unpleasantness, Motivational Oomph, and Painfulness.
    Jennifer Corns.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 02, 2014
    Painful pains are, paradigmatically, unpleasant and motivating. The dominant view amongst philosophers and pain scientists is that these two features are essentially related and sufficient for painfulness. In this article, I first offer scientifically informed characterizations of both unpleasantness and motivational oomph and argue against other extant accounts. I then draw on folk‐characterized cases and current neurobiological and neurobehavioral evidence to argue that both dominant positions are mistaken. Unpleasantness and motivational oomph doubly dissociate and, even taken together, are insufficient for painfulness.
    April 02, 2014   doi: 10.1111/mila.12048   open full text
  • Scientific Inference and Ordinary Cognition: Fodor on Holism and Cognitive Architecture.
    Tim Fuller, Richard Samuels.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 02, 2014
    Do accounts of scientific theory formation and revision have implications for theories of everyday cognition? We maintain that failing to distinguish between importantly different types of theories of scientific inference has led to fundamental misunderstandings of the relationship between science and everyday cognition. In this article, we focus on one influential manifestation of this phenomenon which is found in Fodor's well‐known critique of theories of cognitive architecture. We argue that in developing his critique, Fodor confounds a variety of distinct claims about the holistic nature of scientific inference. Having done so, we outline more promising relations that hold between theories of scientific inference and ordinary cognition.
    April 02, 2014   doi: 10.1111/mila.12047   open full text
  • Meaning and Mindreading.
    J. Robert Thompson.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 02, 2014
    In this article, I defend Neo‐Gricean accounts of language and communication from an objection about linguistic development. According to this objection, children are incapable of understanding the minds of others in the way that Neo‐Gricean accounts require until long after they learn the meanings of words, are able to produce meaningful utterances, and understand the meaningful utterances of others. In answering this challenge, I outline exactly what sorts of psychological states are required by Neo‐Gricean accounts and conclude that there is sufficient evidence that these types of psychological states are present in and capable of being understood by the children in question.
    April 02, 2014   doi: 10.1111/mila.12046   open full text
  • On Learning New Primitives in the Language of Thought: Reply to Rey.
    Susan Carey.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 02, 2014
    A theory of conceptual development must provide an account of the innate representational repertoire, must characterize how these initial representations differ from the adult state, and must provide an account of the processes that transform the initial into mature representations. In Carey, 2009 (The Origin of Concepts), I defend three theses: 1) the initial state includes rich conceptual representations, 2) nonetheless, there are radical discontinuities between early and later developing conceptual systems, 3) Quinean bootstrapping is one learning mechanism that underlies the creation of new representational resources, enabling such discontinuity. I also claim that the theory of conceptual development developed in The Origin of Concepts addresses two of Fodor's challenges to cognitive science; namely, to show how learning could possibly lead to an increase in expressive power and to defeat Mad Dog Nativism, the thesis that all concepts lexicalized as mono‐morphemic words are innate. A recent article by Georges Rey (Mind & Language, 29.2, 2014) argues that my responses to Fodor's challenges fail, because, he says, I fail to distinguish concept possession from manifestation and I do not confront Goodman's new riddle of induction. My response is to show that, and how, new primitives in a language of thought can be learned, that there are easy routes and hard ones to doing so, and that characterizing the learning mechanisms involved is the key to understanding both concept possession and constraints on induction.
    April 02, 2014   doi: 10.1111/mila.12045   open full text
  • Innate and Learned: Carey, Mad Dog Nativism, and the Poverty of Stimuli and Analogies (Yet Again).
    Georges Rey.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. April 02, 2014
    In her recent (2009) book, The Origins of Concepts, Susan Carey argues that what she calls ‘Quinean Bootstrapping’ and processes of analogy in children show that the expressive power of a mind can be increased in ways that refute Jerry Fodor's (1975, 2008) ‘Mad Dog’ view that all concepts are innate. I argue that it is doubtful any evidence about the manifestation of concepts in children will bear upon the logico‐semantic issues of expressive power. Analogy and bootstrapping may be ways to bring about the former, but only by presupposing the very expressive powers Carey is claiming they explain. Analogies must be understood, and bootstrapping involves confirmation of hypotheses already expressible; otherwise they can't select among an infinitude of hypotheses compatible with the finite data the child has encountered, a fact rendered vivid by Goodman's ‘grue’ paradox and Chomsky's poverty of stimulus argument. The problems have special application to minds, since there is no reason to expect a child's concepts to be ‘projectible’ or to correspond to mind‐independent natural kinds. I conclude with an ecumenical view that concepts are reasonably regarded as both innate and often learned, and that what is learned can in fact increase what really concerns Carey, the functioning psychological expressive power of the child, even if it leaves untouched what concerns Fodor, the semantic expressive power. Less ecumenically: maybe Fodor (2008) miscast the debate, and the real issue that bothers people concerns not nativism, but an issue on which Carey and Fodor surprisingly agree, his conceptual Atomism, or the view that all mono‐morphemic concepts are primitive and unanalyzable. The issue deserves further discussion independently of Mad‐doggery.
