SGCS Claims the Objectivist Claim is Fallacious

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SGCS Claims the Objectivist Claim is Fallacious

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) has introduced a new paradigm for cognitive science based upon four decades of empirical research. This empirically derived paradigm rejects the a priori rationalizations of objectivist philosophy.

An expression in a language is considered to be semantically autonomous if that expression meaningfully stands alone on its independent terms. There are two variations of semantic autonomy: conceptual autonomy and nonconceptual autonomy.

Conceptual autonomy assumes that expressions in a language, i.e. words and phrases, express concepts, which are part of human cognition; thus it is concepts that contain meaning. Words and phrases are thus semantically autonomous provided the concept noted is semantically autonomous.

Nonconceptual autonomy assumes that concepts either do not exist or that concepts have nothing to do with meaning. Thus words and phrases acquire meaning by means of what they designate in the world.

Literal Meaning Theory:

The literal meaning theory is about language and not concepts. This theory argues that all literal language, i.e. conventional language, is semantically autonomous. This theory rests on objectivist philosophy, which argues that objective reality is independent of human cognition, i.e. it is ‘mind free’. Objectivist philosophy argues that “statements made in ordinary, conventional language are capable of being objectively true or false

The notion of “literal meaning presupposes the truth of the Literal Meaning Theory¦ This is in accord with the common philosophical view that all concepts are reflections of objective reality, and hence cannot be metaphorical.

The Objectivist Claim:

“The world comes structured in a way that is objective—independent of any minds. The world as objectively structured includes objects, properties of those objects, relations holding among those objects, and categories of those objects, properties and relation.

The objectivist claim takes for granted that “Conventional expressions in a language designate aspects of an objective, mind-free reality. Therefore, a statement must objectively be either true or false, depending on whether the objective world accords with the statement.

SGCS claims that the Objectivist Claim is fallacious because it does not recognize “that truth and falsity are relative to conceptual frameworks¦Thus it fails to recognize that a statement can be meaningful only relative to its defining framework, and it can be true or false only relative to the way we understand reality given that framework.

Do you support the objectivist claim?

Quotes from “More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor by Lakoff and Turner