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. (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. (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