In this textbook, Michael Morris offers a critical introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language. Each chapter focusses on one or two texts which have had a seminal influence on work in the subject, and uses these as a way of approaching both the central topics and the various traditions of dealing with them. Texts include classic writings by Frege, Russell, Kripke, Quine, Davidson, Austin, Grice and Wittgenstein. Theoretical jargon is kept to a minimum and is (...) fully explained whenever it is introduced. The range of topics covered includes sense and reference, definite descriptions, proper names, natural-kind terms, de re and de dicto necessity, propositional attitudes, truth-theoretical approaches to meaning, radical interpretation, indeterminacy of translation, speech acts, intentional theories of meaning, and scepticism about meaning. The book will be invaluable to students and to all readers who are interested in the nature of linguistic meaning. (shrink)

This book traces the linguistic turns in the history of modern philosophy and the development of the philosophy of language from Locke to Wittgenstein. It examines the contributions of canonical figures such as Leibniz, Mill, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, and Davidson, as well as those of Condillac, Humboldt, Chomsky, and Derrida. Michael Losonsky argues that the philosophy of language begins with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. He shows how the history of the philosophy of (...) language in the modern period is marked by a dichotomy between formal and pragmatic perspectives on language and that modern philosophy has not been able to integrate these two aspects of human language. Language as a human activity and language as a syntactic and semantic system remain distinct and competing focal points, although the interplay between these points of view has driven the development of the philosophy of language. (shrink)

The paper provides an overview of the most fundamental ideas representing analytic philosophy throughout its history from the beginning of 20th century up to now. The history of analytic philosophy is divided into two stages – the early and the contemporary ones. The main distinguishing features of early analytic philosophy are using mathematical logic as a tool of stating and solving philosophical problems, and critical attitude toward ‘metaphysics’, i.e., traditional and contemporary non-analytic philosophical theories. The genesis of (...) analytic philosophy was closely related to the revolution in logic that led to the rise of mathematical logic, and it is no coincidence that some founders of analytic tradition (first of all Frege, Russell, and Carnap) were also prominent logicians. (But there were also authors and schools within early analytic philosophy whose researches were based on less formal tools such as classical logic and linguistic methods of analysis of language. Ordinary language philosophy is an example of this type of philosophy.) Using the new logic as a philosophical tool led to a huge number of new ideas and generated a new type of philosophical criticism that was implemented in a number of projects of ‘overcoming metaphysics’. These features constituted the methodological and thematic profile of early analytic philosophy. As opposed to the later, contemporary analytic philosophy cannot be characterized by a prevailing method or a set of main research topic. Its characteristic features are rather of historical, institutional, and stylistic nature. In the paper, early analytic philosophy is represented by Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Vienna Circle (Schlick, Carnap etc.), and ordinary language philosophy (later Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, and Searle). Contemporary analytic philosophy is represented by Quine, and direct reference theory in philosophy of language (Kripke, Donnellan, Kaplan, and Putnam). (shrink)

Arguing About Language presents a comprehensive selection of key readings on fundamental issues in the philosophy of language. It offers a fresh and exciting introduction to the subject, addressing both perennial problems and emerging topics. Classic readings from Frege, Russell, Kripke, Chomsky, Quine, Grice, Lewis and Davidson appear alongside more recent pieces by philosophers or linguists such as Robyn Carston, Delia Graff Fara, Frank Jackson, Ernie Lepore & Jerry Fodor, Nathan Salmon, Zoltán Szabó, Timothy Williamson and Crispin Wright. (...) Organised into clear sections, readings have been chosen that engage with one another and often take opposing views on the same question, helping students to get to grips with the key areas of debate in the philosophy of language, including: sense and reference definite descriptions linguistic conventions language and behaviour descriptivism and rigidity contextualism vagueness rule-following and normativity fictional discourse. Each article selected is clear, thought-provoking and free from unnecessary jargon. The editors provide lucid introductions to each section in which they give an overview of the debate and outline the arguments of the papers. Arguing About Language is an ideal reader for students looking for a balanced yet up-to-date introduction to the philosophy of language. Darragh Byrne is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Birmingham, UK. Max Kölbel is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He is the author of Truth without Objectivity (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of Wittgenstein's Lasting Significance (Routledge, 2004) with Bernhard Weiss, as well as Relative Truth (Oxford, 2008) with Manuel García-Carpintero. (shrink)

This book is mainly a review of those areas of philosophy most closely associated with science. The author generally describes the positions held by representative philosophers in the analytic tradition, quoting liberally, and indicating his approval or disapproval. The review begins with philosophy of science. The scientific method is described as the process of collecting facts by observation and then using induction and deduction to set up theories with explanatory and predictive power. An exposition of the Hempel and (...) Oppenheim theory of explanation follows. George holds that the meaning of theoretical terms may or may not change when a new theory is formulated. The next subject, epistemology, begins with a discussion of the concepts of imagination, memory, knowledge, and perception. George holds that "know" means "believe with conviction." Nevertheless, he maintains that we can never know empirical propositions; only a degree of confirmation is possible. George assumes Realism, and believes that scientific knowledge can be used to solve some problems of perception. The laws of perspective, for example, explain why a penny looks elliptical. George subscribes to the correspondence criterion of truth; coherence and pragmatic utility are only tests. Davidson's views on truth and meaning usher in the philosophy of language. Various sorts of meaning are distinguished, and the work of Frege, Wittgenstein, Quine, Dummett, Carnap, Pearce, Price, Austin, Grice, Searle, Bennett, Korzybski, Morris, Osgood, and Rozeboom is reviewed. Chomsky's influence on the study of grammar is described in some detail. The book concludes with a brief survey of logic. The topics include reference and predication, the propositional and predicate calculi, many-valued logics and "fuzzy" reasoning, formalization and axiomatization, and Turing machines and neural nets. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy is difficult to define since it is not so much a specific doctrine as a loose concatenation of approaches to problems. As well as having strong ties to scientism -the notion that only the methods of the natural sciences give rise to knowledge -it also has humanistic ties to the great thinkers and philosophical problems of the past. Moreover, no single feature characterizes the activities of analytic philosophers. Undaunted by these difficulties, Avrum Stroll investigates the "family resemblances" (...) between that impressive breed of thinkers known as analytic philosophers. In so doing, he grapples with the point and purpose of doing philosophy: What is philosophy? What are its tasks? What kind of information, illumination, and understanding is it supposed to provide if it is not one of the natural sciences? Imbued with clarity, liveliness, and philosophical sophistication, Stroll´s book presents a synoptic picture of the main developments in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics in the past century. It does this by concentrating on the individual thinkers whose ideas have been most influential. Major themes in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy include: · the innovation of mathematical logic by Gottlob Frege at the close of the nineteenth century and its independent development by Bertrand Russell; · the impact of advancements in science on the world of philosophy and its importance for understanding such doctrines as logical positivism, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and eliminative materialism; · the refusal by such thinkers as Wittgenstein, Moore, and Austin to treat logic as an ideal language superior to natural languages; and · a conjecture about which, if any, of the philosophers discussed in the book will enter the pantheon of philosophical gods. Along the way, Stroll also covers the theories of Rudolf Carnap, W. V. O. Quine, Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke, John Searle, Ruth Marcus, and Patricia and Paul Churchland. Stroll´s approach to his subject treats the critical movements in analytic philosophy in terms of the philosophers who defined them. The notoriously complex realm of analytic philosophy emerges less as an abstract enterprise than as a domain of personalities and their competing methods and arguments. The book´s inventive presentations of complex logical doctrines relate them to the traditional problems of philosophy, seeking the continuity between them rather than polemical distinctions so as to bring the true differences of their respective achievements into sharper focus. (shrink)

The analytic movement advertised its 'linguistic turn' as a radical break from the two-thousand-year-old substance tradition. But this is an illusion. On the fundamental level of ontology, there is enough reformulation and presupposition of traditional 'no entity without identity' themes to analogize Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine to Aristotle as paradigmatic of modified realism. Thus the pace of ontology is glacial. Frege and Russell, not Wittgenstein and Quine, emerge as the true analytic progenitors of 'no entity without identity,' offering between (...) them at least twenty-nine private language arguments and sixty-four 'no entity without identity' theories. (shrink)

