Cognitive Science 108/ Linguistics 108

The Challenge of Cognitive Science to Western Philosophy

Readings (in Philosophy in the Flesh)

Reading for Tuesday, September 14, 1999: Read Chapters 6 - 9.

Homework 3

Due at the Beginning of Class Tuesday, September 7, 1999.

Ground Rules: Discuss the homework with the members of your group. No group notes are to be taken. Write up your homeworks individually. They should be in 12 point type, either 1 & 1/2 spaced or double spaced, with at least 1 inch margins. No late homeworks.

This homework is on the course website:

http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~bbergen/cs108/index.html

We suggest the following: Go to the website and download a copy of the homework. Copy the questions into a new file, and fill in your answers after each question, using a different font (e.g., put the questions in italics and the answers in roman). This way it will be clearer to the grader which answer goes with which question, and you will have an overview of all your answers to questions, one by one, at the end of the course.

Chapter 11

  1. In the following sentences, the verb "bring" is used causally. Which metaphor for causation is used in which sentence? Discuss your answer briefly.
  1. She brought me great joy.
  2. She brought me to the edge of tears.
  1. On p. 176, Narayanan's literal skeleton for event structure is given. The following are sentences with verbs and prepositions about motion that are mapped onto events by the Location Event Structure Metaphor.
  1. She reached a state of enlightenment.
  2. He set out to get elected to Congress.
  3. He is in the middle of cooking dinner.
  4. She went back to watching ER.

Tell how "reach", "set out", "be in the middle of" and "go back to" map onto Narayanan's schema.

  1. What is the difference between time and event structure? What is the relationship between time and event structure?
    2.
  2. Is the structure of events an objective feature of the world independent of any beings? Or do we impose a certain type of structure on events by virtue of the way our bodies, brains, and minds are constituted? Discuss this with respect to Narayanan's research (p. 176, pp. 581-3).
  3. What does it matter to philosophy if there are different conceptual metaphors for conceptualizing and reasoning about causation, each with a different inference pattern? How does this affect philosophers' attempt to characterize what "causation" really is?
  4. What is event-structure duality and why is it philosophically important?
    5.
  5. The following alternative analyses have been given for The Moving Activity Metaphor and The Action-Location Metaphor (pp. 204-5).
  1. Derive the Moving Activity Metaphor from the Location Event Structure Metaphor by adding the metonymy, Activities Stand for Actors.
  2. Derive the Action-Location Metaphor from the Location Event Structure Metaphor by observing that being in the Main Process of an action is a special case of being in a state and that States Are Locations in that metaphor.

Describe briefly how the mappings on pp. 204-205 would be derived in this way–if you think the analysis is right. If you think there are problems with such an analysis, describe those problems.