 Although this attitude is commonly held with respect to the rules of grammar, its application to the propositions of ethics, law, science, mathematics, and logic is more controversial.The debate on linguistic conventionalism goes back to Plato's "Cratylus" and the philosophy of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa.It has been the standard position of modern linguistics since Ferdinand de Saussure's "l'arbitraire du signe", but there have always been dissenting positions of phonosemantics, recently defended by Margaret Magnus and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran.