Mahrad Almotahari

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about the cognitive theory of generic sentences. This paper discusses five recent cases. The first is about the acquisition data that supports the theory. The second is about the theory’s take on generic metalinguistic negotiation. The third is about key features of System 1 cognition: what its “inhibition” involves and how its verdicts can change over time. The fourth is about the methodological significance of the theory’s most fundamental claim (“generics-as-defaults”). The last case is about the possibility of erroneous generalization. Some of the most damaging objections to the theory can be straightforwardly addressed once the misunderstandings are resolved. An overarching theme unifies the discussion of each case: independently motivated developments in psychology should condition our understanding of core theoretical concepts and claims.

Cooperative speech is purposive. From the speaker's perspective, one crucial purpose is the transmission of knowledge. Cooperative speakers care about getting things right for their conversational partners. This attitude is a kind of respect. Cooperative speech is an ideal form of communication because participants have respect for each other. And having respect within a cooperative enterprise is sufficient for a particular kind of moral standing: we ought to respect those who have respect for us. Respect demands reciprocity. I maintain that large language models aren't owed the kind of respect that partly constitutes a cooperative conversation. This implies that they aren't cooperative interlocutors, otherwise we would be obliged to reciprocate the attitude. Leveraging this conclusion, I argue that present-day LLMs are incapable of assertion and that this raises an overlooked doubt about their semantic competence. One upshot of this argument is that knowledge of meaning isn't just a subject for the cognitive psychologist. It's also a subject for the moral psychologist.

This paper does three things. First, it presents a new interpretation of Avicenna’s influential argument, the Flying Man. One nice feature of this interpretation is that it vindicates the argument’s validity. Unlike the cogito-inspired case for dualism, the Flying Man isn’t undermined by neglect of referential opacity. Second, it compares Avicenna’s argument with Anscombe’s take on the possibility of conscious thought under sensory deprivation. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief critical assessment. Several possibilities are considered.