Abstract
Machery et al. (2004) presented data suggesting the existence of cross-cultural variation in judgments about the reference of proper names. In this paper, we examine a previously overlooked confound in the subsequent studies that attempt to replicate the results of Machery et al. (2004) using East Asian languages. Machery et al. (2010, 2015) and Sytsma et al. (2015) claim that they have successfully replicated the original finding with probes written in Chinese and Japanese, respectively. These studies, however, crucially rely on uses of articleless, ‘bare noun phrases’ in Chinese and Japanese, which according to the linguistic literature are known to be multiply ambiguous. We argue that it becomes questionable whether the extant studies using East Asian languages revealed genuine cross-cultural variation when the probes are reevaluated based on a proper linguistic understanding of Chinese and Japanese bare noun phrases and English definite descriptions. We also present two experiments on native Japanese speakers that controlled the use of ambiguous bare noun phrases, the results of which suggest that the judgments of Japanese speakers concerning the reference of proper names may not diverge from those of English speakers.
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Notes
Adopting the notational conventions in the linguistics literature, besides emphasized words, we write object-language expressions in italics. Single quotation marks are used to refer to expressions and also to introduce the meaning of an object-language expression (e.g., inu ‘dog’). Occasionally, when no confusion arises, we refer to Japanese expressions using English expressions flanked by single quotation marks in order to save space.
In this paper, we do not question the validity of Machery et al.’s reasoning here. Our focus is on the claim that there is variation in semantic judgments between Westerners and East Asians, regardless of its implications. It has been contended, however, that the traditional philosophers do not really rely on a methodological assumption that would be undermined by such findings. See Machery (2012) for a formulation of the allegedly problematic practice, the ‘method of cases’, and Deutsch (2015) for the argument that traditional philosophy is not dependent on the method, as well as Colaço and Machery (2016) for a critical discussion of Deutsch’s argument.
Since the original work used a different scale, the percentage figures here are adapted from Sytsma et al. (2015, 216).
Or English definite descriptions only have apparent scope properties and are always interpreted in situ, but the syntactically represented variables inside definite descriptions can create multiple readings (Elbourne 2013). (6A) and (6B) are still predicted to be ambiguous on the non-quantificational, presuppositional account of definite descriptions.
Whether this ambiguity relates to the intra-culture variation reported by Machery and his colleagues is a question we do not pursue here (recall that only roughly a half of the Western participants selected (B) answers in their original study).
In modern Japanese, there are three different types of demonstratives: the ko-, so-, and a- series. The proximate and distant demonstrative expressions ko- and a- roughly correspond to this and that, respectively, while the intermediate so- is often associated with the definite article the (Hoji et al. 2003).
In addition to an anaphoric reading, a sono-phrase has a deictic reading, just like English complex demonstratives. In the current experimental settings, however, there is no demonstration by a speaker, and so a deictic interpretation can be easily excluded.
See Sytsma and Livengood (2011, 321) for different ways of characterizing the roles of these added predicates. As with Sytsma and Livengood, we do not try to distinguish these different ways experimentally here.
The 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of (B) answers for each condition are: With Bare Noun Phrase (0.227, 0.406) and Without Bare Noun Phrase (0.403, 0.596). That is, these two intervals do not substantially overlap with each other, indicating that the revised question created the difference.
The values were computed using R ver. 3.2.5. The 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of (B) answers for each condition are: (i) (0.281, 0.468), (ii) (0.272, 0.458), (iii) (0.346, 0.538), (iv) (0.522, 0.709), and (v) (0.452, 0.644). We also summarize the results of \(\chi ^2\) test of independence as follows: (i vs ii: \(\chi ^{2}=0, df=1, p=1\)); (i vs iii: \(\chi ^{2}=1.9149, df=1, p= 0.1664\)); (i vs iv: \(\chi ^{2}=25.977, df=1, p=3.454e-07\)); (i vs v: \(\chi ^{2}=12.787, df=1, p=0.000349\)); (ii vs iii: \(\chi ^{2}=2.0244, df=1, p=0.1548\)); (ii vs iv: \(\chi ^{2}=26.411, df=1, p=2.759e-07\)); (ii vs v: \(\chi ^{2}=13.082, df=1, p=0.0002981\)); (iii vs iv: \(\chi ^{2}=13.475, df=1, p= 0.0002418\)); (iii vs v: \(\chi ^{2}=4.5311, df=1, p=0.03328\)); (iv vs v: \(\chi ^{2}=2.0774, df=1, p=0.1495\)).
Doing the same thing with the accompanying English translation of (14b) ‘person who really discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic (John doesn’t know this)’ seems also difficult.
Another possibility is that 55% underestimates the B answers in (v). This may not be very plausible, however, because the same condition in Experiment 1 shows a similar proportion (50%).
We thank an anonymous reviewer for alerting us to this possibility.
Of course, we by no means claim that no studies will be able to show the existence of cross-cultural variation. Our main message is that the extant research suffers from the noun phrase ambiguity.
At the same time, the current study can be seen as replicating the intra-cultural results that speakers of one and the same language have differing semantic judgments; for example, the disambiguated condition in Experiment 1 obtained a 50-50 split.
See Sung (2015) and the sources cited there.
Perhaps, non-linguistically designed probes such as visual storytelling are preferable over linguistically encoded stimuli.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank James Beebe, Kent Erickson, Edouard Machery, Alex Rausch, Takashi Yagisawa, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on earlier drafts. We are also grateful to the audiences at the 2015 Japan Forum for Young Philosophers, the 2015 Buffalo Annual Experimental Philosophy Conference, the 2016 Central APA Meeting, Queen’s University Belfast, and Soochow University. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (26770006) and for JSPS Fellows (15J06699).
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Appendix: Japanese Probes
Appendix: Japanese Probes
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Izumi, Y., Kasaki, M., Zhou, Y. et al. Definite descriptions and the alleged east–west variation in judgments about reference. Philos Stud 175, 1183–1205 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0902-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0902-9