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La introspección y el uso cognitivo del lenguajeTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 24 (1). 2005.
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39Lexical Concepts: From Contextualism to Concept DecompositionalismIn Erich Rast & Luiz Carlos Baptista (eds.), Meaning and Context, Peter Lang. 2010.
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12Language turned on itself. The semantics and pragmatics of metalinguistic discourse, de Herman Cappelen y Ernie LeporeTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 27 (1): 125-129. 2008.
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2Overhearing a sentence: recanati and the cognitive view of languagePragmatics and Cognition 12 (2): 219-252. 2004.Many pragmaticians have distinguished three levels of meaning involved in the comprehension of utterances, and there is an ongoing debate about how to characterize the intermediate level. Recanati has called it the level of 'what is said' and has opposed the idea that it can be determined semantically - a position that he labels 'pragmatic minimalism lo this end he has offered two chief arguments: semantic underdeterminacy and the Availability Principle. This paper exposes a tension between both…Read more
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2936The influence of language in conceptualization: three viewsProtoSociology 20 89-106. 2013.Different languages carve the world in different categories. They also encode events in different ways, conventionalize different metaphorical mappings, and differ in their rule-based metonymies and patterns of meaning extensions. A long-standing, and controversial, question is whether this variability in the languages generates a corresponding variability in the conceptual structure of the speakers of those languages. Here we will present and discuss three interesting general proposals by focus…Read more
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1036On Relevance Theory's Atomistic CommitmentsIn Belen Soria & Esther Romero (eds.), Explicit Communication: Essays on Robyn Carston’s Pragmatics, Palgrave Mcmillan. 2010.
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42On the Psychological Reality of the Minimal PropositionIn Philippe de Brabanter & Mikhail Kissine (eds.), Utterance Interpretation and Cognitive Models, Emmerald Publishers. pp. 1. 2009.
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5043What the...! The role of inner speech in conscious thoughtJournal of Consciousness Studies 17 (9-10): 141-67. 2010.Abstract: Introspection reveals that one is frequently conscious of some form of inner speech, which may appear either in a condensed or expanded form. It has been claimed that this speech reflects the way in which language is involved in conscious thought, fulfilling a number of cognitive functions. We criticize three theories that address this issue: Bermúdez’s view of language as a generator of second-order thoughts, Prinz’s development of Jackendoff’s intermediate-level theory of consciousne…Read more
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7La relatividad lingüística en los tiempos del mentalésTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 18 (1): 88-106. 2010....
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26The Influence of Language on ConceptualizationProtoSociology 30 89-106. 2013.Different languages carve the world in different categories. They also encode events in different ways, conventionalize different metaphorical mappings, and differ in their rule-based metonymies and patterns of meaning extensions. A long-standing, and controversial, question is whether this variability in the languages generates a corresponding variability in the conceptual structure of the speakers of those languages. Here we will present and discuss three interesting general proposals by foc…Read more
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814Thought, language, and the argument from explicitnessMetaphilosophy 39 (3). 2008.This article deals with the relationship between language and thought, focusing on the question of whether language can be a vehicle of thought, as, for example, Peter Carruthers has claimed. We develop and examine a powerful argument—the "argument from explicitness"—against this cognitive role of language. The premises of the argument are just two: (1) the vehicle of thought has to be explicit, and (2) natural languages are not explicit. We explain what these simple premises mean and why we sho…Read more
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99Shaping your own mind: the self-mindshaping view on metacognitionPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (1): 139-167. 2020.Starting from Proust’s distinction between the self-attributive and self-evaluative views on metacognition, this paper presents a third view: self-mindshaping. Based on the notion of mindshaping as the core of social cognition, the self-mindshaping view contends that mindshaping abilities can be turned on one’s own mind. Against the self-attributive view, metacognition is not a matter of accessing representations to metarepresent them but of giving shape to those representations themselves. Agai…Read more
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2863Inner Speech: Nature and FunctionsPhilosophy Compass 6 (3): 209-219. 2011.We very often discover ourselves engaged in inner speech. It seems that this kind of silent, private, speech fulfils some role in our cognition, most probably related to conscious thinking. Yet, the study of inner speech has been neglected by philosophy and psychology alike for many years. However, things seem to have changed in the last two decades. Here we review some of the most influential accounts about the phenomenology and the functions of inner speech, as well as the methodological probl…Read more
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1951The nature of unsymbolized thinkingPhilosophical Explorations 19 (2): 173-187. 2016.Using the method of Descriptive Experience Sampling, some subjects report experiences of thinking that do not involve words or any other symbols [Hurlburt, R. T., and C. L. Heavey. 2006. Exploring Inner Experience. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Hurlburt, R. T., and S. A. Akhter. 2008. “Unsymbolized Thinking.” Consciousness and Cognition 17 : 1364–1374]. Even though the possibility of this unsymbolized thinking has consequences for the debate on the phenomenological status of cognitive states, the p…Read more
