This is a list of all publications written by Ullin T. Place; included are also unpublished papers. Where possible the full text is added for download. His unpublished Amsterdam lectures presented in the academic year 1973/1974 can be found on a separate page, see the menu above.
Armstrong, D. M., & Place, U. T. (1991). A debate on dispositions: their nature and their role in causation, Part I: the Armstrong-Place debate. Conceptus: Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 25(66), 3-44.
[Talks] [2 citing publications] [1 referring publications by Place]
Armstrong, D. M., Martin, C. B., Place, U. T., & Crane, T. (Ed.) (1996). Dispositions: A debate. Routledge.
[Related] [1 citing publications] [11 referring publications by Place] [Reviews]
Armstrong, D. M., Place, U. T., & Martin, C. B. (1992). A debate on dispositions: their nature and their role in causation: Part II The Martin-Armstrong-Place debate. Conceptus: Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 26(68-69), 3-58.
[1 referring publications by Place]
Chomsky, N., Place, U. T., & Schoneberger, T. (Ed.) (2000). The Chomsky-Place Correspondence 1993-1994 The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 17(1), 7-38. doi:10.1007/BF03392953
[Abstract]Edited correspondence between Ullin T Place and Noam Chomsky, which occurred in 1993-1994, is presented. The principal topics are (a) deep versus surface structure; (b) computer modeling of the brain; (c) the evolutionary origins of language; (d) behaviorism; and (e) a dispositional account of language. This correspondence includes Chomsky's denial that he ever characterized deep structure as innate; Chomsky's critique of computer modeling (both traditional and connectionist) of the brain; Place's critique of Chomsky's alleged failure to provide an adequate account of the evolutionary origins of language, and Chomsky's response that such accounts are “pop-Darwinian fairy tales”; and Place's arguments for, and Chomsky's against, the relevance of behaviorism to linguistic theory, especially the relevance of a behavioral approach to language that is buttressed by a dispositional account of sentence construction.
[5 citing publications]
Download: Chomsky, Place & Schoneberger (2000) The Chomsky-Place Correspondence.pdf
Graham, G., & Valentine, E. R. (Eds.). (2004). Identifying the mind: Selected papers of U. T. Place Oxford University Press.
[Reprints in this collection] [5 citing publications] [Reviews]
Place, U. T. (1954). The concept of heed. British Journal of Psychology, 45, 243-55. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1954.tb01252.x
[References] [21 citing publications] [29 referring publications by Place] [2 reprinting collections]
Download: 1954 The Concept of Heed.pdf 1954 1999 The Concept of Heed - revised version.pdf (with a new introduction; not published)
Place, U. T. (1954a). Conditioning and the treatment of enuresis: A theoretical discussion. Read to the South Australian Group, May 1954, British Psychological Society.
[Talks]
Place, U. T. (1956). Is consciousness a brain process? British Journal of Psychology, 47, 44-50.
Keywords: mind-brain identity theory, phenomenological fallacy
Note:
The revised version from 1997, see download (below), is not published and incorporates revisions proposed in Place (1997g).
Publications citing Place (1956): See publications citing 'Is conscious a brain process?'
[References] [261 citing publications] [57 referring publications by Place] [15 reprinting collections]
Download: 1956 Is Consciousness a Brain Process.pdf 1956 1997 Is Consciousness a Brain Process - revised version.pdf
Place, U. T. (1956a). Emotion concepts and learning theory [Unpublished paper delivered to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, Manchester, 1956].
[Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Place, U. T. (1959). The ‘phenomenological fallacy' - a reply to J. R.Smythies. British Journal of Psychology, 50,72-73. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1959.tb00684.x
Keywords: phenomenological fallacy
[References] [Is reply to] [1 citing publications] [2 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1959 The Phenomenological Fallacy - A Reply to J.R. Smythies.pdf
Place, U. T. (1960). Materialism as a scientific hypothesis. Philosophical Review, 69, 101-104.
[References] [Is reply to] [17 citing publications] [8 referring publications by Place] [2 reprinting collections]
Download: 1960 Materialism as a Scientific Hypothesis.pdf
Place, U. T. (1966). Consciousness and perception in psychology II. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. XL, 101-124. doi:10.1093/aristoteliansupp/40.1.85 [this doi is for the Supplementary Volume consisting of part I by A.J. Watson and part II by U. T. Place]
[References] [Is reply to] [Talks] [9 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1966 Consciousness and Perception in Psychology II.pdf 1966 1999 Consciousness and Perception in Psychology II - revised version.pdf
Place, U. T. (1967). Comments on H. Putnam 'Psychological predicates'. In W. H. Capitan, & D. D. Merrill (Eds.), Art, mind and religion: Proceedings of the 1965 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy (pp.55-68). Pittsburgh University Press.
[References] [Is reply to] [Talks] [6 citing publications] [7 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1967 Comments on H. Putnam's 'Psychological Predicates'.pdf
Place, U. T. (1969a). Burt on brain and consciousness. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 22, 285-292.
Keywords: consciousness, introspection
[References] [Is reply to] [1 citing publications] [6 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1969a Burt on Brain and Consciousness.pdf
Place, U. T. (1969b). Collected papers on brain, mind and consciousness [Doctoral thesis submitted 1969 for the degree of D.Litt, degree awarded in 1972]. University of Adelaide.
[References] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1969b Brain, Mind and Consciousness - Introduction DLitt Thesis.pdf [includes editorial changes by UTP]
Place, U. T. (1969c). The outline of a neurophysiological theory designed to account for the mental phenomena as described in ordinary language in which is as far as possible consistent with current physiological and psychological evidence [Unpublished paper, 3/11/69].
[References]
Download: 1969c The Outline of a Neurophysiological Theory Designed to Account for Mental Phenomena as Described in Ordinary Language.pdf
Place, U. T. (1971a). The infallibility of our knowledge of our own beliefs. Analysis, 31, 197-204. doi:10.1093/analys/31.6.197
[References] [7 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1971a The Infallibility of Our Knowledge about Our Own Beliefs.pdf
Place, U. T. (1971b). Understanding the language of sensations. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 49, 158-166
[References] [2 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1971b Understanding the Language of Sensations.pdf
Place, U. T. (1971c). The use of operant responding as a measure of mood fluctuation in periodic psychosis [Unpublished paper with an author's note added in 1999].
[Abstract]Ryle (1949) has suggested that to be in a happy mood or frame of mind is to have (a) an increased capacity for enjoyment and (b) a reduced sensitivity to distress. It is a natural corollary of this view that to be in an unhappy or miserable mood or frame of mind is to have (a) a reduced capacity for enjoyment and (b) an enhanced sensitivity to distress. Assuming that an individual's capacity for enjoyment can be measured by the rate of operant responding under conditions of positive reinforcement and his or her sensitivity to distress by the rate of responding under conditions of negative reinforcement, it should follow, on Ryle's theory, that in elation the rate of response under conditions of positive reinforcement will be high with a correspondingly low rate of response when reinforcement is negative. In depression, on the other hand, a low rate of response is predicted for the positive reinforcement condition with a high rate of response for
the negative reinforcement condition. In this study, the rate of operant responding under conditions of positive reinforcement is compared with that under conditions of negative reinforcement in two manic depressive patients with regular and predictable mood cycles. Longitudinal studies extended over several months confirm a number of the predictions drawn from Ryle's theory and throw some new and unexpected light on the nature of pathological mood states.
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1971c The Use of Operant Responding as a Measure of Mood Fluctuation in Periodic Psychosis.pdf
Place, U. T. (1972a). Sensations and processes - a reply to Munsat. Mind, LXXXI, 106-112. www.jstor.org/stable/2252189
[References] [Is reply to] [1 citing publications] [9 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1972a Sensations and Processes - A Reply to Munsat.pdf
Place, U. T. (1972b). Inner life [Conference presentation]. Northern Universities Philosophy Conference, Nottingham, April 11th-14th, 1972.
[Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1972b Inner Life.pdf
Place, U. T. (1973-1974). The metaphysical foundations of empirical psychology [A series of twenty eight lectures presented to the Vakgroep Methodenleer, Sub-Fakulteit Psychologie, University of Amsterdam between September 1973 and May 1974]. See Amsterdam Lectures
Place, U. T. (1973). The mental and the physical - a reply to Dr. Meynell. The Heythrop Journal, XIV(4), 417-424. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2265.1973.tb00758.x
[References] [Is reply to] [8 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1973 The Mental and the Physical - A Reply to Dr Meynell.pdf
Place, U. T. (1977a). Twenty years on - "Is consciousness still a brain process?" Open Mind, 6,3-10.
[References] [1 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1977a Twenty Years On - Is Consciousness Still a Brain Process.pdf
Place, U. T. (1977b). Filosofie, psychologie en filosofische psychologie. In K. Soudijn, & H. Bergman (Eds.), Ontwikkelingen in de psychologie (pp. 23-38). Boom/Intermediair.
Note:
Translated in Dutch and edited by Karel Soudijn.
[References]
Download: 1977b Philosophy, Psychology and Philosophical Psychology.pdf
Place, U. T. (1978a). Psychological paradigms and behaviour modification. De Psycholoog, 13, 611-621.
[Abstract]The application of Kuhn's concept of "incommensurable paradigms" to the science of psychology is discussed. Two such paradigms, the behaviorist or behavior analytic paradigm and the cognitive/mentalist paradigm, are distinguished. It is suggested that the choice of paradigm will depend on the method of behavior modification to be employed. If behavior is to be modified by stimulus control and contingency management, a version of the behaviorist paradigm will be selected. If behavior is to be modified by changing the individual's self-directed verbal behavior, the mentalist/cognitive paradigm is to be preferred.
Note:
An earlier version of this paper was presented to a conference of the European Association for Behavioural Therapy at the Central Hotel, London Heathrow Airport in July 1974 and was in 1978 published in De Psycholoog, in English The Psychologist, a journal of the Dutch Society of Psychology. The present revision is from 1986.
[References] [Talks] [2 citing publications] [2 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1978a 1986 Psychological Paradigms and Behavior Modification - revised version.pdf
Place, U. T. (1978b). Natural kinds and psychophysical laws: Comments on the McGinn-Hopkins symposium (PAS 1978) [Unpublished paper].
[References] [Is reply to]
Download: 1978b Natural Kinds and Psychophysical Laws - Comments on the McGinn-Hopkins Symposium.pdf
Place, U. T. (1979a). Review of K. V. Wilkes, Physicalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Philosophy, 54(209), 423-425. doi:10.1017/s0031819100048877
[References] [Reviewed publication(s)]
Download: 1979a Review of K V Wilkes Physicalism.pdf
Place, U. T. (1979b). Essay Review of Karl R. Popper and J. C. Eccles, The Self and its Brain: An argument for Interactionism. Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1977. Annals of Science, 36, 403-408.
[References] [Reviewed publication(s)]
Download: 1979b Essay Review of Karl R. Popper and J. C. Eccles, The Self and its Brain.pdf
Place, U. T. (1981a). Skinner's Verbal Behavior I - why we need it. Behaviorism, 9, 1-24. www.jstor.org/stable/27758970
[Abstract]To explain behaviour in terms of intensional or mentalistic concepts is to explain the behaviour in question on the assumption of a consistent and rational connection between what the agent does and what he says or what is said to him and that therefore any general account of verbal or linguistic behaviour which employs such concepts is necessarily circular, since it explains the acquisition of linguistic skills on the assumption that the speaker already possesses such skills. It follows that this circularity can only be avoided by developing a theory of verbal or linguistic behaviour which is stated entirely in a nonintensional or extensional language. At the present time, the most developed conceptual system for description and explanation of the behaviour of organisms at the molar level in purely extensional terms is that provided by the so-called ‘Radical Behaviorism’ of B. F. Skinner and his followers. Furthermore, in his book Verbal Behavior Skinner (1957) has used this conceptual framework to develop a theory of verbal or linguistic behaviour which represents the most ambitious attempt made so far to formulate a theory of linguistic behaviour in nonintensional or extensional terms.
Note:
Revised version is from 1999.
[References] [7 citing publications] [11 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1981a 1999 Skinner's Verbal Behavior I - Why We Need It - revised version.pdf
Place, U. T. (1981b). Skinner's Verbal Behavior II - what is wrong with it. Behaviorism, 9, 131-152. www.jstor.org/stable/27758982
[Abstract]Skinner's Verbal Behavior as it stands suffers from four major defects. (1) Skinner fails to do justice to the distinction between words which are the repeated and repeatable units of verbal behaviour, but which have a function only in so far as they contribute to the function of the sentences in which they occur, and the sentences themselves which are the functional units of verbal behaviour, but which are seldom repeated word for word either in the mouth of the speaker or in the hearing of the listener. (2) The account given by Skinner of the listener's response to the verbal operant and of the concept of "the discriminative stimulus" which he deploys in this connection is seriously inadequate. (3) Skinner's concept of "the tact" involves a confusion between tacts as words and tacts as sentences. Tacts as words, i.e. names and general terms, designate recurrent features of the common stimulus environment of speaker and listener, both general and particular and contrast with autoclitic words whose function is purely intra-sentential. Tacts as sentences on the other hand are functionally complete verbal operants corresponding to the grammatical concept of an assertion, which act for the benefit of the listener and contrast with mands, sentence utterances corresponding to the imperatives and interrogatives of grammar and logic, which typically act for the benefit of the speaker. (4) Skinner's account fails to do justice to the all-important logical distinction between those tact sentence utterances or assertions which are true and on which the listener can consequently rely and those which are false and therefore unreliable as a source of information from the standpoint of the listener.
[References] [9 citing publications] [10 referring publications by Place] [Is replied by]
Download: 1981b Skinner’s Verbal Behavior II – what is wrong with it.pdf
Place, U. T. (1982). Skinner's Verbal Behavior III - how to improve Parts I and II. Behaviorism, 10, 117-136. www.jstor.org/stable/27759002
[References] [2 citing publications] [5 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1982 Skinner's Verbal Behavior III - How to Improve Parts I and II
Place, U. T. (1983a). Comments on Mark Burton's theses. Behaviour Analysis, 4(1), 22-31.
Keywords: consciousness
[References] [Is reply to] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1983a Comments on Mark Burton's Theses.pdf
Place, U. T. (1983b). Behavioural contingency semantics [Conference presentation abstract]. In P. Simons (Ed.), Abstracts of the 7th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 2, Sections 5 and 12 (pp. 342-345). J. Huttegger OHG.
Keywords: behavioural contingency semantics
Note:
Presentation given at the 7th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science held in Salzburg, July 11th-16th 1983. In the downloads two documents are made available. One is an extended abstract, in actual fact a 4 pages summary as published in the proceedings of the conference and second is the text of the presentation.
In the abstract Place tried to show how a later strand in Skinner's thinking represented by his 1969 book Contingencies Reinforcement, particularly the operant analysis of problem solving can be developed in such a way as to make good all the important deficiencies in the account given by Skinner in Verbal Behavior and what are mercilessly exposed by Chomsky in his 1959 Review.
In the presentation Place discusses the reasons why a behavioural account of language acquisition and language use is to be preferred to the alternative theories belonging to the tradition that stems from Chomsky.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1983b Behavioural Contingency Semantics. The Abstract.pdf 1983b Behavioural Contingency Semantics. The Presentation.pdf
Place, U. T. (1983c). Behavioural contingency semantics and the analysis of behaviour. [Conference presentation abstract, delivered at the Christmas Meeting of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, University College, London, January 1983]. Behaviour Analysis Letters, 3, 128-129.
Keywords: behavioural contingency semantics, verbal behaviour, behaviour analysis, discriminative stimulus, significant stimulus event, disinforcement
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1983c Behavioural Contingency Semantics and the Analysis of Behaviour - The Abstract.pdf 1983c Behavioural Contingency Semantics and the Analysis of Behaviour - The Presentation.pdf
Place, U. T. (1983d). Skinner's Verbal Behavior IV - how to improve Part IV, Skinner's account of syntax. Behaviorism, 11, 163-186. www.jstor.org/stable/27759026
Keywords: behavioural contingency semantics, Skinner, verbal behavior
[References] [3 citing publications] [15 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1983d Skinner's Verbal Behavior IV - How to Improve Part IV - Skinner's Account of Syntax.pdf
Place, U. T. (1983e). Disposicijska svojstva i argument virtus dormitiva (Dispositional properties and the virtus dormitiva argument). Filozofska Istrazivanja, 3(7), 77-84.
Place, U. T. (1984a). Logic, reference and mentalism: a comment on B.F.Skinner, 'The operational analysis of psychological terms'. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7(4), 565-566. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00027321
Note:
The download also includes the response of Skinner.
[References] [Is reply to] [1 citing publications] [1 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1984a Logic, Reference, and Mentalism.pdf
Place, U. T. (1984b). Some comments on Professor Searle's Reith lectures. [Publication source unknown]
[References] [Is reply to]
Download: 1984b Some Comments on Professor Searle's Reith Lectures.pdf
Place, U. T. (1984c). On the relation between intenTional-with-a-t and mental phenomena and intenSional-with-an-s, mentalistic and Oratio Obliqua locutions [Unpublished paper presented to the Senior Seminar, Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, on Tuesday March 20th 1984; revised in 1987 or 1988].
[References] [2 citing publications]
Download: 1984c 1987 On the Relation between Intentional-with-a-T and Mental Phenomena and Intensional-with-an-S, Mentalistic and Oratio Obliqua Locutions.pdf
Place, U. T. (1985a). A response to Sundberg and Michael. VB News, 3, 38-45. [Reprinted in The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 3, 41-47]
[References] [Is reply to] [1 citing publications] [5 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1985a A Response to Sundberg and Michael.pdf
Place, U. T. (1985b). Conversation analysis and the empirical study of verbal behaviour. [Conference presentation abstract, delivered at the Annual Conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, University of Sussex, April 1984]. Behavioural Processes, 10, 196-197
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1985b Conversational Analysis and the Empirical Study of Verbal Behaviour (abstract).pdf 1985b Conversation Analysis and the Empirical Study of Verbal Behaviour (complete text).pdf
Place, U. T. (1985c). Semicovert behavior and the concept of pain: a comment on H. Rachlin 'Pain and behavior'. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8, 70-71. doi:10.1017/s0140525x00019695
[References] [1 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1985c Semicovert Behavior and the Concept of Pain.pdf
Place, U. T. (1985d). Three senses of the word "tact". Behaviorism, 13, 63-74. www.jstor.org/stable/27759058
[References] [2 citing publications] [14 referring publications by Place] [Is replied by]
Download: 1985d Three Senses of the Word 'Tact'.pdf 1985d Supplement to Three Senses of the Word 'Tact'.pdf complete table with all occurrences of the word 'tact' in Skinner's Verbal Behavior
Place, U. T. (1985e). Three senses of the word "tact" - a reply to Professor Skinner. Behaviorism, 13, 155-156.
[References] [Is reply to] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1985e Three Senses of the Word 'Tact' - A Reply to Professor Skinner.pdf
Place, U. T. (1985f). The application of behavioural contingency semantics to the analysis of a narrative text [Conference presentation]. First International Pragmatics Conference, Via Reggio, Italy, July 1985.
[Talks]
Download: not available yet
Place, U. T. (1986a). Ethics as a system of behavior modification. In L. J. Parrott, & P. N. Chase (Eds.), Psychological Aspects of Language: The West Virginia Lectures (Chapter 6, pp.157-178). Charles C. Thomas.
[References] [1 citing publications] [2 referring publications by Place] [Is replied by]
Download: 1986a Ethics as Behavior Modification - revised version.pdf revised and two footnotes added after publication of the book
Place, U. T. (1986b). Do we have intuitive knowledge of what is the case in all possible worlds [Presentation]. Department of Philosophy, University of York, 6th November 1986.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1986b Do We Have Intuitive Knowledge of What is the Case in All Possible Worlds.pdf at the end is included an appendix which explicates the structure of the main argument of the paper
Place, U. T. (1986c). The invisibility of extra-episodic reinforcement as a problem in presenting behavior analysis to conversation analysts [Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, St. Andrew's, Scotland, April 1986].
[Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Place, U. T. (1986d). Can a psychologist make sense of natural kind terms as rigid designators? [Paper presented at the Course on 'Meaning and Natural Kinds', Inter university Post graduate Centre, Dubrovnik, Yugo-slavia, 15-25 September 1986].
Note:
Revised by the author in 1993.
[References] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1987a). Skinner re-skinned. In S. Modgil, & C. Modgil (Eds.), B. F. Skinner, Consensus and Controversy (Part XI, Skinner and the 'Virtus dormitiva' argument, pp. 235-243). Falmer Press.
[Abstract]In 'Skinner Skinned' Dennett (1978, chapter 4) discusses two arguments, the virtus dormitiva and intentionality arguments, which he sees as the only solid ground underlying the various arguments which Skinner gives for repudiating the use of mentalistic explanations in a scientific psychology; and of these he endorses only the intentionality argument. I argue (a) that what Skinner finds objectionable in mentalistic idioms is their dispositional character, (b) that both the virtus dormitiva and intentionality argument are arguments against the use of dispositional property ascriptions in scientific explanation, and (c) that, since dispositional property ascriptions are essential to any causal explanation, Dennett has failed to provide any good reason for endorsing Skinner's repudiation of mentalism. It is suggested that mentalism is objectionable only insofar it involves the use of idioms which presuppose what Skinner (1969) calls 'rule-governed' behaviour to explain behaviour that is 'contingency-shaped'.
[References] [7 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place] [Is replied by]
Download: 1987a Skinner Re-skinned.pdf
Place, U. T. (1987b). Skinner re-placed. In S. Modgil, & C. Modgil (Eds.), B. F. Skinner, Consensus and Controversy (Part XI, Skinner and the 'Virtus dormitiva' argument, pp. 249-251). Falmer Press.
[References] [Is reply to] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1987b Skinner Re-placed.pdf
Place, U. T. (1987c). Causal laws, dispositional properties and causal explanations. Synthesis Philosophica, 2(3), 149-160.
[Abstract]The role in causal explanation of sentences ascribing dispositional properties to the entities involved is discussed in the light of (a) the counterfactual theory of causal necessity originally proposed by Hume (1777) and more recently by Mackie (1962; 1974), (b) Ryle's (1949) hypothetical analysis of dispositional statements. and (c) Goodman's (1965) observation that counterfactuals are "sustained", not only by causal law statements universally quantified over entities of a given kind, but by dispositional statements which are restricted in their scope to a single individual. It is argued that what is required in order to support a causal counterfactual is universal quantification over a period of time which may be as short as you like, provided (a) that it covers the moment when the event hypothesised in the counterfactual is assumed to have occurred and (b) that its restriction to that period can be rationally justified.
[References] [11 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1987c Causal Laws, Dispositional Properties and Causal Explanations.pdf with corrections added after publication
Place, U. T. (1988a). Thirty years on - is consciousness still a brain process? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 66, 208-219.
[References] [14 citing publications] [5 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1988a Thirty Years On - Is Consciousness Still a Brain Process.pdf
Place, U. T. (1988b). Skinner's distinction between rule-governed and contingency-shaped behaviour. Philosophical Psychology, 1, 225-234. doi:10.1080/09515088808572941
[Abstract]The distinction that Skinner draws in his 'An operant analysis of problem solving' (1966, 1969, 1984) between 'rule-governed' and 'contingency'shaped' behaviour is arguably the most important single contribution to the theory of behaviour that he has made in a long and uniquely distinguished career. The concept of a 'rule' as a 'contingency-specifying' verbal formula which exercises 'stimulus control' over other aspects of the behaviour of a linguistically competent human being presents a formidable challenge to contemporary cognitive psychology in that the 'Representation' and 'computation' of environmental contingencies is seen as confined to verbally controlled behaviour emitted by linguistically competent human subjects. It also suggests a way of filling a major gap in the account of language offered by Skinner in his earlier book Verbal Behavior (1957), namely the lack of any account of how the speaker is able to use instructions to evoke behaviour which the listener never previously emitted and declarative sentences to convey information about contingencies which the listener has never previously encountered.
[References] [Talks] [5 citing publications] [2 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1988b Skinner's Distinction Between Rule Governed and Contingency Shaped Behaviour.pdf
Place, U. T. (1988c). What went wrong? - comments on B.F.Skinner's 'Whatever happened to psychology as the science of behavior?' Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 1, 307-309. doi:10.1080/09515078808254214
[References]
Download: 1988c What Went Wrong.pdf
Place, U. T. (1988d). Consciousness as an information processing system. The British Psychological Society 1988 Abstracts, 58.
[Related] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1988e). The problem of mental content from the standpoint of linguistic empiricism [Presentation prepared for the Course on Functionalism and Content, Inter-university Post-graduate Centre, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia (since 1991 Croatia), 7-15 September 1988] Inter-university Post-graduate Centre.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1988e The Problem of Mental Content from the Standpoint of Linguistic Empiricism .pdf
Place, U. T. (1988f). Consciousness as an information processing system. [Paper presented to the Inaugural Symposium of the Mind-Body Group, Second Annual Conference of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, University of Leeds, April 1988].
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1988f Consciousness as an Information Processing System.pdf
Place, U. T. (1988h). Pre-linguistic and post-linguistic concepts. [Presentation to the Generalisation Group, Department of Psychology, University College of North Wales, Bangor at 10 March 1988 and to the Department of Psychology, Trinity College, Dublin at 11 March 1988.]
Note:
After the presentation revised by the author. The last revision is from 24th March 1999. The central argument of the paper has not been revised.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1988h Pre-Linguistic and Post-Linguistic Concepts.pdf
Place, U. T. (1988i). Natsoulas v. Skinner on Feeling [Unpublished].
[Abstract]Natsoulas' critique of Skinner's account of feeling is a mixture of valid criticism, profound misunderstanding of Skinner's position and conceptual confusion.
Note:
It is unclear which publication of Natsoulas Place is reacting to in this unpublished comment. Natsoulas wrote several articles about Skinner’s views on consciousness with titles like Toward a model for consciousness in the light of B.F. Skinner’s contribution (1978), Perhaps the most difficult problem faced by behaviorism (1983), On the radical behaviorist conception of consciousness (1986), On the radical behaviorist conception of pain experience (1988). But no one is as explicit about feelings as suggested in this comment on Natsoulas. Perhaps Place is reacting to an unpublished paper of Natsoulas. The present comment is of interest because of the conceptual analysis of the verb to feel.
The date of this comment is unclear. I have chosen 1988, but this is more or less an educated guess.
[References]
Download: 1988i Natsoulas v. Skinner on Feeling.pdf
Place, U. T. (1989a). Low claim assertions. In J. Heil (Ed.), Cause, mind and reality: Essays honoring C. B. Martin (pp. 121-135). Kluwer. doi:10.1007/978-94-011-9734-2_9
Keywords: colours, mind-brain identity theory, introspection, phenomenological fallacy, topic neutrality
[References] [4 citing publications] [4 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1989a Low claim assertions.pdf
Place, U. T. (1989b). Towards a connectionist version of the causal theory of reference. Acta Analytica, 4(5), 71-97.
[Abstract]The connectionist model of the brain as a parallel distributed processor (PDP) is invoked to provide a version of the the causal theory of the reference of natural kind terms and proper names which rejects Kripke's doctrine of rigid designation and retains the Port Royal-Hamilton thesis that the extension of a general term is determined by its comprehension or intension, together with Frege's thesis that the reference (Bedeutung) of a singular term is determined by its sense (Sinn).
[References] [Talks] [1 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1989b Towards a Connectionist Version of the Causal Theory of Reference.pdf
Place, U. T. (1989c). Concept acquisition and ostensive learning: a response to Professor Stemmer. Behaviorism, 17, 141-145. www.jstor.org/stable/41236094
[Abstract]The alternative offered by Professor Stemmer to cognitivist theories of the process whereby general terms acquire their meaning is criticised in its turn on the grounds that it presents an oversimplified view of the complex processes involved in the acquisition of word meanings.
[References] [Is reply to] [2 citing publications] [Is replied by]
Download: 1989c Concept Acquisition and Ostensive Learning - A Response to Professor Stemmer.pdf
Place, U. T. (1989d). Thirty five years on - is consciousness still a brain process? In J. Brandl, & W. L. Gombocz (Eds.), The Mind of Donald Davidson. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 36(1), 17-29.
[References] [Talks] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1989d Thirty Five Years On - Is Consciousness Still a Brain Process.pdf
Place, U. T. (1989e). Contingency analysis of naturally occurring verbal interactions [Conference presentation abstract]. British Psychological Society 1989 Abstracts, 67.
[Abstract]The analysis of verbal behaviour in terms of Skinner's (1969) concept of the three‑term contingency can be made at two different levels (a) at the semantic level at which the content of an utterance is analysed in terms of the contingency or contingencies it "specifies" or "depicts" and (b) at the pragmatic level at which the utterance is viewed as behaviour in relation to a preceding utterance by another speaker as antecedent and to a subsequent utterance or other behaviour emitted by the listener as consequence.
A technique is proposed for generating a pragmatic analysis of naturally occurring verbal interactions based partly on an interpretation of Harlow's (1959) distinction between "win‑stay/fail‑ shift" and "win‑shift/fail‑stay" contingencies in terms of Michael's (1982) concept of an "establishing condition" and its reversal, and partly on a behaviour analytic interpretation of the concepts of "turn", "sequence", "continuer", "adjacency pair" and "preference organisation" derived from the vocabulary of conversation analysis (Heritage 1985).
[References] [Related] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1989f). Two concepts of consciousness: The biological/private and the linguistic/social. Revista mexicana de análisis de la conducta= Mexican journal of behavior analysis, (Extra 3), 69-88.
[Abstract]How much of the mental life which we attribute to ourselves and our fellow human beings should we attribute to other creatures, particularly those mammals to which we are most closely related in evolutionary terms, given that such creatures do not communicate with one another by means of anything resembling human natural language?
The paper approaches this question historically by considering the positions taken by Aristotle, Descartes, the post-Darwinians such as Romanes, the behaviorists down to Skinner, and contemporary philosophers such as Davidson and Fodor. A distinction is drawn between two concepts of consciousness: the biological/private which I argue we should not hesitate to attribute to all warm-blooded vertebrates and the linguistic/social which is exclusively human.
The concept of consciousness as biological and private is the 'consciousness' of traditional introspective psychology and of 'Is consciousness a brain process?' (Place 1956). It comprises the phenomena of selective attention, conceptualization, mental image formation, emotional reaction and motivation. The concept of consciousness as linguistic and social is the consciousness of Hegel, Marx, Vygotsky, Skinner and much contemporary philosophical psychology. It consists of an integrated system of propositional attitudes (beliefs) all of which are either formulated or susceptible to formulation as sentences in natural language (Skinner's "contingency-specifying stimuli" or "rules").
Note:
The publication date, 1989, can't be correct, but it is the date used by the journal. After publication the author revised the paper, see Place 1992f
[References] [Related]
Download: 1989f Two Concepts of Consciousness (Revista Mexicana de Analisis de la Conducta).pdf
Place, U. T. (1989g). Some thought on the work of the Würzburg School and the controversy it provoked, prompted by a visit to Würzburg 10-16 October 1989 [Unpublished presentation at the Departmental Seminar, Departement of Psychology, University College of North Wales, Bangor, 2nd November 1989].
[Abstract]The debate between the Würzburg School and E. B. Titchener which took place during the first decade of this century was not, as it is often portrayed, a debate about the existence or non-existence of imageless thought. It is better described as a conceptual and terminological issue about the nature of consciousness, the place of meaning in consciousness and the role of introspection (Selbstbeobachtung) in its empirical investigation.
