Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... passant, it is quite perverse that a paper entitled "Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought" fails to define "language", "thought", and "communication". (In due course I shall define what I mean by "thought" and "communication", Figure 1.) It is intellectually reckless to assert what something is for without first establishing what that something is. ...

Context 2

... linguistic competence in terms of its functionalityhow we use language-in critical rationalism draws into relief just how categorically different human language is from anything in nonhuman animals. Inspired by Popper, himself inspired by Bühler, we can organize a hierarchy of linguistic functions in Figure 1 (with higher levels subsuming lower levels): (1) the expressive function (i.e., the expres­ sion of an inner state); (2) the signal function (i.e., the expression in (1) functions as a signal to some receiver, whether it was intended to or not); (3) the descriptive function (i.e., over and above (1) and (2), it makes statements that can be true or false); and (4) the argumentative function (i.e., over and above (1)-(3), it adds argument, with its values of validity and invalidity). ...

Context 3

... beyond the four functions of Figure 1 is a fifth function, homologous in its profundity-and mystery-to Plato's fifth solid, the dodecahedron. Of the latter, having associated the other solids (the cube, the octahedron, icosahedron, the tetrahedron) with the classical elements (earth, air, water, fire), Plato remarked in the Timaeus that "the god used [the dodecahedron] for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven". ...

Context 4

... reason Figure 1 does not include an explicit fifth function is that the poetical function is a kind of argument (subsumable in Level 4), in that poetry-like any work of art-is created in a critical process of inspired-trial and error-correction. Keats, for instance, was distinctively Popperian. ...

Context 5

... to Figure 1, Popper criticized "radical behaviorists" and "radical physical­ ists" in terms that apply with equal force to FPG, who argue that their "view that language is simply a communication system aligns with a continuity view of human evolution", and that my "contrasting alternative-that language is the medium for think­ ing-implies a sharp discontinuity between our species and others. This alternative view centres language-perhaps innately-as the mechanism of change, and the mechanism that endowed humans with a novel representational format for mental computations". ...

Context 6

... derivation is [...] roughly analogous to a proof with Σ", a finite set of initial symbols, "taken as the axiom system and F", the finite set of rewrite rules, " [taken] as the rules of inference" (Chomsky, 1956). It is important that both of these axiom systems-geometry and language-be finite: "Since any language L in which we are likely to be interested is an infinite set, we can investigate the structure of L only though the study of finite devices (grammars) which are capable of generating its sentences" (Chomsky, 1959); "When the number is infinite, [s]ome kind of rule or systematic procedure"-some finite system-"must be given" (Turing, 1954(Turing, /2004). ...