This highly acclaimed book is a major contribution to the philosophy of language as well as a systematic interpretation of Frege, indisputably the father of ...

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)

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Experimental philosophy of language uses experimental methods developed in the cognitive sciences to investigate topics of interest to philosophers of language. This article describes the methodological background for the development of experimental approaches to topics in philosophy of language, distinguishes negative and positive projects in experimental philosophy of language, and evaluates experimental work on the reference of proper names and natural kind terms. The reliability of expert judgments vs. the judgments of ordinary speakers, (...) the role that ambiguity plays in influencing responses to experiments, and the reliability of metalinguistic judgments are also assessed. (shrink)

Now in its Third Edition, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction introduces students to the main issues and theories in twentieth-century philosophy of language, focusing specifically on linguistic phenomena. Author William G. Lycan structures the book into four general parts. Part I, Reference and Referring, includes topics such as Russell's theory of descriptions (and its objections), Donnellan's distinction, problems of anaphora, the description theory of proper names, Searle's cluster theory, and the causal-historical theory. Part II, Theories (...) of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic meaning and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, Pragmatics and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics and includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force. Part IV, The Expressive and the Figurative, examines various forms of expressive language and what "metaphorical meaning" is and how most listeners readily grasp it. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Language_ introduces the student to the main issues and theories in twentieth-century philosophy of language. Topics are structured in three parts in the book. Part I, Reference and Referring Expressions, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Desciptions, Donnellan's distinction, problems of anaphora, the description theory of proper names, Searle's cluster theory, and the causal-historical theory. Part II, Theories of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic meaning and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, (...) Pragmatics and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics, includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force and surveys approaches to metaphor. Unique features of the text: * chapter overviews and summaries * clear supportive examples * study questions * annotated further reading * glossary. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy of science has led to improvements in the practices and products of scientific knowledge-making, and in this way it exemplifies socially relevant philosophy of science. It has also yielded important insights and original research questions for philosophy. Feminist scholarship on science thus presents a worthy thought-model for considering how we might build a more socially relevant philosophy of science—the question posed by the editors of this special issue. In this analysis of the history, contributions, (...) and challenges faced by feminist philosophy of science, I argue that engaged case study work and interdisciplinarity have been central to the success of feminist philosophy of science in producing socially relevant scholarship, and that its future lies in the continued development of robust and dynamic philosophical frameworks for modeling social values in science. Feminist philosophers of science, however, have often encountered marginalization and persistent misunderstandings, challenges that must be addressed within the institutional and intellectual culture of American philosophy. (shrink)

In his early lecture courses, Martin Heidegger exhibited an abiding interest in human life. He believed that human life has philosophical import while it is actually being lived; language has philosophical import while it is being spoken. In this book, Scott Campbell traces the development of Heidegger's ideas about factical life through his interest in Greek thought and its concern with Being. He contends that Heidegger's existential concerns about human life and his ontological concerns about the meaning of Being (...) crystallize in the notion of Dasein as the Being of factical human life. Emphasizing the positive aspects of everydayness, Campbell explores the contexts of meaning embedded within life; the intensity of average, everyday life; the temporal immediacy of life in early Christianity; the hermeneutic pursuit of life's self-alienation; factical spatiality; the temporalizing of history within life; the richness of the world; and the facticity of speaking in Plato and Aristotle. He shows how Heidegger presents a way of grasping human life as riddled with deception but also charged with meaning and open to revelation and insight. (shrink)

Anton Marty (Schwyz, 1847–Prague, 1914) contributed significantly to some of the central themes of Austrian philosophy. This collection contributes to assessing the specificity of his theses in relation with other Austrian philosophers. Although strongly inspired by his master, Franz Brentano, Marty developed his own theory of intentionality, understood as a sui generis relation of similarity. Moreover, he established a comprehensive philosophy of language, or "semasiology", based on descriptive psychology, and in which the utterer’s meaning plays a central (...) role, anticipating Grice’s pragmatic semantics. The present volume, including sixteen articles by scholars in the field of the history of Austrian philosophy and in contemporary philosophy, aims at exposing some of Marty’s most important contributions in philosophy of mind and language, but also in other fields of research such as ontology and metaphysics. As archive material, the volume contains the edition of a correspondence between Marty and Hans Cornelius on similarity. This book will interest scholars in the fields of the history of philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, historians of phenomenology, and, more broadly, contemporary theoretical philosophers. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Questions of Meaning Theories of Meaning Language, Mind and Metaphysics: Questions of Priority Semantic Theories: Davidson's Programme Analysing the Concept of Meaning: Grice's Programme Pragmatics: Conversational Implicature and Relevance Theory.

This engaging and accessible introduction to the philosophy of language provides an important guide to one of the liveliest and most challenging areas of study in philosophy. Interweaving the historical development of the subject with a thematic overview of the different approaches to meaning, the book provides students with the tools necessary to understand contemporary analytical philosophy.

Science and the originality of life -- Christian facticity -- Grasping life as a topic -- Ruinance -- The retrieval of history -- Facticity and ontology -- Factical speaking -- Rhetoric -- Sophistry.

One of the most important students of Franz Brentano was Anton Marty, who made it his task to develop a philosophy of language on the basis of Brentano’s analysis of mind. It is most unfortunate that Marty does not receive the attention he deserves, primarily due to his detailed and distracting polemics. In the analysis presented here his philosophy of language and other aspects of his thought, such as his ontology , are examined first and foremost (...) in their positive rather than critical character. The analysis is moreover supplemented by translations of four important works by Marty, including his entire work On the Origin of Language. These are in fact the first English translations of any substantial writings by him. The resulting picture that emerges from the analysis and translations is that Marty has much to say that proves to be of enduring interest for the philosophy of language on a range of topics, especially the meanings of statements, of emotive expressions, and of names as regards both their communicative and their ontological aspects. The volume will be of interest not only to philosophers and historians of philosophy, but also to historians of linguistics and psychology. (shrink)

Philosophy of language is an extraordinarily rich field. It has a history stretching back, in the Western tradition, to the pre-Socratics. And, in the last century or so, it has been of central concern in both the Anglo-American and Continental traditions. Obviously, a brief survey cannot hope to cover such intellectual abundance. What’s more, as this encyclopedia itself attests to, pragmatics is an equally rich academic endeavour. Any mere overview of their intersection must, then, narrow its focus. As (...) a result, my specific topic will be: What has Anglo-American philosophy of language contributed to the study of utterance meaning in context? (shrink)

Metaethics is the study of metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language, insofar as they relate to the subject matter of moral or, more broadly, normative discourse – the subject matter of what is good, bad, right or wrong, just, reasonable, rational, what we must or ought to do, or otherwise. But out of these four ‘core’ areas of philosophy, it is plausibly the philosophy of language that is most central (...) to metaethics – and not simply because ‘metaethics’ was for a long time construed more narrowly as a name for the study of moral language. The philosophy of language is central to metaethics because both the advantages of and the open problems facing different metaethical theories differ sharply over the answers those theories give to central questions in the philosophy of language. In fact, among the open problems over which such theories differ, are included particularly further problems in the philosophy of language. This article briefly surveys a range of broad categories of views in metaethics and both catalogues some of the principal issues faced by each in the philosophy of language, as well as how those arise out of their answers to more basic questions in the philosophy of language. I make no claim to completeness, only to raising a variety of important issues. (shrink)

This book has arisen out of lectures I gave in recent years at the Uni versities of Munich and Regensburg, and it is intended to serve as a textbook for courses in the Philosophy of Language. In my lectures I was able to presuppose that the students had taken an introductory course in logic. Some knowledge of logic will also be helpful in studying this book - as it is almost everywhere else in philosophy -, especially in (...) Section 3. 2, but it is no prerequisite. I would like to give my sincere thanks to Prof. Terrell for his excellent translation of the book, which is based on the second, revised and en larged German edition. Regensburg, May 1975 FRANZ VON KUTSCHERA INTRODUCTION Language has become one of philosophy's most important and pressing themes during this century. This preoccupation with language has its ori gins in the most diverse areas of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

In her second post in this series, Anna Mahtani explores the parallels between philosophy of language and decision theory’s treatment of indexicals and vagueness.

What is meaning? How is linguistic communication possible? What is the nature of language? What is the relationship between language and the world? How do metaphors work? The Philosophy of Language, considered the essential text in its field, is an excellent introduction to such fundamental questions. This revised edition collects forty-six of the most important articles in the field, making it the most up-to-date and comprehensive volume on the subject. Revised to address changing trends and contemporary (...) developments, the fifth edition features seven new articles including influential work by Mark Crimmins, Gottlob Frege, David Kaplan, Frederick Kroon, W. V. Quine, and Robert Stalnaker (two essays). Other selections include classic articles by such distinguished philosophers as J. L. Austin, John Stuart Mill, Hilary Putnam, Bertrand Russell, John R. Searle, and P. F. Strawson. The selections represent evolving and varying approaches to the philosophy of language, with many articles building upon earlier ones or critically discussing them. Eight sections cover the central issues: Truth and Meaning; Speech Acts; Reference and Descriptions; Names and Demonstratives; Propositional Attitudes; Metaphor and Pretense; Interpretation and Translation; and The Nature of Language. A general introduction and introductions to each section give students background to the issues and explain the connections between them. A list of suggested further reading follows each section. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century philosophy took a ‘linguistic turn’. The first clear signal of this development was Ludwig Wittgenstein's remark in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that ‘All philosophy is “Critique of Language”‘ and this work by Wittgenstein remains a classic presentation of the thesis that philosophy can only be undertaken through the critical study of language. Thus during the twentieth century philosophical approaches to language, the kinds of theorizing now known as (...) ‘philosophy of language’, have been developed in a context in which language has been taken to be a primary resource for philosophy, and as a result there has been a two-way relationship in which conceptions of language and of philosophy have been developed together. (shrink)

Language, through the discrete nature of linguistic names and strictly determined grammatical rules, creates absolute, “quantized”, sharply separated “facts” within the external world that is continuous, “fuzzy” and relational in its essence. Therefore, it is similar, in some important sense, to magic, which attributes causal and creative power to magical words and formulas. On the one hand, language increases greatly the effectiveness of the processes of thinking and interpersonal communication, yet, on the other hand, it determines and distorts (...) to a large extent the picture of the world created within the mind. The relatively smallest (but still significant) magical admixture is present in science, because of its relatively reliable methodology, while the largest is found in religion and a large part of philosophy. The magical nature of language also manifests itself in logic and mathematics that refer to ill determined, fuzzy objects, sets and relations in the real world. The meaning of linguistic names is based on the conceptual network—an epiphenomenon (continuous in its essence) of the neural network—where interactions between particular concepts are based on the relation of connotation. The names and formulas of language correspond to these concepts which are best separated and determined. A direct relation of denotation between the elements of language and “facts” of the world is an illusion. While we cannot dispense with language because of its immense usefulness, we must remember about its “fact-creating” nature and influence on our thought and cognitive processes. The picture of the reality created as the result of them is to a large extent formed and deformed by the nature of language, and not by the “immanent” properties of the world in itself. (shrink)

Crispin Wright is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential analytic philosophers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This volume is a collective exploration of the major themes of his work in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and philosophy of mathematics. It comprises specially written chapters by a group of internationally renowned thinkers, as well as four substantial responses from Wright. In these thematically organized replies, Wright summarizes his life's work and responds to the (...) contributory essays collected in this book. In bringing together such scholarship, the present volume testifies to both the enormous interest in Wright's thought and the continued relevance of Wright's seminal contributions in analytic philosophy for present-day debates. (shrink)

In this paper I address anew the problem of determinacy in translation by examining the Western philosophical and translation theoretic traditions of the last century. Translation theory and the philosophy of language have largely gone their separate ways (the former opting to rebrand itself as “translation studies” to emphasize its empirical and anti-theoretical underpinnings). Yet translation theory and the philosophy of language predominantly share a common assumption that stands in the way of determinate translation. It is (...) that languages, not texts, are the objects of translation and the subjects of semantics. The way to overcome the theoretical problems surrounding the possibility and determinacy of translation is to marry the philosopher of language’s concern for determinacy and semantic accuracy in translation with the notion of a “text-type” from the translation theory literature. The resulting theory capable of explaining determinacy in translation is what I call the text-type conception of semantics (TTS). It is a novel alternative to the salient positions of Contextualism and Semantic Minimalism in the contemporary philosophy of language. (shrink)

Written in a straightforward and explanatory way and filled with examples, this text provides a comprehensive introduction to the field, suitable for students with no background in the philosophy of language or formal logic.

Book Information Dummett: Philosophy of Language. By Karen Green. Polity Press. Cambridge. 2002. Pp. xi + 220. Hardback, £55. Paperback, £14.99.

Jnanasrimitra (975-1025) was regarded by both Buddhists and non-Buddhists as the most important Indian philosopher of his generation. His theory of exclusion combined a philosophy of language with a theory of conceptual content to explore the nature of words and thought. Jnanasrimitra's theory informed much of the work accomplished at Vikramasila, a monastic and educational complex instrumental to the growth of Buddhism. His ideas were also passionately debated among successive Hindu and Jain philosophers. This volume marks the first (...) English translation of Jnanasrimitra's Monograph on Exclusion, a careful, critical investigation into language, perception, and conceptual awareness. Featuring the rival arguments of Buddhist and Hindu intellectuals, among other thinkers, the Monograph reflects more than half a millennium of competing claims while providing an invaluable introduction to a crucial philosopher. Lawrence J. McCrea and Parimal G. Patil familiarize the reader with the author, themes, and topics of the text and situate Jnanasrimitra's findings within his larger intellectual milieu. Their clear, accessible, and accurate translation proves the influence of Jnanasrimitra on the foundations of Buddhist and Indian philosophy. (shrink)

In the Twentieth Century, Logic and Philosophy of Language are two of the few areas of philosophy in which philosophers made indisputable progress. For example, even now many of the foremost living ethicists present their theories as somewhat more explicit versions of the ideas of Kant, Mill, or Aristotle. In contrast, it would be patently absurd for a contemporary philosopher of language or logician to think of herself as working in the shadow of any figure who (...) died before the Twentieth Century began. Advances in these disciplines make even the most unaccomplished of its practitioners vastly more sophisticated than Kant. There were previous periods in which the problems of language and logic were studied extensively (e.g. the medieval period). But from the perspective of the progress made in the last 120 years, previous work is at most a source of interesting data or occasional insight. All systematic theorizing about content that meets contemporary standards of rigor has been done subsequently. (shrink)

Philosophy of Language in Uruguay examines works of philosophy of language through epistemology, linguistics, and cognitive sciences to discover how philosophy of language has developed in Uruguay in the last two decades.

In this book one of the world's foremost philosophers of language presents his unifying vision of the field--its principal achievements, its most pressing current questions, and its most promising future directions. In addition to explaining the progress philosophers have made toward creating a theoretical framework for the study of language, Scott Soames investigates foundational concepts--such as truth, reference, and meaning--that are central to the philosophy of language and important to philosophy as a whole. The first (...) part of the book describes how philosophers from Frege, Russell, Tarski, and Carnap to Kripke, Kaplan, and Montague developed precise techniques for understanding the languages of logic and mathematics, and how these techniques have been refined and extended to the study of natural human languages. The book then builds on this account, exploring new thinking about propositions, possibility, and the relationship between meaning, assertion, and other aspects of language use. An invaluable overview of the philosophy of language by one of its most important practitioners, this book will be essential reading for all serious students of philosophy. (shrink)

The content of this book provides a unified and coherent treatment of a number of important issues in the philosophy of language and logical theory.

This collection, with essays by Graham H. Bird, Jaakko Hintikka, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Jan Wolenski, will interest graduate students of the philosophy of language and logic, as well as professional philosophers, historians of analytic philosophy, and philosophically inclined logicians. Language, Truth and Knowledge brings together 11 new essays that offer a wealth of insights on a number of Carnap's concerns and ideas. The volume arose out of a symposium on Carnap's work at an international conference held in (...) Vienna in 2001. The essays are written from a variety of perspectives: -some essays aim at rebutting influential criticisms directed at Carnap's views; -others examine and assess his thought in the light of recent developments in the neurosciences; -still others are historical and describe the development of Carnap's thought; -they all shed light on the relation of this thought and different philosophical traditions. These essays form a collection that will prove a valuable resource for our understanding of the historic Carnap and the living philosophical issues with which he grappled. (shrink)

This book offers readers a collection of 50 short chapter entries on topics in the philosophy of language. Each entry addresses a paradox, a longstanding puzzle, or a major theme that has emerged in the field from the last 150 years, tracing overlap with issues in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, ethics, political philosophy, and literature. Each of the 50 entries is written as a piece that can stand on its own, though useful connections to other (...) entries are mentioned throughout the text. Readers can open the book and start with almost any of the entries, following themes of greatest interest to them. Each entry includes recommendations for further reading on the topic. -/- Philosophy of Language: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is useful as a standalone textbook, or can be supplemented by additional readings that instructors choose. The accessible style makes it suitable for introductory level through intermediate undergraduate courses, as well as for independent learners, or even as a reference for more advanced students and researchers. (shrink)

Is philosophy deaf to the sound of the personal voice? While philosophy is experienced at admiring, resenting, celebrating, and, at times, renouncing language, philosophers have rarely succeeded in being intimate with it. Hagi Kenaan argues that philosophy's concern with abstract forms of linguistic meaning and the objective, propositional nature of language has obscured the singular human voice. In this strikingly original work Kenaan explores the ethical and philosophical implications of recognizing and responding to the individual (...) presence in language. In pursuing the philosophical possibility of listening to language as the embodiment of the human voice, Kenaan explores the phenomenological notion of the "personal." He defines the personal as the irresolvable tension that exists between the public character of language, necessary for intelligibility, and the ways in which we, as individuals, remain riveted to our words in a contingently singular manner. _The Present Personal_ fuses phenomenology and aesthetics and the traditions of Continental and Anglo-American philosophy, drawing on Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger as well as literary works by Kafka, Kundera, and others. By asking new questions and charting fresh terrain, Kenaan does more than offer innovative investigations into the philosophy of language; _The Present Personal_, and its concern with the intimate and personal nature of language, uncovers the ethical depth of our experience with language. Kenaan begins with a discussion of Kierkegaard's existential critique of language and the ways in which the propositional structure of language does not allow the spoken to reflect the singularity of the self. He then compares two attempts to subvert the "hegemony of content": the pragmatic turn of J. L. Austin and the poetic path of Heidegger. Kenaan concludes by turning to Kant and discovering an analogy between the experience of meaning in language and the aesthetic experience of encountering beauty. Kenaan's reconceptualization of philosophy's approach to language frees the contingent singularity of language while, at the same time, permitting it to continue to dwell within the confines of content. (shrink)

Is philosophy deaf to the sound of the personal voice? While philosophy is experienced at admiring, resenting, celebrating, and, at times, renouncing language, philosophers have rarely succeeded in being intimate with it. Hagi Kenaan argues that philosophy's concern with abstract forms of linguistic meaning and the objective, propositional nature of language has obscured the singular human voice. In this strikingly original work Kenaan explores the ethical and philosophical implications of recognizing and responding to the individual (...) presence in language. In pursuing the philosophical possibility of listening to language as the embodiment of the human voice, Kenaan explores the phenomenological notion of the "personal." He defines the personal as the irresolvable tension that exists between the public character of language, necessary for intelligibility, and the ways in which we, as individuals, remain riveted to our words in a contingently singular manner. _The Present Personal_ fuses phenomenology and aesthetics and the traditions of Continental and Anglo-American philosophy, drawing on Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger as well as literary works by Kafka, Kundera, and others. By asking new questions and charting fresh terrain, Kenaan does more than offer innovative investigations into the philosophy of language; _The Present Personal_, and its concern with the intimate and personal nature of language, uncovers the ethical depth of our experience with language. Kenaan begins with a discussion of Kierkegaard's existential critique of language and the ways in which the propositional structure of language does not allow the spoken to reflect the singularity of the self. He then compares two attempts to subvert the "hegemony of content": the pragmatic turn of J. L. Austin and the poetic path of Heidegger. Kenaan concludes by turning to Kant and discovering an analogy between the experience of meaning in language and the aesthetic experience of encountering beauty. Kenaan's reconceptualization of philosophy's approach to language frees the contingent singularity of language while, at the same time, permitting it to continue to dwell within the confines of content. (shrink)

This engaging and accessible introduction to the philosophy of language provides an important guide to one of the liveliest and most challenging areas of study in philosophy. Interweaving the historical development of the subject with a thematic overview of the different approaches to meaning, the book provides students with the tools necessary to understand contemporary analytical philosophy. The second edition includes new material on: Chomsky, Wittgenstein and Davidson as well as new chapters on the causal theory (...) of reference, possible worlds semantics and semantic externalism. (shrink)

This anthology brings together a diversity of readings in the philosophy of language from the ancient Greeks to contemporary analytic, feminist, and multicultural perspectives. The emphasis is on issues that have a direct bearing on concerns about knowledge, reality, meaning, and understanding. A general introduction and introductions to each group of readings identify both the continuities and differences in the way "big" questions in philosophy of language have been addressed by philosophers of different historical periods, institutional (...) affiliations, races, and genders. (shrink)

This collection of fourteen original essays addresses the seminal contribution of Franz Brentano and his heirs, to philosophy of language. Despite the great interest provoked by the Brentanian tradition and its multiple connections with early analytic philosophy, precious little is known about the Brentanian contribution to philosophy of language. The aim of this new collection is to fill this gap by providing the reader with a more thorough understanding of the legacy of Brentano and his (...) school, in their pursuit of a unique research programme according to which the analysis of meaning is inseparable from philosophical inquiries into what goes on in the mind and what there is in the world. In three parts, the volume first reconstructs Brentano’s pathbreaking thoughts on meaning and grammatical illusions, exploring their strong connections with the Austro-German tradition and analytic philosophy. It then addresses the multifaceted debates on the objectivity of meaning in the Brentano School and its aftermath. Finally, part three explores Brentano’s wider legacy, namely: Husserl’s theory of modification and typicality, Bühler’s theory of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions, and Wittgenstein’s thoughts on guidance and rule-following. The result is a unique collection of essays which shows the significance, originality and timely character of the Brentanian philosophy of language. (shrink)

This collection of classic and contemporary essays in philosophy of language offers a concise introduction to the field for students in graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses. It includes some of the most important basic sources in philosophy of language, as well as new essays by scholars on the leading edge of innovation in this increasingly influential area of philosophy. Each chapter is preceded the editors' introduction.

Starting with Gottlob Frege's foundational theories of sense and reference, Miller provides a useful introduction to the formal logic used in all subsequent philosophy of language. He communicates a sense of active philosophical debate by confronting the views of the early theorists concerned with building systematic theories - such as Frege, Bertrand Russell, and the logical positivists - with the attacks mounted by sceptics - such as W.O. Quine, Saul Kripke, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This leads to important excursions (...) into related areas of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science that present the more recent attempts to save the notions of sense and meaning by philosophers such as Paul Grice, John Searle, Jerry Fodor, Colin McGinn, and Crispin Wright. Miller then returns to the systematic program by examining the formal theories of Donald Davidson, concluding with a chapter surveying the relevance of philosophy of language to the broader metaphysical debates between realists and anti-realists. Miller's clear, engaged, and coherently structured approach makes Philosophy of Language an ideal text for undergraduate courses. The guides to further reading provided in each chapter help the reader pursue interesting topics further and facilitate using the book in conjunction with primary sources. (shrink)

A welcome introduction to one of the most intellectually demanding areas of the undergraduate philosophy curriculum. The authors provide a clear framework within which students can fit contemporary developments in the Anglo-American tradition which provide the core themes of philosophy of mind and which connect to their other work in epistemology and philosophy of language.

This paper proposes a concept of creativity that stems from a semiotic and linguistic theoretical perspective, in which the formal frame of reference for variation and linguistic change considers and evaluates both the process of general interaction and the contact of languages as a global phenomenon. This method proposes an analysis of creativity that ranges from reflections of ancient philosophy to a contemporary linguistic perspective, incorporates international ideologies, and identifies, within the dimensions of use and social sharing, the principle (...) capable of guiding potentially unlimited forms of linguistic creativity that are self-expressive and communicative, far beyond the grammatical patterns of regularity and norm. Interpreting the paradigm of creativity according to this model means placing the semiotic property in a position of prima inter pares, entrusted not only with the “role” of forming signs (words, sentences, texts), but the function of arbitraire, as a phenomenon of language creation. The following reading references the semiotic contribution of Tullio De Mauro, an Italian linguist who has contributed to the systematization of creativity, overcoming and synthesizing both Saussurian structuralism and Chomskyan generativism. (shrink)

This paper analyses the metaliterary statements that pervade the oeuvre of Ennodius of Pavia (a.d. 474–521) in order to reconstruct his underlying conception of language: its nature, power, function, limitations, and dangers. This new perspective provides a more nuanced insight into the paradoxical poetics of the author as well as his final renunciation to literature after his appointment as bishop of Pavia.