- New
-
Topics
- All Categories
- Metaphysics and Epistemology
- Value Theory
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Logic and Philosophy of Logic
- Philosophy of Biology
- Philosophy of Cognitive Science
- Philosophy of Computing and Information
- Philosophy of Mathematics
- Philosophy of Physical Science
- Philosophy of Social Science
- Philosophy of Probability
- General Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Science, Misc
- History of Western Philosophy
- Philosophical Traditions
- Philosophy, Misc
- Other Academic Areas
- Journals
- Submit material
- More
About this topic
| Summary | Words and phrases have meaning. But what are meanings? Maybe they are the objects and properties that our words are about. But then ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Samuel Clemens’ would have the same meaning, even though one and the same person can affirm the sentence ‘Mark Twain was a great writer’ but reject the sentence ‘Samuel Clemens was a great writer.’ And what makes it the case that some squiggles or sounds are meaningful? Perhaps it’s because of the mental states of language users, but then in virtue of what do those states have their meaning or content? Might the explanation run in the other direction, so that our mental states have content only because we are language users? Also, can our grasp of what words mean explain our basic logical and mathematical knowledge and otherwise underwrite a compelling conception of the a priori? Perhaps it’s because we know what ‘and’ means that we know that ‘A and B’ is true just in case ‘A’ is true and ‘B’ is true. This category subsumes work that ranges over these and other questions concerning meaning and its bearing on a variety of philosophical topics. |
| Key works | Frege 1892 and Russell 1905 are seminal works on meaning and reference. Kripke 1980 and Putnam 1975 argue, among other things, that semantic properties are determined by factors external to language users. Grice 1957 and Davidson 1973 explore the relation of language and thought. Quine 1951 rejects the idea of philosophically interesting truths in virtue of meaning and knowledge in virtue of knowledge of meaning. |
| Introductions | Speaks 2010 provides a survey with references. Richard 2003 is a good collection of articles. |
Show all references
Related
Subcategories
The Basis of Meaning (663)
Use Theories of Meaning (158)
Naturalizing Mental Content* (1,583 | 176)
Theories of Reference* (691 | 216)
Aspects of Meaning (1,189)
Analyticity (933 | 96)
Interpretation (399 | 190)
Legal Interpretation* (86 | 54)
Literary Interpretation* (906)
The Interpretation of Art* (189)
Interpretation, Misc (55)
Propositions (1,590 | 146)
Propositions as Acts (96)
Structured Propositions (290)
Singular Propositions (174)
Attitude Ascriptions* (852 | 301)
Propositions, Misc (269)
Semantic Phenomena (1,520 | 227)
Ambiguity and Polysemy (124)
Compositionality (331)
Context and Context-Dependence* (1,092 | 314)
Logical Form (309)
Nonliteral Meaning (51)
Scope (150)
Semantic Values (72)
Metaphor* (933)
Semantic Theories (1,980 | 557)
Conceptual Semantics (42)
Fregean Theories of Meaning* (564 | 128)
Possible World Semantics (412)
Relevance Theory* (263)
Russellian and Direct Reference Theories of Meaning* (222 | 132)
Situation Semantics (71)
Truthmaker Semantics (57)
The Nature of Contents* (1,501 | 241)
Dynamic Semantics (181)
Semantic Theories, Misc (143)
Intentionality* (14,158 | 1,851)
Meaning, Misc (408)
History/traditions: Meaning
- Plato: Meaning (30)
Contents
11737 found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 11737 |
Material to categorize
- De la continuité entre non-sens et sens : réflexions d’après Deleuze, Ricœur et Wittgenstein.Paul Dablemont - manuscriptA beginner reader might think that my title is senseless: aren't sense and nonsense supposed to be opposed? Why seeking continuity there? The Stoics and after them this line that goes from Leibniz to Deleuze via Nietzsche, have revealed an intrinsic relationship of continuity between these two entities that common sense sees as contradictory. Although this continuity exists at least from a Stoic-Deleuzian viewpoint, its functioning and nature remain problematic. My goal here is to study this continuity to understand and (...)
- The Ontological and Moral Status of Whole Brain Emulations in Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism.Richard Friedrich Runge - 2025 - AI and Ethics.The prospect of designing whole brain emulations (WBEs) capable of replicating the phenomenological effects of human brains presents a compelling argument for granting robots that implement such technology a human-like moral status. While deontological and utilitarian perspectives struggle to refute this notion—potentially paving the way for recognizing a utility monster—the article proposes that naturalistic virtue ethics offers a more skeptical stance. Drawing on the metaethical and ontological tenets of neo-Aristotelian naturalism, as articulated by Philippa Foot and Michael Thompson, this article (...)
