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Performance of Understanding: Pragmatics and Fast and Frugal Heuristics

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The Extended Theory of Cognitive Creativity

Part of the book series: Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology ((PEPRPHPS,volume 23))

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Abstract

What determines the meaning of an utterance is a logical matter and as such must be treated independently of the bio-cognitive constraints that operate in our bodies. This thesis, whose great supporter was Frege, implies a clear notion of rationality that seems not to bear comparison with what we know on the limits of our rationality. Various theories (Kahneman and Tversky 1983; Gigerenzer et al., 1999), thematizing the need to consider our rationality beginning from the bio-cognitive constraints that our body imposes on a mass of information, can be of great utility for facing the problem of what type of rationality operates in phenomena of linguistic understanding (Ferreira and Patson 2007; Christiansen and Chater, 2016). From this picture it will clearly emerge that understanding is a performance of human organisms that cannot be described without considering the effective bio-cognitive constraints at work in our actions.

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Carapezza, M. (2020). Performance of Understanding: Pragmatics and Fast and Frugal Heuristics. In: Pennisi, A., Falzone, A. (eds) The Extended Theory of Cognitive Creativity. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22090-7_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22090-7_20

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