bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Approaches: Computational Cladistics
Authors: McMahon April , McMahon Robert 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Before turning to attempts to construct and evaluate linguistic family trees, which will be the main topic of this chapter and the next, we return briefiy to lexicostatistics, and to disturbing similarities of this method with mass comparison. In the chapters that follow we will be using elements of lexicostatistics, for instance in generating trees based on cognacy scores over standard Swadesh-type lists. We have also said that, in common with many comparative historical linguists, we regard mass comparison as inherently problematic, and as crucially compromised by a lack of rigour in determining what can count as a phonetic or semantic match. However, there remain areas of overlap between the two methods, since both are predominantly lexically based, and involve the comparison of lists. True, those lists are set in lexicostatistics, while there is no basic vocabulary criterion in mass comparison; lexicostatistics also tends to be applied step by step, in a series of pairwise comparisons between languages, whereas in mass comparison the more lists, the merrier. But, at least at first glance, these differences do not decisively favour lexicostatistics. For one thing, we made a series of suggestions in Chapter 2 for a slackening of the constraints on the composition of test lists, so that many-to-one or one-to-many matches between items and meanings might be allowed, and culture-specific meanings might be included in locally variable lists. Worse still, Greenberg (1987: 27) clearly sees the simultaneous comparison of multiple lists as strongly advantageous: ‘To inspect languages pairwise, or at a half-guess, is a different thing from a multilateral comparison undertaken with a consciousness of the types of resemblances that are likely to bespeak common origin.’ Moreover, Greenberg argues that mass comparison is free from the restrictions of time depth (see Ch. 7 below) which affect lexicostatistics and the comparative method, since ‘there is no theoretical limit to the depth at which classification can be carried out when the number of languages examined is large’ (ibid. 28—9). It would appear that mass comparison and lexicostatistics emerge as approximately equal on the issue of list composition, with mass comparison edging ahead on the number of lists to be compared.
Quantitative Methods Beyond the Lexicon
Authors: McMahon April , McMahon Robert 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Our focus in this book so far has stayed rather firmly fixed on the lexicon, and on methods of comparison which apply to vocabulary or, more accurately, to cognacy judgements calculated over basic meaning lists. There are two reasons for this. First, lists of this kind are already well known in comparative linguistics, and we have been keen to demonstrate that it is possible to apply quantitative methods to familiar data: this is simply another case of starting from the known and moving subsequently into the unknown. Linked with this is the fact that methods for comparing meanings already exist, and are therefore available for testing and computerizing; but this is not the case, certainly not to the same extent, for other areas of the grammar. Working in areas other than the lexicon therefore means both developing methods for comparison and demonstrating that these can be quantified to good effect, and it did not seem to us a useful start to ask our readers to accept both simultaneously.
Serial Verbs in Tetun Dili
Authors: Hajek John 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Tetun Dili (TD) is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by approximately 50,000-60,000 speakers in an enclave setting in Dili, the capital of East Timor. East Timor is mostly Austronesian-speaking, although four non-Austronesian languages are also spoken there.
Serial Verbs in Lakota (Siouan)
Authors: de Reuse Willem J 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Lakota or Teton Dakota is a Native American language mainly spoken on reservations in North and South Dakota in the United States. Estimates of fluent speakers vary between 6,000 and 10,000. Lakota belongs to the Dakotan subgroup of the Mississippi Valley group within the Siouan family of languages.
On Our Interest in Getting Things Right: Pragmatism without Narcissism
Authors: Stout Jeffrey 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The critics of pragmatism have long charged that it fails to do justice to the objective dimension of human inquiry. Philosophers who believe that classical pragmatism was on to something important, but that it requires careful reformulation if it is to meet the objections that have been raised against it, have recently renewed the effort to provide accounts of inquiry that are both recognizably pragmatic in orientation and demonstrably hospitable to the cognitive aspiration to get one’s subject matter right. One example of such an account can be found in Robert Brandom’s massive book Making It Explicit (1994: esp. ch. 8, sect. IV). One of Bjørn Ramberg’s recent papers (2000), though hardly as elaborate, also aims to provide such an account. Both of these philosophers explicate cognitive aspirations and conceptual norms pragmatically— as artifacts arising in human discursive practices of a certain kind. In framing their explications, they rigorously avoid resorting to metaphysical talk about correspondence to the real.
On Not Being a Pragmatist: Eight Reasons and a Cause
Authors: Hacking Ian 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Nothing is easier than to familiarise one’s self with the mammalian brain. Get a sheep’s head, a small saw, chisel, scalpel and forceps (all three can best be had from a surgical instrument maker), and unravel its parts either by the aid of a human-dissecting book, such as Holden’s ‘Manual of Anatomy,’ or by the speciﬁc directions ad hoc given in such books as Foster and Langley’s ‘Practical Psychology’ (Macmillan) or Morrell’s ‘Comparative Anatomy and Dissection of Mammalia’ (Longman’s).
Pragmatism and Objective Truth
Authors: Macbeth Danielle 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The pragmatist tradition, both classical and contemporary, is oddly divided on the question of the coherence of a robust conception of objective truth. Whereas both Peirce and Sellars take Peirce’s conception of meaning, on which the pragmatist tradition is founded, to make an essential contribution to an adequate account of objective truth, other pragmatists (notably James, Dewey, and Rorty) take that same conception to foreclose once and for all the possibility of such an account. There is, I think, real merit to both these wings of the tradition. My aim is not, however, to defend that claim— at least not directly— but instead to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between Peirce’s pragmatist maxim and the notion of objective truth by reﬂecting on the nature and signiﬁcance of that maxim.
Moore’s Paradox
Authors: Green Mitchell , Williams John N 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
G. E. Moore famously observed that to assert, ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don’t believe that I did’ would be ‘absurd’. Moore calls it a ‘paradox’ that this absurdity persists despite the fact that what I say about myself might be true. Over half a century later, such sayings continue to perplex philosophers and other students of language, logic, and cognition. Ludwig Wittgenstein was fascinated by Moore’s example, and the absurdity of Moore’s saying was intensively discussed in the mid-20th century. Yet the source of the absurdity has remained elusive, and its recalcitrance has led researchers in recent decades to address it with greater care. In this definitive treatment of the problem of Moorean absurdity Green and Williams survey the history and relevance of the paradox and leading approaches to resolving it, and present new essays by leading thinkers in the area. Contributors Jonathan Adler, Bradley Armour-Garb, Jay D. Atlas, Thomas Baldwin, Claudio de Almeida, André Gallois, Robert Gordon, Mitchell Green, Alan Hájek, Roy Sorensen, John Williams
What Reflexive Pronouns Tell Us about Belief: A New Moore’s Paradox De Se, Rationality, and Privileged Access
Authors: Atlas Jay David 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Quine (1960) raised questions in the 1940s about the referential occurrences of singular terms in lower clauses in third-person, present tense, indicative sentences that contain intentional verbs, e.g. ‘believes’. In sentence (1) John believes that Gray Davis was re-elected governor of California. Quine distinguished between a ‘‘notional sense’’ of ‘believes’ and a ‘‘relational sense’’ of ‘believes’.
My Philosophical Position Says p and I Don’t Believe p
Authors: Hájek Alan 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
There is typically something strange about asserting or believing Moore- paradoxical sentences. In this paper I want to harness this strangeness to do a particular kind of philosophical work. I will argue that various prominent philosophers are committed to asserting and believing various Moore-paradoxical sentences in virtue of the very philosophical positions that they hold.
Moorean Pretense
Authors: Gordon Robert M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Wittgenstein noted that the absurdity of assertions of the form, p but I don’t believe that p, does not carry over to suppositions. He was right. The absurdity also does not carry over to what I take to be the more inclusive category, pretense. For example, you can pretend — or suppose or imagine — that a certain species of mushroom is poisonous but that you are ignorant of this fact. You might even picture yourself innocently saute´ing your mushrooms, then eating them and getting very sick.
Conceptual Art Is Not What It Seems
Authors: Lopes Dominic McIver 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Hypotheses in aesthetics should explain appreciative failure as well as appreciative success. They should state the general conditions under which people fail to understand and value works as works of art. This stricture is all the more important when the typical response to avant-garde art is incomprehension, resistance, and rejection. Perhaps this typical response is justified and the art in question deserves to be repudiated. Assume this not always to be the case. Then if some art deserves a response that it typically does not get, we should try to explain the appreciative failure. Explaining appreciative failure might require interesting changes to theories about art.
Identity and Modality
Authors: MacBride Fraser 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The papers in this volume address fundamental, and interrelated, philosophical issues concerning modality and identity, issues that have not only been pivotal to the development of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century, but remain a key focus of metaphysical debate in the twenty-first. How are we to understand the concepts of necessity and possibility? Is chance a basic ingredient of reality? How are we to make sense of claims about personal identity? Do numbers require distinctive identity criteria? Does the capacity to identify an object presuppose an ability to bring it under a sortal concept? Rather than presenting a single, partisan perspective, Identity and Modality enriches our understanding of identity and modality by bringing together papers written by leading researchers working in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of mathematics. The resulting variety of perspectives correspondingly reflects both the breadth and depth of contemporary theorizing about identity and modality, each paper addressing a particular issue and advancing our knowledge of the area. This volume will provide essential reading for graduate students in the subject and professional philosophers. .
The Julius Caesar Objection: More Problematic than Ever
Authors: MacBride Fraser 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Is it possible that Julius Caesar was not only a person but also a number? Might the conqueror of Gaul—beneath his material guise—have been the bearer of numerical properties? Common sense appears to inform us otherwise. Caesar was a man and no doubt added up sums. Buthecould hardly have been the result of a subtraction. And what appears to be true of Caesar also appears to be true of other concrete items. They enjoy the benefits of being spatially related and causally interacting with their neighbours. By contrast, numbers appear quite different kinds of thing. They stand in equations and figure in the ancestral of the successor relation to zero. It seems that there is a Moorean fact, basic to our ordinary ways of thinking, any adequate philosophy of mathematics must accommodate. The fact that must be respected is the fact that no concrete item is a number. A theory encounters the ‘Caesar’ problem when it fails to meet this adequacy constraint.
Is There a Bodily Criterion of Personal Identity?
Authors: Olson Eric T 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
One of the main problems of personal identity is supposed to be how we relate to our bodies. A few philosophers endorse what is called a ‘bodily criterion of personal identity’: they say that weare our bodies, or that our identity over time consists in the identity of our bodies. Manymore deny this—typically on the grounds that we can imagine ourselves coming apart from our bodies. But both sides agree that the bodily criterion is an important view, which anyone thinking about personal identity must consider.
Recent Debates about the a Priori
Authors: Field Hartry 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
At least from the time of the ancient Greeks, most philosophers have held that some of our knowledge is independent of experience, or ‘‘a priori’’. Indeed, a major tenet of the rationalist tradition in philoso-phy was that a great deal of our knowledge had this character: even Kant, a critic of some of the overblown claims of rationalism, thought that the structure of space could be known a priori, as could many of the fundamental principles of physics; and Hegel is reputed to have claimed to have deduced on a priori grounds that the number of planets is exactly five.
The Case for Nietzschean Moral Psychology
Authors: Knobe Joshua , Leiter Brian 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Moral psychology is the branch of ethics directly concerned with the psychology of the kind of agency we exercise in acting morally. Moral psychology asks whether such agency is psychologically possible, what motivations it requires, what the source of those motivations might be, and what the emotive and cognitive mechanisms are by which they translate into actions. Until fairly recently (e.g., Doris 2002; Nichols 2004; Prinz forthcoming), Anglophone philosophers writing about moral psychology have tended to approach these questions ‘from the armchair,’ and without regard to pertinent empirical ﬁndings about human psychology.
Introduction
Authors: Simpson Andrew 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
This book sets out to chart the role that language plays, and has played, both positively and also negatively, in the attempted construction, maintenance, and strengthening of national cohesion and identity in a broad range of states in modern Africa. Language as a communicative system varying among different populations is commonly acknowledged to function as an important symbol of group identity, often stimulating a natural sense of solidarity among communities sharing a single variety of speech, and is sometimes deliberately manipulated to create feelings of belonging to populations larger than the local or the regional, and the significant establishment of fully extensive national identities in independent states. In the African context, with the highly complex set of ethno-linguistic configurations presented by many of the continent’s states, the need for careful, conscious attention to the process of ‘national integration’ (Alexandre 1968, Bamgbose 1991) and nation-building has been recognized as having a particularly special importance. A considerable majority of Africa’s modern states exist in their current territorial shapes as the result of earlier Western colonial expansion in Africa, and the imposition of borders on contiguous bodies of land with almost no concern for creating homogeneous or coherent populations. In very many cases a wide range of quite distinct ethnic groups became artificially assembled as the demographic co-constituents of European protectorates and colonies, while other groups found themselves divided by new borders and separated into two or more Western-administered territories. In the second half of the twentieth century, when independence from colonial rule was finally achieved across Africa, the inheritance of these externally imposed, largely arbitrary borders consequently led to the sudden emergence of a great number of states with extremely mixed populations often having little in common save the sharing of a single officially recognized territory and the hopes of a better post-colonial future.
D. R. Congo: Language and ‘Authentic Nationalism’
Authors: Bokamba Eyamba G 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
What is known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) represents one of the most multilingual nations in Africa with an estimated 214 living indigenous languages or ethnic groupings (Ethnologue 2005). To this number must be added French, the declared official language of DRC, and a few other non-indigenous languages (e.g. Lebanese Arabic, English, Greek, Hindi, Portuguese, and Wolof ) that are spoken by significant communities in urban centres. What the ultimate number of languages spoken in DRC may turn out to be and how accurate such a datum may be remain open questions in the absence of census data that include a linguistic component. What is certain, however, is that DRC is a stable multilingual state with twenty-one wellknown major indigenous languages with an estimated population of at least 500,000 each (Ethnologue 2005). Of these, four languages – Kikongo, Kiswahili, Lingala, and Tshiluba – serve as national languages in selected domains, with French as the official language in most public domains (Bokamba 1976, forthcoming).
Why Exactly is Commitment Important for Rationality?1
Authors: Sen Amartya 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The idea of rational choice must be founded, in one way or another, on the basic requirement that choices be based on reason. But the interpretation of how reason is to be used can vary so radically between different formulations of rationality that there is frequently very little in common between the different uses of the idea of rational choice. There are differences over the domain of reason: for example, whether it should apply only to the selection of alternatives given one’s preferences over the alternatives, or also be used in the determination of the preferences themselves.
of Commitments, Persons, and Agents in Rational Choice Modelling
Authors: Güth Werner , Kliemt Hartmut 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The most basic cognitive distinction a rational actor has to make is that between what does and what does not depend on her or his actions. An actor who chooses her act in each and every instance solely in view of the causal consequences of that particular act is ‘opportunistically rational’ if her choice behaviour at each and every single instance of choice-making can be described as maximizing some ‘utility function’ that represents her preferences over the causal consequences of the options of choice at the instance of choice-making.
Beyond Self-Goal Choice: Amartya Sen’s Analysis of the Structure of Commitment and the Role of Shared Desires
Authors: Schmid Hans Bernhard 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the current debate on economic rationality, Amartya Sen’s analysis of the structure of commitment plays a uniquely important role (Weirich 2004: 387 ff.). However, Sen is not alone in pitting committed action against the standard model of rational behavior. Before turning to Sen’s analysis in section 2 of this paper, I shall start with an observation concerning some of the other relevant accounts. It seems that the concept of commitment plays a key role in two opposing views on what is wrong about the classical model.
Aristotelian Teleology
Authors: Judson Lindsay 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
It is November, and the long, dry summer is past. The rain is falling, and the farmer knows that this means that the corn he has just planted will grow. Is the rain, in Aristotle’s view, a process which has the growth of crops—or of plants more generally—as its end, or is it a process which has a quite different end (or no end at all), and which the farmer merely exploits for his own agricultural purposes? Neither answer is, on the face of it, incoherent. The general can be pleased at the upsetting effect which an eclipse has on the enemy troops, and with sufficient astronomical knowledge he might even have planned his campaign so as to exploit this effect: but no one believes that Aristotle would take the eclipse to be even partly for the sake of upsetting the troops. On the other hand, the farmer can be pleased at the ripening of his olives, which is for Aristotle a paradigm case of a natural teleological process. In the absence of a belief either in divine providence or in the existence of a global teleological Nature, however, what we might call the biocentric view, that the rain falls for the sake of plant life in general, and hence for the sake of all animal life, seems quite bizarre. Equally hard to find plausible is a special form of biocentrism—the anthropocentric view that the rainfall is for the sake of the growth of the farmer’s crops because the natural world is naturally—rather than providentially—organized around the life of human beings.
Doing without Morality: Reflections on the meaning of dein in aristotle’ s Nicomachean Ethics
Authors: kraut Richard 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
before Aristotle turns, in NE 1. 6, to a discussion of the Platonic theory of the good, he prefaces his criticism with the admission that he undertakes this investigation with some reluctance, because those who introduced the forms are his friends.
Epicurus’ Argument for Atomism
Authors: Betegh GÁbor 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The cornerstone of Epicurus’ physics is atomism: Epicurus follows Democritus1 in maintaining that our world is ultimately composed of atoms and the void. It is, then, somewhat surprising that the demonstration of the atomist thesis is apparently confined to three sentences in the Letter to Herodotus, our main source on Epicurus’ physics. These are the three sentences that I shall focus on in this paper. First, I shall argue that the standard interpretation, which takes the argument to be based on the impossibility of sizeless parts, is not the correct one. Then, I shall examine the alternative reconstruction of the atomist argument that focuses on the body– void distinction. Finally, I shall try to show that Epicurus’ defence of atomism is based on the unalterability of the atoms.
Three Conceptions of Rational Agency
Authors: Wallace R Jay 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
At the center of philosophical debates about normative reasons for action are questions about the relation between such reasons and motivation. Many philosophers hold—rightly, in my view—that normative reasons must satisfy what I shall call the motivation requirement.¹ This requirement may be formulated (with deliberate vagueness) as follows: if agent A has reason r to perform action x, and A is properly aware that r obtains, then A must be motivated to do x, on pain of irrationality2