    April 02, 2014   doi: 10.1111/mila.12044   open full text
  • Experimenting on Contextualism.
    Nat Hansen, Emmanuel Chemla.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 13, 2013
    In this article we refine the design of context shifting experiments, which play a central role in contextualist debates, and we subject a large number of scenarios involving different types of expressions of interest to contextualists, including ‘know’ and color adjectives like ‘green’, to experimental investigation. Our experiment (i) reveals an effect of changing contexts on the evaluation of uses of the sentences that we examine, thereby overturning the absence of results reported in previous experimental studies (so‐called null results), (ii) uncovers evidence for a ‘truth bias' in favor of positive over negative sentences, and (iii) reveals previously unnoticed distinctions between the strength of the contextual effects displayed by scenarios involving knowledge ascriptions and scenarios concerning color and other miscellaneous scenarios.
    June 13, 2013   doi: 10.1111/mila.12019   open full text
  • Origins of Meaning: Must We ‘Go Gricean’?
    Dorit Bar‐On.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 04, 2013
    The task of explaining language evolution is often presented by leading theorists in explicitly Gricean terms. After a critical evaluation, I present an alternative, non‐Gricean conceptualization of the task. I argue that, while it may be true that nonhuman animals, in contrast to language users, lack the ‘motive to share information’ understood à la Grice, nonhuman animals nevertheless do express states of mind through complex nonlinguistic behavior. On a proper, non‐Gricean construal of expressive communication, this means that they show to their designated audience (without intentionally telling)—and their designated audience recognizes (without rationally inferring)—both how things are in the world and how things are with them. Recognizing that our nonhuman predecessors were already proficient—though non‐Gricean—sharers of such information would free us to focus on the more tractable problem of explaining how linguistic expressive vehicles came to replace, augment, and transform the nonlinguistic expressive means to which nonhuman animals are consigned.
    June 04, 2013   doi: 10.1111/mila.12021   open full text
  • Flavour, Taste and Smell.
    Louise Richardson.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 04, 2013
    I consider the role of psychology and other sciences in telling us about our senses, via the issue of whether empirical findings show us that flavours are perceived partly with the sense of smell. I argue that scientific findings do not establish that we're wrong to think that flavours are just tasted. Non‐naturalism, according to which our everyday conception of the senses does not involve empirical commitments of a kind that could be corrected by empirical findings is, I suggest, a plausible view that is not easy to dismiss.
    June 04, 2013   doi: 10.1111/mila.12020   open full text
  • We Are Not All ‘Self‐Blind’: A Defense of a Modest Introspectionism.
    Georges Rey.
    Mind & Language / Mind and Language. June 04, 2013
    Shoemaker (1996) presented a priori arguments against the possibility of ‘self‐blindness’, or the inability of someone, otherwise intelligent and possessed of mental concepts, to introspect any of her concurrent attitude states. Ironically enough, this seems to be a position that Gopnik (1993) and Carruthers (2006, 2008, 2009a,b) have proposed as not only possible, but as the actual human condition generally! According to this ‘Objectivist’ view, supposed introspection of one's attitudes is not ‘direct’, but an ‘inference’ of precisely the sort we make about the attitudes of others, an inference that has the advantage in our own case of only our own sensory data and memories, our behavior, and of the context we are in; i.e. we are all substantially self‐ blind. After sorting out a number of methodological and verbal issues, I argue, first, that the a priori arguments against Objectivism don't succeed, and that Gopnik and Carruthers are right to regard the issue as an empirical one. On the other hand, I think they seriously underestimate the difficulty of establishing Objectivism. It is unlikely there is an inferential procedure from the data of pure sensation, behavior and context to the relevant self‐attributions that would be as spectacularly reliable as people manifestly seem to be. Moreover, there is a simpler model: the mind very likely consists of a panoply of sub‐routines some of whose outputs are ‘tagged’ for their having been so processed, rather in the way that software ‘documents’ are on standard computers. Introspection plausibly consists in a person's simply attending to distinctive constellations of these tags, even though they may lack phenomenal feels. This draws attention to an important independent fact: that much of phenomenology (or ‘what it's like’ to be in a certain state) may be constituted by facts that are not phenomenal.
    June 04, 2013   doi: 10.1111/mila.12018   open full text