Jaroslav Peregrin

In this paper I put forward a thesis regarding the anatomy of “cultural evolution”, in particular the way the “cultural” transmission of behavioral patterns came to piggyback, through us humans, on the transmission effected by genetic evolution. I claim that what grounds and supports this new kind of transmission is a complex behavioral “meta-pattern” that makes it possible to grasp a pattern as something that “ought to be”, i.e. that transforms the pattern into what we can call a rule. (Here I draw especially on the philosophical insights of Wilfrid Sellars.) In this way I interlink empirical research done in evolution theory with some more speculative philosophical theories, thus shedding new light on the former and adding an empirical footing to the latter

A few decades ago, only isolated groups of philosophers counted the phenomenon of normativity as one of their principal interests. Rules and norms have always, of course, been in the purview of moral philosophers, who often took them as exceedingly abstract entities, if not directly metaphysical. Philosophers from the border territories of philosophy and social sciences, on the other hand, were interested in more concrete norms, namely those that emerge and survive within human societies. Philosophers of law stood between these two extremes, studying law as a matter of socially instituted norms which, however, might be seen as a projection of something more esoteric. The research programs of these groups of philosophers had little overlap. And for philosophers of mind, of language, or of science (with the exception of a few philosophers of social sciences, such as Peter Winch), norms were at most only of marginal interest. This situation has changed hugely over recent decades. I think the catalyst was the interest in rules and norms within the philosophy of language, which was kindled by the ongoing reception of the later Wittgenstein. Other philosophers, like Michael Dummett and Wilfrid Sellars, also deserve part of the credit. Via philosophy of language, interest in norms invaded sections of philosophy of mind, too, and the previously isolated studies of various types of norms slowly became interconnected, if not directly integrated. No wonder that more and more general studies of the nature of rules and norms are now reaching the light of day. Andrei Marmor's Social Conventions is one of the most recent contributions. Marmor sees a social convention as a specific kind of norm characterized especially by its arbitrariness. More precisely, a rule is conventional, according to the author, iff (i) some people follow it; (ii) they have a reason to follow it; and (iii) there is an alternative rule that they could have followed for the same reason. The point of departure for Marmor's analysis is David Lewis's theory of convention F1F, which, however, he considers too narrow and hence extends it considerably. Lewis's idea is that norms result from certain spontaneous processes by which society reacts to coordination problems..

Can we base the whole of logic solely on the concept of incompatibility? My motivation for asking this is two-fold: firstly, a technical interest in what a minimal foundations of logic might be; and secondly, the existence of philosophers who have taken incompatibility as the ultimate key to human reason (viz., e.g., Hegel's concept of determinate negation). The main aim of this contribution is to tackle two related questions: Is it possible to reduce the foundations of logic to the mere concept of incompatibility? and Does this reduction lead us to a specific logical system? We conclude that the answers, respectively, are YES and a qualified NO (qualified in the sense that basing semantics on incompatibility does make some logical systems more natural than others, but without ruling out the alternatives.) A search for the bare bones of logic generally leads one to the relation of inference (or consequence). This way is explored meticulously by Koslow (1992). He defines an implication structure as, in effect, an ordered pair , where S is a set and | f Pow(S)HS fulfilling certain (relatively simple) restrictions. And obviously if we reduce incompatibility to inference, which is achievable by the well known ex contradictione quodlibet principle, we reach a logic based on incompatibility. The kind of logic flowing most straightforwardly from this setting is the intuitionist one. However, there is also the approach taken by R. Brandom and A. Aker (2008), who have set up a logic based directly on incompatibility. They define an incompatibility structure as an ordered pair such that S is a set and z f Pow(S) (again fulfilling certain restrictions). The authors introduce logical operators in such a way that they reach classical logic. Does this mean that inference 'naturally' leads to intuitionist logic, whereas incompatibility leads to the classical one? Myself, I have argued that it is indeed intuitionist logic that is the logic of inference (see Peregrin, 2008)..

In recent decades, many theories of formal semantics of natural language have undergone what can be called a dynamic turn: they have moved from treating language as a static system to considering it 'in action' and to taking meanings as crucially involving 'context-change potentials'. The theories, however, usually concentrate much more on the hows of the turn than on its whys and as a result, the conceptual foundations of dynamic semantics are much less elaborated than its technical side. This book, based on a conference held in Prague in September 2001, is a contribution to filling this gap: it consists of papers addressing, from various sides, the foundational questions of the dynamic theories of meaning. It includes contributions of writers who are commonly held as authorities concerning the turn, who, however, here concentrate more on the why's than on the how's of dynamic semantics. Hence the book should be of interest both for those who want to know what the turn is about, and for those who are not satisfied with knowing the technical side of dynamic semantics and want to know its point.

There may be various reasons for claiming that meaning is normative, and additionally, very different senses attached to the claim. However, all such claims have faced fierce resistance from those philosophers who insist that meaning is not normative in any nontrivial sense of the word. In this paper I sketch one particular approach to meaning claiming its normativity and defend it against the anti-normativist critique: namely the approach of Brandomian inferentialism. However, my defense is not restricted to inferentialism in any narrow sense for it encompasses a much broader spectrum of approaches to meaning, connected with the Wittgensteinian and especially Sellarsian view of language as an essentially rule-governed enterprise; and indeed I refrain from claiming that the version of inferentialism I present here is in every detail the version developed by Brandom

V knize konfrontuji běžné pojetí jazyka, podle kterého je význam záležitostí vztahu slovo-věc, se strukturalistickým pohledem, podle kterého význam nemůže existovat bez toho, aby byly výrazy určitým způsobem provázány mezi sebou. Ukazuji, že takový strukturalismus není jen věcí Ferdinanda de Saussura, ale že se vyskytuje (pod jménem holismus) i v základech (post)analytické filosofie Quina, Davidsona, Sellarse a Brandoma. Ukazuji také, že není neslučitelný s formálně-logickým přístupem k významu, jaký byl rozpracován Carnapem, Montaguem a dalšími.

