Ostension : word learning and the embodied mind / Chad Engelland.
2014
P120.L34 E64 2014eb
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Title
Ostension : word learning and the embodied mind / Chad Engelland.
Author
Engelland, Chad, author.
ISBN
9780262320610 (electronic bk.)
0262320614 (electronic bk.)
9780262028097 (print)
0262028093 (print)
0262320614 (electronic bk.)
9780262028097 (print)
0262028093 (print)
Published
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2014]
Copyright
2014
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (xxix, 305 pages)
Call Number
P120.L34 E64 2014eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
401/.93
Summary
"Ostension is bodily movement that manifests our engagement with things, whether we wish it to or not. Gestures, glances, facial expressions: all betray our interest in something. Ostension enables our first word learning, providing infants with a prelinguistic way to grasp the meaning of words. Ostension is philosophically puzzling; it cuts across domains seemingly unbridgeable--public--private, inner--outer, mind--body. In this book, Chad Engelland offers a philosophical investigation of ostension and its role in word learning by infants. Engelland discusses ostension (distinguishing it from ostensive definition) in contemporary philosophy, examining accounts by Quine, Davidson, and Gadamer, and he explores relevant empirical findings in psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and neuroscience. He offers original studies of four representative historical thinkers whose work enriches the understanding of ostension: Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Augustine, and Aristotle. And, building on these philosophical and empirical foundations, Engelland offers a meticulous analysis of the philosophical issues raised by ostension. He examines the phenomenological problem of whether embodied intentions are manifest or inferred; the problem of what concept of mind allows ostensive cues to be intersubjectively available; the epistemological problem of how ostensive cues, notoriously ambiguous, can be correctly understood; and the metaphysical problem of the ultimate status of the key terms in his argument: animate movement, language, and mind. Finally, he argues for the centrality of manifestation in philosophy. Taking ostension seriously, he proposes, has far-reaching implications for thinking about language and the practice of philosophy"--MIT CogNet.
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