- (1 other version)The myth of metaphor.Colin Murray Turbayne - 1962 - New Haven,: Yale University Press.
- (1 other version)The diversity of meaning.L. Jonathan Cohen - 1963 - [New York]: Herder & Herder.
- What did you say? A Philosophical Model of Communication and Indeterminacy.Conrad Friedrich - 2025 - Dissertation, Lmu MunichThis thesis asks a simple question. Why is it that communication between two people succeeds? In other words, what makes it so that one person can signify whatever thought they are entertaining to another person, and that person will understand what the first wanted to say? Consequently, what are the conditions for success, and when does communication fail? This thesis takes a stance on these questions, and develops a framework for systematically explaining communicative success. I discuss relevant accounts of communication (...)
- Sémantique et vérité: de Tarski à Davidson.François Rivenc - 1998 - Paris: Presses universitaires de France.Remove from this listExport citation
Bookmark - Donald Davidson's Philsophy of Language.Nikolay Milkov - 1989 - Philosophical Thought 45 (6):30-38.
- Meaning without representation: essays on truth, expression, normativity, and naturalism.Steven Gross, Nicholas Tebben & Michael Williams (eds.) - 2015 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. Leading thinkers in the field explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti-representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the role of language in (...)
- Deviance and the literal-metaphorical distinction revisited.Chris Genovesi & Jacob Hesse - 2025 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-25.Classical deviance theories about metaphor argue that the metaphorical sense of a word or expression, w, deviates from the sense of the word or expression interpreted literally. Developments in lexical pragmatics challenge these theories by claiming that deviance pervades (nearly) all aspects of linguistic communication. If deviance is the norm, then classical explanans offer little to no insight. In fact, many theorists have abandoned the idea of the literal-metaphorical distinction. This move carries significant consequences for theories of language and communication. (...)
- Generics.Federico Cella & Martina Rosola - 2025 - Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy.Generics have been a vividly debated topic since the 1970s. Several aspects make them especially interesting, from their ubiquity to their tricky truth-conditions, from their distinctive cognitive implications to their (still debated) harmfulness in the social domain. This annotated bibliography aims to provide a guide to the massive scholarship on generics ranging through different fields. In linguistics and philosophy of language, generics are subject to inquiries for a number of reasons (see Linguistic Overviews). First, no one specific element in the (...)
- Saying What I Think.Eric Marcus - forthcoming - Res Philosophica.It is often hard to articulate a thought. Why should this be, if not that to have a thought is one thing, and to know it something else? In fact the gap between thought and its articulation is not epistemic. While it’s true that we come to know our thoughts better through articulation, it's not because a thought is already perfectly determinate despite my ignorance of it. Rather, we make the thought determinate through articulation. This connection between the determinacy of (...)
- Sinnmaximierung: wie wir in Zukunft arbeiten.Tristan Horx - 2022 - Köln: Quadriga.
- Senso e controsenso: uno studio filosofico su grammatica e logica delle lingue naturali.Salvatore Pistoia Reda - 2024 - Roma: Carocci editore.
- The world in perspective: meaning and intentionality.Min Huang - 2025 - New York, NY: Routledge.This book aims to reclaim the significance of meaning within the philosophical thinking that has evolved from Descartes and Locke through Kant, Husserl, and Frege, focusing on intentionality-the mind's directedness toward the reality. The author opens with an epistemological account of analyticity and illustrates the central role of intentionality within it. A transcendentalist view on intentionality is then adopted, in contrast with the prevalent naturalist stance. Addressing key themes in the philosophy of language-truth, representation, propositions, predication, reference, and sense, the (...)
- Dal Tractatus alle Ricerche: la transizione graduale nel pensiero di Wittgenstein.Simone Nota - 2024 - Laboratorio dell’ISPF 21 (13):1-34.In questo saggio critico la rigida distinzione tra due diversi Wittgenstein, mostrando come il suo pensiero sia in continua transizione. In particolare mostro come, attraverso un costante ripensamento del concetto di forma, Wittgenstein giunga a identificare il significato delle parole con il loro uso nelle nostre pratiche linguistiche.
- Conceptual and Ethical Challanges of Evolutionary Medicine.Ozan Altinok - 2023 - Springer.(This is the preprint version) This book is about disease, but disease from a very specific perspective, namely that of evolutionary medicine. However, in doing so, it explains evolutionary medicine in its current form now, criticizes it, and tries to apply it not directly on disease instances or tokens of disease, but rather the concept of disease. Doing so, the aim of this book is to ask the question; how to build a better concept of disease? The parts of the (...)
- Reciprocity.Andrej Poleev - 2025 - Enzymes 23.A Review of: Joel Z. Leibo et al. A theory of appropriateness with applications to generative artificial intelligence. (2024) (in Russian) .
- Enattivismo e codifica predittiva: Un’Analisi Evolutiva dell’Informazione Semantica.Stefano Coelati Rama - manuscriptThis paper explores the emergence of the mind through the lens of information theory, predictive coding, and radical enactivism. This perspective integrates philosophical and biological insights, offering a naturalistic and contextualist account of the mind’s emergence. The paper highlights the innovative potential of linking predictive and semantic frameworks, reaffirming the relevance of evolutionary and information-based approaches to contemporary debates in cognitive science and philosophy.
- Husserl and the Internalism-Externalism Debate.Ilpo Hirvonen - 2025 - Dissertation, University of HelsinkiThis article-based dissertation studies the question whether Husserl could be understood as an internalist or an externalist about meaning or content. In this context, internalism and externalism represent different answers to the question whether things external to the subject, namely features of the subject’s social and physical environment, may individuate the content of the subject’s intentional states (e.g., judgments, beliefs, perceptions). Where internalism maintains that content can only be individuated by internal factors, externalism claims that content can also be individuated (...)
- The Internal-External Divide and Husserl's Phenomenology.Ilpo Hirvonen - 2024 - In Alexander D. Carruth, Heidi Haanila, Paavo Pylkkänen & Pii Telakivi, True Colors, Time After Time: Essays Honoring Valtteri Arstila. Turku: University of Turku. pp. 20-52.Various interpretations of Husserl have been presented in relation to the internalism-externalism debate. The debate concerns the question whether linguistic and mental content can be determined by features that are not only internal but also external to the subject. Besides different internalist and externalist interpretations of Husserl, there are interpretations that reject both internalism and externalism as frameworks for understanding Husserl. The main reason not to commit to either externalist or internalist interpretations seems to be that the internal-external divide, which (...)
- A situational hermeneutic: the priority of reference over meaning.Wai Lok Cheung - forthcoming - Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics.An intentional fallacy is committed when one sets the goal of getting to the author’s intention. In this paper, I restore authorial authority, through proposing a situational hermeneutic. It obligates, when engaging with a text, stepping into the author’s shoes. Instead of focusing only on the ideas of the author, I emphasise the importance of knowing how the text relates to the author’s world through identifying the referents. This priority of reference over meaning resonates with Chad Hansen’s black-box analogy in (...)
- Znaleźć ulgę od bezszalupowości, czyli Kłopoty filozoficzne Saula Kripkego. [REVIEW]Krystian Bogucki - 2024 - Roczniki Filozoficzne 72 (4):410-418.Recenzja: Saul Kripke, Kłopoty filozoficzne, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2023. Review of the Polish-language edition of Saul Kripke's Philosophical Troubles, vol. 1.
- All About Carnap's Babylon.C. Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language (1937) contains an unfortunate passage, the ‘Babylon passage’, explaining what it is for a linguistic expression to be about a subject matter. Past criticism has only addressed Carnap's mistaken claim that the occurrence of a denoting term is necessary and sufficient for a linguistic expression to be about the denotatum. But the passage contains further problems: a form‐object confusion due to the ambiguity of ‘lecture’; a use‐mention problem with the word ‘Babylon’; and finally, the fact (...)
- Ontological relativity.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1969 - New York,: Columbia University Press.Intended to clarify the meaning of the philosophical doctrines propounded by W. V. Quine in "Word and Objects," the essays included herein are intimately related and concern themselves with three philosophical preoccupations: the nature of meaning, the meaning of existence and the nature of natural knowledge.
- Introduzione alla semantica..Tullio de Mauro - 1970 - Bari,: Laterza.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Logique du sens.Gilles Deleuze - 1973 - Paris: Union générale d'éditions.
- Filosofía y lenguaje.Emilio Lledó Iñigo - 1974 - Esplugues de Llobregat: Ariel.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- O čem mluvíme?: vybrané stati k logice a sémantice.Pavel Tichý - 1996 - Praha: Filosofia, nakl. Filosofického ústavu AV ČR.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- 'Pencil,' 'Water,' 'Christianity': Digging into Externalist Semantic Theories.Irene Olivero - 2021 - In Giulia Angelini & Alessandro Esposito, Dieci anni di Universa, dieci anni di ricerca. pp. 225-272.‘Pencil’, ‘Tiger’, ‘Christianity’. What kind of reference (if any) do these terms have? Do they have the same semantics? In his celebrated The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ (1975), Hilary Putnam suggests so when arguing that they have externalist semantics. However, this claim is highly controversial. A lengthy discussion has been going on the matter. So far, neither Putnam’s nor other defenses of Externalism proposed within this debate have actually succeeded in showing that the terms at stake (and their likes) are semantically (...)
- Underspecification and Communication.Ray Buchanan - 2024 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 11.It has recently been argued that our use of vague language poses an intractable problem for any account of content and communication on which (i) the things we assert are propositions and (ii) understanding an assertion requires recognizing which proposition the speaker asserted. John MacFarlane has argued that this problem concerning vague language is itself a species of an even more general problem for such traditional accounts—the problem posed by “felicitous” underspecification. Repurposing certain ideas from Allan Gibbard, MacFarlane offers a (...)
- Foundations for Metasemantics.Daniel Cohnitz & Jussi Haukioja - forthcoming - Oxford University Press.Metasemantics studies the foundations of meaning, asking what makes it the case that certain words have the meanings that they do. But what makes metasemantic theories true? This question has been all but ignored in philosophy of language. In this book, we address this issue and argue that just as in metasemantics, both internalist and externalist answers are available for this foundational question. -/- In the book, we introduce and defend _meta-internalism_, arguing that the foundations of reference and meaning are (...)
- The word "green" is written in black and non-referential terms.Paul Merriam & M. A. Z. Habeeb - manuscriptThe word "green" refers to the color green, which could more precisely refer to the wavelength of green photons, green paint, green light, or green qualia. But in this 12-page paper, as in this abstract, it is written in black. Thus its referential meaning(s) is different than its non-referential or presentational meaning, which is the actual quale of blackness arising in the actual reader's mind. Philosophy has discussed--but never employed--non-referential terms before. That is like discussing swimming but never employing a (...)
- Imaginários e dramas sociais: estudos de significação.José Carlos Rodrigues - 2015 - Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Editora PUC-Rio.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Lost in Translation: Artificial Intelligence and the Burden of Bad Metaphors (forthcoming).Māris Kūlis - forthcoming - In Vincent C. Müller, Leonard Dung, Guido Löhr & Aliya Rumana, Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: The State of the Art. Berlin: SpringerNature.This paper examines how metaphors shape our thinking about and conceptualizing of artificial intelligence (AI), noting that their inherent imprecision leads to discrepancies in our understanding and objectives for AI. By exploring the concept of 'bad metaphors' that equate artificial intelligence with human intelligence, paper argues that these metaphors often carry additional, unintended meanings that distort our understanding and expectations of AI. The terms “artificial” and “intelligence” themselves are ambiguous and ideologically loaded, contributing to the complexity. The paper critiques the (...)
- A scientific foundation of philosophy.William Leonard Hoerber - 1952 - Los Angeles:
- On the nature of meanings.Niels Egmont Christensen - 1961 - Copenhagen,: Munksgaard.
- (1 other version)Semiotik und Erkenntnistheorie.Georg Klaus - 1963 - Berlin,: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- The Indefensibility of the Scientific Concept of Probability.A. Braynen - manuscriptWhereas many philosophers accept the validity of 'probability' and confine themselves to interpreting it, this paper challenges its conceptual coherence by critically examining its use in the empirical world. While measure theory provides a rigorous mathematical framework for manipulating probability functions, we argue that applying precise probability measures to empirically uncertain outcomes introduces a fundamental contradiction. Probability measures claim to quantify uncertainty while simultaneously implying a degree of understanding about events that we do not fully possess. This inconsistency undermines the (...)
- Påståenden och uppmaningar.Erik Ryding - 1975 - Lund: Doxa.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Das Wahrheitsproblem und die Idee der Semantik: eine Einführung in die Theorien von A. Tarski und R. Carnap.Wolfgang Stegmüller - 1968 - New York: Springer.
- What is this thing called peace?Fabio Lampert - 2024 - Studia Philosophica Estonica 17:80-95.This article scrutinizes discourse surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war in Western nations, where, despite widespread support for Ukraine, a contingent advocates for peace by rejecting military aid. This “pacifist” stance gains traction through public demonstrations in European countries and political endorsement. However, by opposing military aid while advocating peace, these messages, while ostensibly altruistic, distort genuine efforts for establishing peace in Ukraine. The article argues that recent developments from the philosophy of language, combined with the realities of Russia’s invasion and main (...)
- (1 other version)Spontannostʹ soznanii︠a︡: veroi︠a︡tnostnai︠a︡ teorii︠a︡ smyslov i smyslovai︠a︡ arkhitektonika lichnosti.V. V. Nalimov - 1989 - Moskva: "Prometeĭ".Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Reclaiming Russellian Singular Thoughts.Heimir Geirsson - 2024 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 24 (71):235-254.There is an important difference between a thought that is directed towards a particular object and a thought that is not so directed. For example, there is a difference in my thoughts about my brother, and my thoughts about brothers, more generally. The first has the earmarks of singular thought, while the latter does not. After showing that there is no agreement about the nature of singular thought, I revisit early Russell to find greater clarity. I then advance a version (...)
- Wondering about the Impossible: On the Semantics of Counterpossibles.Maciej Sendłak - 2024 - Springer.This book argues for the importance and commonness of reasonings concerning impossibilities. Its aim is twofold – descriptive and constructive. Since hypothetical reasoning about impossibilities calls for explanation, the book provides a comprehensive guide through popular semantic theories of conditionals. Each is examined from the perspective of the question of impossibilities and the logic and metaphysics surrounding them. This provides the ground for a further aim. In the final chapter, I endeavor to combine the best features of the existing theories (...)
- Poczucie sensu życia w procesie adaptacji do wolności: studium antropologiczno-pedagogiczne = The role of meaning in life in the social readaptation of prisoners: an anthropological and pedagogical study.Monika Wolińska - 2022 - Płock: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Mazowieckiej Uczelni Publicznej w Płocku. Edited by Jarosław Michalski.Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Dynamický logos: o významové stavbě světa.Michal Ajvaz - 2023 - Praha: Filosofia.
- Goodman's 'About': the Ryle factor.Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum - 2024 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 12 (5):1-27.Nelson Goodman’s paper ‘About’ (1961) was a milestone in aboutness theory. Although it has been much discussed, an interesting fact about it has so far been completely ignored: the important debt it owes to two papers it cites by Gilbert Ryle. With Ryle’s ‘About’ (1933) it shares much more than the title – it, too, offers a three-fold account of different ways a sentence can relate to a subject matter and a separate account for fictitious objects. More importantly, although Goodman’s (...)
- Compositionality in Perception: A Framework.Kevin J. Lande - forthcoming - WIREs Cognitive Science.Perception involves the processing of content or information about the world. In what form is this content represented? I argue that perception is widely compositional. The perceptual system represents many stimulus features (including shape, orientation, and motion) in terms of combinations of other features (such as shape parts, slant and tilt, common and residual motion vectors). But compositionality can take a variety of forms. The ways in which perceptual representations compose are markedly different from the ways in which sentences or (...)
- Computational Thought Experiments for a More Rigorous Philosophy and Science of the Mind.Iris Oved, Nikhil Krishnaswamy, James Pustejovsky & Joshua Hartshorne - 2024 - In Larissa Samuelson, Stefan Frank, Mariya Toneva, Allyson Mackey & Eliot Hazeltine, Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. pp. 601-609.We offer philosophical motivations for a method we call Virtual World Cognitive Science (VW CogSci), in which researchers use virtual embodied agents that are embedded in virtual worlds to explore questions in the field of Cognitive Science. We focus on questions about mental and linguistic representation and the ways that such computational modeling can add rigor to philosophical thought experiments, as well as the terminology used in the scientific study of such representations. We find that this method forces researchers to (...)
- Tricky Truths: How Should Alethic Pluralism Accommodate Racial Truths?Ragnar van der Merwe & Phila Msimang - 2024 - Acta Analytica 39 (2):335-357.Some alethic pluralists maintain that there are two kinds of truths operant in our alethic discourse: a realist kind and an anti-realist kind. In this paper, we argue that such a binary conception cannot accommodate certain social truths, specifically truths about race. Most alethic pluralists surprisingly overlook the status of racial truths. Douglas Edwards is, however, an exception. In his version of alethic pluralism—Determination Pluralism—racial truths are superassertible (anti-realist) true rather than correspondence (realist) true. We argue that racial truths exhibit (...)
| 1 — 50 / 11737 |
PhilPapers logo by Andrea Andrews and Meghan Driscoll.
This site uses cookies and Google Analytics (see our terms & conditions for details regarding the privacy implications). Use of this site is subject to terms & conditions.
All rights reserved by The PhilPapers Foundation
Server: philpapers-web-54b44b69b7-nwt9g uwo