Papers by Gabriel Greenberg
This paper presents an analysis of face emoji (disc-shaped pictograms with stylized facial expres... more This paper presents an analysis of face emoji (disc-shaped pictograms with stylized facial expressions) that accompany written text. We propose that there is a use of face emoji in which they comment on a target proposition expressed by the accompanying text, as opposed to making an independent contribution to discourse. Focusing on positively valenced and negatively valenced emoji (which we gloss as happy and unhappy , respectively), we argue that the emoji comment on how the target proposition bears on a contextually provided discourse value endorsed by the author. Discourse values embody what an author desires, aspires to, wishes for, or hopes for. Our analysis derives a range of non-trivial generalizations, including (i) ordering restrictions with regards to the placement of emoji and text, (ii) cases of apparent mixed emotions, and (iii) cases where the lexical content of the accompanying text influences the acceptability of a face emoji.
This paper presents a new deductive argument for the strict conditional analysis of counterfactua... more This paper presents a new deductive argument for the strict conditional analysis of counterfactual conditionals, as against the dominant variably strict analysis due to Robert Stalnaker (1968) and David Lewis (1973). Counterfactual conditionals belong to a broader linguistic family of counterfactual modals. The argument offered here turns on facts about the logical interaction of counterfactual conditionals and counterfactual possibility modals (like “could” and “might”). I call this the Coordination Argument. The argument not only validates the strict conditional analysis of counterfactual conditionals, it also implies a distinctive account of their semantic relationship to counterfactual modality generally. I call this the Coordinated Analysis. This view in turn sheds light on the division of communicative labor between semantics and pragmatics in counterfactual discourse. The paper is divided into two major parts. In Section 1, I review the necessary theoretical background: the s...
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2015
This introduction aims to familiarize readers with basic dimensions of variation among pictorial ... more This introduction aims to familiarize readers with basic dimensions of variation among pictorial and diagrammatic representations, as we understand them, in order to serve as a backdrop to the articles in this volume. Instead of trying to canvas the vast range of representational kinds, we focus on a few important axes of difference, and a small handful of illustrative examples. We begin in Section 1 with background: the distinction between pictures and diagrams, the concept of systems of representation, and that of the properties of usage associated with signs. In Section 2 we illustrate these ideas with a case study of diagrammatic representation: the evolution from Euler diagrams to Venn diagrams. Section 3 is correspondingly devoted to pictorial representation, illustrated by the comparison between parallel and linear perspective drawing. We conclude with open questions, and then briefly summarize the articles to follow. 1 Types of Iconicity As early as 1868, Charles S. Peirce distinguished between at least two basic kinds of sign: symbols and icons. 1 As we shall understand these categories, SYMBOLIC 1 We use Peirce's taxonomy as the point of departure for our own, but we don't aspire to exegetical accuracy. In fact, Peirce famously distinguished up to three kinds of sign, including not only symbols and icons, but also indices. To simplify our presentation, we will only discuss the first two. Moreover, in 1868, Peirce used the term "likeness" instead of "icon", but later changed his terminology.
Consciousness and cognitions are the two central aspects of the mind. Here I’ll outline the conce... more Consciousness and cognitions are the two central aspects of the mind. Here I’ll outline the concept of cognition, and give a sense for the wide variety of mental states and processes which count as cognitive. To begin, we can say that agents have or exhibit cognition, at certain times, and not at others. Some animals, like amoebas, and other living things, like plants, probably have no cognition at all. Other animals, like humans, exhibit cognition whenever they are awake, and maybe when they sleep too. So what is it for an agent to have cognition?
Because humans cannot know one another’s minds directly, every form of communication is a solutio... more Because humans cannot know one another’s minds directly, every form of communication is a solution to the same basic problem: how can privately held information be made publicly accessible through manipulations of the physical environment? Language is by far the best studied response to this challenge. But there is a diversity of non-linguistic strategies for representation with external signs, from facial expressions and fog horns to chronological graphs. Among these alternatives, the class of pictorial representations dominate practical communication— witness the proliferation of maps, road signs, newspaper photographs, scientific illustrations, television shows, architectural drawings, and even the fleeting imagery of manual gesture.1 In such cases, what bridges the gap between the physical media of pictures and the information they manage to convey? In this paper I offer a partial answer to this question. The general thesis of this paper is that pictures are associated with thei...
