A Pragmatic Constructivist Perspective on Language Games

A Constructivist Perspective on Physics

This paper examines the problem of extending the programme of mathematical constructivism to applied mathematics. I am not concerned with the question of whether conventional mathematical physics makes essential use of the principle of excluded middle, but rather with the more fundamental question of whether the concept of physical infinity is constructively intelligible. I consider two kinds o...

A pragmatic perspective on the evolution of language

Predicting pragmatic reasoning in language games.

One of the most astonishing features of human language is its capacity to convey information efficiently in context. Many theories provide informal accounts of communicative inference, yet there have been few successes in making precise, quantitative predictions about pragmatic reasoning. We examined judgments about simple referential communication games, modeling behavior in these games by ass...

Argumentation by Figurative Language in Verbal Communication: a Pragmatic Perspective

This tendency reflects egocentric distance. For example, the examples in (8) show the cognitive process of semantic extension from mouth as ‘facial organ’ (i.e. something concrete) to mouth as ‘talkativeness’ (i.e. something abstract). In sum, polysemy can be significant evidence which shows that experientialist epistemology really works in language users’ mind. In other words, the developing w...

Socio-constructivist perspective on self-assessment: a case study

In this paper, our goal is to deal with self-assessment according to a socio-constructivist approach. We offer some data about different versions of the same Workshop, considered as a case study. Between the possibility to adopt a completely goal-driven or a fully goal-free self assessment, we suggest the adoption of a blended modality, in order to involve students in the learning process and m...