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Author Archives: murphyblog
‘Leave the starry heavens alone’: Some old problems of mind and matter
Scientific understanding can be roughly defined – as Chomsky once said – as a convergence between properties of the mind and properties of the world. What form does this convergence take? Heisenberg is supposed to have said to Einstein that ‘If nature … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy
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New paper out in Glossa
New paper published in Glossa on the ancient debate of whether language is optimally designed for cognition or communication. Language design and communicative competence: The minimalist perspective “In the Minimalist Program, the place of linguistic communication in language evolution and … Continue reading
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Lenneberg and Brain Dynamics: Comments on Balari & Lorenzo (2017)
Sergio Balari and Guillermo Lorenzo have a paper in the current volume of Biolinguistics, which is dedicated to celebrating the 50th anniversary of Lenneberg’s Biological Foundations of Language. The paper includes a number of unusual claims about computational approaches to … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics
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Recursion and Oscillations: Comments on Boeckx (2016) and Goucha et al. (2016)
Cedric Boeckx has a new paper out in the Journal of Neurolinguistics, “A conjecture about the neural basis of recursion in light of descent with modification”. The central thesis is summarised as follows: “I argue that the expansion of the … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics
4 Comments
New paper on pragmatic unarticulated constituents
New paper published in Biolinguistics on the nature of pragmatic unarticulated constituents and the syntax-semantics interface. “This paper explores the prospect that grammatical expressions are propositionally whole and psychologically plausible, leading to the explanatory burden being placed on syntax rather … Continue reading
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Rhythmic Syntax, Granularity, and Future of the Interdisciplinarian
Boeckx and Theofanopoulou (2015) today produced a commentary on ‘Labels, Cognomes and Cyclic Computation: An Ethological Perspective’ (Murphy 2015a; henceforth LCC). With care and instructive insights into the life sciences they expand the discussion of the computational capacities of non-humans, … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics
2 Comments
Real Methodological Naturalism: The Problem of Naturalism and the Limits of Inquiry
In a recent paper, ‘Naturalism without metaphysics’, philosopher John Collins notes that scientific naturalism does not have to be a metaphysical position, and in fact any serious naturalist must suppose that their metaphysics reaches only as far as their theoretical … Continue reading
Posted in Linguistics, Philosophy
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Infinite Jest: Putting the ‘a’ in ‘a priori’
The truth will set you free, but not until it’s done with you. David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) David Foster Wallace, widely considered one of the greatest American writers, hanged himself in his garage on September 12th 2008 after suffering for … Continue reading
Posted in David Foster Wallace, Literature
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Elliot Murphy 