5 publications of Place that refer to Quine (1969). Epistemology naturalized.

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. (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on the work of the Würzburg School and the controversy it provoked, prompted by a visit to Würzburg 10-16 October 1989 [Unpublished presentation at the Departmental Seminar, Departement of Psychology, University College of North Wales, Bangor, 2nd November 1989].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. (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]  [11 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. (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. (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