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13Overhearing a sentence: Recanati and the cognitive view of languagePragmatics and Cognition 12 (2): 219-251. 2004.Many pragmaticians have distinguished three levels of meaning involved in the comprehension of utterances, and there is an ongoing debate about how to characterize the intermediate level. Recanati has called it the level of `what is said' and has opposed the idea that it can be determined semantically — a position that he labels `pragmatic minimalism'. To this end he has offered two chief arguments: semantic underdeterminacy and the Availability Principle. This paper exposes a tension between bo…Read more
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1000Semantic underdetermination and the cognitive uses of languageMind and Language 20 (5). 2005.According to the thesis of semantic underdetermination, most sentences of a natural language lack a definite semantic interpretation. This thesis supports an argument against the use of natural language as an instrument of thought, based on the premise that cognition requires a semantically precise and compositional instrument. In this paper we examine several ways to construe this argument, as well as possible ways out for the cognitive view of natural language in the introspectivist version de…Read more
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2064What is said by a metaphor: the role of salience and conventionalityPragmatics and Cognition 21 (2): 304-328. 2013.Contextualist theorists have recently defended the views (a) that metaphor-processing can be treated on a par with other meaning changes, such as narrowing or transfer, and (b) that metaphorical contents enter into “what is said” by an utterance. We do not dispute claim (a) but consider that claim (b) is problematic. Contextualist theorists seem to leave in the hands of context the explanation about why it is that some meaning changes are directly processed, and thus plausibly form part of “what…Read more
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45What is Said by a Metaphor: The Role of Salience and ConventionalityPragmatics and Cognition 21 (2): 304-328. 2013.Contextualist theorists have recently defended the views (a) that metaphor-processing can be treated on a par with other meaning changes, such as narrowing or transfer, and (b) that metaphorical contents enter into “what is said” by an utterance. We do not dispute claim (a) but consider that claim (b) is problematic. Contextualist theorists seem to leave in the hands of context the explanation about why it is that some meaning changes are directly processed, and thus plausibly form part of “what…Read more
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35Overhearing a sentencePragmatics and Cognition 12 (2): 219-251. 2004.Many pragmaticians have distinguished three levels of meaning involved in the comprehension of utterances, and there is an ongoing debate about how to characterize the intermediate level. Recanati has called it the level of ‘what is said’ and has opposed the idea that it can be determined semantically — a position that he labels ‘pragmatic minimalism’. To this end he has offered two chief arguments: semantic underdeterminacy and the Availability Principle. This paper exposes a tension between bo…Read more
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22On the Distinction between Semantic and Conceptual RepresentationDialectica 64 (1): 57-78. 2010.I address the problem of the distinction between semantic and conceptual representations from general considerations about how to distinguish a representational kind. I consider three different ways of telling representational kinds apart – in terms of structure, processing and content – and I examine if semantic representations may constitute a distinct kind with respect to each of them. I argue that the best options for semantic representation to be regarded as a distinct representational kind…Read more
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55On the distinction between semantic and conceptual representationDialectica 64 (1): 57-78. 2010.I address the problem of the distinction between semantic and conceptual representations from general considerations about how to distinguish a representational kind. I consider three different ways of telling representational kinds apart – in terms of structure, processing and content – and I examine if semantic representations may constitute a distinct kind with respect to each of them. I argue that the best options for semantic representation to be regarded as a distinct representational kind…Read more
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5Radu J. Bogdan, Minding Minds: Evolving A Reflexive Mind by Interpreting Others Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 20 (6): 392-394. 2000.
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755Systematicity and Conceptual PluralismIn Paco Calvo & John Symons (eds.), The Architecture of Cognition: Rethinking Fodor and Pylyshyn's Systematicity Challenge, Mit Press. pp. 305-334. 2014.The systematicity argument only challenges connectionism if systematicity is a general property of cognition. I examine this thesis in terms of properties of concepts. First, I propose that Evans's Generality Constraint only applies to attributions of belief. Then I defend a variety of conceptual pluralism, arguing that concepts share two fundamental properties related to centrality and belief-attribution, and contending that there are two kinds of concepts that differ in their compositional pro…Read more
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17Explicitness and nonconnectionist vehicle theories of consciousnessBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (2): 302-303. 2004.O'Brien & Opie's connectionist vehicle theory of consciousness is heavily dependent on their notion of explicitness as (1) structural and (2) necessary and sufficient for consciousness. These assumptions unnecessarily constrain their position: the authors are forced to find an intrinsic property of patterns that accounts for the distinction between conscious and unconscious states. Their candidate property, stability, does not capture this distinction. Yet, I show that we can drop assumptions (1…Read more
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |