Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
9th International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics (Philang), Lodz, Polonya, 16 - 18 Mayıs 2025, (Yayınlanmadı)
Systematicity revisited
Systematicity has traditionally been defined in terms of and as a byproduct of
compositionality. (Calvo & Symons, 2014) The traditional view is associated with symbolic – encodingist – atomistic approaches to understanding conceptual representation. However, this kind of understanding doesn’t explain the emergence of new knowledge under systematic approaches. (Allen et al., 2024) Particularly rule-based approaches such as inferentialism (Peregrin, 2009), and associated model theories are left without a sufficient account of systematicity. Systematicity is key to understanding the link between intelligence – defined as capabilities of understanding, and symbolic- representational systems, such as language. (Hoyningen-Huene, 2013) Without explaining the role of systematicity in model theoretic frameworks, we lack a proper explanation that would provide a key to understanding the emergence of understanding in representational systems such as large language models. (Vaswani, 2017)
This paper is going to offer a rule based and holistic account of systematicity: functional well-formedness will be proposed to be prior to arbitrary and formal well-formedness. (Bickhard, 2007) The role of limiting constraints will be explored. I will make use of the notion of an implicit definition that is derivative from a system of premises/axioms. (Hilbert, 1902) This is fundamentally different from an explicit definition, which points to an equivalence, and requires mereological relations between atomistic parts of a system and the system itself. It will be argued that systematicity is prior to compositionality, and it is due to systematic considerations that individuable parts emerge as implicitly defined. One benefit of the offered approach will be flexibility with regards to emergence of new (abstract) objects, which allows for coherent expansion of models.
Key terms: Systematicity, compositionality, inferentialism, interactivism, model theory, implicit definition.
Bibliography
Allen, J. W., Mirski, R., & Bickhard, M. H. (2024). Beyond the mirror: An action-based model of knowing through reflection. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, 2, 1449705.
Bickhard, M. H. (2007). Language as an interaction system. New Ideas in Psychology, 25(2), 171–187.
Calvo, P., & Symons, J. (2014). The Architecture of Cognition: Rethinking Fodor and Pylyshyn’s Systematicity Challenge. MIT Press.
Hilbert, D. (1902). The Foundations of Geometry.... Authorised Translation by EJ Townsend (E. J. Townsend, Trans.). Kegan Paul & Company.
Hoyningen-Huene, P. (2013). Systematicity: The nature of science. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199985050.001.0001
Peregrin, J. (2009). Inferentialism and the Compositionality of Meaning. International Review of Pragmatics, 1(1), 154–181. https://doi.org/10.1163/187731009X455875
Vaswani, A. (2017). Attention is all you need. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. https://user.phil.hhu.de/~cwurm/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/7181-attention-is-all-you-need.pdf