Pragmatic Condition Research Articles

On Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology

We argue, contrary to epistemological orthodoxy, that knowledge is not purely epistemic—that knowledge is not simply a matter of truth‐related factors (evidence, reliability, etc.). We do this by arguing for a pragmatic condition on knowledge, KA: if a subject knows that p, then she is rational to act as if p. KA, together with fallibilism, entails that knowledge is not purely epistemic. We support KA by appealing to the role of knowledge‐citations in defending and criticizing actions, and by giving a principled argument for KA, based on the inference rule KB: if a subject knows that A is the best thing she can do, she is rational to do A. In the second half of the paper, we consider and reject the two most promising objections to our case for KA, one based on the Gricean notion of conversational implicature and the other based on a contextualist maneuver.

Phonetic disambiguation by Korean non-native speakers of English

This study examined the effect of pragmatic contrast and auditory priming on the production of contrasts such as ‘‘mob∼mop’’ and ‘‘pat∼pet’’ by 22 Korean non-native speakers of English. Korean speakers played a card arrangement game with a native speaker of English (a confederate). In the pragmatic condition, critical items were arranged to enable the comparison of the same word (e.g. ‘‘mob’’) in two contexts, one where the situation might force subjects to make the contrast of mob and mop and one where the situation facilitates the confederates recognition of mob because there is no contrasting form. An additional auditory priming condition was induced by the confederate saying a phonetically similar word such as ‘‘what is below hob?’’ before the target ‘‘mob.’’ Koreans produced more English-like forms when they had to be distinguished from the contrastive item or when they had been auditorily primed. For both b/p and ae/E contrasts, vowel duration was used to signal the distinction in both conditions. Additionally, for the b/p contrast, closure voicing percentage was significantly longer but only in the pragmatic condition. Overall both conditions have similar disambiguating effect, but have different specific consequences for cueing consonant versus vowel contrasts.

Can We Do Without Pragmatic Encroachment?

And John Hawthorne (2004) and Jason Stanley (2005) have argued that what it takes to turn true belief into knowledge is sensitive to the practical environment the subject is in. These authors seem to be suggesting there is, to use Jonathan Kvanvig’s phrase “pragmatic encroachment” in epistemology. In this paper I’ll argue that their arguments do not quite show this is true, and that concepts of epistemological justification need not be pragmatically sensitive. The aim here isn’t to show that (PC) is false, but rather that it shouldn’t be described as a pragmatic condition on justification. Rather, it is best thought of as a pragmatic condition on belief. There are two ways to spell out the view I’m taking here. These are both massive simplifications, but they are close enough to the truth to show the kind of picture I’m aiming for. First, imagine a philosopher who holds a very simplified version of functionalism about belief, call it (B).

Phonological contrast and neutralization by children with cochlear implants

Objective To determine the degree to which pediatric users of cochlear implants (CIs) implement neutralization of the /t/ vs. /d/ contrast under different pragmatic conditions. Study design Children who used cochlear implants and both children and adults with normal hearing produced minimal pairs contrasting lexical /t/ and /d/ in three conditions that gradually increased the need to differentiate members of the pairs, ranging from neutralization through implicit contrast to explicit contrast. Duration of the preceding vowel, the stop occlusion, and voice onset time following release were measured. Results Adults exhibited small differences between /t/ and /d/ in the neutralization condition; differences increased through the remaining conditions. For the children, differences between /t/ and /d/ in the neutralization condition were relatively large, and differences between /t/ and /d/ did not increase monotonically through the conditions. Conclusion Adults with normal hearing implement contrast and neutralization depending on pragmatic context. Children with either normal hearing or cochlear implants exhibit less differentiation, tending to maintain contrastiveness regardless of pragmatic condition.

The role of pragmatics in interpreting the chinese perfective markers -guo and -le

It is claimed in the literature that the perfective marker -guo has the following semantic properties: discontinuity, repeatability/reversibility, and partiality, which contrast with the continuation and totality properties of the perfective marker -le. Previous analyses adopt a purely semantic approach to account for the above properties of -guo and -le, and the role played by pragmatics is not recognized. In this paper, we argue that the purely semantic approach is not adequate, and show that both semantics and pragmatics play a role in the interpretation of -guo and -le, which motivates us to propose a semantic-pragmatic account to explain the properties of guo- and le-sentences in Chinese. Following previous analyses like Smith's (1997), we treat the basic semantics of both -guo and -le as presenting a perfective viewpoint. However, unlike previous studies, we claim that the so-called semantic properties demonstrated by the two markers are all pragmatic implicatures. After revisiting the three properties discussed in previous studies, we suggest replacing discontinuity and repeatability/reversibility with the new property “change-out-of-state” while keeping the totality/partiality property. We propose to determine the selection of -guo and -le by a pragmatic condition when semantics imposes no restriction on their co-occurrence with the predicate in question: If the speaker wants to emphasize a change out of state and/or partial realization of the situation, -guo will be preferred, but -le will be a better alternative, if the speaker wants to emphasize continuation of the resultative state and/or total realization of the relevant situation.

Strict coherence, sigma coherence and the metaphysics of quantity

In 1955 Abner Shimony introduced a strong notion of coherence which has become known as strict coherence. It is a variation on a theme by Ramsey and de Finetti: that of testing the coherence of your system of beliefs by seeing how much damage can be done by a cunning bettor with a finite number of bets, each of which you take to be fair. The bettor makes a Dutch Book against you if his bets taken together guarantee that you must suffer a loss; that is to say that no matter what the outcomes of the events upon which bets are placed you suffer a net loss. Let us say that a bettor makes a Weak Dutch Book against you if you can suffer a loss but cannot enjoy a gain: that is to say that there are possible outcomes of the events on which bets are made such that you suffer a net loss and no such outcomes which yield a net gain. If no Dutch book can be made against you, your beliefs are coherent; if- in addition no weak Dutch book can be made against you, your beliefs are strictly coherent. Betting quotients are coherent if and only if they are finitely additive probabilities. They satisfy the stronger requirement of strict coherence if and only if they are finitely additive probabilities which assign a positive probability to every possible event (Kemeny 1955). Coherence is a pragmatic consistency condition. Strict coherence adds to this a requirement of open-mindedness. The strictly coherent agent does not assign probability zero to anything unless it is must be judged impossible by virtue of the underlying Boolean logic. Strict coherence is epistemologically attractive and was easily implementable in the context of finite Carnapian inductive logic in which it was introduced. But

Recall of Text: Differences between First and Second Language Readers

This article examines the differences between first and second language readers' recall of a written English passage. First, the hierarchical content-structure analysis developed by Meyer (1975a) is presented and then discussed in terms of the selected English expository prose text. Next, the results of a reading experiment are presented. In this experiment, adult students from three different language backgrounds, English, Japanese, and Spanish, read the passage and wrote immediate recalls. The comparison of the students' recall protocols with the hierarchical content-structure analysis of the passage revealed that the native English speakers in the sample outperformed the students of English as a second language (ESL) in terms of total recall. Yet, unexpectedly, there was no significant difference between these groups in the recall of the high-level ideas of the text. Finally, the article discusses discourse features in the recall protocols, such as “perspective” and “pragmatic condition,” which are not included in Meyer's system. Recommendations for future research are suggested, and implications for reading instruction are presented.

A discourse analysis of deixis: pragmatic, cognitive and semantic factors in the comprehension of ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘here’ and ‘there’

ABSTRACTChildren (mean age 3; 6) were tested as to the comprehension of the deictic words this, that, here and there in two conditions: as hearers–addressees and as hearers–spectators. It was hypothesized that comprehension of these words depends on the role the comprehender plays in the conversation, and that a spectator's role is more difficult than an addressee's. Comprehension in a pragmatic condition (with a pointing gesture accompanying the utterance) was contrasted with a semantic condition (without gesture), and the prediction was that the pragmatic use of the words would facilitate comprehension. It was also theorized that this and here are marked, whereas that and there are unmarked. Therefore, it was predicted that this and here would be more difficult to comprehend than that and there. All the initial predictions were confirmed by the analysis of variance. The results are discussed within recent theories of pragmatics, semantics and cognitive development.