Mental Functioning and the Ontology of Language

Barry SmithBuffalo, September 24, 2012

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Shimon Edelman’s Riddle of Representation

two humans, a monkey, and a robotare looking at a piece of cheese

what is common to the representational processes in their visual systems?

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Answer:

The cheese, of course

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/book/austrian_philosophy/

Brentano and his students

Brentano

Meinong Ehrenfels Husserl Twardowski

Meinong Alley, Graz

Investigations in Ontology and

Psychology

with support from the Imperial-Royal Minister of Culture and Education in

Vienna, 1904

Bertrand Russell

It is argued, e.g., by Meinong, that we can speak about "the golden mountain," "the round square," and so on .... In such theories, it seems to me, there is a failure of that feeling for reality which ought to be preserved even in the most abstract studies. Logic, I should maintain, must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can”

from 1874 to 1914 Brentano controls Austrian philosophy

BrentanoVienna

MeinongGraz

EhrenfelsPrague

TwardowskiLemberg

Husserl Proßnitz

from 1874 to 1914 Brentano controls Austrian philosophy

BrentanoVienna

MeinongGraz

EhrenfelsPrague

TwardowskiLemberg

Franz Kafka

Husserl Proßnitz

Brentano revolutionizes psychology

Brentanopublished Psychology

from an Empirical Standpoint, 1874

Meinong Ehrenfelsfounder of Gestalt psychology, 1890

Husserl Twardowski

Wundt first laboratory of

experimental psychology, 1879

Brentanists revolutionize ontology

Brentano

MeinongOn the Theory

of Objects, 1904

EhrenfelsHusserl

first formal mereology, 1902

______

first use of ‘formal ontology’

~1905;

Twardowski

Leśniewskilogical

formalization of mereology,

1916

Brentanists revolutionize our understanding of the relations between psychology and

ontology

Brentano introduces in 1874 the idea of intentional directedness

(aboutness)

Meinong Ehrenfels Husserl Twardowski

how can we think about what does not exist?

Brentanists revolutionize our understanding of the relations between psychology and

ontology

Brentano introduces in 1874 the idea of intentional directedness

(aboutness)

Meinong Ehrenfels Husserl Twardowski

Stefan Schulz famous contributor to

zoology of unicorns

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the arrow of intentionality

Brentanists introduce the problem of understanding the relation between intentionality and language

Brentano

Meinong Ehrenfels Husserlcategorial

grammar, 1901

Twardowski

Leśniewskifounder of

formal mereology

Tarski invents formal

semantics

“From Intentionality to Formal Semantics”Brentano

Husserl Twardowski

Leśniewskiformal

mereology

Tarski formal

semantics

Joseph Woodger Axiomatic Method in

BiologyPatrick Hayes

“Ontology of Liquids”…

Description Logics, OWL …

The Logicians: Leśniewski, Tarski, Łukasiewicz, Twardowski Main Library of the University of Warsaw

Brentanists revolutionize our understanding of the relations between psychology and language

Brentano

Meinong EhrenfelsHusserl

two kinds of aboutness: relational

Twardowski

3 Levels of Reality

Level L1: the level of reality e.g. in wounds, bacteria, on the side of the patientLevel L2: the level of cognitive representations of this reality, e.g. in beliefs, desires and other mental acts and statesLevel L3: the level of publicly accessible concretizations of L2 cognitive representations in information artifacts of various sorts, e.g. texts, databases, ontologies

Relations that a good theory of mind and language needs to deal with

• between uses of language and external objects

• among uses of language themselves• among mental phenomena• between uses of language and mental

phenomena

Relations that a good theory of mind and language needs to deal with

• between uses of language and external objects(a) between a referring use of an expression and its object (assuming that it has an object),(b) between the use of a (true) sentence and that in the world which makes it true,(c) between a used predicate and the object or objects of which it is predicated, and also, at least in certain cases, between this object and those of its parts and aspects in virtue of which the predicate holds,• among uses of language themselves, for example:(a) anaphoric relations, (b) relations between those acts (act parts) which are referring and those

which are predicating uses of expressions, (c) relations between successive uses of sentences in higher-order structures

such as narratives, arguments, conversations, and so on.

Relations that a good theory of mind and language needs to deal with

• among mental phenomena(a) between mental acts and underlying mental states (attitudes, beliefs)(b) between one mental act and another, e.g. an act of thought is fulfilled by an act of perception• between uses of language and mental phenomena(a) between my acts and states and those associated uses of language which are overt actions on my part, for example actions of promising or commanding,(b) between my mental acts and states and the overt actions (including utterances) of other subjects with whom I come into contact (relations of understanding, of communication)