Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind

by Chad Engelland

Overview

An examination of the role of ostension—the bodily manifestation of intention—-in word learning, and an investigation of the philosophical puzzles it poses.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262320627
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	11/07/2014
Series:	The MIT Press
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	876 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Chad Engelland is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Dallas. He is the author of Heidegger's Shadow: Kant, Husserl, and the Transcendental Turn; The Way of Philosophy: An Introduction; and Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind (MIT Press).

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Minding Ostension xv

1.1 Philosophical Question of Mind and Language xvi

1.2 Contemporary Resources xviii

1.3 Historical Resources xxi

1.4 Philosophical Investigations xxiii

1.5 Phenomenology xxiv

1.6 The Publicness of Language Logically Entails a Phenomenology of Ostension xxvii

I Contemporary Resources 1

1 The Philosophy of Action, Perception, and Play 3

1.1 The Relevance of Ostension 4

1.2 The Irrelevance of Inner Evidence 7

1.3 The Irrelevance of Communicative Intentions 8

1.4 The Need for a Phenomenological Approach to Action 9

1.5 A Sketch of the Phenomenological Account 16

2 The Science of Prelinguistic Joint Attention 21

2.1 Word Learning and Joint Attention 22

2.2 The Conceptual and Phenomenological Problem of Mind Reading 24

2.3 The Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Joint Attention 26

2.4 Mirror Neurons and Theory of Mind 28

2.5 Pragmatics, Gesture, and Accidental Information Transmission 30

2.6 Why Ostension Is Necessary 32

II Historical Resources 39

3 Wittgenstein: Ostension Make Language Public 41

3.1 Background: Wittgenstein's Method and Context 43

3.2 Ostension and the Unintelligibility of Private Languages 46

3.3 An Augustinian Emphasis on Ostension 49

3.4 An Alternative to Augustine: Disambiguating Ostension through Training 54

3.5 Ostension through Perception, Not Inference 57

3.6 Comparison with Russell 59

3.7 Ostension Cancels an Intersubjective Hiddenness 62

3.8 Conclusion 64

4 Merleau-Ponty: Gestural Meaning and the Living Body 67

4.1 Background: Merleau-Ponty's Method and Context 68

4.2 Merleau-Ponty's Account of Word Acquisition 70

4.3 The Elusive Nature of Gesturing 71

4.4 The Reciprocity of Gesturing and "Flesh" 73

4.5 Comparison with Heidegger 77

4.6 Flesh and Words 79

4.7 Conclusion 81

5 Augustine: Word Learning by Understanding the Movement of life 85

5.1 Background: Augustine's Method and Context 87

5.2 The Problem of Conversation by Convention 89

5.3 Bodily Movement, Manifestation, and Word Acquisition 92

5.4 The Ambiguity of Ostension 95

5.5 Mental Language and Word Acquisition 98

5.6 An Animate Theory of Mind 100

5.7 Conclusion 104

6 Aristotle: Natural Movement and the problem of shared understanding 107

6.1 Background: Aristotle's Method and Context 109

6.2 Sharing Intelligibility 111

6.3 The problem of shared Intelligibility 113

6.4 Sharing Attention through Bodily movement 116

6.5 Comparison with descartes 118

6.6 From Revelatory Movement to collective Intentionality 123

6.7 The Ambiguity of Ostension and the Logic of Perception 125

6.8 Conclusion 127

III Philosophical Investigations 129

7 Phenomenology: Discovering Ostension 131

7.1 Manifestation 133

7.2 Inference Lacks the Appropriate Evidence 135

7.3 Answering Objections to the Manifestation Account 139

7.4 Replacing Inner and Outer with Joint presence 143

7.5 How to Handle Appearances 146

8 Mind: The Logic of Ostension 151

8.1 A Different kind of Analogy 153

8.2 Manifestation I: Animate action Discloses affects 156

8.3 Manifestation II: Mirroring Disclosure 161

8.4 Manifestation III: Reciprocal Roles of Disclosure 163

8.5 Other Animate minds 166

9 Epistemology: Disambiguating Ostension 171

9.1 Disambiguating Ostensive Definitions 172

9.2 Disambiguating Ostension 176

9.3 The Nature of the Conversational Animal 179

9.4 Indeterminacy and the Publicness of Perception 182

9.5 Words, Identification, and Understanding 185

10 Metaphysics: Movement, Manifestation, and Language 193

10.1 Animate Movement and Joint Presence 194

10.2 Relating Mechanical and Phenomenological movement 197

10.3 The Ostensive Animal 202

10.4 Words Are Ostensive 205

10.5 Manifestation Makes Language Public 208

10.6 Philosophy's Manifest Starting point 211

11 Conclusion: The Origin of the Human Conversation 215

11.1 Behold the animate Mind 216

11.2 New Wine in new Skins 218

11.3 A Glance Back 219

11.4 The Conversation about conversation 220

Notes 223

Bibliography 269

Index 289

What People are Saying About This

Endorsement

Engelland's topic—the conceptual underpinnings of ostension and its role in language acquisition—is a fascinating and timely one that lies at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and linguistics. His book has the virtue of making it amply clear how an adequate treatment of this important topic can benefit from drawing on a broad and diverse range of sources. In navigating the rich philosophical terrain surrounding ostension, Engelland provides a suggestive and useful model for bridging the traditional divide between analytic and phenomenological approaches to mind and language.

—Dorit Bar-On, Professor of Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, University of Connecticut

From the Publisher

Nothing comes more naturally to us than reacting to someone's pointing to something or someone: in this marvelous book, with very reliable and readable chapters that draw on ideas from Wittgenstein, Augustine, Merleau-Ponty, and Aristotle, and much else besides, Chad Engelland shows us how central gestures of pointing are to our learning to speak in the first place and thus to our taking part in conversation and indeed to our whole life with language—highly recommended!

—Fergus Kerr, OP, FRSE, Honorary Fellow, Divinity School, University of Edinburgh; author of Theology after Wittgenstein

Ostension by Chad Engelland is a beautiful and exciting book that engages a truly important topic. Engelland is a trustworthy guide; he introduces the reader to an ongoing conversation—carried out by philosophers and also cognitive scientists—that is, finally, about conversation itself and its power to make present a shared world. Anyone interested in understanding the human mind will benefit from and delight in this remarkable book.

—Alva Noë, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley

Engelland's topic—the conceptual underpinnings of ostension and its role in language acquisition—is a fascinating and timely one that lies at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and linguistics. His book has the virtue of making it amply clear how an adequate treatment of this important topic can benefit from drawing on a broad and diverse range of sources. In navigating the rich philosophical terrain surrounding ostension, Engelland provides a suggestive and useful model for bridging the traditional divide between analytic and phenomenological approaches to mind and language.

—Dorit Bar-On, Professor of Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, University of Connecticut

Fergus Kerr

Nothing comes more naturally to us than reacting to someone's pointing to something or someone: in this marvelous book, with very reliable and readable chapters that draw on ideas from Wittgenstein, Augustine, Merleau-Ponty, and Aristotle, and much else besides, Chad Engelland shows us how central gestures of pointing are to our learning to speak in the first place and thus to our taking part in conversation and indeed to our whole life with language—highly recommended!

Dorit Bar-On

Engelland's topic—the conceptual underpinnings of ostension and its role in language acquisition—is a fascinating and timely one that lies at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and linguistics. His book has the virtue of making it amply clear how an adequate treatment of this important topic can benefit from drawing on a broad and diverse range of sources. In navigating the rich philosophical terrain surrounding ostension, Engelland provides a suggestive and useful model for bridging the traditional divide between analytic and phenomenological approaches to mind and language.