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2015
spatial properties had in common by the myriad possible bizarre scenes which could project to the... more spatial properties had in common by the myriad possible bizarre scenes which could project to the same picture. As I’ll demonstrate in Section 4, these spatial properties in fact constitute a relatively natural class: they consist of all (and only) the angular locations of all low-level features like edge, surface, and color featured in the picture’s content. I call this a picture’s PROJECTIVE CONTENT (and formalize the idea in Section 4).10 So while the Projection Principle cannot explain the attributions of reference or high-level properties we normally associate with pictures, it does explain the attribution of projective content, which in turn specifies the basic angular layout 10Projective content is comparable to Kulvicki’s notion of barebones content (Kulvicki 2006, ch. 3). See Section 5 and the appendix for discussion. §1 The Projection Principle 8 of rudimentary features in pictorial space.11 We can now see why the explanatory significance of the Projection Principle runs d...
Maps are rich with potential for meaning. Their geographic contents are what enable simple acts o... more Maps are rich with potential for meaning. Their geographic contents are what enable simple acts of wayfinding, say from the grocery store to the gas station. But they can also reinforce the tectonic outlines of global ideologies, like the dominance of First World nations over the Third World.1 The many meanings of a map can be visualized as a loosely organized sequence of concentric spheres. At the center is the most strict, conventional interpretation of a map as a representation of objects and features distributed in space. The spheres of meaning radiate out from that core in degrees of social dependence and political significance.2
1. All authors contributed equally to this work. The film sequences were produced with assistance... more 1. All authors contributed equally to this work. The film sequences were produced with assistance of Judy Phu (Cinematography), Jean Tyson (Cinematography), Dylan Chapgier (Cinematography) , Nathan Mead (Assistant Camera/Gaffer), David Preggerson (Production Assistant), Jonathan Oldham (Actor), and David Atlas (Actor). We are grateful for the comments and suggestions of reviewers and colleagues, as well as audiences at the University of Oslo, Cornell, SCSMI, UCLA, and Haverford. This project was supported in part by the UCLA Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Transdisciplinary Seed Grants. Over the last century, the philosophical study of meaning, including the areas of semantics and pragmatics, has overwhelmingly focused on language. In this paper, we examine the interplay of semantics and pragmatics in the alternative domain of film— understood to include all variety of video and animation, as they appear in cinema, television, and online. Far from a marginal case, film is...
Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy
In this paper, we describe two film conventions for representing what a character sees: point of ... more In this paper, we describe two film conventions for representing what a character sees: point of view (POV) and sight link. On a POV interpretation, the viewpoint of a shot represents the viewpoint of a particular character; while in sight link, a shot of a character looking off-screen is associated with a shot of what they are looking at. Our account of both treats them as spatial in nature, and relates them to similar spatial interpretative principles that generalize beyond character eyelines. We additionally observe that whether the object shot in a sight link takes a POV interpretation depends on whether the glance shot precedes or follows it. We offer a processing account of this effect of order on interpretation, which relies on the assumption that spatial coherence in film is established by incremental viewpoint grounding.
Linguistics and Philosophy
This essay calls attention to a set of linguistic interactions between counterfactual conditional... more This essay calls attention to a set of linguistic interactions between counterfactual conditionals, on one hand, and possibility modals like could have and might have, on the other. These data present a challenge to the popular variably strict semantics for counterfactual conditionals. Instead, they support a version of the strict conditional semantics in which counterfactuals and possibility modals share a unified quantificational domain. I'll argue that pragmatic explanations of this evidence are not available to the variable analysis. And putative counterexamples to the unified strict analysis, on careful inspection, in fact support it. Ultimately, the semantics of conditionals and modals must be linked together more closely than has sometimes been recognized, and a unified strict semantics for conditionals and modals is the only way to fully achieve this.
Tagging is the phenomenon in which regions of a picture, map, or diagram are annotated with words... more Tagging is the phenomenon in which regions of a picture, map, or diagram are annotated with words or other symbols, to provide descriptive information about a depicted object. The interpretive principles that govern tagged images are not well understood, due in part to the difficulty of integrating pictorial and linguistic semantic rules. Rather than directly combining these rules, I propose to use the framework of perspectival feature maps as an intermediary representation of content, in which the outputs of pictorial and linguistic interpretation may be assimilated. The result is a simple and compositional semantics for tagged images.
