Mind, Code and Context: Essays in Pragmatics (Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics Series)
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- Synopsis
- Scholars concerned with the phenomenon of mind have searched through history for a principled yet non-reductionist approach to the study of knowledge, communication, and behavior. Pragmatics has been a recurrent theme in Western epistemology, tracing itself back from pre-Socratic dialectics and Aristotle's bio- functionalism, all the way to Wittgenstein's content-dependent semantics. This book's treatment of pragmatics as an analytic method focuses on the central role of context in determining the perception, organization, and communication of experience. As a bioadaptive strategy, pragmatics straddles the middle ground between absolute categories and the non-discrete gradation of experience, reflecting closely the organism's own evolutionary compromises. In parallel, pragmatic reasoning can be shown to play a pivotal role in the process of empirical science, through the selection of relevant facts, the abduction of likely hypotheses, and the construction of non-trivial explanations. In this volume, Professor Givon offers pragmatics as both an analytic method and a strategic intellectual framework. He points out its relevance to our understanding of traditional problems in philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, cognitive psychology, neuro-biology, and evolution. Finally, the application of pragmatics to the study of the mind and behavior constitutes an implicit challenge to the current tenets of artificial intelligence.
- Copyright:
- 1989
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9781317768012
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781315802268, 9780898596076, 9780898596076
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Date of Addition:
- 07/29/20
- Copyrighted By:
- Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Psychology, Language Arts, Communication
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.