Titchener's contention that in introspection the trained psychologist strips away meaning in order to provide a description of raw uninterpreted experience is shown to be the absurdity that it is by Wittgenstein's (1953) 'private language argument'. There is, nevertheless, a useful distinction to be drawn between two ways of acquiring mental self-knowledge:
(a) introspection (Selbstbeobachtung) which yields observational knowledge of the qualia of ongoing experience, and
(b) inner perception (innere Wahrnehmung) which yields intuitive knowledge of the onset and content of dispositional mental states.
In terms of this distinction, the Würzburg protocols are based on an inner perception of the content of the reported thoughts rather than on introspective observation of the qualia of experience.
The paper concludes with an assessment of the significance of the Würzburg-Titchener controversy for the subsequent history of psychology and for contemporary issues in psychology and the philosophy of mind.
Note:
Poshumously published as Place (2002/3)
[References] [Related] [Talks]
Download: 1989g Some Thought on the Work of the Wurzburg School and the Controversy it Provoked.pdf
Place, U. T. (1989h). Relational frames and the role of logic in rule-governed behaviour. [Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, Cambridge, 1989. Revised in 1997.]
[Abstract]The concept "relational frame" has been proposed by Steve Hayes (1991) as a higher order category in which Murray Sidman's concept of "equivalence class" is subsumed as a special case. Like equivalence, the relational frame concept was originally conceived as an interpretation of the behaviour of human subjects on a matching to sample task. While not denying the reality of relational frame abstraction in the case of intelligent human adults, it is suggested that this may be an over intellectual interpretation of the equivalence responding of children and less intelligent adults. It is proposed that the relational frame concept should instead be seen as an important contribution
(a) to relational logic, and
(b) to our understanding of the role of logic in rule governed behaviour,
and that the ability to abstract relational frames is something that appears much later in the process whereby linguistic competence is acquired than equivalence class responding on the matching to sample task.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1989h Relational Frames and the Role of Logic in Rule-Governed Behaviour.pdf
Place, U. T. (1990a). E. G. Boring and the mind-brain identity theory. The British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter, 11, 20-31.
[References] [Talks] [7 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1990a E.G. Boring and the Mind-Brain Identity Theory.pdf added to the end of the document are excerpts from Boring, 1933
Place, U. T. (1990b). Intensionalism, connectionism and the picture theory of meaning. Acta Analytica, 5(6), 47-63.
[Abstract]The connectionist model of the brain as a parallel distributed processor (PDP) is invoked in support of the view that the sense of singular terms and the intension of general terms and of more complex linguistic expressions determine
(1) the reference of singular terms,
(2) the extension of general terms,
(3) the truth of propositions,
(4) the validity of arguments,
(5) the meaning of sentences.
Keywords: connectionism, conceptualism, correspondence theory of truth, extensionalism, intensionalism, ontology, philosophy of language, picture theory of meaning, universals
[References] [Talks] [5 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1990b Intensionalism, Connectionism and the Picture Theory of Meaning.pdf
Place, U. T. (1990c). A radical behaviourist methodology for the empirical investigation of private events [Conference paper abstract]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society 1990 Abstracts, 38.
[Related]
Place, U. T. (1990d). Can social constructivism be reconciled with scientific realism [Presentation to the Course on the Philosophy of Science at the Inter-university Centre, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, April 11th 1990]. Inter-university Centre, Dubrovnik
Keywords: conceptualism, connectionism, universals
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1990d Can Social Constructivism Be Reconciled With Scientific Realism.pdf
Place, U. T. (1990e). Critical Notice [Unpublished book review of Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind Brain by Patricia Smith Churchland. MIT Press, l986].
Keywords: conceptual analysis, eliminative materialism, mind-brain identity theory, neurophilosophy
Note:
This critical notice was commissioned by the editor of the Quarterly Journal of Philosophy in 1986 when the book first appeared; but since it was not completed until four years later in 1990, it was never submitted. It was revised in 1999 in anticipation of a meeting with Pat Churchland in Siena, Italy, in October of that year - a meeting that because of the illness of Place never took place.
[References] [Reviewed publication(s)]
Download: 1990e Critical Notice.pdf
Place, U. T. (1991a). Conversation analysis and the analysis of verbal behavior. In L. J. Hayes, & P. N. Chase (Eds.), Dialogues on verbal behavior: The First International Institute on Verbal Relations (Chapter 5, pp. 85-109). Context Press.
[References] [4 citing publications] [5 referring publications by Place] [Is replied by]
Download: 1991a Conversation Analysis and Analysis of Verbal Behavior.pdf
Place, U. T. (1991b). Error-correction in connectionist networks: A new perspective on the law of effect [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society 1991 Abstracts, 67.
[Related] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1991c). Konekcionizem in o_ivljenje behaviorizma (Slovenian translation of 'Connectionism and the resurrection of behaviourism'). Anthropos, 1(3), 327-335.
[Related]
Place, U. T. (1991d). The problem of error-correction in connectionist networks: a new perspective on the law of effect [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of 17th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis - May 24-27 1991 - Atlanta, Georgia (p. 148). Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis.
[Abstract]The parallel distributed processor (PDP) derives its ability to learn complex and subtle pattern discriminations from changes that occur in the so-called 'weights' of the synaptic connections between the multiple interconnected nodes of which the device consists as a consequence of previous activation of those connections. In order for the device to have that property, the changes which occur in the synaptic weights must conform to what is known as 'a learning rule' or to a limited number of such rules depending on the circumstances. McClelland and Rumelhart (1988) propose two such rules: "the so-called Hebbian or correlational learning rule .... and the error-correcting or 'delta' learning rule." Attention is drawn to the analogy, if not coincidence, between these learning rules and such traditional learning principles as association by contiguity in the case of the Hebbian or correlational learning rule and the Law of Effect in the case of the error-correcting or 'delta' rule. It is suggested that both of these learning rules are needed, the correlational/contiguity rule to control input selection by the mechanism of selective attention and the 'delta' rule/Law of Effect to control output selection. It is argued that, in the case of living organisms, a second input selection principle is required in order to account for the preoccupation of attention with the motivationally significant at the expense of the motivationally insignificant.
Identification of the error-correction rule with the Law of Effect draws attention
(a) to the fact that in living organisms the error- and correct-messages are constituted by the immediate consequences of behavior, and that these are differentiated into error-messages (disinforcements) and correct-messages (reinforcements) by the motivational attitude of the organism to those consequences,
(b) to the fact that, in contrast to the prejudices of learning theorists in the nineteen thirties who were inclined to deny the weakening effect of punishment on the strength of response tendencies, on the connectionist view it is error-correction (disinforcement) rather than confirmation (reinforcement) that does all the work.
It is concluded that what we need is a symmetrical conception of the Law of Effect which allows both the strengthening of response tendencies by success and the weakening of response tendencies by failure.
[References] [Related] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1991e). Symbolic processes and stimulus equivalence [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of 17th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis - May 24-27 1991 - Atlanta, Georgia (p. 357). Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis
[Related] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1991f). On the social relativity of truth and the analytic/synthetic distinction. Human Studies, 14, 265-285. doi:10.1007/bf02205609
[Abstract]Three solutions are examined to the problem of cultural chauvinism posed by the fact that the verb `to know' commits the speaker to the truth of what is known. Two, the doctrine that truth is socially relative and the doctrine that truth determination procedures are socially relative, are rejected. A third, the view that truth is relative to linguistic convention is defended. Holding this view commits the author to an intensionalist theory of reference, a conceptualist theory of universals, a defence of the analytic-synthetic distinction against Quine's critique, and the view that the basic principles of science are analytic.
[References] [3 citing publications] [14 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1991f On the Social Relativity of Truth and the Analytic Synthetic Distinction.pdf
Place, U. T. (1991g). E. G. Boring and the mind-brain identity theory [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society 1991 Abstracts, 2.
[References] [Related] [Talks]
Download: 1991g Abstract of E.G. Boring and the Mind-Brain Identity Theory.pdf
Place, U. T. (1991h). Error-correction in connectionist networks: A new perspective on the law of effect [Unpublished paper. Presented to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, Bournemouth, 12th April 1991, Session on Behavioristic Perspectives on Cognitive Psychology and to the 17th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Atlanta, Georgia, May 26th 1991.] .
[References] [Related] [Talks]
Download: 1991h Error Correction in Connectionist Networks - A New Perspective on the Law of Effect.pdf
Place, U. T. (1991i). Dispositions as intentional states. Conceptus, XXV(66), 7-16. With D. M. Armstrong and C. B. Martin ‘A debate on dispositions: their nature and their role in causation, Part I: The Armstrong-Place debate, Chapter 2'.
Place, U. T. (1991j). On confounding conceptualism with nominalism.' Conceptus, XXV(66), 30-44. With D. M. Armstrong and C. B. Martin ‘A debate on dispositions: their nature and their role in causation, Part I: The Armstrong-Place debate, Chapter 4'.
Place, U. T. (1991k). From syntax to reality: the picture theory of meaning [Discussion paper presented to a small conference on 'Footprints of the Brain in the Syntax of Natural Language' at the Neurosciences Institute, New York, February 1991].
Keywords: picture theory of meaning
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1991k From Syntax to Reality - the Picture Theory of Meaning.pdf revised version from 1999
Place, U. T. (1991l). Serbo-Croat translation of 'Towards a connectionist version of the causal theory of reference.' SOL.
Note:
Translation of Place, U. T. (1989b). Towards a connectionist version of the causal theory of reference. Acta Analytica, 4(5), 71-97.
Place, U. T. (1992a). Behavioral contingency semantics and the correspondence theory of truth. In S. C. Hayes,& L. J. Hayes (Eds.), Understanding verbal relations: The Second and Third International Institute on Verbal Relations (Chapter 9, pp. 135-151). Context Press.
Keywords: behaviour analysis, behavioural contingency semantics, correspondence theory of truth, picture theory of meaning, situation, three-term contingency
[References] [Talks] [2 citing publications] [15 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1992a Behavioral Contingency Semantics and the Correspondence Theory of Truth.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992b). Is there an operant analysis of animal problem-solving? [Conference presentation, presented at 18th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis - May 25-28 1992 - San Francisco, California]. Association for Behavior Analysis. Abstract published in Proceedings of 18th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis - May 25-28 1992 - San Francisco, California (p. 155). Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis.
[Abstract]In 'An operant analysis of problem-solving', Skinner (1966/1969/1988) develops an account of problem-solving based on the distinction between two different ways in which an organism can learn to adapt to environmental contingencies: (1) contingency-shaped behavior in which the behavior of an organism is progressively shaped by repeated exposure to the contingency itself, and (2) rule-governed behavior in which a verbally competent human being adapts to a contingency by constructing a verbal formula or rule which is said to "specify" the contingency in question. A rule may be constructed, as in the case of contingency-shaped behavior, in the light of repeated exposure to the contingency itself. It may equally well be based on information about the contingency supplied by another speaker, on information derived from a written text, or on an inference from other rules derived from any or all these sources. It is this case where the agent infers a new rule tailor-made for the problem with which he/she is confronted that Skinner has in mind in offering an analysis of problem-solving in these terms.
There is a growing body of empirical evidence (Hayes 1989) which confirms the accuracy of Skinner's description of problem-solving as it occurs in the case of verbally competent human beings. But animals also solve problems; and so do pre-verbal human infants. This kind of problem-solving cannot simply be a matter of contingency-shaping, though previous contingency-shaped behavior is the only resource from which a pre-verbal organism can draw in selecting an appropriate problem-solving strategy. It requires some mechanism like that which Köhler (1925) refers to as "insight" whereby the stimulus class which currently controls a particular response class is somehow stretched so as to include the current stimulus situation.
The case for postulating such a behavior mediating mechanism within the conceptual framework of radical behaviorism is argued by appealing
(a) to the analogy between attending behavior and thinking by talking to oneself, and
(b) to the process whose existence is implied by Skinner's (1938) account of "stimulus class" whereby an organism learns to break up its stimulus environment into stimulus classes "along the natural lines of fracture."
Keywords: the natural lines of fracture, stimulus class, rule-governed behaviour, problem-solving, Skinner
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1992b Is There an Operant Analysis of Animal Problem-Solving.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992c). Eliminative connectionism and its implications for a return to an empiricist/behaviorist linguistics. Behavior and Philosophy, 20, 21-35. www.jstor.org/stable/27759268
[Abstract]For the past three decades linguistic theory has been based on the assumption that sentences are interpreted and constructed by the brain by means of computational processes analogous to those of a serial-digital computer. The recent interest in devices based on the neural network or parallel distributed processor (PDP) principle raises the possibility ("eliminative connectionism") that such devices may ultimately replace the S-D computer as the model for the interpretation and generation of language by the brain. An analysis of the differences between the two models suggests that that the effect of such a development would be to steer linguistic theory towards a return to the empiricism and behaviorism which prevailed before it was driven by Chomsky towards nativism and mentalism. Linguists, however, will not be persuaded to return to such a theory unless and until it can deal with the phenomenon of novel sentence construction as effectively as its nativist/mentalist rival.
[References] [Talks] [1 citing publications] [8 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1992c Eliminative Connectionsm -Its Implications for a Return to an Empiricist-Behaviorist Linguistics.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992d). The role of the ethnomethodological experiment in the empirical investigation of social norms, and its application to conceptual analysis. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 22, 461-474. doi:10.1177/004839319202200403
[Abstract]It is argued that conceptual analysis as practiced by the philosophers of ordinary language, is an empirical procedure that relies on a version of Garfinkel's ethnomethodological experiment. The ethnomethodological experiment is presented as a procedure in which the existence and nature of a social norm is demonstrated by flouting the putative convention and observing what reaction that produces in the social group within which the convention is assumed to operate. Examples are given of the use of ethnomethodological experiments, both in vivo and as a thought experiment, in order to demonstrate the existence of otherwise invisible conventions governing human social behavior. Comparable examples are cited from the writings of ordinary language philosophers of ethnomethodological thought experiments designed to demonstrate the existence of linguistic conventions.
[References] [Talks] [1 citing publications] [12 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1992d The Role of the Ethnomethodological Experiment in the Empirical Investigation of Social Norms, and its Application to Conceptual Analysis.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992e). Behaviorism and behavior analysis in Britain - An historical overview. The ABA Newsletter, 15(4), 5-7.
[References]
Download: 1992e Behaviorism and Behavior Analysis in Britain.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992f). Two concepts of consciousness: the biological/private and the linguistic/social. Acta Analytica, 7(8), 53-72.
[Abstract]How much of the mental life which we attribute to ourselves and our fellow human beings should we attribute to other creatures, particularly those mammals to which we are most closely related in evolutionary terms, given that such creatures do not communicate with one another by means of anything resembling human natural language?
The paper approaches this question historically by considering the positions taken by Aristotle, Descartes, the post-Darwinians such as Romanes, the behaviorists down to Skinner, and contemporary philosophers such as Davidson and Fodor. A distinction is drawn between two concepts of consciousness: the biological/private which I argue we should not hesitate to attribute to all warm-blooded vertebrates and the linguistic/social which is exclusively human.
The concept of consciousness as biological and private is the 'consciousness' of traditional introspective psychology and of 'Is consciousness a brain process?' (Place 1956). It comprises the phenomena of selective attention, conceptualization, mental image formation, emotional reaction and motivation. The concept of consciousness as linguistic and social is the consciousness of Hegel, Marx, Vygotsky, Skinner and much contemporary philosophical psychology. It consists of an integrated system of propositional attitudes (beliefs) all of which are either formulated or susceptible to formulation as sentences in natural language (Skinner's "contingency-specifying stimuli" or "rules").
Note:
The download is a version revised after publication by the author.
[References] [Talks] [4 citing publications]
Download: 1992f Two Concepts of Consciousness the Biological Private and the Linguistic Social.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992g). Two concepts of consciousness: the biological/private and the linguistic/social [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society 1992 Abstracts, 67.