Clauses (1) and (2) guarantee the inclusion of all 'intuitive' natural numbers, and (3) guarantees the exclusion of all other objects. Thus, in particular, no nonstandard numbers, which would follow after the intuitive ones are admitted (nonstandard numbers are found in nonstandard models of Peano arithmetic, in which the standard natural numbers are followed by one or more 'copies' of integers running from minus infinity to infinity)1. What is problematic about this delimitation? I suspect that its hypothetical proponent would see its weakest point in the unexplained concept of successor. However, we logicians know better (or at least some of us are convinced that we do): it is clause (3) which harbours the neuralgic spot, by dint of resisting any reasonable logical formalization to the point of appearing utterly void! There is, of course, no problem with regimenting (1) - we only need an individual constant 0 and a unary predicate constant N (the one whose meaning we are interested in) and we postulate..

It is now often taken for granted that facts are entia non grata, for there exists a powerful argument (dubbed the slingshot), which is backed by such great names as Frege or Gödel or Davidson (and so could hardly be wrong), that discredits their existence. There indeed is such an argument, and it indeed is not wrong on the straightforward sense of wrong. However, in how far it knocks down any conception of facts is another story, a story which is anything but simple and perspicuous. In his book, Stephen Neale takes pains to excavate the origins of the argument and the presuppositions which it needs to be usable for the purpose of exorcising facts. In the introduction of the book, Neale expresses his conviction that his analysis of the slingshot will not only compromise its usability for the purpose of discrediting facts, but also save representationalist conceptions of language and mind from the attacks of the antirepresentationalist philosophers like Davidson and Rorty. „Representational philosophy,“ he claims, „survives the Davidson-Rorty onslaught because non-truth-functional logics and ontologies of facts, states of affairs, situations and propositions survive not only the actual arguments deployed against them, but also the most precise and powerful slingshot arguments that can be constructed.“ However, what he does take his analyses to show is that „the most precise and powerful slingshot arguments demonstrate conclusively that the logical and ontological theories originally targeted must satisfy non-trivial conditions if they are to avoid logical or ontological collapse.“ (P. 12) The book starts with the discussion of the philosophy of Donald Davidson, who appears to have brought the slingshot argument to the current prominence within philosophical discussions. Here we encounter the first variant of the slingshot: Consider two sentences φ and ψ and a proper name d. Consider the definite descriptions ‘the object x such that (x = d and φ)’ and ‘the object x such that (x = d and ψ)’..

What is structuralism? The stock To explain why we should see Quine can translate the natives’ gavagai either as answer is that it is the brainas a structuralist, I would like to revive rabbit or as undetached rabbit’s part, so he child of Ferdinand de his widely discussed thought experican translate his peers’ rabbit either as Saussure, later fostered by Levi-Strauss, ment, featuring a field linguist decipherrabbit or as undetached rabbit’s part. Hence Foucault, Derrida and their allies. But I ing an unknown language spoken by the cultural relativism appears to muthink we have only to confront the ausnatives somewhere in the middle of tate into an “individual relativism”, a terely scientific style of Saussure’s Course nowhere. On hearing the natives exkind of solipsistic skepticism in which de linguistique générale with that of the claiming “Gavagai!” whenever they see a we can be certain neither that we underwritings of the French structuralists to rabbit, the linguist records in his notestand the natives, nor even that we unrecognise an essential discontinuity. The book the tentative translation hypothderstand each other! French philosophers have developed esis gavagai = rabbit. Next, Quine asks us However this is not a conclusion only certain consequences of Saussure’s to imagine another linguist, who, ob- Quine would be willing to draw. He teaching; and, moreover, in a rather nonserving the same behaviour of the same does not say that we cannot understand Saussurean way. natives, proposes the hypothesis gavagai each other (nor even that we cannot un- In my recent book I put forward the = undetached rabbit’s part. Quine then conderstand the natives): that we can is conalternative thesis that the kind of strucsiders ways of deciding which of the tinually testified to by the indubitable turalism advanced by Saussure is in fact two linguists is correct, and concludes, successes of our communication. For present implicitly in the writings of to the astonishment of many readers, Quine, there is no other measure of unpeople not normally associated with the that there is no feasible way to decide; derstanding, save the smoothness and term, namely the (post)analytic phiand hence that both linguists are corfruitfulness of linguistic interaction, the losophers such as Willard Van Orman rect..

Wenn es aber Wirklichkeitssinn gibt, und niemand wird bezweifeln, daß er seine Daseinsberechtigung hat, dann muß es auch etwas geben, das man Möglichkeitssinn nennen kann. Wer ihn besitzt, sagt beispielsweise nicht: Hier ist dies oder das geschehen, wird geschehen, muß geschehen; sondern er erfindet: Hier könnte, sollte oder müßte geschehn; und wenn man ihm von irgend etwas erklärt, daß es so sei, wie es sei, dann denkt er: Nun, es könnte wahrscheinlich auch anders sein. So ließe sich der Möglichkeitssinn geradezu als die Fähigkeit definieren, alles, was ebensogut sein könnte, zu denken und das, was ist, nicht wichtiger zu nehmen als das, was nicht ist.