A Critical Introduction to Philosophy of Language is a historically oriented introduction to the central themes in philosophy of language. Its narrative arc covers Locke's 'idea' theory, Mill's empiricist account of math and logic, Frege and Russell's development of modern logic and its subsequent deployment in their pioneering program of 'logical analysis', Ayer and Carnap's logical positivism, Quine's critique of logical positivism and elaboration of a naturalist-behaviorist approach to meaning, and later-Wittgenstein's 'ordinary language philosophy'-inspired rejection of the (...) project of logical analysis. Thus, it historically situates the two central programs in early twentieth-century English-speaking philosophy -- logical analysis and logical positivism -- and discusses the central critiques they face later in the century in the works of Quine and the later-Wittgenstein. Unlike other secondary studies in philosophy of language, A Critical Introduction to Philosophy of Language is not just a 'greatest hits album', i.e., a discontinuous compilation in which classics in the field are presented together with their standard criticisms one after the other. Instead, Fennell develops a particular, historical-thematic narrative in which the figures and ideas he treats are introduced in highly intentional ways. And by cross-referencing them throughout his discussions, he highlights the contributions they make to the narrative they comprise. (shrink)

This is a critical review of a book that defends two basic theses about analytic philosophy--that the 'no entity without identity' ontology is basic to the four great analytic philosophers and that they were 'modified realists.' This review calls into question both of these claims. The ontological views of Frege, Russell, Quine, Wittgenstein and others are discussed as well other central issues in analytic philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2502\REVIEWS.252 : 2006-02-27 11:52 Reviews  HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS C P Philosophy / Purdue U. West Lafayette,  ,  @. Scott Soames. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Vol. : The Dawn of Analysis; Vol. : The Age of Meaning. Princeton: Princeton U. P., . Pp. xix, ; xxii, . . (hb), . (pb) for each volume. he last twenty years have (...) seen an explosion in books and papers on RusTsell ’s philosophy and its contemporary significance. There is good reason to think that this will continue as the contents of the Collected Papers are digested by Russell scholars and as more specialists contribute to the history of analytic philosophy more generally. Given all this good news, it is disconcerting to find a -page discussion of Russell, in a well-reviewed book by a first-rate philosopher, repeating many of the errors and misconceptions about Russell that scholars have worked so hard against. Soames’ discussion of Russell in the volumes under review is in fact so distressing that it alone compromises the book as a suitable introduction to the history of analytic philosophy. After briefly reviewing the outline of the two volumes, I discuss the errors concerning Russell, and conclude by drawing some lessons for Russell scholarship. Soames’ focus is on what he takes to be the most important and influential work of analytic philosophers, beginning with Moore’s Principia Ethica and ending in  with Kripke’s Naming and Necessity lectures. Kripke, in fact, marks the culmination of one of the two great achievements of analytic philos- _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2502\REVIEWS.252 : 2006-02-27 11:52  Reviews ophy that Soames sees in this period: … the two most important achievements that have emerged from the analytic tradition in this period are (i) the recognition that philosophical speculation must be grounded in pre-philosophical thought, and (ii) the success achieved in understanding, and separating one from another, the fundamental methodological notions of logical consequence, logical truth, necessary truth, and apriori truth. (: xi) Moore is credited with the methodological innovation required by (i), as once we accept that what we think we know prior to philosophical reflection is a constraint on our epistemology, Moore’s response to scepticism, which Soames endorses, inevitably follows. But even Moore, and nearly every other figure that Soames discusses, is guilty of confusing necessity, analyticity and apriority. Soames endorses Kripke’s basic point that necessity is a metaphysical concept that can come apart from the epistemic notion of apriority and the semantic category of analytic propositions. Volume  repeats this charge several times, using it to undermine Moore’s views on ethics in Part One, Russell’s conception of analysis in Part Two, and logical positivism in Part Three. It is noteworthy that Soames takes Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic as representative of logical positivism, ignoring contemporary scholarship on the Vienna Circle just as much as he ignores Russell scholarship. Part Four reconstructs Wittgenstein’s views in the Tractatus and Volume  ends with a discussion of Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. The second volume begins with a part on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. This paves the way for Soames’ discussion of ordinary language philosophy in Parts Two and Three, which Soames sees as closely tied to the later Wittgenstein. Ryle’s Concept of Mind, Strawson’s early views on truth, Hare’s theory of goodness as well as Malcolm’s paradigm-case argument and Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia are investigated in these chapters. Part Four presents Grice’s theory of conversational implicature as the final nail in the coffin of ordinary language philosophy. In Part Five, Soames returns to Quine, this time discussing the ambitious arguments of Word and Object and the more general project of naturalized epistemology. Part Six articulates Davidson’s program for constructing a theory of meaning for natural languages along the lines of a Tarskistyle theory of truth, and Volume  ends with an extended discussion of the promise and limitations of Kripke’s Naming and Necessity. The material on Russell is entirely confined to four chapters in Volume : Chapter : “Logical Form, Grammatical Form, and the Theory of Descriptions ”, Chapter : “Logic and Mathematics: The Logicist Reduction”, Chapter : “Logical Constructions and... (shrink)

In this book Dummett develops the view of his essay "Truth" that a full development of the Wittgensteinian "meaning-as-use" view of language will displace truth from its central position in the philosophy of language in favor of verifiability. He adds the provision, however, that one must first liberalize the extreme constructivism in favor of a suitably nonpsychologistic intuitionism. His view gradually emerges in a careful reconstruction and criticism of the most viable and coherent of Frege’s positions in philosophic logic. (...) In the process the views of Russell, Quine, Geach, Strawson, and Wittgenstein are measured, winnowed, and assessed; even Kripke’s recent claims about names and identity are dismissed in an appendix, though this is one of the few parts of the book that does not seem to compel agreement. Though undoubtedly the most masterful book ever written about Frege, and a joy to read, one can hardly call it a definitive intellectual biography: there is only one direct quote from Frege and no footnotes. But it just may be the most solid and brilliant reflection currently available on the core philosophic problems of the last hundred years.—J.L. (shrink)

By John R. Searle Copyright John R. Searle I. Naturalizing Language I believe that the greatest achievements in philosophy over the past hundred or one hundred and twenty five years have been in the philosophy of language. Beginning with Frege, who invented the subject, and continuing through Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin and their successors, right to the present day, there is no branch of philosophy with so much high quality work as the philosophy of language. In (...) my view, the only achievement comparable to those of the great philosophers of language is Rawls’s reinvention of the subject of political philosophy (and therefore implicitly the subject of ethics). But with this one possible exception, I think that work in the philosophy of language is at the top of our achievements. Having said that, however, I have to record a serious misgiving I have about the subject. The problem is that its practitioners in general do not treat language as a natural phenomenon. This may seem a strange charge to make, given that so many contemporary and recent philosophers of language are anxious to emphasize the empirical character of their theories of language. Quine and Davidson are striking examples of resolute empiricism. My objection is that few contemporary and recent philosophers of language attempt to treat language as a natural extension of non-linguistic biological capacities. Language is not seen as continuous with, nor as an extension of, the rest of our specifically human biological inheritance. I think there is a deep reason, both historically and intellectually, why language has not been treated naturalistically. It is.. (shrink)

Philosophy of language explores some of the fundamental yet most technical problems in philosophy, such as meaning and reference, semantics, and propositional attitudes. Some of its greatest exponents, including Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell are amongst the major figures in the history of philosophy. In this clear and carefully structured introduction to the subject Gary Kemp explains the following key topics: the basic nature of philosophy of language and its historical development early arguments concerning (...) the role of meaning, including cognitive meaning vs expressivism, context and compositionality Frege’s arguments concerning sense and reference; non-existent objects Russell and the theory of definite descriptions modern theories including Kripke and Putnam; arguments concerning necessity, analyticity and natural kind terms indexicality, context and modality. What are indexicals? Davidson’s theory of language and the ‘principle of charity’ propositional attitudes Quine’s naturalism and its consequences for philosophy of language. Chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of language and will be particularly useful for students coming to the subject for the first time. (shrink)

Context is mainly a critical history of one of the central strands – arguably, the central strand – of the analytic tradition in philosophy, namely, the philosophy of language. Key figures that put in an appearance include Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Ayer, Hempel, Tarski, Quine, Davidson, Putnam, and Dewey, the last being a somewhat odd figure, given the general tenor of Callaway’s cavalcade of stars. Meaning and analysis are the focus of attention, and true to his title, Callaway (...) doesn’t hesitate to criticize various positions as he makes his way – the book is organized more or less chronologically – from Frege to Davidson and Putnam. More than that, though, he doesn’t content himself with merely negative criticism. Original positions on various issues are argued for and integrated into an approach that’s largely inspired by Quine, but also pays a large tribute to Davidson and Dewey. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy’s Second Revolution: Early and Recent Analytic Philosophy by D. S. Clarke, and: The Rise of Analytic Philosophy ed. by Hans-Johann Glock, and: Early Analytic Philosophy: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein. Essays in Honor of Leonard Linsky by William W. TaitCharles LandesmanD. S. Clarke. Philosophy’s Second Revolution: Early and Recent Analytic Philosophy. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997. Pp. xii + 232. Cloth, $42.95. (...) Paper, $19.95.Hans-Johann Glock, editor. The Rise of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiv + 95. Paper, $19.95.William W. Tait, editor. Early Analytic Philosophy: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein. Essays in Honor of Leonard Linsky. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997. Pp. viii + 291. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $26.95.A remark once made by a justice of the Supreme Court about pornography may also apply to analytic philosophy: one can’t define it, but one knows it when one sees it. Can one do better than this? For D. C. Clarke, Western philosophy has undergone two revolutionary breaks with its past: the first initiated by Descartes directed against classical philosophy and the second initiated at the turn of this century that came to be known as analytic philosophy. (Continental philosophy is barely mentioned. Heidegger is briefly referred to as a bad example of a philosopher who “employs vacuously general language better designed for expressing attitudes than for advancing claims vulnerable to criticism” [192].) A revolutionary shift of framework, for Clarke, eliminates a whole set of problems. Even though the problems discussed by analytic philosophers seem similar to many of those discussed by Plato and Descartes, in fact the relation is tenuous, and current problems have new meanings (190).Clarke offers little help in defining analytic philosophy for “we find today the clear sense of purpose of analytic philosophy which flourished forty years ago being replaced by a variety of programs sharing no easily discernible common thread” (xi). It looks as if the revolutionary élan has been replaced by business as usual. Clarke’s volume is not, however, a history of analytic philosophy but a survey intended for students and the general reader of the views of analytic philosophers on a selected group of problems: approaches to language, the relation of mind to body, the nature of belief, knowledge, and understanding, the relation between philosophy and science, ethics, and philosophical method. Clarke discusses each issue with clarity and insight and argues for his own views, which are always interesting. He criticizes the current tendency in analytic philosophy toward excessive specialization and argues that the special task of philosophy is to search for a framework capable of integrating various aspects of culture. He emphasizes the importance of the study of the history of philosophy: “The central concepts of any integrating framework are few.... The history of philosophy is an indispensable aid in providing such understanding in choosing those [End Page 481] concepts that can serve this function in the present” (191). This book can be recommended for courses in analytic philosophy and in the history of philosophy in the twentieth century.Most of the essays in the volume edited by Glock are concerned to advance ways of characterizing analytic philosophy. Most of them reject Dummett’s claim that analytic philosophy is distinguished by its concern with explaining thought by giving an account of language. In his essay, Dagfinn Føllesdal recognizes the difficulty of constructing any useful classification of intellectual trends. Because analytical philosophy cannot be characterized by reference to doctrines or problems, he proposes to distinguish it by reference to its approach to philosophical problems: “analytic philosophy is very strongly concerned with argument and justification. An analytic philosopher asks: what reasons are there for accepting or rejecting this position?” (7). The interest in language is merely an offshoot of this more fundamental concern. It follows that “the analytic/non-analytic distinction runs across other divisions.... Whether one is an analytic philosopher depends on what importance one ascribes to argument and justification” (14). Thus Aquinas and Descartes, among others, count as analytic philosophers but not Heidegger or Derrida because “they predominantly make use of rhetoric” (12). Føllesdal thinks that there are ethical reasons for being an analytic philosopher... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 131-136 [Access article in PDF] Language, Logic, and Recovery:A Commentary on van Staden Paul Falzer and Larry Davidson Keywords: analytic philosophy, experience, Frege, ordinary language, psychosis, psychotherapy. VAN STADEN'S PAPER, "Linguistic Markers of Recovery," takes on a formidable task. As he explains it, findings from a previously conducted empirical study suggest that recovery from a psychiatric condition can be predicted by (...) certain patterns of first person pronoun usage. His current paper explains how these patterns follow the mathematical logic of Gottlob Frege. van Staden's attempt to systematize the link between language and treatment outcome shows promise. We want to support his effort by raising a few caveats about the application of foundational systems in psychiatry and psychology, particularly the advisability of employing a logical system to explain recovery from mental illness. Along the way, we will be identifying related issues that the author may elect to take up in his future work.van Staden's proposal is inspired by Frege's logical system, but the paper is, at the very least, an innovative adaptation. There are various points where we are left to wonder just how much of this proposal is really Frege's. Nevertheless, the genesis of van Staden's ideas is so dependent that one would expect a fuller account of Frege's pivotal role in the development of modern logic, how his work precipitated what is known commonly as the linguistic turn, and why a logical system that was so well received when first articulated was eclipsed so quickly by Russell's Principia (1963) and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. (1981) These issues can be addressed separately and perhaps they should, because lacking an account of how Frege's philosophy developed and evolved makes the presentation appear somewhat sketchy and incomplete.Frege is portrayed in philosophical lore as the founder of modern logic and a pioneer of the movement that later became known as analytic philosophy. Dummett (1991) regards Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic (1968) as analytical philosophy's first work (p. 111). According to Quine (1955), "All modern logic owes an incalculable debt to Frege. If anyone can be singled out as the founder of mathematical logic, it is by all odds he" (p. 158). Rorty (1967) notes that analytic philosophy's tack of construing philosophical questions as turning on language use and construction challenges the entire tradition, from Parmenides forward. However, the challenge reaches fruition not in Frege, but in works of Moore, Wittgenstein, and Austin. Rather than [End Page 131] sharing the limelight with the great analytic philosophers, Frege has become somewhat of a peripheral figure, whose contribution is usually portrayed as transitional. In some respects, analytic philosophy was moving against Frege's, and later, Russell's logical systems as it was concomitantly countering the various strands of idealism expounded principally by Bradley and McTaggart (see Hacker 1996, 5-12). Almost from the outset, Fregean logic was caught in a cross fire, and the author is obligated to tell us why we should be attending to the pristine version and not the more fully developed approaches that came soon after.Such a justification undoubtedly would begin with the dictum most central to Frege's philosophical thought, that propositions are primary. For Kemp (1998), this declaration carries two interrelated implications: Logical propositions are the real bearers of truth and falsity, and reasoning is a movement from one judgment to another (see p. 218). Frege posits that propositions are independent of mind, grammar, and language use. Knowledge and cognition are embodied in, but do not predicate, judgment. Frege adamantly rejects the notion that philosophical concepts are grounded in psychological phenomena, such as perception, sense impression, and some traditional accounts of meaning. This is the doctrine known as psychologism, and Frege abjures the suggestion that psychology can contain the sciences or adjudicate their findings (Frege 1956; for a discussion of this doctrine, see Notturno 1989; Davidson 1988; Davidson and Cosgrove 1991). The dictum that propositions are primary dispels the commonly held idea that reasoning begins with perception and proceeds... (shrink)

There are nine chapters: Chapter 1 introduces an analogy between philosophy and sherry-making to show that the historical tradition flavors the new analytic one. It then takes note of the difficulty of any general definition of analytic philosophy, and thus introduces the book’s methodology: examining the positions of some notable analytic philosophers so that the reader can grasp the family resemblance concept of analytic philosophy. Chapter 2 deals primarily with the role of Russell’s logic, touching on ideal (...) languages, definite descriptions, Frege and the problem of identity, and logical atomism. Chapter 3, “Logical Positivism and the Tractatus,” curiously devotes fifteen pages to Russell before turning to its eponymous topic, the Tractatus, and to Carnap. Chapter 4 is devoted to Moore, chapter 5 to the later Wittgenstein, chapter 6 to Ryle and Austin, chapter 7 to Quine, chapter 8 to direct reference theories. The concluding ninth chapter evaluates the contribution of analytic philosophy; argues that Wittgenstein alone will be history’s great philosopher of the century; considers briefly some current trends, identity theory and functionalism; and finally predicts that philosophy will continue to play an important role in the humanities in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 85 RUSSELL’S CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE James Connelly Philosophy, Trent U. Peterborough, on k9l 1z6, Canada [email protected] Graham Stevens. The Theory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language. Basingstoke, uk: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. xiii, 197. isbn: 978-0230 -20116-3. £50; us$85. ver the past decade, Graham Stevens has built his reputation as a lucid, durable, and oftentimes ground-breaking historian of analytic philosophy. (...) His latest book, entitled TheTheory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language, will only add to that burgeoning scholarly legacy. If it has not been established already, this book will doubtless cement Stevens’ place amongst the leading Russell scholars in the world today. It may very well herald Stevens ’ arrival on the scene as a noteworthy contributor to contemporary philosophy of language as well. The central goal of the book is “to bring the historical and purely philosophical analyses of [Russell’s] work into closer alignment” (p. 3). Stevens hopes to overcome a “striking disparity” (p. 2) in the ways that Russell’s contributions to the philosophy of language have been conceived by expositors of his philosophy, on the one hand, versus philosophers of language, on the other. In particular, though contemporary philosophers of language would tend to view Russell’s enormous contribution to that subject as being “undeniable” (p. 1), and to be “bewildered” (p. 94) by any suggestion to the contrary, expositors of Russell’s philosophy have nevertheless been at pains to emphasize that Russell “was not engaged in the philosophical study of language” (p. 2). As Stevens notes, this situation is especially puzzling since “these two groups [of scholars] overlap to a considerable extent” (p. 2). Stevens’ strategy for overcoming this disparity is two-pronged. First he aims to tackle, head on, the fallacious arguments of Monk,1 Dummett,2 and others, to the effect that Russell was not engaged in the philosophy of language. According to Stevens, such arguments have principally appealed to either (1) ______ 1 Ray Monk, “What Is Analytical Philosophy?”. 2 Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language. l= 86 Reviews Russell’s dismissal of ordinary language philosophy, (2) his early, non-linguistic, conception of the nature of propositions, or (3) his view that natural language was inherently defective for philosophical purposes, and so called for replacement by a “logically perfect language”. In regards to (1), Stevens argues in a word that “[o]rdinary language philosophy has had its day” (p. 176). Over the past several decades, in other words, leading philosophers of language have come to agree with Russell in viewing ordinary language philosophy as “an outdated, and rather eccentric, relic of mid-twentieth century British philosophy” (ibid.).The classic Russell– Strawson debate over the question whether ordinary language lacks an exact logic3 has been settled decisively in Russell’s favour, as philosophers of language have transformed “the attempt to systematically specify the semantics of large regions of natural language” (ibid.) into a “central project” (ibid.). In regards to (2), moreover, Stevens notes that by this line of reasoning, absurdly, David Kaplan would not qualify as a philosopher of language since he “explicitly invokes the Russellian non-linguistic conception of a proposition as the conception appropriate for providing the content of properly context-situated indexical sentences” (p. 170). And, of course, Kaplan is not at all unique amongst contemporary philosophers of language in appealing to a Russellian conception of propositional content, as the examples of Nathan Salmon,4 Scott Soames,5 and many others show. In regards to (3), finally, Stevens argues that Russell’s dim view of natural language was grounded in his conception of logical form as non-linguistic, and that that conception, in turn, derives simply from the poverty of syntactic theory available to Russell, prior to the Chomskyian revolution in linguistics during the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the conceptual and analytic resources made available by this revolution, however, there exists “no insurmountable obstacle to assimilating Russell ’s notion of logical form to something akin to the modern notion of lf” (p. 172), where lf is conceived as one of four levels of syntactic representation within Chomsky’s Government and Binding Theory... (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is Andrej Ule’s book Osnovna filozofska vprašanja sodobne logike [Basic Philosophical Questions of Contemporary Logic] from 1982. Specifically, I focus on his assessment of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein’s views on the ontological status of logic and its apriority. Ule claims that all three thinkers failed because they did not take into account the role a human being plays in this as the creator of language. In this assessment, I recognize the rejection of metaphysics and (...) the linguistic approach to philosophical issues that were characteristic of analytic philosophy in the past. I shortly describe this position and the role that the discussed authors played in its development. I conclude with my own assessment of the proposed views based on the contemporary, metaphysics-friendly position. (shrink)

This book explores the nature of meaning, primarily through readings of the work of Walter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Alexander Stern offers a critical analysis of Benjamin's philosophy of language, finding in it a common root with Wittgenstein's thought on language, and traces the historical foundation of both accounts of meaning to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy. Benjamin's theory of language is notoriously dense and obscure. In elucidating it, Stern emphasizes Benjamin's attempt to reorient the Kantian project around (...) language-the medium in which knowledge is expressed-and his concern with the logical understanding of language gaining credence in the work of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege. The result is a radical model of the relationship between language, experience, and the world that sees "absolutely everything" as linguistic in a broadened sense and which sees the logical or designative capacities of language as grounded in an aesthetic foundation. Wittgenstein and Benjamin are read in the book as complementary to one another, sharing comparable critiques of empiricism and comparable accounts of concept use, linguistic understanding, and the relation between experience and language. Although this similarity breaks down over Wittgenstein's account of the "experience of meaning," which is subordinated to his account of meaning as use, Stern argues that Benjamin's theory of language can productively address some unresolved issues in Wittgenstein's understanding of meaning. (shrink)

The contours of contemporary philosophy are difficult to trace. How can we orient ourselves among authors such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Foucault, Derrida, Adorno, Benjamin, Deleuze, Agamben, Zizek, Badiou , Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin, Putnam, Davidson, Rorty, Kripke, McDowell or Cavell? How can we orient ourselves among terms such as phenomenology, analytical philosophy, existentialism, pragmatism, feminism, postmodernism, Nietzscheanism, naturalism, materialism or cognitivism? Presenting a journey through figures and movements of contemporary philosophy, this (...) book suggests an answer, supporting the reader's personal exploration. (shrink)

For fifty years, Willard Van Orman Quine's books and articles have stimulated intense debate in the fields of logic and the philosophy of language. Many scholars in fact, regard Quine as the greatest living English-speaking philosopher; yet his views remain widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. This book provides the first major explication and defense of Quine's systematic philosophy and is ideally suited for use as a required or supplementary text in a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in (...) philosophy and linguistics.The book explores the far-reaching implications of Quine's views on language for contemporary analytic philosophy. It is unique in providing a lucid and rich description and reconstruction of the historical context from which Quine's work grew, focusing in particular on the role that Russell and Wittgenstein played in shaping the problems inherited by Quine. It presents Quine's difficult later views in an accessible fashion, bringing out as no other study has the very radical nature of his position. One of the book's highlights is its careful examination and assessment of Tarski's theory of truth as it relates to the traditions of Russell and Wittgenstein and to Quine's own philosophy.George D. Romanos took his Ph.D. in philosophy under George D. W. Berry and Paul T. Sagal at Boston University. This book grew out of his dissertation with the active criticism and support of Quine himself. (shrink)

Chisholm, R. M. Sentences about believing.--Cornman, J. W. Intentionality and intensionality.--Marras, A. Intentionality and cognitive sentences.--Chisholm, R. M. Notes on the logic of believing.--Luce, D. R., Sleigh, R. C., and Chisholm, R. M. Discussion on "Notes on the logic of believing."--Lycan, W. G. On intentionality and the psychological.--Hempel, C. G. Logical analysis of psychology.--Carnap, R. Logical foundations of the unity of science.--Nagel, T. Physicalism.--Ryle, G. Dispositions.--Sellars, W. Empiricism and the philosophy of mind.--Chisholm, R. M. and Sellars, W. The Chisholm-Sellars (...) correspondence on intentionality.--Aune, B. Thinking.--Bergmann, G. Intentionality.--Sellars, W. Notes on intentionality.--Frege, G. On sense and nominatum.--Russell, B. On denoting.--Carnap, R. The analysis of belief sentences.--Putnam, H. Synonymity, and the analysis of belief sentences.--Quine, W. V. O. Quantifiers and propositional attitudes.--Linsky, L. Substitutivity and descriptions.--Hintikka, J. Semantics for propositional attitudes.--Rosenthal, D. M. and Sellars, W. The Rosenthal-Sellars correspondence on intentionality.--Bibliography (p. 505-523). (shrink)

Many beginning students in philosophy of language find themselves grappling with dense and difficult texts not easily understood by someone new to the field. This book offers an introduction to philosophy of language by explaining ten classic, often anthologized, texts. Accessible and thorough, written with a unique combination of informality and careful formulation, the book addresses sense and reference, proper names, definite descriptions, indexicals, the definition of truth, truth and meaning, and the nature of speaker meaning, as addressed (...) by Frege, Kripke, Russell, Donnellan, Kaplan, Evans, Putnam, Tarski, Davidson, and Grice. The explanations aim to be as simple as possible without sacrificing accuracy; critical assessments are included with the exposition in order to stimulate further thought and discussion. Philosophy of Language will be an essential resource for undergraduates in a typical philosophy of language course or for graduate students with no background in the field. It can be used in conjunction with an anthology of classic texts, sparing the instructor much arduous exegesis. ContentsFrege on Sense and Reference • Kripke on Names • Russell on Definite Descriptions • Donnellan's Distinction • Kaplan on Demonstratives • Evans on Understanding Demonstratives • Putnam on Semantic Externalism • Tarski's Theory of Truth • Davidson's Semantics for Natural Language • Grice's Theory of Speaker Meaning. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the historical relationship between phenomenology and the emerging analytic tradition. We pay particular attention to the reception of Husserl’s work by Russell, Moore, and others, and to some convergences between phenomenology and ordinary language philosophy, noted by Wittgenstein, Austin, and Ryle. Focusing on Russell and Ryle, we argue that the historical details suggest an alternative parsing of the ways to the “parting of the ways” narrative made famous by Dummett but also committed to by (...) many others, in which we start from a common source or origin only to have two increasingly divergent inheritances of philosophy that have next to nothing in common, like the Rhine and the Danube. We will show that the period thought to be prior to the “gulf” does not evince the sort of philosophical unity and commonality of purpose sometimes ascribed to it, and that the period of socio-political institution of the ‘divide’ post World War Two, is both historically and philosophically much more complicated than is usually thought, with the ostensible rivers being rather more intertwined than is often supposed. (shrink)

The most influential philosopher in the analytic tradition of his time, Willard Van Orman Quine changed the way we think about language and its relation to the world. His rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his scepticism about modal logic and essentialism, his celebrated theme of the indeterminacy of translation, and his advocacy of naturalism have challenged key assumptions of the prevailing orthodoxy and helped shape the development of much of recent philosophy.This introduction to Quine's philosophical ideas provides philosophers, students, (...) and generalists with an authoritative analysis of Quine's lasting contributions to philosophy. The major themes covered include the adaptation of the language of modern logic to formulate a criterion of ontological commitment; Quine's own ontological commitments; Duhemian-Holistic empiricism and the attendant rejection of a priori knowledge; the nature and grounds of logical truth; Quine's criticisms of such notions as meaning, synonymy, analyticity, and necessity; the conjecture of the indeterminacy of translation; modal logic; propositional attitudes; and Quine's work on naturalized epistemology.Quine's ideas throughout are contrasted with more traditional views, as well as with contemporaries such as Frege, Russell, Carnap, Davidson, Field, Kripke, and Chomsky, enabling the reader to grasp a clear sense of the place of Quine's views in twentieth-century philosophy and the important criticisms of them. (shrink)

This important book proposes a new account of the nature of language, founded upon an original interpretation of Wittgenstein. The authors deny the existence of a direct referential relationship between words and things. Rather, the link between language and world is a two-stage one, in which meaning is used and in which a natural language should be understood as fundamentally a collection of socially devised and maintained practices. Arguing against the philosophical mainstream descending from Frege and Russell to Quine, Davidson, (...) Dummett, McDowell, Evans, Putnam, Kripke and others, the authors demonstrate that discarding the notion of reference does not entail relativism or semantic nihilism. A provocative re-examination of the interrelations of language and social practice, this book will interest not only philosophers of language but also linguists, psycholinguists, students of communication and all those concerned with the nature and acquisition of human linguistic capacities. (shrink)

A milestone in Wittgenstein scholarship, this collection of essays ranges over a wide area of the philosopher's thought, presenting divergent interpretations of his fundamental ideas. Different chapters raise many of the central controversies that surround current understanding of the Tractatus, providing an interplay that will be particularly useful to students. Taken together, the essays present a broader and more comprehensive view of Wittgenstein's intellectual interests and his impact on philosophy than may be found elsewhere.The thirteen chapters treat topics from (...) both periods of Wittgenstein's work: More than half are devoted to his early thought, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of 1921, reflecting a growing interest today among philosophers in reexamining this seminal book, while three chapters treat the Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953. The remaining chapters discuss such "nonstandard" topics as philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and anthropology.Contents: The Early Wittgenstein and the Middle Russell, Kenneth Blackwell; Frege and Wittgenstein, Michael Dummett; Wittgenstein and the Theory of Types, Hide Ishiguro; The So-called Realism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Brian McGuinness; The Logical Independence of Elementary Propositions, David Pears; The Rise and Fall of the Picture Theory, Peter Hacker; The Picture Theory and Wittgenstein's Later Attitude to It, Erik Stenius; Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy of Mind, Anthony Kenny; A Theory of Language?, G. E. M. Anscombe; Im Anfang war die Tat, Peter Winch; Wittgenstein's Full Stop, D. Z. Phillips; Quote: Judgments from Our Brain, Paul Ziff; Wittgenstein and the Fire Festivals, Frank Cioffi, Index.Irving Block is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at The University of Western Ontario. (shrink)

The most influential philosopher in the analytic tradition of his time, Willard Van Orman Quine changed the way we think about language and its relation to the world. His rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his scepticism about modal logic and essentialism, his celebrated theme of the indeterminacy of translation, and his advocacy of naturalism have challenged key assumptions of the prevailing orthodoxy and helped shape the development of much of recent philosophy. This introduction to Quine's philosophical ideas provides philosophers, (...) students and generalists with an authoritative analysis of his lasting contributions to philosophy. Quine's ideas throughout are contrasted with more traditional views, as well as with contemporaries such as Frege, Russell, Carnap, Davidson, Field, Kripke and Chomsky, enabling the reader to grasp a clear sense of the place of Quine's views in twentieth-century philosophy and the important criticisms of them. (shrink)

This book deals with a major problem in the study of language: the problem of reference. The ease with which we refer to things in conversation is deceptive. Upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that we hardly ever tell each other explicitly what object we mean, although we expect our interlocutor to discern it. Amichai Kronfeld provides an answer to two questions associated with this: how do we successfully refer, and how can a computer be programmed to achieve this? Beginning (...) with the major theories of reference, Dr Kronfeld provides a consistent philosophical view which is a synthesis of Frege's and Russell's semantic insights with Grice's and Searle's pragmatic theories. This leads to a set of guiding principles, which are then applied to a computational model of referring. The discussion is made accessible to readers from a number of backgrounds: in particular, students and researchers in the areas of computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and the philosophy of language will want to read this book. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 196-210 [Access article in PDF] On Philosophy as Therapy:Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Autobiographical Writing Garry Hagberg IN HIS LATER PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS Wittgenstein was exquisitely sensitive to the misleading implications housed within the formulations of philosophical questions. The question with which he opened the Blue Book, "What is the meaning of a word?," the question "What is thinking?," and the question "What constitutes understanding?," (...) each put into place presumptions concerning how an answer is going to proceed: in the first, that the meaning will be an entity of some kind—likely of an ontological kind different from the acoustical or calligraphic sensory property of the word (to which we will then think the meaning attached); in the second, that thinking will be in essence a determinate mental process or event—likely one of an ontological kind different from that of speaking (to which we will then picture thinking as prior); in the third, an inner process culminating in a state that is metaphysically hidden from all things outer and that is the inner condition that lies unreachable behind what we will then call the behavior that is contingently correlated with it. It is by now no secret that each of these questions has been subjected to thorough scrutiny throughout the writings in The Blue and Brown Books, Philosophical Investigations, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Zettel, and even more extensively in the typescripts and manuscripts from which these are taken. 1 But it is still perhaps less widely realized than it might be that the very phrase "Wittgenstein's method" can easily prove as misleading as each of the above questions, and there is an aspect of irony waiting to dawn on those who reflect that the modern philosopher most concerned to maintain a philosophically relevant mindfulness about front-loaded [End Page 196] implications is perhaps too often not afforded precisely the mindfulness about his own later philosophical writings that he was most concerned to teach.The phrase "Wittgenstein's method" might well lead us to expect, in the first place, a unitary way of contending with philosophical difficulties that is employed across the board; in the second place, it might lead us to expect an acceptance of a set of perennial problems as framed by philosophers through the ages that are treated with that unitary method; and in the third place, it might lead us to expect a set of solutions to those time-honored questions providing answers formulated in a way parallel to, if different from, those worked out by Frege, Russell, Quine, or many others before and since. Indeed, such an expectation has often outlived the recognition that Wittgenstein's own writings are presented in a piecemeal way that seems not to offer any such overarching method or any such problem-accepting concisely formulated answers; some have simply assumed that, while Wittgenstein himself did not or could not provide such results, the raw material is there, and the task of interpretation, in his case, just comes to the task of argument-and-position formulation. To load a spatial metaphor into epistemology, nothing could be further from the truth. What Wittgenstein's later writings offer us is—to put the matter in a different way misleadingly briefly—a way of seeing philosophical problems that constitutes a radical departure from the approaches of Frege, Russell, Quine, and so many others. And in enacting this departure throughout his writings from the Blue Book and the Cambridge lectures of those years through to his final remarks in On Certainty, he himself, wary of too simply or too conventionally characterizing his own ways of working, appeals to the notion of therapy. This is a fitting concept for a moment in philosophy's history of radical departure and an ensuing process of radical change.It is true that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein wrote "Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language" (4.003), and it would not be wrong to call... (shrink)

Saul Kripke is one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. His most celebrated work, Naming and Necessity , makes arguably the most important contribution to the philosophy of language and metaphysics in recent years. Asking fundamental questions – how do names refer to things in the world? Do objects have essential properties? What are natural kind terms and to what do they refer? – he challenges prevailing theories of language and conceptions of metaphysics, especially the descriptivist (...) account of reference, which Kripke argues is found in Frege, Wittgenstein and Russell, and the anti-essentialist metaphysics of Quine. In this invaluable guidebook to Kripke's classic work, Harold Noonan introduces and assesses: Kripke's life and the background to his philosophy the ideas and text of Naming and Necessity the continuing importance of Kripke's work to the philosophy of language and metaphysics. The Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kripke and Naming and Necessity is an ideal starting point for anyone coming Kripke's work for the first time. It is essential reading for philosophy students studying philosophy of language, metaphysics, logic, or the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy and the Language of the People: The Claims of Common Speech from Petrarch to Locke by Lodi NautaPatrick RysiewLodi Nauta. Philosophy and the Language of the People: The Claims of Common Speech from Petrarch to Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 275. Hardback, $39.99.What type of language should philosophers use? Granted that such things as clarity and communicative efficacy are desiderata of a good (...) language in which to philosophize, are they best achieved by inventing a specialized language or by sticking to the common language we already possess? It might seem that using familiar terms would be among the nonnegotiable starting points in philosophical theorizing. After all, how else are we to ensure that our theories make and maintain contact with the subjects that prompted us to philosophize in the first place? On reflection, however, perhaps our common language is so beset with defects—imprecision, the encoding of various prejudices, an inability to express certain types of truths, and so on—that philosophers, like specialists in other fields, have no alternative but to devise their own technical language. So, even if we agree that philosophers should use “clean tools,” as J. L. Austin famously put it, that does not settle the question of whether they should adhere to a common language or whether such a language is ill-suited for philosophical purposes.In contemporary analytic circles, the debate just rehearsed is likely to prompt thoughts of the twentieth-century back-and-forth between those who thought that philosophical advancement required developing a logically ideal language (e.g. Russell and Frege) and those who were deeply suspicious of such a project (e.g. Austin and Wittgenstein). But then, contemporary analytic philosophy tends to be pretty ahistorical. And one of the main aims, and most welcome accomplishments, of Lodi Nauta’s Philosophy and the Language of the People is to demonstrate that this type of debate is not a recent phenomenon. In particular, Nauta’s stated goal is to increase awareness of the role that a critique of language—and, in particular, an insistence upon the need to respect common language—played in helping to bring about the erosion and eventual demise of Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy.Of course, Aristotle himself was hardly indifferent to the workings of ordinary language, drawing important lessons from how we use certain words. But neither was he averse to coining new terms when ordinary Greek fell short. The example of Aristotle thus makes it clear that, as Nauta notes (16), in adjudicating between common and technical language there is plenty of room for intermediate positions that do not simply champion one or the other. This general point notwithstanding, attempts to render Aristotle’s ideas in Latin and to capture the subtleties of various proposed additions to the Aristotelean framework historically led to significant increases in the stock of technical terms used to philosophize. With this came the growing sense that philosophy had lost contact with its subject matter and lost track of its proper aim of making sense of the world of everyday experience.As Nauta suggests (4), the concern that philosophy is just so much technical tire-spinning will be all too familiar to contemporary philosophers. Much less familiar, however, is that precisely this was the complaint of many Renaissance humanist and early modern philosophers. Hence the need for Nauta’s book: over eight central chapters—book-ended [End Page 506] by an introduction and conclusion—Nauta recounts the various ways in which an insistence upon the importance of “common language” played destructive and constructive theoretical roles in the writings of a selected range of thinkers.Chapter 1 considers early humanist critiques of scholastic jargon by Francesco Petrarch and Leonardo Bruni. Chapter 2 examines Lorenzo Valla (the subject of Nauta’s previous monograph) and his attempt to cast classical Latin as the natural common language in which learned scholarship should be conducted. Chapters 3–5 survey three humanists who built differently on Valla’s foundation—Giovanni Pontano, via a genealogical approach to language and an emphasis on its role in our affective, social, and cognitive lives; Juan Luis Vives, as part of his wider views on human culture... (shrink)

The paper, drawing on articles by J. M. E. McTaggart, G. E. Moore, D. Davidson, J. L. Austin, B. Russell, A. J. Ayer and G. E. M. Anscombe, argues that the philosophy of language in the analytic tradition has developed an “inchoative“ view of time, and history is a problem as regards the existence of events in the past and how these events can be known. An alternative view is hinted at through the work of L. Wittgenstein and S. (...) Cavell. (shrink)

This is a review article of a recently published guide to the philosophy of language, Przewodnik po filozofii języka, Wydawnictwo WAM, Kraków 2016). The article presents this publication against a background of other monographs and guides devoted to the topic of the contemporary philosophy of language which have been published in English. It aims at highlighting the main issues discussed by this philosophy, as well as its relation to linguistics.

Analytic philosophy - arguably the most important philosophical movement in the 20th century - has gained a new historical self-consciousness, particularly about it's own origins. The period between 1880 and 1930 saw the most important work of its founding figures (Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein) take root and flourish. The fifteen previously-unpublished essays in this collection explore different facets of this period, with an emphasis on the vital intellectual relationship between Frege and the early Wittgenstein.

Atomic propositions and their properties are the core of the philosophy of language. To define atomic propositions, it is necessary to clarify their nature. To this end, Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein tried to understand the nature of atomic propositions by examining their unity. The question of the unity of atomic propositions has not been uniformly resolved, however. Frege and Russell largely agreed on the category and role of propositions, thinking that the object represented by a proposition is a Platonic (...) abstract entity, but they had different understandings of the unity of propositions. Wittgenstein took a different approach, holding that the object of a proposition representation is the linguistic picture entity. Based on this understanding, the problem of examining the unity of atomic propositions becomes the problem of examining the representation form and content of the proposition, thus avoiding the formal ontology of propositions. Atomic propositions are the basic unit formed by the cognitive subject in the activity of representing the world, and their nature is the unity of the transcendental intentionality of the cognitive subject and the experiential activity. (shrink)

The late 20th century saw great movement in the philosophy of language, often critical of the fathers of the subject-Gottlieb Frege and Bertrand Russell-but sometimes supportive of (or even defensive about) the work of the fathers. Howard Wettstein's sympathies lie with the critics. But he says that they have often misconceived their critical project, treating it in ways that are technically focused and that miss the deeper implications of their revolutionary challenge. Wettstein argues that Wittgenstein-a figure with whom the (...) critics of Frege and Russell are typically unsympathetic-laid the foundation for much of what is really revolutionary in this late 20th century movement. The subject itself should be of great interest, since philosophy of language has functioned as a kind of foundation for much of 20th century philosophy. But in fact it remains a subject for specialists, since the ideas are difficult and the mode of presentation is often fairly technical. In this book, Wettstein brings the non-specialist into the conversation (especially in early chapters); he also reconceives the debate in a way that avoids technical formulation. The Magic Prism is intended for professional philosophers, graduate students, and upper division undergraduates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 287 the writers is deeply and seriously involved in answering what he takes to be fundamental questions about "what there is." But at the same time, it must be said that the degree of absorption which the essays reveal has about it an air of quaintness, as if, in reading them, one had suddenly discovered a community of people who spoke nothing but Elizabethan English. For the (...) problems constructed and dealt with in this way emerge from some earlier philosophical clime: from the worlds of Meinong's Investigations Into the Theory of Objects and Russell's Lectures on Logical Atomism, where the talk is of "elementary propositions," "The Ideal Language," "bare particulars," "denoting," what "subsists" as distinct from what "exists," and so on. If any of the writers are aware of the contributions made to philosophy by the later Wittgenstein (mentioned briefly only once in the text, p. 89), Wisdom (not referred to at all), Austin (who appears in a footnote as a translator of Frege), Ryle (mentioned once), and Strawson, this awareness is suppressed with a ruthlessness that borders on perversity. There is clearly here no feeling for the changes that have occurred in philosophy since 1933, or any awareness of the fact that the problems, which they pose, stem to a large extent from just those presuppositions which led to the abandonment of Logical Atomism some thirty years ago./n saying these things, I am, of course, not to be understood as implying that ontological investigations per se are always to be discounted, or that "progress in philosophy is linear," but merely that the fecundity of this particular mode of investigation has long since been shown to be exhausted. Finally, it is surprising to the reviewer that the volume does not contain a paper by Professor Gustav Bergmann. Most of the authors are former students of Professor Bergmann --and their work coincides with the scope of his own interests, as well as reflecting a similar approach to the problems being dealt with. To some extent, however, this omission is more apparent than real since he is mentioned frequently in the text--and, unless I have miscounted, some thirty-seven times in the footnotes. AVRUM STROLL University of California, San Diego BOOK NOTES Centre International de Synth~se, XXIV" Semaine de Synth~se" L'expdrience. 28 Mai-l" Juin, 1962. Paris, Editions A. Michel [1964]. 476 pp., 8 fig. = Revue de synth~se, 3m" serie, No. 29-31, Jan.-Sept., 1963. This large volume of the Revue de Synth~se deserves special notice, even though it is impossible to give it a critical review here. Here are gathered critical, empirical reports from competent scientists and other savants, including the whole range and all the domains of knowledge, on the concrete aspects of experience which special fields and methods of knowing reveal. Viewing experience from this wide perspective, and including in it what the Germans have called Erlebnis in order to do justice to the empirical aspects of existentialism as well as of phenomenology, these scholars have performed a basic service for the sciences and for philosophy. In addition to the more traditional distinctions between cognitive, moral, aesthetic, and religious experience, there are illuminating accounts of geological and biological empiricism (relating the terrestrial sciences to nuclear and cosmic sciences), and of experience englobante as distinguished from experience objective. Such catholic empiricism, such synthetic discriminations are indeed a great contribution to contemporary discussion and to progress in philosophical vocabulary and sympathies. 288 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Among the participants in this work are: G. Bouligant, George Bastide, Jean Boisset, Olivier Lacombe, Jean Lameere, Joseph Moreau, and Jean Wahl. Many other authors have contributed briefer communications. --H.W.S. Chalus, Paul, L'homme et la religion. Recherches sur les sources psychologiques des croyances. Pal~olithique-N~olithique-Age du Bronze-Cr&e-IsraEl-Iran. Paris, Editions A. Michel, 1963. 510 pp., 22 figs., 12 pl., diagrs. = L'l~volution de l'Humanit& Biblioth~que de Synth&e Historique. S~rie compl~mentaire. 33.93 NF. This addition to the notable series of works sponsored by the Centre International de SynthOse in Paris attempts to combine the history and psychology of religion. The theme is indicated in... (shrink)

Though Mr. Lin purports to attack “Chomsky's view of language” and to defend the “common sense view of language”, he in fact attacks “views” that are basic and common to linguists, psycholinguists, and developmental psychologists. Indeed, though he cites W. V. O. Quine, L. Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin in his support, they all sharply part company from his views, Austin particularly. Lin's views are not common sense but a set of scholarly and philological prejudices that linguistics disparaged from (...) its inception as an organized science a hundred years ago. Professor [of Philosophy]: I will explain to you the secrets of language in all its wealth and complexity. (shrink)

Syntax has to do with rules that constrain how words can combine to make acceptable sentences. Semantics (Frege and Russell) concerns the meaning of words and sentences, and pragmatics (Austin and Grice) has to do with the context bound use of meaning. We can hence distinguish between three competing principles of translation: S—translation preserves the syntax of an original text (ST) in the translation (TT); M—translation preserves the meaning of an ST in a TT; and P—translation preserves the pragmatics of (...) an ST in a TT. A prominent form of P is functionalism defended by linguists and translation theorists (J.R. Firth, Eugene Nida, Susan Bassnett and many others) and historically was defended by philosophers (Russell, Ogden and Richard) but abandoned by philosophers and criticized by Wittgenstein. If we adopt M, then a TT will always say exactly what the ST says, and hence all subsequent TTs, even alternative ones produced via M, will be consistent with each other. But if we adopt P, in contrast, we have no reason to believe that the TTs will say what the ST does, and moreover they can contradict each other. If such contradictory translations are produced on the basis of the totality of empirical evidence, it results in what Quine called the indeterminacy of translation. Yet, P is not easy to reject. In many cases, translation in accordance with M where the meaning to be preserved is linguistic results in TTs that are failures. In contrast to a language focused approach to semantics, I close by following a lead in the translation theory literature of identifying text-types (genres) as a tool for identifying translatable content in an ST. To individuate text-types I identify them with disciplines, as elucidated by the 2nd century Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra. This allows for the definition of textual meaning as the discipline relative pragmatics of an ST and further for translation to proceed by way of M, while taking the intuitions that motivate P seriously. Translations that preserve textual meaning will not only have the same meaning as each other but will be pragmatically felicitous. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth CenturyA. P. MartinichScott Soames. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 1, The Dawn of Analysis. Pp. xix + 411. Vol. 2, The Age of Meaning. Pp. xxii + 479. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Cloth, $35.00, each volume.This two-volume work treats Anglo-American analytic philosophy from 1900 to roughly 1970. This means that the views of Michael Dummett, John Rawls and others (...) are not treated. Soames explains the omission in an epilogue to the second volume. Too much good philosophy on too many topics has been done recently—much of it using technical devices—to allow him or anyone else, to master more than a few parts. That seems right to me.The first volume consists of five parts: One: G. E. Moore on Ethics, Epistemology, and Philosophical Analysis; Two: Bertrand Russell on Logical and Linguistic Analysis; Three: Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus; and Four: Logical Positivism, Emotivism, and Ethics; and Five: The Post-Positivist Perspective of the Early W. V. Quine. The great figure associated with twentieth-century analytic philosophy who is missing from Volume 1, Gottlob Frege, Soames omits, because Frege's "concerns were, on the whole, more specialized and technical than the others, and for many years this limited his influence" (1:xiii n. 1). The second volume consists of seven parts: One: Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations; Two: Classics of Ordinary Language Philosophy: Truth, Goodness, the Mind, and Analysis; Three: More Classics of Ordinary Language Philosophy: The Response to Radical Skepticism; Four: Paul Grice and the End of Ordinary Language Philosophy; Five: The Philosophical Naturalism of Willard Van Orman Quine; Six: Donald Davidson on Truth and Meaning; Seven: Saul Kripke on Naming and Necessity.What does twentieth-century analytic philosophy come to? Soames thinks its "two most important achievements" are (i) the recognition that philosophical speculation must be grounded in pre-philosophical thought, and (ii) the success achieved in understanding, and separating one from another, the fundamental methodological notions of logical consequence, logical truth, necessary truth, and apriori truth" (1:xi; see also 1:298-99 and 2:252). He admirably succeeds in making the case for these judgments, although many philosophers will think that these two together do not amount to a great deal, considering all the effort expended by analytic philosophers. I think that analytic philosophy has done more; it has given philosophers many techniques for attacking conceptual problems, a great deal of information about the structure and nature of language, and has decisively refuted various theses that were once thought attractive and even obviously true. In any case, those who think that analytic philosophy, especially conceptual analysis, accomplished nothing are, I think, refuted by these volumes. In his discussion of G. E. Moore's article, "A Defense of Common Sense," Soames explains what he takes to be the first great result of analytic philosophy. Moore showed that the beliefs of common sense should often be accepted "with more confidence" than any philosophical beliefs or propositions that conflict with them, and in these cases cannot be overthrown by philosophical beliefs. For example, "The skeptic assumes that we can be certain about what knowledge is before we decide whether what we all ordinarily take to be paradigmatic cases of knowledge really are genuine" [End Page 125] (23, entire sentence is bold in the original). (Soames uses boldface type to mark all of the significant propositions discussed in the book, a nice pedagogical device.)In his discussion of Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions, Soames gives the impression that linguistic interests primarily motivated Russell. I think the motivation was primarily ontological. Russell wanted to justify ridding philosophy of nonexistent entities. The doctrines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Logical Positivism were two ways in which philosophical analysis developed. For Soames, what is most important in the Tractatus is the theory of names, and he holds, I believe, the minority belief (which I share) that properties are reducible to configurations of objects (1:206-6). What is most important in Logical Positivism is the verification theory of meaning. Strongly verifiable sentences "were supposed to be those the truth of which could, in principle, be completely established... (shrink)

Description: The book points to a new logic of singular designators based upon a close analysis of work in the area by contemporary philosophers of language. The philosophers range from Frege, Russell, Quine, Strawson and Dummett to Kripke, Hintikka, Plantinga, Kaplan, Donnellan, Searle and Burge. It is generally taken for granted that proper names are rigid designators, having no meaning content, which explains their intranslatability into other languages. However, they do have their modes of presentation that must constitute their sense. (...) There is little room for contradiction here in admitting that proper names have a sense, which does not amount to meaning. One of the advantages of this position is that it blocks the emergence of the Kripkean puzzle about belief by accepting different belief contents corresponding to a variation in the senses of the names involved. Is Kripke's distinction between rigid and non-rigid designators finally valid' the author asks, questioning the corollaries that are supposed to follow from the distinction, viz., that proper names do not have descriptive backing, and that there are contingent a priori truths. He draws our attention to predicative occurrences of proper names, in the modal context, matching corresponding occurrences of definite descriptions. His explanation of contingency, where proper names or definite descriptions are involved, is innovatively straight, simple and broad-based, at par with situations having ordinary predicates. Parts of the book have taken a final shape in response to comments by Strawson, Dummett and Burge. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree, with some rare exceptions. One of those exceptions is the broadest-brush account of what language is. Language is a system of signs used for the communication of --well, and here the agreement begins to break down--thoughts, ideas, messages, propositions or propositional contents, intentions, and a host of technical terms offer themselves to chink the cracks. A list of philosophers subscribing would be impossible to complete. Locke, Carnap, Augustine, Hobbes, Fodor, Katz, Chomsky, Derrida, --well, and on and on. (...) Easier would be to list those who dissent. Heraclitus, Wittgenstein, maybe J.L. Austin, Frank Ebersole, and NOT on and on. The first chapter lays out the view that language is a system of signs in sympathetic terms. The second provides a selection of what are usually called “ordinary language” arguments against the view--reminders about how the view requires us to think in terms which are not consistent with how we think about language and signs when we are not doing philosophy. Those arguments have been unpersuasive among philosophers, and Chapter Three begins the work of investigating separate pieces of the view in detail. Chapter Three takes up an argument for the view which is familiar among philosophers, using Jerry Fodor’s formulation: we cannot be thinking in a public, natural language, because animals and preverbal infants think with no such language. I show this argument is not an argument at all but is rather an expression of the view in question. Chapter Four takes up the argument that the relations between particular words and their meanings is arbitrary or conventional rather than natural or necessary, otherwise there would be only one language among mankind. I argue that the alternatives (conventional vs. natural or necessary) are both generated by taking the division between words and their meanings to be the division between signs and signified--in other words, the question is a result of adopting the view of language as signs. Attempts to argue for the legitimacy of the question without taking the view for granted only serve to call it into question more. In Chapter Five I investigate whether we talk in order to communicate something which is otherwise hidden and invisible. We are tempted to think that you and I talk because I cannot read your mind or you mine. Though Wittgenstein has a famous set of comments on the notion of a private language, it remains a strong temptation to think that language gives public form to something (thoughts, ideas, intentions, feelings, content, meaning) which without language would be unknowable to all but the person whose something it is. Examples help point to the incoherence of this view and show that even if it were not incoherent, remedying the invisibility of those internal whatnots would still leave us with a need for language. Chapter Six takes up a hoary question about boundaries of effability--the possibility that there are limits to what can be said which are more restrictive than what can be thought or felt. The account of language as signs provides one easy way to make sense of this idea, but investigation into examples shows the problem is not one that makes sense unless we just grant that account. Chapter Seven investigates how to make sense of the notion that there are things which are in language and other things which are not. I spell out how the view of language as signs gives us a way to think this, and then show how one reaction to finding problems with the notion resonates with Wittgenstein’s early work and with some work of Jacques Derrida, who bite similar bullets and agree that everything is language, that the limits of language are the limits of our world. I then subject that reaction to critical investigation using examples, which reveals their reaction as a rear-guard attempt to save the view of language as signs. Chapter Eight uses examples as guides toward alternative views of language, feeling our way toward what language might be if it is not a system of signs. Finally, the appendix takes up what I take to be the serious arguments against the methods I use in this work, the first two articulated by John Searle (“the assertion fallacy”) and H. P. Grice (“conversational implicature”), and another the generally unspoken belief that philosophical work is like scientific work. (shrink)

The past few decades have seen considerable interest in the history of analytic philosophy. As this field has developed, complex and provocative questions have emerged about the very nature of analytic philosophy, challenging long- standing assumptions and spawning new research paradigms. In this outstanding collection an international team of contributors examine these questions and contribute to these debates, exploring the idea of analysis, the essence and status of logic, the nature of the proposition and its linguistic expression, the (...) logical act of judgment, the distinction between external and internal relations, the possibility of category mistakes, and the demarcation of sense from nonsense. Several of the chapters shed light on the interconnections between Wittgenstein and other figures within that tradition, including Frege, Russell, Ramsey, and Ryle. Other chapters examine the interaction between analytic philosophers and members of other philosophical traditions, including Frege and Weierstrass, Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein and Bradley, Russell and the North American Pragmatists, Russell and the Neo-Kantians, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, and Heidegger and Ryle. Among the specific topics explored are Russell’s conception of the judging subject, Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following, Frege’s conception of the logical categories, and Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense. The volume also includes a book review by Gilbert Ryle – collected and published non-anonymously here for the first time – which sheds important light on the reception of Frege’s philosophy in the analytic tradition. Early Analytic Philosophy: Origins and Transformations will be of great interest to those studying and researching the history of twentieth-century philosophy, contemporary analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of language and logic. (shrink)