[Related]
Place, U. T. (1992h). The Tower of Babel: some speculations on the role of technology, language and trade on the evolution of religion, philosophy and science [Conference presentation with additional notes, presented at the Centennial Conference of the Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, on the Philosophy of Religion, Fairbairn House, Clarendon Road, Leeds, 6 August 1992]. Department of Philosophy, University Leeds.
[Abstract]The paper explores the relationship between three features which, it is often claimed, distinguish human beings from other species of living organism:
(1) the ability to colonize a new environment by developing an appropriate technology,
(2) the ability to communicate with one another by means of a learned language, and
(3) the propensity to develop a system of magico-religious beliefs and practices.
The Tower of Babel legend is seen as reflecting the way in which a new environment and the development of a new set of technologies designed to deal with that environment leads to changes in linguistic practice within the community involved. The dependence of human beings on the possession of integrated systems of causal theory and technological practice for their survival, is proposed as the motive for the creation of a system of magico-religious beliefs and practices in those areas of human life where understanding of the causal relations and consequent technological control is lacking. Because they are not constrained in the way that technological beliefs and practices are constrained, by the need for precise control over the technological process, magico-religious belief systems tend to proliferate in much the same way that languages proliferate as a consequence of the Tower of Babel phenomenon. The consequent multiplicity of magico-religious belief systems creates a barrier to trade and other forms of social co-operation between communities which differ in this respect which, to judge by the lengths to which human beings have gone to iron out such differences, is more serious than that presented by differences in language. The development of philosophy, the supra-national religions and science are interpreted as successive responses to this problem.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1992h The Tower of Babel.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992i). Philosophical fashion and scientific progress in the theory of universals. [Unpublished paper. Presented November 5th 1992, Department of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor; November 26-28, 1992, Conference of the Linguistic Society of Belgium on Conceptual and Linguistic Representation, Antwerp]
[Abstract]Are universals (kinds) something over and above the things (their instances) of which they are kinds? Does the universe come already packaged into kinds of thing, or are the universals which the human and animal mind distinguishes simply the product of the mind's classificatory activity? Whether universals are mind-independent or mind-dependent, are the concepts human beings and other living organisms have of them innate or are they generated wholly or in part by some kind of learning process. In either case, what assurance do we have that our conceptual scheme does not seriously misrepresent the way things are, as Kant puts it, "in themselves."
While the tides of philosophical fashion have flowed backwards and forwards between the poles of this debate ever since the time of Plato and Aristotle, it is argued that there is now some reason to think that the current tide which appears to be moving away from platonism and nativism and back towards conceptualism and empiricism may be taking us towards a permanent scientifically-based resolution of the problem. This solution, if that is what it is, gives due weight to both innate factors and learning at the biological level and to social construction at the level of human linguistic communication. It sees Darwin's principle of variation and natural selection as operating as much in the ontogenetic development of our conceptual scheme as in its phylogeny, and as providing the assurance we need that, in B.F.Skinner's words, it takes "account of the natural lines of fracture along which behavior and environment actually break." (Skinner 1938 p.33).
Keywords: conceptualism, connectionism, universals
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1992i Philosophical Fashion and Scientific Progress in the Theory of Universals.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992j). Towards a reconciliation between the associationist and radical behaviorist traditions in the experimental analysis of behavior. [Unpublished paper. Presented under the title 'The three term contingency as a link between the associationist and radical behaviorist traditions in the experimental analysis of behavior' as Invited Address to the First International Congress on Behaviorism and the Sciences of Behavior, Guadalajara, Mexico, 6th October 1992].
[Abstract]It is an implication of the Law of Non-Contradiction that two incompatible descriptions of the same class of phenomena cannot both be true. This suggests that the future for radical behaviorism must lie in achieving a reconciliation with other disciplines and approaches studying the same or closely related phenomena. The approach known as "associative learning theory" shares a common data basis with radical behaviorism in the area of the experimental analysis of animal behavior. It is separated from radical behaviorism by a different view of the nature of what is learned. According to the radical behaviorist, under certain antecedent conditions (discriminative stimulus + establishing condition) an organism learns to emit a response. According to associative learning theory what is learned is an association between a pair of consecutive stimulus events. When presented with the first member of the pair, the organism learns to "predict" or "expect" the second member of the pair.
Until recently, the principal application of this principle was Rescorla and Wagner's (1972) analysis of Pavlovian (respondent) conditioning. More recently, Adams and Dickinson's (1981) reinforcer-devaluation experiment has led associationists to pay more attention to instrumental (operant) learning. It has also opened up an interesting divergence of views between Dickinson (1988; Heyes and Dickinson, 1991; Dickinson & Balleine, forthcoming) who takes it as evidence of a discontinuity between respondent conditioning, which he interprets in terms of the establishment of mechanical associations, and operant learning which he interprets in terms of the ‘beliefs’ and ‘desires’ of philosophical action theory, and Rescorla (1991) who uses it as evidence for an interpretation of operant learning based on the same principles of stimulus-stimulus association invoked by Rescorla and Wagner to account for respondent conditioning.
Standing in the way of a reconciliation between radical behaviorism and associative learning theory are the misgivings of the former about the use made by the latter of ‘mentalistic’ concepts, such as ‘expect,’ ‘anticipate,’ and ‘predict.’ These misgivings may be allayed if attention is paid to the results of applying to such concepts the technique, known as ‘conceptual analysis,’ developed by Wittgenstein (1953; 1958) and the philosophers of the Oxford ‘ordinary language’ school. A recent application of this technique to the linguistic phenomenon known variously as ‘intentionality’ or ‘intensionality’ shows that it consists of two distinct varieties of ‘referential anomaly’ which ‘infect’ the grammatical objects of certain verbs. In one case, the grammatical object is used to indicate a range of possible events any one of which, if it were to occur, would constitute a manifestation or satisfaction of a disposition. In the other case, the grammatical object functions as a quotation of what the agent either has said or might be expected to say or have said. Referential anomaly of the dispositional kind is both unavoidable and benign, but the use of quotations to characterize behavioral dispositions is acceptable for scientific purposes only in those cases where the behavior in question is in fact subject to linguistic control.
Since the grammatical object of the verbs ‘know,’ ‘believe’ and ‘think,’ as they occur in belief/desire explanations, takes the form of an embedded indicative sentence in oratio obliqua or indirect reported speech, Dickinson's explanation of instrumental/operant learning in animals involves the scientifically unacceptable metaphor of linguistic initiation and control. Rescorla's theory, on the other hand, requires nothing more than that the organism learn to ‘expect’ or ‘anticipate’ an event (the outcome), given the combination of an antecedent discriminative stimulus and the stimulus constituted by the incipient emission of the response which it evokes. In this case the anomaly of reference in the noun phrase which occurs as the grammatical object of the verb reflects its use as a device for indicating a range of possible outcomes any one of which, if it occurred, would fulfill and confirm the expectation which it specifies.
Note:
UTP made changes to the text of the presentation in 1995 and in 1999.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1992j 1999 Towards a Reconciliation between the Ascociationist and Redical Behaviorist Traditions in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.pdf
Place, U. T. (1992k). Selectionism, connectionism and the re-socialization of linguistics. [Unpublished paper. Presented in absentia under the title 'Selectionism and connectionism: Their implications for a return to an empirical/behavioristic linguistics' at the 1992 Conference of the Research Committee for Sociolinguistics of the International Sociological Association on 'The interface between Sociology and Linguistics', Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 9th-11th June 1992].
Note:
Last change to the text of the presentation made by UTP is from 1999.
[Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Place, U. T. (1993a). Two concepts of consciousness: the biological/private and the linguistic/social.(shortened version) The British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter, 16, 11-23.
Note:
For the full version see Place 1992f
[Related]
Place, U. T. (1993b). A behavioral view of language [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of the 19th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis (p. 550). Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis.
Place, U. T. (1993c). A radical behaviorist methodology for the empirical investigation of private events. Behavior and Philosophy, 20, 25-35. www.jstor.org/stable/27759281
[Abstract]Skinner has repeatedly asserted that he does not deny either the existence of private events or the possibility of studying them scientifically. But he has never explained how his position in this respect differs from that of the mentalist or provided a practical methodology for the investigation of private events within a radical behaviorist perspective. With respect to the first of these deficiencies, I argue that observation statements describing a public state of affairs in the common public environment of two or more observers which those observers confirm as a correct description provide a far more objective and secure foundation for empirical knowledge than statements describing private events in the experience of a single individual. In the course of this argument, I also invoke Wittgenstein's (1953) demonstration — his 'private language argument' — of the incoherence of traditional subjective empiricism. Regarding the second deficiency, I argue that observation statements describing private events can serve as data for an objective study, provided that (a) the verbal behavior in which they consist and its context are objectively observed and recorded, and (b) an explanation is given of how this verbal behavior is generated by the events it reports.
Keywords: methodological behaviorism, objectivity principle, private events, private language argument, radical behaviorism
[References] [Talks] [7 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1993c A Radical Behaviorist Methodology for the Empirical Investigation of Private Events.pdf
Place, U. T. (1993d). Holism and cognitive dissonance in the discrimination of correspondence between sentences and situations. Acta Analytica, 8(10), 143-155.
[Abstract]A synthetic proposition is true, if there exists a situation corresponding to that which the proposition depicts. Assurance that such correspondence obtains depends on the coherence of a body of pragmatically tested beliefs, anchored to reality by objective observation statements endorsed as correct by the relevant linguistic community. Hull's "primitive suggestibility" and Festinger's "cognitive dissonance" are invoked to explain how failures of correspondence are detected.
Keywords: conceptualism, correspondence theory of truth, holism, picture theory of meaning
Note:
Added to the full text: unpublished rephrasing of some of the central points of this article by the author.
[References] [Talks] [5 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1993d Holism and Cognitive Dissonance in the Discrimination of Correspondence between Sentences and Situations.pdf
Place, U. T. (1993e). Is there an operant analysis of animal problem-solving [Abstract]. Behavioral Development, 3(3), 5.
[Related]
Place, U. T. (1993f). With D. M. Armstrong and C. B. Martin 'A debate on dispositions: their nature and their role in causation, Part II: The Martin-Armstrong-Place debate, Chapter 7. Microstructural properties: categorical or dispositional?. Conceptus, XXVI(68/69), 33-39.
Place, U. T. (1993g) Folk psychology from the standpoint of conceptual analysis [Conference presentation]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society 1993, 30.
[Related]
Place, U. T. (1993h). Psychologism and anti-psychologism: An historical overview [Conference presentation]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society 1993, 37.
[Abstract]Psychologism is the (mistaken) belief that logic is a descriptive science, that the laws of logic describe how people think in the way that the laws of motion describe how things move. Anti-psychologism repudiates psychologism, holding that logic is a normative or prescriptive science like ethics. Its laws tell us how people ought to think, not how they actually think in practice.
Psychologism has always had a strong following within psychology, even though the difficulty most human subjects encounter in making correct logical inferences is not easily reconciled with it. But in philosophy the influence of Frege (1894) on Russell and Wittgenstein on the one hand and Husserl on the other has ensured that anti-psychologism has been the dominant orthodoxy both in Austro-Anglo-Saxon Analytic Philosophy and in Continental (German-French) Phenomenology. More recently, Fodor (1975) has pointed out that the causal role played by formally stated logical rules in the basic software of the serial-digital computer shows
(a) that psychologism cannot be dismissed, as it has been in the past, on the grounds that logical principles are not the kind of thing that can enter into a causal relation, and
(b) that if, as Fodor himself thinks, the serial-digital computer is the right model for the functioning of the brain, psychologism must actually be true.
With the replacement of the serial-digital computer by the connectionist network as the preferred model for the way the brain functions, anti-psychologism looks set to become the dominant orthodoxy once again. But this time the case will be argued, not on a priori grounds, but on the the empirical evidence which renders psychologism a massively implausible account of how thought is actually generated.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1993h Psychologism and Anti-Psychologism - A Historical Overview.pdf
Place, U. T. (1993i). Following 'the natural lines of fracture': Concept formation in neural networks [Conference presentation, presented at the Symposium on Associationism, Behaviour Analysis and Connectionism, held at the Annual Conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, University College, London 31st March 1993].
[Abstract]It is an implication of Darwin's theory of evolution by variation and natural selection that the survival and reproduction of complex free-moving living organisms, animals in other words, depends on their ability to change the spatial relations between themselves and other objects, including other organisms of the same and of different species, and so bring about the conditions necessary for that survival and reproduction. In order to do that the organism requires a system - its nervous system - whose function is to match the output to the current stimulus input on the one hand and the organism's current state of deprivation with respect to conditions required for its survival and successful reproduction on the other. Matching behaviour to the conditions required for survival and reproduction is the function of the motivational/emotional part of the system. Matching behaviour to current stimulus input is the function of the sensory/cognitive part of the system. The sensory/cognitive system cannot perform its function successfully without the ability to group inputs together in such a way that every actual and possible member of the class or category so formed is a reliable indicator of the presence of an environmental situation in which a particular behavioural strategy or set of such strategies is going to succeed. In other words the survival and reproduction of an organism of this kind depends crucially on its having a conceptual scheme, a conceptual scheme moreover, which reliably predicts the actual behaviour-consequence relations operating in the organism's environment.
Although verbs such as ‘classifying’, ‘categorizing’ and ‘conceptualizing’ are not to be found in Skinner's writings, there is an important passage in The Behavior of Organisms (Skinner 1938) where he addresses the issue which others talk about when they use such terms. Thus in Chapter One, after outlining his "System of Behavior", he goes on to say
The preceding system is based upon the assumption that both behavior and environment may be broken into parts which retain their identity throughout an experiment and undergo orderly changes. If this assumption were not in some sense justified, a science of behavior would be impossible. But the analysis of behavior is not an act of arbitrary sub-dividing. We cannot define the concepts of stimulus and response quite as simply as ‘parts of behavior and environment’ without taking account of the natural lines of fracture along which behavior and environment actually break. (Skinner 1938 p.33).
What Skinner has primarily in mind in this passage is the way the scientist's concepts need to be shaped into conformity with what he calls "the natural lines of fracture." But on the Darwinian argument the same must be true of the stimulus classes within which any living organism's behaviour generalises and between which it discriminates. It is argued that studying the properties of artificially constructed neural networks helps us to understand how the brain develops patterns of generalisation and discrimination which do indeed "follow the natural lines of fracture along which behavior and environment actually break." Attention is drawn to the role of the ‘hidden layer’ in responding to resemblances of pattern, to the role of re-entrant/recurrent and reverberatory circuits in establishing expectations on the basis of consecutive stimulus patterns, and to the role of error-correction in bringing stimulus classes into line with the contingencies experienced during learning.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1993i Following 'The Natural Lines of Fracture' - Concept Formation in Neural Networks.pdf
Place, U. T. (1993j). Unsupervised and supervised learning in neural networks [Unpublished paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, University College, London, 30th March 1992, and at the Inter-Univerrsity Centre Conference on 'Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind,' Park Hotel, Bled, Slovenia, 10th June 1993].
[Abstract]The paper examines the relationship between three distinctions, two drawn from the current literature on learning in connectionist networks and one from the animal learning literature:
1. the distinction drawn by connectionists between 'unsupervised' and 'supervised' learning,
2. the distinction also drawn by connectionists between the Hebbian and 'delta' or error-correction learning rules, and
3. the distinction drawn within traditional learning theory between classical or respondent conditioning on the one hand and instrumental or operant learning on the other.
It is argued that, despite differences in the way error-correction is applied in the two cases, the distinction between unsupervised and supervised learning corresponds closely to that between classical and instrumental learning. But, whereas unsupervised learning is usually implemented in artificial networks by a version of the Hebbian rule and supervised learning by the 'delta' rule, recent and not so recent work in animal learning suggests that, given plausible assumptions about the arrangement of the network, a version of the Hebbian rule can account for both types of learning.
[References] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1994a). Connectionism and the resurrection of behaviourism. Acta Analytica, 9(12), 65-79.
[Abstract]The demise of behaviourism is traced to the advent of the serial-digital computer as a model for the functioning of the brain. With the advent of a new model in the shape of the parallel distributed processor (PDP) or connectionist network, the resurrection of behaviourism can be predicted. The relation between the two models is explained in terms of Skinner's (1966) distinction between "contingency-shaped" (modelled by the PDP) and "rule-governed" behaviour. Rule-governed behaviour in Skinner's sense is behaviour controlled by a verbal/symbolic "specification" of the relevant contingencies. The S-D computer is a device designed by a PDP (the human brain) to compensate for its own slowness and inefficiency in constructing and manipulating such symbolic specifications.
[References] [Talks] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1994a Connectionism and the Resurrection of Behaviorism.pdf
Place, U. T. (1994b). Philosophical fashion and scientific progress [in the theory of universals. Presentation abstract]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society 1994, 87.
[Related] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1994c). Contextualism, mechanism and the conceptual analysis of the causal relation [Conference presentation, presented at a symposium on "The Bogy of Mechanism": Alternative Philosophical Perspectives on the Contextualism/Mechanism Debate, conducted at the Twentieth Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Atlanta, GA, May 28th 1994]. Association for Behavior Analysis.
[Abstract]The notion that mechanism and contextualism are two alternative and conflicting ways of conducting the scientific enterprise rests on a misunderstanding of the nature of the causal relation. Every effect is the outcome of many causes. Where the effect is an event, there is always a single triggering event which combines with a set of standing conditions which are already in place to complete the set of causes which are jointly sufficient for the coming about of the effect. In a mechanism, one triggering event leads inevitably to another because any variation in the standing conditions has been eliminated by strict control of the context within which the causal process takes place. Most mechanisms are a product of human artifice. Some, such as the movements involved in animal locomotion, are the product of natural selection. Another example of mechanical causation in biology is the transmission of excitation across the synapse from the pre-synaptic to the post-synaptic neuron. However, research by connectionists on the properties of artificial neural networks shows that mechanical causation at the neuro-synaptic ('molecular') level yields multi-factorial contextual causation at the ('molar') level of the network as a whole.
[References] [Talks] [1 citing publications] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1994c Contextualism, Mechanism and the Conceptual Analysis of the Causal Relation.pdf
Place, U. T. (1994d). Sharpness: an interesting exception to the rule that dispositional properties require explanation in terms of their owner's microstructure [Conference presentation, presented to the Twentieth Annual Conference on the Philosophy of Science at the Inter University Centre, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 12th April 1994]. Inter University Centre, Dubrovnik.
[Abstract]The most common form of distinctively scientific causal explanation is an explanation of the dispositional properties shared by instances of a universal or kind. Such explanations typically invoke the structural properties of the property-bearer. In the majority of cases and in all cases where a specifically scientific explanation is required, what are invoked are features of the microstructure of the property-bearer which are not accessible to ordinary observation at the level of common sense. An interesting exception is the case of the sharpness of a knife or needle.
Sharpness is a property and a concept with a number of unusual features. Most property-concepts are either purely dispositional, as in the case of such things as the brittleness of glass, the flexibility of rubber or the magnetic properties of an iron bar, or they are structural properties, such as the external shape and internal arrangement of an object. Sharpness, by contrast, is a property with two aspects, a purely dispositional aspect, the property-bearer's propensity to cut or pierce, and a structural aspect, the fineness and hardness of its edge or point. However, the relation between these two aspects is a causal relation between "distinct existences", not a relation of identity. The dispositional property, aptness to cut or pierce, depends on and is explained by the structural properties, the fineness and hardness of the edge or point. In this it differs from most other dispositional properties. For in this case, the structural properties on which the dispositional property depends are features of the macrostructure rather than the microstructure of the property-bearer. They are thus available to common observation by the man- or woman-in-the-street in a way that the microstructural properties on which most dispositional properties depend are not. Hence the absorption of both cause and its effect into a single common-sense concept.
Causal relations and the causal explanations which invoke them have two components:
(a) a categorical component, some kind of contact or proximity between the causal agent and the causal patient, and
(b) a dispositional component which provides the "cement" which, in the explanation, takes the form of a 'covering law' and governs the interaction between the two.
In this respect, the causal relation whereby aptness to cut or pierce is generated by the structural properties of fineness and hardness of edge or point is no exception. Of the two structural properties which stand as cause to the dispositional property as effect, one, the fineness of the edge or point, is categorical; the other, its hardness, is dispositional.
From a philosophical standpoint the 'sharpness' example raises two interesting questions:
(1) In what sense does the effect, the aptness to cut or pierce, constitute a "distinct existence" from its causes, the fineness and hardness of the edge or point, as Hume's principle requires?
(2) What light, if any, is thrown by this example on the problem of the source of the dispositional properties of an elementary particle which has no microstructure (the 'charm' of the quark)?
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1994d Sharpness.pdf
Place, U. T. (1994e). Conceptual analysis as the empirical study of linguistic conventions: Some implications for behavior analysis [Conference presentation at the Twentieth Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Atlanta, Georgia, May 29th 1994].
[Abstract]In a recent paper (Place 1992), the writer has argued that conceptual analysis, as practised by the philosophers of the 'ordinary language' school, is an empirical study of the linguistic conventions to which a speaker must conform if what she says is to be understood by (i.e., is to effectively control the behavior of) any competent interpreter of the language, dialect or technical code she is using. Since conformity to social norms and conventions is maintained by the avoidance of the aversive consequences of failing to do so, the only way to demonstrate unambiguously the existence of such a norm or convention is to perform an ethnomethodological experiment (Garfinkel 1964) in which the putative norm or convention is deliberately flouted so that the actual social consequences of so doing can be observed.
Because of the social disruption and hostility towards the experimenter which such an experiment is liable to incur, in practice most such investigations take the form of a thought experiment in which the researcher invites the reader to imagine or recollect from her own past experience the consequences of flouting the convention in question. Though the consequences of flouting linguistic conventions are less serious, the reluctance of philosophers, in their professional capacity, to engage in any form of practical activity has ensured that the methodology of conceptual analysis is likewise that of the ethnomethodological thought experiment. In this case the existence of a linguistic convention is demonstrated by constructing a sentence which flouts the putative convention, and then asking the reader to consider how she would react, if confronted by such a sentence in the course of ordinary conversation.
Provided the linguistic conventions which are studied in this way are universal in the sense that some version of them is to be found in every natural language, conceptual analysis so conceived can provide valuable insights into
(a) the different ways in which language is used to control the behavior of the listener (pragmatics),
(b) the way in which sentences are used to depict or represent segments of environmental reality, possible future events and states of affairs as well as actual past and present ones, (semantics) and
(c) the nature of the reality thereby depicted (metaphysics).
In relation to behavior analysis, conceptual analysis has important implications for the study of verbal behavior, for an understanding of the relation between our ordinary psychological language ("folk psychology") and the language of behavior analysis on the one hand and the language of physiology on the other, and for an understanding of some of the concepts, such as the concepts of 'cause' and 'effect' which are fundamental to the enterprise of empirical science as a whole.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1994e Conceptual Analysis as the Empirical Study of Linguistic Convention - Some Implications for Behavior Analysis.pdf
Place, U. T. (1995/6). Symbolic processes and stimulus equivalence. Behavior and Philosophy, 23/24, 13-30. www.jstor.org/stable/27759337
[Abstract]A symbol is defined as a species of sign. The concept of a sign coincides with Skinner's (1938) concept of a discriminative stimulus. Symbols differ from other signs in five respects: (1) They are stimuli which the organism can both respond to and produce, either as a self-directed stimulus (as in thinking) or as a stimulus for another individual with a predictably similar response from the recipient in each case. (2) they act as discriminative stimuli for the same kind of object for all members of the verbal community within which they function as symbols; (3) they acquire their properties by virtue of arbitrary social convention rather than any natural and intrinsic connection between the sign and what it is a sign of; (4) competent members of the verbal community can both produce the appropriate symbol in response to a naturally occurring sign of the presence of the object or a sample of the kind of object which the symbol stands for and select the appropriate object when presented with the symbol; (5) they form stimulus equivalence classes of the kind demonstrated in the matching-to-sample task (Sidman, 1971; Sidman and Tailby, 1982) both with other symbols having the same meaning and, more important, with the naturally-occurring non-symbolic signs of the presence of the object or kind of object which the symbol stands for.
[References] [Talks] [13 citing publications] [4 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1995-6 Symbolic Processes and Stimulus Equivalence.pdf
Place, U. T. (1995a). The Searle fallacy: a reply to John Beloff (and in passing to John Searle). The British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter, 21, 5-18.
[References] [Is reply to] [Is replied by]
Download: 1995a The Searle Fallacy a Reply to John Beloff (and in passing to John Searle).pdf
Place, U. T. (1995b). 'Is consciousness a brain process?' Some misconceptions about the article. In B. Borstner, & J. Shawe-Taylor (Eds.), Consciousness at the crossroads of cognitive science and philosophy: Selected proceedings of the final meeting of the Tempus Project 'Phenomenology and Cognitive Science', Maribor, Slovenia, 23-7 August, 1994 (pp. 9-15). Imprint Academic.
[References] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1995b 'Is Consciousness a Brain Process' Some Misconceptions about the Article.pdf
Place, U. T. (1995c). Conceptual analysis as the empirical study of linguistic convention [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society 1995, 143.
[Abstract]Recent developments such as connectionism in the field of artificial intelligence and selectionism in the neurosciences point away from a conception of the rules of language as a set of formal principles genetically inscribed onto the brain's equivalent of a hard disk and towards the notion that they are social conventions acquired and maintained by the error-correcting practices of a linguistic community. These developments should lead to a revival, not only of an empiricist/behaviourist linguistics, but also of conceptual analysis conceived as the empirical investigation of linguistic convention, using as its research tool Garfinkel's ethnomethodological experiment in which the putative convention is deliberately flouted so that the social consequences of so doing can be observed or, in the case of a thought experiment, imagined. Some implications of such a revival for our conception of the role of the philosopher in relation to psychology are examined.
It is suggested that in order to explain how a "grammatical investigation" (Wittgenstein 1953) can throw light on the structure of reality, we need to invoke a combination of Frege's (1891/1960) "function and argument" analysis of the sentence and Wittgenstein's (1921/1961) "picture theory" of its meaning. This theoretical underpinning shows us how conceptual analysis construed as an empirical investigation of linguistic conventions can yield
(a) a conception of mental life as proceeding from mental activity/process through an instantaneous mental event to a mental disposition, and
(b) an argument against the existence of abstract objects such as the mind and its faculties.
Keywords: picture theory of meaning
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1995c Conceptual Analysis as the Empirical Study of Linguistic Convention.pdf
Place, U. T. (1995d). A psychologist's response to Professor Dretske's ' What good is consciousness'. [Unpublished response to Fred Dretske's Saturday morning Presidential speaker's presentation "What Good is Consciousness?" Annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Virginia Beach, VA, April 15th , 1995].
Note:
The presentation of Professor Dretske is published as Dretske, F. (1997). What good is consciousness? Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 27(1), 1-15.
[References] [Is reply to] [Talks]
Download: 1995d A Psychologist's Response to Professor Dretske's 'What Good is Consciousness'.pdf
Place, U. T. (1995e). Conceptual analysis and the concept of reinforcement in classical/respondent conditioning and instrumental/operant learning [Presentation given at the Annual Conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, University College, London, 11th April 1995].
[Abstract]Conceptual analysis is the empirical investigation of the social conventions which govern the construction of intelligible sentences in natural language. Although it has application to other aspects of language, the focus is on features that are universal across languages and on ordinary rather than technical language. In relation to the scientific study of the behaviour of living organisms, it gives us insight both into the respects in which common sense psychology serves functions which have no place in the scientific enterprise and into the way behaviour is in fact regulated, based on thousands of years of experience of how it looks from without as well from within.
The way in which the distinction between classical/respondent conditioning and instrumental/operant learning is marked in the sentences of common sense psychology is discussed as a means of reconciling the different technical languages of behaviour analysis and associative learning theory.
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1995e Conceptual Analysis and the Concept of Reinforcement.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996a). Names as constituents of sentences: an omission. Commentary on P. Horne and C. F. Lowe, 'On the origins of naming and other symbolic behavior'. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 65, 302-304. doi:10.1901/jeab.1996.65-302
[Abstract]After Skinner's (1957) insistence on separating the behavior of the speaker from that of the listener, Horne & Lowe (1996) have brought these two aspects of language back together by showing that in learning a name the child must not only learn, as speaker, to produce the name when presented with the object to which it applies, it must also learn, as listener, to select the object when presented with the name. What is missing from their account is the recognition that it is sentences, rather than names, that are the functional units of language, and that a primitive sentence requires a function or predicate in the form of an action-name in addition to one or more object-names. They are also chided for failing to distinguish the three senses of Skinner's term "tact" to which the writer drew attention in an earlier paper (Place 1985).
[References] [Is reply to] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1996a Names as Constituents of Sentences - An Omission.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996b). Summary of Dispositions: A Debate [Unpublished paper].
Note:
Unpublished summary of the positions adopted in the book Dispositions: A Debate. UTP hoped in vain that his co-authors would fill in their positions.
[References]
Download: 1996b Summary of Dispositions A Debate.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996c). Dispositions as intentional states. In D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin, U. T. Place, & T. Crane (Ed.) Dispositions: A debate (Chapter 2, pp. 19-32). Routledge.
[Abstract]All three authors agree that 'This glass is brittle' entails 'If it were suitably struck, it would break'. They also agree that such a statement, if true, requires a state of affairs whose existence makes it true (its truthmaker). They disagree as to its nature. For Place, it is an intentional state which "points towards" a possibly-never-to-exist future and a counterfactual past. In accordance with the conceptualist theory of universals and the picture theory of meaning which he outlines, such states are construed as properties of particulars. They provide Hume's "invisible glue" which sticks cause to effect.
Keywords: picture theory of meaning
[References] [Related] [6 citing publications]
Download: 1996c Chapter 2 Dispositions as Intentional States.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996d). A conceptualist ontology. In D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin. U. T. Place, & T. Crane (Ed.) Dispositions: A debate (Chapter 4, pp. 49-67). Routledge.
[Abstract]Nominalised predicates, opaque contexts and monadic relational predicates are cases where surface structure conceals an underlying complexity. A conceptualist picture theory of meaning allows different ways of carving up reality into atomic situations. To say that a universal exists means either that it has at least one instance or that some creature has that concept. Structural factors combine to cause dispositions. Dispositions combine with the relevant conditions to cause their manifestations. Type-identities begin as contingent hypotheses and become necessary when used in classification. The existence of individual dispositional properties, not Laws of Nature, are the truthmakers for causal counterfactuals.
Keywords: picture theory of meaning
[References] [Related] [3 citing publications] [Is replied by]
Download: 1996d Chapter 4 A Conceptualist Ontology.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996e). Structural properties: categorical, dispositional or both? In D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin, U. T. Place, & T. Crane (Ed.) Dispositions: A debate (Chapter 7, pp. 105-125). Routledge.
[Abstract]Martin's "linguisticism" which converts existence into the truth of an existential statement is found in such doctrines as "To exist is to be the value of a variable", "Wanting is a propositional attitude", and "Causal conditionals are of the form 'If p, then q'". The (dispositional) properties of the whole are caused by, are often predictable from, but are not reducible to, the (categorical) arrangement of its parts and their dispositional properties. An unmanifested dispositional property is a law of the nature of the property-bearer which governs how it would behave, if its manifestation conditions were to be fulfilled.
[References] [Related] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1996e Chapter 7 Structural Properties - Categorical, Dispositional or Both .pdf
Place, U. T. (1996f). Conceptualism and the ontological independence of cause and effect. In D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin, U. T. Place, & T. Crane (Ed.) Dispositions: A debate (Chapter 10, pp. 153-162). London: Routledge.
Keywords: conceptualism
[References] [Related] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1996f Chapter 10 Conceptualism and the Ontological Independence of Cause and Effect.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996g). Intentionality as the mark of the dispositional. Dialectica, 50, 91-120. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.1996.tb00001.x
[Abstract]Martin and Pfeifer (1986) have claimed "that the most typical characterizations of intentionality . . . all fail to distinguish . . . mental states from . . . dispositional physical states." The evidence they present in support of this thesis is examined in the light of the possibility that what it shows is that intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional. Of the five marks of intentionality they discuss a critical examination shows that three of them, Brentano's (1874) inexistence of the intentional object, Searle's (1983) directedness and Anscombe's (1965) indeterminacy, are features which distinguish T-intenTional/dispositional states, both mental and non-mental (physical), from non-dispositional "categorical" states. The other two are either, as in the case of Chisholm's (1957) permissible falsity of a propositional attitude ascription, a feature of linguistic utterances too restricted in its scope to be of interest, or, as in the case of Frege's (1892) indirect reference/Quine's (1953) referential opacity, evidence that the S-intenSional locution is a quotation either of what someone has said in the past or might be expected to say, if the question were to arise at some time in the future.
[References] [Is reply to] [Talks] [38 citing publications] [10 referring publications by Place] [Is replied by]
Download: 1996g Intentionality as the Mark of the Dispositional.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996h). Mental causation is no different from any other kind. The British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter, 23, 15-20.
[Abstract]Mental causation, as the term is used here, is the relation between an individual's beliefs, desires and intentions on the one hand and the behaviour they motivate on the other. Until it was challenged by Donald Davidson (1963/1980), the accepted view amongst philosophers was that mental causation in this sense is not a causal relation ("reasons are not causes"). Now most subscribe to Davidson's view that it is a causal relation, but an anomalous one. I argue that it is a standard causal relationship which differs in no way from other non-mental cases of causation.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1996h Mental Causation is No Different from Any Other Kind.pdf this is a shortened version of the unpublished: 1996h Full version of Mental Causation is No Different from Any Other Kind.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996i). The properties of conscious experiences: A second reply to John Beloff. The British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter, 23, 31-33.
[References] [Is reply to]
Download: 1996i The Properties of Conscious Experiences A Second Reply to John Beloff.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996j). Linguistic behaviorism as a philosophy of empirical science. In W. O'Donohue, & R. Kitchener (Eds.), The Philosophy of Psychology ( Chapter 9, pp. 126-140). Sage. doi:10.4135/9781446279168.n9
[Abstract]Linguistic behaviorism is a philosophy of science with application to every empirical science from physics to sociology. It holds that
• philosophy, including the philosophy of science, uses conceptual analysis to study the interface between language and the 'reality' it depicts,
• conceptual analysis is an empirical investigation of the conventions governing the construction of intelligible sentences in natural language and its technical derivatives,
• conformity to linguistic convention is maintained by selective social reinforcement.
It endorses the analytic/synthetic distinction, a picture theory of the meaning of sentences, a correspondence theory of synthetic truth and a counterfactual theory of causal necessity.
Keywords: correspondence theory of truth, picture theory of meaning
[References] [Talks] [3 citing publications] [10 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1996j Linguistic Behaviorism as a Philosophy of Empirical Science.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996k). Introduction of 'Folk psychology and its implications for psychological science'. In W. O'Donohue, & R. Kitchener (Eds.) The Philosophy of Psychology (Chapter 17, pp. 243-244). Sage. doi:10.4135/9781446279168.n17
Download: 1996k Introduction of 'Folk psychology and its implications for psychological science'.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996l). Folk psychology from the standpoint of conceptual analysis. In W. O'Donohue, & R. Kitchener (Eds.) The Philosophy of Psychology (Chapter 17, pp. 264-270). Sage. doi:10.4135/9781446279168.n17
[Abstract]Before deciding what status should be given to folk psychology within scientific psychology, we must understand its linguistic peculiarities. To do that, we need to attend to research on the topic within the philosophical tradition known as "conceptual analysis." This research enables us to identify six respects in which folk psychological language can lead us astray, when used in a scientific context:
(1) the creation of bogus abstract entities by the process of "nominalizing" predicates and other non-substantival parts of speech,
(2) the persistent use of adjectives with evaluative (good/bad) connotations,
(3) the systematic evaluation of the content of other people's cognitive attitudes and judgments from the standpoint of the speaker,
(4) the distortion of causal accounts of human action by the demand for a single scapegoat on whom to pin the blame when things go wrong,
(5) the use of the metaphor of linguistic control when explaining behavior that is not subject to that type of control,
(6) the unavoidable use of simile when describing private experience.
[References] [Talks] [2 citing publications] [2 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1996l Folk Psychology from the Standpoint of Conceptual Analysis.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996m). Metaphysics as the empirical investigation of the interface between language and reality. Acta Analytica,11(15), 97-118.
[Abstract]The rules of syntax and semantics on conformity to which linguistic communication depends are construed as social conventions instilled and maintained by the error-correcting practices of a linguistic community. That conception argues for the revival of conceptual analysis construed as the empirical investigation of such conventions using the ethnomethodological thought experiment as its primary research tool, and for a view of metaphysics as the empirical study of the interface between utterances and the reality they depict.
[References] [Talks] [2 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1996m Metaphysics as the Empirical Study of the Interface between Language and Reality.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996n). A selectionist approach to the problem of universals [Conference presentation, presented in the session 'Conceptual and Philosophical Issues in Behavior Analysis' of the 22nd Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis, San Francisco, May 27th 1996]. Association for Behavior Analysis.
[Abstract]As it is discussed by philosophers, the problem of universals has two aspects: an ontological aspect and an epistemological aspect. Views on the ontological aspect divide between "realism" which holds that universals are abstract objects, distinct from their instances, with which the organism's concepts must line up if it is to survive and reproduce, and "constructivism" which holds that the organism's concepts are the only universals there are. Views on the epistemological issue divide between "nativism" which holds that concepts are innate, and "empiricism" which holds that they are learned. Most realists are nativists. Most constructivists are empiricists. Selectionist considerations suggest a middle position between these extremes:
(1) There are no universals in the absence of a classifying organism (constructivism).
(2) There is a significant innate contribution to the organism's system of concepts (nativism).
(3) The fine tuning which brings the organism's concepts into line with what Skinner (1938) calls "the natural lines of fracture along which environment and behavior actually break" is a matter of contingency-shaped discrimination learning (empiricism).
(4) There are objective constraints which ensure that the concepts so formed line up with "real" similarities and differences between objects, events and states of affairs in the organism's interactions with the environment (realism).
Keywords: universals
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1996n A Selectionist Approach to the Problem of Universals.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996o). On the anti-depressant effect of suppressing REM sleep [Conference presentation, presented at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology at Barcelona on the 18th of July 1996]. European Society for Philosophy and Psychology.
[Abstract]In a paper presented to the 1995 Euro-SPP Meeting in Oxford Kathleen Taylor and I proposed the identification of conscious experience with the activity of what we call the "central input focuser (CIF)" which restructures the figure-ground relations within what Broadbent (1971) has called the "evidence" on which the categorization of problematic inputs is based. We further suggested that rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is a condition in which the CIF is allowed to "freewheel" while decoupled from sensory input. As a result the vivid dream imagery which is characteristic of and peculiar to this phase of sleep recapitulates those associations formed during the preceding period of waking which have acquired motivational significance and hence an emotional charge by virtue of their resemblance to or associative links with emotionally charged events in the dreamer's past life. The effect of this is to ensure that the dreamer's attention is caught by inputs which have these emotionally charged associations during subsequent periods of waking consciousness. In this paper an explanation, based on this hypothesis, is offered of the well-known fact that anti-depressant drugs have the effect of suppressing REM sleep; though what the hypothesis in fact explains is why a drug that suppresses REM sleep should have an anti-depressant effect.
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1996o On the Anti-Depressant Effect of Suppressing REM Sleep.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996p). Review of Morris (1996) Some reflections on contextualism, mechanism, and behavior analysis [Unpublished review of the manuscript submitted by Morris.]
[References] [Reviewed publication(s)]
Download: 1996p Review of Morris (1996), Some reflections on contextualism, mechanism, and behavior analysis.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996q). The picture theory of meaning and its implication for the theory of truth and its discrimination. Communication and Cognition, 29, 5-14.
[Abstract]Linguistic behaviourism is an approach to linguistics, philosophy and the philosophy of science which combines Skinner's (1957) thesis that language is a form of learned social behaviour maintained by the reinforcement practices of a linguistic or, as he would say, "verbal" community with Chomsky's (1957, etc.) insistence that the functional unit of language is the sentence and that sentences are seldom repeated word-for-word, but are typically constructed anew on each occasion of utterance. The ability of the listener or reader to be directed by an imperative sentence to do something she has never done before or to be alerted by a declarative sentence to the existence of a situation the like of which she has never encountered and to which she would otherwise have no access is explained on a version of the picture theory of meaning in which the structure and content of the sentence maps onto the structure and content of the situation which is thereby depicted. Hand in hand with the picture theory of meaning goes a correspondence theory of what it means for a contingent proposition to be true. But in accounting for the way true contingent propositions are discriminated, both the coherence and the pragmatic principles are invoked.
Keywords: correspondence theory of truth, picture theory of meaning
[References] [1 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1996q The Picture Theory of Meaning and its Implication for the Theory of Truth and its Discrimination.pdf
Place, U. T. (1996r). Three senses of the word "tact": Their location within first language acquisition [Unpublished paper, presented to the symposium 'Current Behavioral Research with Young Children' of the 22nd Annual Convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis, San Francisco, May 28th 1996].
[Talks]
Place, U. T. (1997a). Contingency analysis applied to the pragmatics and semantics of naturally occurring verbal interactions. In J. L. Owen (Ed.), Context and communication behavior (Chapter 18, pp. 369-385). Context Press.
[Abstract]Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner's (1969) concept of the "three-term contingency." It can be applied to the analysis of any sequence of events in which a single individual interacts with its environment or, as in the case of social behavior, in which two or more individuals interact with each other. It is particularly valuable when applied to the analysis of naturally-occurring verbal interactions, such as conversations and business transactions. It can be applied not only to the sequence of events whereby utterances follow one another as the interaction proceeds, their pragmatics, but also to the semantic content of the utterances, the sequence of events called for by what Skinner (1957) calls a "mand" or those recorded or predicted by the kind of declarative sentence he sometimes (Place 1985) calls a "tact".
[References] [Talks] [2 citing publications] [5 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1997a Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997b). Linguistic behaviorism and the correspondence theory of truth. Behavior and Philosophy, 25, 83-94. www.jstor.org/stable/27759370
[Abstract]Linguistic Behaviorism (Place, 1996) is an attempt to reclaim for the behaviorist perspective two disciplines, linguistics and linguistic philosophy, most of whose practitioners have been persuaded by Chomsky's (1959) Review of B. F. Skinner's (1957) Verbal Behavior that behaviorism has nothing useful to contribute to the study of language. It takes as axiomatic (a) that the functional unit of language is the sentence, and (b) that sentences are seldom repeated word-for-word, but are constructed anew on each occasion of utterance out of units, words, phrases and turns of phrase, that are repeated.
On this view, the problem of discriminating the true from the false arises from the use of novel declarative sentences (statements) to depict or, to use Skinner's term, "specify" contingencies the like of which the listener need never have encountered and to which he would otherwise have no access. In such cases the listener needs to distinguish among the sentences he receives from other speakers between those where the situation depicted/specified corresponds to that which actually exists at the time and place specified in the sentence and are, therefore, true, and those to which no actual situation corresponds and which are, therefore, false.
Keywords: correspondence theory of truth, linguistic behaviorism
[References] [Talks] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1997b Linguistic Behaviourism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997c). From mystical experience to biological consciousness: a pilgrim's progress? [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society, 5, 117.
[Talks]
Place, U. T. (1997d). Rescuing the science of human behavior from the ashes of socialism. Psychological Record, 47, 649-659. doi:10.1007/BF03395251
[Abstract]The discredit into which the socialist ideal has fallen as a consequence of recent political events calls into question, not just the viability of a particular political and economic system but, the very idea that the social order can be improved by applying principles derived from the scientific study of human social behavior. Before the collapse of socialism, the idea of a science of human behavior, construed in biological terms as a branch of the science of the behavior of free-moving living organisms in general, had been undermined by Chomsky's (1959) repudiation of the behaviorist project to construct a science of language (verbal behavior) based on principles derived from the study of animal learning. I contend that only by reinstating the link between linguistics and the study of animal learning can confidence be restored in the possibility of a genuine science of human behavior with application to the problem of constructing a better social order.
[References] [Talks] [3 citing publications] [2 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1997d Rescuing the Science of Human Behavior from the Ashes of Socialism.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997e). On the nature of conditionals and their truthmakers. Acta Analytica, 12(18), 73-88.
[Abstract]Standard propositional and predicate logic fails both as a model for natural language and, since it cannot handle causation, as a language for science. The failure to handle causation stems from a misconstrual of the causal conditional as a relation between the truth of two propositions (If p, then q). What the causal conditional in fact specifies is a 'relation' between the possible existence or non-existence of two situations made true by the existence of the dispositional properties of the concrete particulars involved.
[References] [Talks] [5 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1997e On the Nature of Conditionals and Their Truthmakers.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997f). De re modality without possible worlds. Acta Analytica, 12(19), 131-145.
[Abstract]A distinction is drawn between de dicto modality which is a matter of which propositions can, cannot and must be true, given the laws of logic, and de re modality which is a matter of which situations (events or states of affairs) can, cannot and must exist, given the laws of nature. It is argued that Kripke's de re modality, defined in terms of what is true in some possible world, no possible world and all possible worlds, is an unsatisfactory amalgam of the two.
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1997f De Re Modality Without Possible Worlds.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997g). We needed the analytic-synthetic distinction to formulate mind-brain identity then: we still do [Conference presentation, presented at a Symposium on 'Forty years of Australian Materialism', June 21st 1997]. Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds.
[Abstract]Quine's (1951/1980) repudiation of the analytic-synthetic distinction undermines three principles fundamental to the view expounded in ‘Is consciousness a brain process?' (Place 1956):
the idea that problems, such as that of the relation between mind and body, are partly conceptual confusions to be cleared away by philosophical analysis and partly genuine empirical questions to be investigated and answered decisively by the relevant empirical science, the distinction between the meaning of what the individual says when she describes her private experiences and the nature of the actual events she is describing as revealed by science, and the claim that, unless the connection is obscured by the different ways in which the two predicates come to be applied, co-extensive predicates become conceptually (intensionally) connected, and sentences asserting their identity become analytic. It is argued that, if the object is, as it should be, to assimilate this case to other cases of type-identity in science, rather than perpetuate the problem, these principles are still needed.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1997g We Needed the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction to Formulate the Mind-Brain Identity Then We Still Do.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997h). Wundt's theory of imageless thought as a possible key to the role of slow-wave sleep in depressive ruminations [Conference presentation, presented at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (ESPP), Padova, 28th August 1997]. European Society for Philosophy and Psychology
[Abstract]Sleep contributes in two ways to the aetiology of clinical depression. The dream imagery of REM sleep stamps in associations between current environmental events and other emotionally charged incidents in the past, only some of which are depressive in nature. The imageless ruminations of slow-wave sleep have a more specific depressive effect in that they keep alive, often indefinitely, problems for which no solution is to be found.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1997h Wundt's Theory of Imageless Thought as Possible Key to the Role of Slow-Wave Sleep in Depressive Ruminations.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997i). Linguistic behaviourism and the correspondence theory of truth [Conference presentation abstract, presented at the Symposium on 'Finding the Truth in Behaviour Analysis']. In J.C. Leslie (Ed.) EMEAB III Proceedings of the Third European Meeting for the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour, July 10-13 1997, Dublin, Ireland (p. 59). University of Ulster.
Keywords: correspondence theory of truth, linguistic behaviorism
[Related] [Talks]
Place, U. T. (1997j). Is consciousness a grain process? A response to Graham & Horgan [Unpublished response to a final draft (1997) of Graham, G., & Horgan, T. (2002). Sensations and grain processes. In J. H. Fetzer (Ed.), Consciousness Evolving (pp.63-86). John Benjamins.]
Note:
[There is some overlap with Place (1999e).]
[References] [Is reply to]
Download: 1997j Is Consciousness a Grain Process - A Response to Horgan & Graham.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997k). Two theories of meaning: The two-factor dispositional/relational and the single factor relational [Presented at the Twenty Third Philosophy of Science Course, Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik, 8th April 1997].
[Abstract]Theories of meaning are of two kinds, two-factor dispositional/relational theories and single factor relational theories. A two-factor dispositional/relational theory of meaning holds that the word 'meaning' has two senses: a primary and fundamental sense in which meaning is a disposition and a secondary and derivative sense in which meaning is a relation.
(a) In the primary or dispositional sense, the meaning of a linguistic expression, such as a phrase or sentence, is a disposition, shared by relevantly competent speakers and interpreters of a particular natural language or technical code, to apply certain criteria (which they need not be able to state) in deciding whether or not a particular they encounter is either an instance to which, in the case of a general term or universally quantified sentence, the expression applies or, in the case of a singular term or singularly quantified sentence, the individual to which it refers.
(b) In the secondary or relational sense, the meaning of a linguistic expression is the actual individuals assigned, by the application of those criteria, to the extension of a general term or universally quantified sentence or the actual individual referred to by a singular term or singularly quantified sentence when uttered on a particular occasion, as determined by the criteria.
Taking their cue from Quine's (1951/1980) repudiation of the analytic/synthetic distinction, many philosophers have defended a purely relational/extensional theory of meaning in which dispositional notions such as 'intension', 'Sinn' ('sense'), 'analytic' and 'necessary' (defined in terms of what it is self-contradictory to deny) play no part. Motivation for the single-factor relational theory comes from logic. That for the two-factor dispositional relational theory defended here comes from psychology. The application of the two-factor theory to scientific principles such as 'Water is H2O' and Ohm's Law is described.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1997k Two Theories of Meaning - The Two-Factor Dispositional Relational and the Single Factor Relational.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997l). Consciousness and the Zombie-within. [Paper presented at the Inaugural Conference of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Claremont, CA, June 15th 1997.]
[Talks] [3 referring publications by Place]
Place, U. T. (1998a). From mystical experience to biological consciousness: a pilgrim's progress? In Man Cheung Chung (Ed.), Current Trends in History and Philosophy of Psychology, (Vol. 1, 1998, chapter 8, pp. 43-48). British Psychological Society.
[Abstract]I recount the history of a thought process leading from an adolescent interest in mystical experience to an article entitled 'Is consciousness a brain process?' (Place 1956) in which I gave an affirmative answer to that question. A psychological research project designed to demonstrate the adaptive function of a personality transformation brought about through mystical experience becomes an attempt to resolve the mind-body problem through an empirical evaluation of the hypothesis that consciousness is a behaviour-controlling process in the brain. The mystic's insistence on the inadequacy of words to describe such experiences leads through the logical positivist's claim that religious language is nonsense, to the view that nothing that introspecting subjects say about their experiences is inconsistent with anything the physiologist might say about the brain processes in which on this view they consist.
Note:
This is a shortened version of Place (2004).
[References] [Related] [Talks] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1998a From Mystical Experience to Biological Consciousness.pdf
Place, U. T. (1998b). Sentence and sentence structure in the analysis of verbal behavior. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 15, 131-133. doi:10.1007/BF03392935
[References] [2 citing publications]
Download: 1998b Sentence and Sentence Structure in the Analysis of Verbal Behavior.pdf
Place, U. T. (1998c). Behaviourism and the evolution of language. In Man Cheung Chung (Ed.), Current Trends in History and Philosophy of Psychology Volume 2 (Chapter 9, pp. 55-61). British Psychological Society.
[Abstract]The view that linguistic competence is acquired and maintained according to the principle of selective operant reinforcement is defended, partly on grounds of evolutionary probability and the special nature of human environmental adaptation, and partly on the basis of two strands of empirical evidence: experimental evidence from studies of "verbal conditioning" and observational evidence of naturally-occurring verbal interactions in the work of discourse and conversation analysts. But, since selective operant reinforcement is as much part of animal as it is of human learning, that principle by itself cannot explain why only humans have developed language and why apes can, at best, attain to the linguistic competence of a human two-year-old.
[References] [Talks] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1998c Behaviourism and the Evolution of Language.pdf
Place, U. T. (1998d). Behaviourism as a standpoint in linguistics. Connexions, (4), 26-30.
[Abstract]The thesis of this paper is that behaviourism is the only adequate scientific foundation for the disciplines of psychology, linguistics and linguistic philosophy. Behaviourism in psychology is presented as a convergence of six principles: (1) behaviour as the subject matter of psychology, (2) the objectivity principle, (3) the rejection of mentalistic explanation, (4) the three-term contingency, (5) the distinction between discriminative stimuli and establishing conditions, and (6) learning theory.
Behaviourism in linguistics and linguistic philosophy is seen as resting on ten principles: (1) language as communication in the service of technology, (2) language and thought, (3) the sentence as the functional unit of linguistic communication, (4) novel sentence-construction, (5) novel sentences and the representation of unfamiliar contingencies, (6) sentence-construction and the win-shift/fail-stay contingency, (7) the picture theory of the meaning of sentences, (8) the associative learning of word and phrase meaning, (9) lexical words, syntactic words and Bickerton's "proto-language", (10) mutations and the facilitation of language learning.
Note:
About the journal:
Connexions - An online journal of cognitive science. ISSN 1368-3233.
In the period 1997 - 2003 there appeared 6 issues. The journal is archived at www.keithfrankish.com/connexions/
[References] [Talks] [2 citing publications]
Download: 1998d Behaviourism as a Standpoint in the Science of Linguistics.pdf
Place, U. T. (1998e) Evidence for the role of operant reinforcement in the acquisition and maintenance of linguistic competence. Connexions, (4), 31-37.
Note:
About the journal:
Connexions - An online journal of cognitive science. ISSN 1368-3233
In the period 1997 - 2003 there appeared 6 issues.
The journal is archived at www.keithfrankish.com/connexions/
[References] [Talks] [2 citing publications]
Download: 1998e Evidence for the Role of Operant Reinforcement in the Acquisition and Maintenance of Linguistic Competence.pdf
Place, U. T. (1998f). Disposizione ('Dispositions' translated into Italian by Giacomo Gava). In G. Gava, Lessico Epistemologico (Epistemological Lexicon, 2nd edition, pp. 44-51). CLEUP (Cooperativa Libraria Editrice Università di Padova).
[References]
Download: 1998f Dispositions.pdf the English original that is translated into Italian
Place, U. T. (1998g). In praise of the breadth of British Philosophers. Letter to the Editor in response to an article by Malcom Bradbury which appeared in the edition for 29/11/98, The Observer 6/12/98, p. 30.
Download: 1998g In Praise of the Breadth of British Philosophers.pdf
Place, U. T. (1998h). The neuroanatomy of consciousness and the zombie-within. [Paper presented at the Second Annual Conference of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Bremen, Germany, 20th June 1998].
[Abstract]In Chapter 3 of their book, Milner & Goodale (1995) concede that, since the ventral and dorsal streams as defined by Ungerleider & Mishkin (1982) bifurcate "downstream" of the striate cortex (V1), neither stream can account for the visual functions which survive lesions of V1 ("blindsight"). However, on their Figure 3.1 (p. 68) they show another pathway which I call the 'Sub-Cortical (S-C) to dorsal pathway' (SUPERIOR COLLICULUS, PULVINAR, POSTERIOR PARIETAL CORTEX) which bifurcates from the ventral pathway (LATERAL GENICULATE NUCLEUS, V1-V5, INFERO-TEMPORAL CORTEX) at the retina. Not only does the S-C to dorsal pathway explain blindsight. It also coincides exactly with Michael Posner's (Posner & Petersen 1990; Posner and Dehaene 1994) "posterior attention system". This allows us to identify the superior colliculus and pulvinar with that part of the "zombie-within" (Place 1997) which involuntarily attracts the focus of conscious attention to any input which it identifies as problematic and the posterior parietal cortex as the structure which, in addition to its role in the feedback control of voluntary movement, maintains voluntary control over the focus of conscious attention (in the ventral stream in the case of vision) until a satisfactory categorization of the input is achieved. This, when combined with the known functions of the ventral pathway, allows us, in the case of vision, to identify actual anatomically defined structures corresponding to most of the functionally defined modules envisaged in 'Consciousness and the zombie-within' (Place 1997) up to the point where conscious experience gives way to categorization.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1998h The Neuroanatomy of Consciousness and the Zombie-within.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999a). Ryle's behaviorism. In W. O'Donohue, & R. Kitchener (Eds.), Handbook of Behaviorism (Chapter 13, pp. 361-398). Academic Press. doi:10.1016/B978-012524190-8/50014-0
[Abstract]A distinction is drawn between the OR-behaviorism of the Americans which wants to make psychology more scientific and the OUR-behaviourism of Wittgenstein and Ryle which comes from the philosophy of language. Ryle's doctrines are classified into those that derive from Wittgenstein and those that are peculiar to Ryle. The latter are sub-classified into failures and successes. Criticisms of Ryle's position by Place, Geach, Medlin, Armstrong and Martin are examined and, where possible, rebutted. I conclude that, with some important exceptions, the dispositional analysis of mental concepts survives, as does, more controversially, the hypothetical analysis of dispositional statements.
Note:
'Brian Medlin challenges Ullin Place on the question of probity in Place's paper "Ryle's Behaviorism" and holds him accountable for defaming him. Medlin wants this rectified. In further correspondence Medlin wants the passage withdrawn from the paper. As the book had already been published, Ullin requested from the publisher that a corrigendum slip be printed and inserted into unsold copies of the book, and sewn in if any further copies of the book were printed.' Note on Box 1, Folder 025 (letters exchanged between Jack Smart, Ullin T. Place, Brian Medlin, Jim Franklin, David Armstrong) held in the Brian Medlin Collection at the Library of Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia.
[References] [11 citing publications] [4 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1999a Ryle's Behaviorism.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999b). Intentionality and the physical - a reply to Mumford. Philosophical Quarterly, 49, 225-231. doi:10.1111/1467-9213.00139
[Abstract]Martin and Pfeifer (1986) claim "that the most typical characterizations of intentionality" proposed by philosophers are satisfied by physical dispositions. If that is correct, we must conclude either, as they and Mumford do, that the philosophers are wrong and intentionality is something else or, as I do, that intentionality is what the philosophers say it is, in which case it is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional. To my contention that the intentionality of a disposition consists in its being directed towards its future manifestations Mumford objects that the notion of directedness is obscure and cannot in the light of Martin's (1994) argument be elucidated by reference to what would happen if the conditions for its manifestation are satisfied. But Martin's argument rests on the mistaken assumption that causal conditionals of which dispositional ascriptions are an instance are of the form 'If p then q'.
[References] [Is reply to] [10 citing publications] [2 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1999b Intentionality and the Physical - A Reply to Mumford.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999c). Behaviourism and the evolution of language [Conference presentation abstract]. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society, 7, 84.
[Related]
Place, U. T. (1999d). Connectionism and the problem of consciousness. Acta Analytica, 14(22), 197-226.
[Abstract]This paper falls into three parts. In Part 1 I give my reasons for rejecting two aspects of Horgan and Tienson's position as laid out in their book, the language of thought and belief-desire explanations of behaviour, while endorsing the connection they see between linguistic syntax and the syntax of a motor skill. In Part 2 I outline the theory that the brain consists of two input-output transformation systems consciousness whose function is (a) to categorise problematic inputs, (b) to select a response appropriate to such inputs once they have been categorised and (c) to initiate and monitor the execution of such response once selected, and the "zombie-within" whose function is (a) to identify and alert consciousness to any inputs that are problematic either because they are unexpected or because they are significant relative to the agent's current or perennial motivational concerns. In Part 3 I consider how far the properties of the two systems outlined in Part 2 can be understood in terms of the known properties of connectionist networks.
Keywords: connectionism, consciousness, problematic input, zombie-within
Note:
The download file contains some text added by the author after publication. Footnote 2 is added.
[References] [Related] [Talks] [3 citing publications] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1999d Connectionism and the Problem of Consciousness.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999e). Token- versus type-identity physicalism. Anthropology and Philosophy, 3(2), 21-31.
[Abstract]The observation that identity is a relation between two names or descriptions which refer to the same individual (token-identity) or the same kind or class of things (type-identity) suggests that, unless the descriptions in question are specified, physicalism, understood as the claim that every mentally specified state or process is identical with some physically specified state or process, is empty hand-waving. It can be argued on behalf of the type-identity physicalist that future psycho-physiological research will allow us to specify which types of mentally-specified states or processes are identical with which physically-specified states or processes. No such possibility can be envisaged if token-identity physicalism (Davidson 1970/1980) is true. Consequently, the case for token-identity physicalism must rest on an a priori argument. But the argument which Davidson offers is inconclusive. Token-identity physicalism is, therefore, in serious danger of being side-lined, should evidence supporting the stronger type-identity thesis be forthcoming.
[References] [7 citing publications] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1999e Token- versus Type-Identity Physicalism.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999f). Vagueness as a mark of dispositional intentionality. Acta Analytica, 14(23), 91-109.
[Abstract]Vagueness (within rather than at the boundaries of a concept) is one of the "three salient things about intention" listed by Elizabeth Anscombe (1965) in her paper ‘The intentionality of sensation’. In an unpublished paper John Burnheim has claimed that "physical causal dispositions" satisfy these "three marks of intentionality given by Anscombe." Subsequent discussion by C. B. Martin and K. Pfeifer (1986) and Place (1996) shows that if the various marks of intentionality proposed by Brentano, Chisholm, Anscombe, Lycan and Searle are sorted according to Kneale's (1968) distinction between intenTional states and intenSional locutions it turns out that all of the former (Anscombe's three marks plus Searle's/Brentano's directedness) are found in physical dispositions, while the latter (Chisholm's second and third marks) are marks of a quotation.
[References] [Talks] [4 citing publications] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1999f Vagueness as a Mark of Dispositional Intentionality.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999g). Intentionality naturalized: dispositions and quotations [Unpublished paper].
[Abstract]Martin and Pfeifer have argued that physical dispositions satisfy all the accepted marks of intentionality. My own researches suggest the following conclusions: 1. ‘Intentionality’ means whatever the accepted marks make it mean. 2. Hence, if Martin and Pfeifer are right, intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional. 3. We need to distinguish intentionality, as described by Brentano, Anscombe and Searle's “intentionality-with-a-t” which is the mark of the dispositional from Frege's “indirect reference", Quine’s “referential opacity”, Geach's “non-Shakespearianity” and Searle’s “intensionality-with-an-s” which is the mark of a quotation.
[References] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1999g Intentionality Naturalized - Dispositions and Quotations.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999h). The picture theory of meaning: A rehabilation [Conference presentation; presented to the IUC Conference on Epistemology, Bled, Slovenia, 31st May - June 5th 1999].
[Abstract]I argue the case for a rehabilitation of the "picture theory" of the meaning of sentences expounded by Wittgenstein (1921/1971) in the Tractatus, but abandoned by him in moving from his earlier to his later philosophy. This rehabilitation requires the replacement of 'facts' as the objects which sentences depict by 'situations' (Barwise and Perry 1983) and the recognition that the situation depicted by a sentence is an "intentional object" (Brentano 1871/1995). It also implies a different view of the way his sense (Sinn)/reference (Bedeutung) distinction should be applied to the meaning of sentences from that maintained by Frege (1892/1960) himself. Such a theory opens the door to a thorough-going empiricist theory of the acquisition of both concepts and sentence structure.
Keywords: picture theory of meaning
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1999h The Picture Theory of Meaning - A Rehabilitation.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999i). Comments on 'Causality, Senses and Reference' [Section from A defense of emergent downward causation by Teed Rockwell http://www.cognitivequestions.org/causeweb.html] www.cognitivequestions.org/utplacecaus.html
Download: 1999i Comments on Causality, Senses and Reference.pdf
Place, U. T. (1999j) Are qualia dispositional properties? [Paper presented at the Università di Siena and Terza Università di Roma conference on "Consciousness Naturalized", Certosa di Pontignano, Siena - published as Place, U. T. (2000). The causal potency of qualia its nature and its source. Brain and Mind, 1, 183-192].
[Related] [1 referring publications by Place]
Place, U. T. (1999k). Introduction to Essays in Radical Empiricism [Unpublished; edited by T. W. Place]
[Abstract]This is a compilation of introductions that U. T. Place wrote in 1999 to books intended to form a book series under the title “Essays in Radical Empiricism”. Place couldn’t finish this project because of his death on 2 January 2000. The idea was that the books would consist of his published and unpublished papers. Each book would start with an introductory chapter, with the first three sections being the same for all books. These sections were called “Radical Empiricism”, “Metaphilosophy”, and “Conceptual Analysis” and are reproduced in this document as the first three sections. In each book, these sections were to be followed by a section that introduced the theme of the book in question. All the finished sections that introduce a theme are included here. Because not all themes are covered this way, I added sections from a letter in which Place discussed his “Nachlaß” in October 1999. The themes on which Place published and that are missing in this overview are, amongst others, language learning, the evolution of language, and emotion and mood.
[References]
Download: 1999k Introduction to Essays in Radical Empiricism.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000a). Consciousness and the zombie-within: a functional analysis of the blindsight evidence. In Y. Rossetti, & A. Revonsuo (Eds.), Beyond dissociations: Interaction between dissociated implicit and explicit processing (pp. 295-329). John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/aicr.22.15pla
[Abstract]Cowey & Stoerig's (1995) demonstration that the phenomenon of blindsight applies to monkeys with striate cortical lesions in the same way as it does to humans with similar lesions makes it plausible to argue that the behaviour of mammals and probably that of other vertebrates is controlled by two distinct but closely interdependent and interacting systems in the brain which I shall refer to respectively as 'consciousness' and the 'sub-conscious automatic pilot or "zombie" within'.
On this hypothesis, consciousness has three functions, (a) that of categorizing any input that is problematic in that it is either unexpected or significant relative to the individual's current or perennial motivational concerns, (b) that of selecting a response appropriate both to the presence of a thing of that kind and to the individual's motivational concerns with respect to it, and (c) that of monitoring the execution of that response. Conscious/phenomenal experience, on this view, is the first stage in the process whereby problematic inputs are processed by consciousness. Its function is to modify the figure-ground relations within the central representation of a problematic input until an adequate categorization is selected.
The sub-conscious automatic pilot or “zombie-within” has two functions (a) that of continuously scanning the total current input and alerting consciousness to any input it identifies as problematic, (b) that of protecting consciousness from overload either by ignoring those non-problematic inputs which require no response or by responding appropriately but automatically to those for which there already exists a well practised skill or other “instinctive” response pattern.
Keywords: consciousness
[References] [Talks] [5 citing publications] [5 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 2000a Consciousness and the Zombie-within a Functional Analysis of the Blindsight Evidence.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000b). The causal potency of qualia: Its nature and its source. Brain and Mind, 1, 183-192. doi:10.1023/A:1010023129393
[Abstract]There is an argument (Medlin, 1967; Place, 1988) which shows conclusively that if qualia are causally impotent we could have no possible grounds for believing that they exist. But if, as this argument shows, qualia are causally potent with respect to the descriptions we give of them, it is tolerably certain that they are causally potent in other more biologically significant respects. The empirical evidence, from studies of the effect of lesions of the striate cortex (Humphrey, 1974; Weiskrantz, 1986; Cowey and Stoerig, 1995) shows that what is missing in the absence of visual qualia is the ability to categorize sensory inputs in the visual modality. This would suggest that the function of private experience is to supply what Broadbent (1971) calls the “evidence” on which the categorization of problematic sensory inputs are based. At the same time analysis of the causal relation shows that what differentiates a causal relation from an accidental spatio-temporal conjunction is the existence of reciprocally related dispositional properties of the entities involved which combine to make it true that if one member of the conjunction, the cause, had not existed, the other, the effect, would not have existed. The possibility that qualia might be dispositional properties of experiences which, as it were, supply the invisible “glue” that sticks cause to effect in this case is examined, but finally rejected.
[References] [Talks] [4 citing publications] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 2000b The Causal Potency of Qualia.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000c). The role of the hand in the evolution of language. Psycoloquy, 11(7), January 23. www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?11.007
[Abstract]This article has four sections. Section I sets out four principles which should guide any attempt to reconstruct the evolution of an existing biological characteristic. Section II sets out thirteen principles specific to a reconstruction of the evolution of language. Section III sets out eleven pieces of evidence for the view that vocal language must have been preceded by an earlier language of gesture. Based on those principles and evidence, Section IV sets out seven proposed stages in the process whereby language evolved: (1) the use of mimed movement to indicate an action to be performed, (2) the development of referential pointing which, when combined with mimed movement, leads to a language of gesture, (3) the development of vocalisation, initially as a way of imitating the calls of animals, (4) counting on the fingers leading into (5) the development of symbolic as distinct from iconic representation, (6) the introduction of the practice of question and answer, and (7) the emergence of syntax as a way of disambiguating utterances that can otherwise be disambiguated only by gesture.
[References] [Talks] [12 citing publications] [2 referring publications by Place] [Is replied by]
Download: 2000c The Role of the Hand in the Evolution of Language.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000d). The two-factor theory of the mind-brain relation. Brain and Mind, 1, 29-43. doi:10.1023/A:1010087621727
[Abstract]The analysis of mental concepts suggests that the distinction between the mental and the nonmental is not ontologically fundamental, and that, whereas mental processes are one and the same things as the brain processes with which they are correlated, dispositional mental states depend causally on and are, thus, "distinct existences" from the states of the brain microstructure with which 'they' are correlated. It is argued that this difference in the relation between an entity and its composition/underlying structure applies across the board. All stuffs and processes are the same thing as is described by a description of their microstructure. In all cases where the manifestation of a disposition extends beyond the "skin" of the dispositional property bearer, dispositions invariably depend causally on the structure, usually the microstructure, of the bearer.
[References] [3 citing publications] [1 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 2000d The Two Factor-Theory of the Mind-Brain Relation.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000e). Behaviorism as an ethnomethodological experiment: Flouting the convention of rational agency. Behavior & Philosophy, 28(1/2), 57. www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27759404.pdf
[Abstract]As interpreted here, Garfinkel's "ethnomethodological experiment" (1967) demonstrates the existence of a social convention by flouting it and observing the consternation and aversive consequences for the perpetrator which that provokes. I suggest that the hostility which behaviorism has provoked throughout its history is evidence that it flouts an important social convention, the convention that, whenever possible, human beings are treated as and must always give the appearance of being rational agents. For these purposes, a rational agent is someone whose behavior is controlled by a logically consistent body of means-end beliefs ("rules" in Skinner's terminology) and complementing desires which between them provide a basis for predicting how the individual will behave and for suggesting what arguments will persuade the agent to modify his or her beliefs and the behavior based upon them. The behaviorist flouts this convention by suggesting that its fictional character makes it unsuitable for the purposes of scientific explanation of behavior. The hostility that this suggestion provokes is evidence of the importance attached by the verbal community both to preserving a consistent and rational connection between what is said and what is done and presenting it as part of the natural order of things.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 2000e Behaviorism as an Ethnomethodological Experiment.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000f). Identity theories. In M. Nani, & M. Maraffa (Eds.), A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Roma Tre University. Retrieved Februari 9, 2019, from http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/mbit.htm
[References] [3 citing publications]
Download: 2000f Theories of Mind.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000g). From icon to symbol: An important transition in the evolution of language [Abstract]. Proceedings of the 3rd International Evolution of Language Conference (pp. 183-184). École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications. www.infres.telecom-paristech.fr/confs/evolang/actes/_actes56.html
[References] [2 citing publications]
Download: 2000g From Icon to Symbol - An Important Transition in the Evolution of Language.pdf
Place, U. T. (2002). A pilgrim's progress? From mystical experience to biological consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9(3), 34-52. www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2002/00000009/00000003/1261
[Abstract]Ullin Thomas Place died on 2nd January 2000 at the age of seventy-five. I had met him a little over three years earlier, in November 1996, during the annual 'Mind and Brain' symposium organized by Peter Fenwick and held at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. At that meeting Professor Place delivered a slightly shortened version of the paper reproduced here, in which he told his personal story — a pilgrim's progress? — recounting, as he put it, 'the history of a thought process leading from an adolescent interest in mystical experience to an article entitled 'Is consciousness a brain process?' [Place, 1956] in which I argued for an affirmative answer to that question'. [Abstract by Anthony Freedom]
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Download: 2002 A Pilgrim's Progress.pdf
Place, U. T. (2002/3) Some thoughts on the work of the Würzburg School and the controversy it provoked, prompted by a visit to Würzburg 10-16 October 1989. Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 10, 261-280
[Abstract]Der Autor berichtet über einen Besuch in Würzburg und der Suche nach Spuren der „Würzburger Schule“ und kommt dabei auf einige grundsätzliche Fragen der „Denkpsychologie“ zu sprechen. Dabei korrigiert er alte Missverständnisse, die er großen Teils in der unterschiedlichen Verwendung der Terminologie bzw. in ihrer Übersetzung (speziell: ‚Introspektion‘; ‚Selbstbeobachtung‘ vs. Brentanos ‚Innere Wahrnehmung‘) erblickt und schildert die (durch Behaviourismus, Gestaltpsychologie und Psychoanalyse unterbrochene, durch Computermodelle wieder aktuell gewordene) Wirkung für die Gegenwartspsychologie.
Note:
Posthumously publication of Place (1989g).
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Download: 1989g Some Thought on the Work of the Wurzburg School and the Controversy it Provoked.pdf
Place, U. T. (2004). From mystical experience to biological consciousness. A pilgrim's progress? In G. Graham, & E.R. Valentine (Eds.), Identifying the mind: Selected papers of U. T. Place (pp. 14-29). Oxford University Press.
[Abstract]I recount the history of a thought process leading from an adolescent interest in mystical experience to an article entitled 'Is consciousness a brain process?' in which I argued for an affirmative answer to that question. For the first time in recent history the materialist thesis was presented in a form in which it could withstand what had previously been regarded as decisive philosophical objections. The paper contains a critique of the "phenomenological fallacy" in which I draw attention to how little we can really say about the properties of our private experiences. This argument owes much to the insistence of the mystics on the inadequacy of words to describe their experiences.
Keywords: consciousness
Note:
This paper is published with minor editorial changes and without the abstract and the appendix in G. Graham and E. R. Valentine (Eds.) (2004). Identifying the Mind: Selected Papers of U. T. Place (pp. 14-29). Oxford University Press,.
The paper was already finished in 1996. A shortened version was presented to the Mind and Brain symposium, organized by Dr. Peter Fenwick at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, in November 1996 and to the Eleventh Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy Section, York, March 1997. It was published under a different title and edited by Anthony Freeman including an editorial introduction and footnotes as Place, U. T. (2002). A pilgrim’s progress? Journal of Consciousness Studies. 9(3), 34-52.
[References] [Related] [Talks] [2 citing publications] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 2004 From Mystical Experience to Biological Consciousness.pdf
Place, U. T., & Smart, J. J. C. (1955). Contradictories and entailment. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 15, 541-544. doi:10.2307/2103914
[References]
Download: Place & Smart (1955) Contradictories and Entailment.pdf
Place, U. T., & Sofroniou, N. (1987). Equivalence classes, relational frames and the autoclitic. [Unpublished paper presented at the Christmas Conference of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group, University College, London, December 1987].
[Abstract]Sidman (Sidman 1971 and Sidman and Tailby 1982) defines an "equivalence class" in terms of the generalisation of responses on a matching to sample task which conforms to the principles of reflexivity (or identity), symmetry and transitivity. More recently, Hayes (forthcoming) has proposed that equivalence in this sense is only one amongst a number of "relational frames" which the child abstracts from particular relations which it encounters in the process of acquiring language. Hayes is not specific in characterising the experiences from which the child is supposed to abstract these relational frames. This paper explores the suggestion (Place forthcoming) that relational frames are a species of what Skinner (1957) calls "autoclitic frames". As here conceived, autoclitics are construed as syntactic operators which enable the speaker to construct novel sentences which are nevertheless intelligible to the listener. Likewise an autoclitic frame is seen as an abstract framework formed by autoclitic words, prefixes, suffixes and other autoclitic features, such as word order. When completed by the insertion of the appropriate tact words, phrases or clauses, an autoclitic frame yields an intelligible phrase or sentence. This hypothesis predicts that the child's acquisition of the ability to generalise in accordance with the principles of reflexivity, symmetry and transitivity on the matching to sample task will be found to depend on its ability to construct and draw the appropriate inferences from relational sentences which legitimise inferences of these kinds.
[References] [Talks]
Download: Place & Sofroniou (1987) Equivalence Classes, Relational Frames and the Autoclitic.pdf
Place, U. T., & Taylor, K. E. (1995). The functions of consciousness and its constituent parts [Conference presentation, presented to the Annual Meeting of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, 31st August 1995]. European Society for Philosophy and Psychology
[References] [Talks] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: Place & Taylor (1995) The Functions of Consciousness and its Constituent Part.pdf
Place, U. T., & Wheeler Vega, J. A. (1999). An anticipation of reversal theory within a conceptual-analytic and behaviorist perspective [Conference presentation, presented by the second author at the 9th International Conference on Reversal Theory, June 28 - July 2]. University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
[Abstract]Michael Apter denies that behaviorism can provide an adequate account of human action, referring to it in one place as "a kind of methodological vandalism" (Apter, 1989, p. 2). It is the purpose of this paper to show how the first author came, as a behaviorist and analytic philosopher, to a position that anticipates reversal theory to a surprising extent.
The basis of this position is an analysis of polar statements concerning 'wanting': 'X wants O', and 'X does not want O'. These sentences imply a number of corollaries. For example, if 'X wants O', then: 'X will be pleased if O appears', 'X will be worried if it looks as if O will not appear', and 'X will be angry or miserable if O fails to appear'. Contrasting entailments follow ‘X does not want O'. These implications display the relationship between the motivational concepts of 'wanting' and 'not wanting', and emotion concepts such as being pleased, worried, angry, miserable, &c. This set of reciprocally related entailments provide, it will be argued, the conceptual foundation of reversal theory. This analysis led the first author to develop a behavioral theory of emotion, in which the various emotions can be located on two dimensions (after Myers, 1923): 'pleasant/unpleasant', and 'high-arousal/low-arousal'. Emotions are distinguished by reference to a third variable: a characteristic 'impulse' appropriate to the type of contingency in which the emotion in question is evoked. The notions of 'wanting' and 'not wanting' are defined, in the language of operant psychology, as differences in the reinforcing effect of actual and potential stimuli with respect to actual and potential operant responses by the organism.
Some illustrative clinical and experimental applications of the theory by the first author, in the 1960's, are outlined.
[References] [Talks] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: Place & Wheeler Vega (1999) An Anticipation of Reversal Theory within a Conceptual Analytic and Behaviorist Perspective.pdf