Philosophical Review, 2013
The scientific study of representation in the twentieth century was driven at almost every turn b... more The scientific study of representation in the twentieth century was driven at almost every turn by the formal analysis of language. From logic, to computation, to cognitive science, our understanding of language served as a model for our understanding of representation generally. Yet there are other, nonlinguistic forms of representation as well, notably representation by pictorial images. In the realm of public communication, the use of imagistic representation is ancient in human societies and thrives without special training or tools in the form of iconic gesture. In modern industrial society, pictorial representations are ubiquitous, used to efficiently encode and transmit vast quantities of information-exemplified by maps, road signs, text book illustrations, architectural drawings, television broadcasts, and so on. In the private domain of cognition, the spatial organization of the human visual cortex strongly suggests that picturelike representation is one of the basic strategies for information manage-This essay benefited from the generous conversation and comments of many friends, colleagues, students, and teachers:
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy
Truth, or accuracy, is widely thought to be the centerpiece of any formal theory of meaning, at l... more Truth, or accuracy, is widely thought to be the centerpiece of any formal theory of meaning, at least in the study of language. This paper argues for a theory of pictorial accuracy, with attention to the relationship between accuracy and pictorial content. Focusing on cases where pictures are intended to convey accurate information, the theory distinguishes between two fundamental representational relations: on one hand, a picture expresses a content; on the other, it aims at a target scene. Such a picture is accurate when the content it expresses fits the target scene it aims at. In addition, content is thought to divide into two aspects: singular content specifies the particular individuals which a picture is of, and attributive content specifies the properties and relations which the picture ascribes to those individuals. For a picture to be accurate, both aspects must be matched in the target. I call this the Three-Part Model, because it distinguishes between a triad of factors-singular content, attributive content, and target-which together determine pictorial accuracy. Through close examination of a series of cases, I argue that each component of this model is essential in order to make sense of pictorial accuracy across a range of cases.
Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy
Truth, or accuracy, is widely thought to be the centerpiece of any formal theory of meaning, at l... more Truth, or accuracy, is widely thought to be the centerpiece of any formal theory of meaning, at least in the study of language. This paper argues for a theory of pictorial accuracy, with attention to the relationship between accuracy and pictorial content. Focusing on cases where pictures are intended to convey accurate information, the theory distinguishes between two fundamental representational relations: on one hand, a picture expresses a content; on the other, it aims at a target scene. Such a picture is accurate when the content it expresses fits the target scene it aims at. In addition, content is thought to divide into two aspects: singular content specifies the particular individuals which a picture is of, and attributive content specifies the properties and relations which the picture ascribes to those individuals. For a picture to be accurate, both aspects must be matched in the target. I call this the Three-Part Model, because it distinguishes between a triad of factors-singular content, attributive content, and target-which together determine pictorial accuracy. Through close examination of a series of cases, I argue that each component of this model is essential in order to make sense of pictorial accuracy across a range of cases.
... hit Gupta, Alex Jackson, Michael Johnson, Ben Levinstein, Karen Lewis, Kelby Mason, Ricardo M... more ... hit Gupta, Alex Jackson, Michael Johnson, Ben Levinstein, Karen Lewis, Kelby Mason, Ricardo Mena, Zachary Miller, Lisa Miracchi, Alex Morgan, Sarah Murray, Jenny Nado, Carlotta Pavese, Jessica Rett, Kevin Sanik, Adam Sennett, and Will Starr. ...
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2014
This introduction aims to familiarize readers with basic dimensions of variation among pictorial ... more This introduction aims to familiarize readers with basic dimensions of variation among pictorial and diagrammatic representations, as we understand them, in order to serve as a backdrop to the articles in this volume. Instead of trying to canvas the vast range of representational kinds, we focus on a few important axes of difference, and a small handful of illustrative examples. We begin in Section 1 with background: the distinction between pictures and diagrams, the concept of systems of represen- tation, and that of the properties of usage associated with signs. In Section 2 we illustrate these ideas with a case study of diagrammatic representation: the evolu- tion from Euler diagrams to Venn diagrams. Section 3 is correspondingly devoted to pictorial representation, illustrated by the comparison between parallel and linear perspective drawing. We conclude with open questions, and then briefly summarize the articles to follow.
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Papers by Gabriel Greenberg