Neuroimaging and the Search for Philosophical Groundings in Language Processing Studies

Neuroimaging-based language studies face the challenge of properly selecting linguistic units to be used as stimuli. While the selection of simple terms is relatively straightforward, abstract concepts and polysemic markers pose greater difficulties, potentially affecting the validity of the association between stimuli and the neurocognitive structures. This study addresses this problem by focusing on modality, specifically through the validation of polysemic statements using the verb tocar in Colombian Spanish. A set of modal logic proofs was developed based on existing theoretical definitions. These definitions were coupled with diverse senses of tocar as expressed in linguistic terms, formalized as axioms and then expressed as formal deductive proofs to support the categorization of statements. This process helps in maintaining the philosophical contribution to studies in the neurocognitive realm. Through an elicitation task and expert validation, a final set of 198 statements was consolidated, achieving fair agreement according to Fleiss’ Kappa statistic. It is concluded that these statements contribute to enhancing the validity of neurocognitive lexical decision tasks involving polysemic markers and their neurocognitive correlates. This work provides a deductive and replicable methodological framework that can be applied in studies framed in empirical, analytic and experimental philosophy, neurophilosophy and Cognitive science.