Mind, Code and Context: Essays in Pragmatics

Givon, T.

ISBN 10 : 080580482X ISBN 13 : 9780805804829

Editeur : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, 1989

Synopsis

Book by Givon Talmy

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

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.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc
• Date d'édition: 1989
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 080580482X
• ISBN 13: 9780805804829
• Reliure: Feuillets mobiles
• Nombre de pages: 496
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible