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
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Download: 1991k From Syntax to Reality - the Picture Theory of Meaning.pdf revised version from 1999

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.
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Download: 1992h The Tower of Babel.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.
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Download: 1992j 1999 Towards a Reconciliation between the Ascociationist and Redical Behaviorist Traditions in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.pdf

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.
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Download: 1994a Connectionism and the Resurrection of Behaviorism.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. (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. (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.
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Download: 1998c Behaviourism and the Evolution of Language.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