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 ...

_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)

Alexander Miller provides an extensive and well-written introduction to the philosophy of language. He explains important theories concerning various aspects of meaning. Following his discussion of each theory, Miller surveys main criticisms and, in some cases, replies to these criticisms and/or proposed amendments of the original theories. While his book is primarily exposition, Miller includes his own critical commentary of the theories and/or responses, engaging the reader further in the debate.

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)

Much of feminist philosophy of language so far can be described as critical—critical either of language itself or of philosophy of language, and calling for change on the basis of these criticisms. Those making these criticisms suggest that the changes are needed for the sake of feminist goals — either to better allow for feminist work to be done or, more frequently, to bring an end to certain key ways that women are disadvantaged. In this (...) entry, I examine these criticisms. I also examine work by feminists that seems to suggest some of the criticisms are misplaced: that, for example, philosophy of language is better able to help in feminist projects than critics suppose. My focus in this entry will generally be on the analytic tradition. For continental approaches, see the entries on feminist approaches to the intersection of analytic and continental philosophy , feminist approaches to the intersection of pragmatism and continental philosophy. (shrink)

What do ‘meaning’ and ‘truth’ mean? And how are they situated in the concrete practices of linguistic communication? What is the relationship between words and the world? How—with words—can people do such varied things as marry, inaugurate a president, and declare a country’s independence? How is language able to express knowledge, belief, and other mental states? What are metaphors and how do they work? Is a mathematically rigorous account of language possible? Does language make women invisible and (...) encode a male worldview? These are the kind of questions that have been addressed by philosophers of language since ancient times. Interest in the subject stretches back to the beginnings of western philosophy . Interest in the philosophy of language has also been enduring—and has blossomed anew in the past century. This new title in the Routledge series, Critical Concepts in Philosophy, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by A. P. Martinich, one of the subdiscipline’s leading scholars, this collection brings together in four volumes the canonical and the very best cutting-edge scholarship in the field to provide a synoptic view of all the key issues, figures, concepts, and current debates. With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editor, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Philosophy of Language is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by philosophers and linguists—as well as psychologists and cognitive scientists working on language—as a vital research resource. (shrink)

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)

This book is an introduction to and interpretation of the philosophy of language devised by Donald Davidson over the past 25 years. The guiding intuition is that Davidson's work is best understood as an ongoing attempt to purge semantics of theoretical reifications. Seen in this light the recent attack on the notion of language itself emerges as a natural development of his Quinian scepticism towards "meanings" and his rejections of reference-based semantic theories. Linguistic understanding is, for Davidson, (...) essentially dynamic, arising only through a continuous process of theory construction and reconstruction. The result is a conception of semantics in which the notion of interpretation and not the notion of knowing a language is fundamental. In the course of his book Bjorn Ramberg provides a critical discussion of reference-based semantic theories, challenging the standard accounts of the principle of charity and elucidating the notion of radical interpretation. The final chapter on incommensurability ties in with the discussions of Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science and suggests certain links between Davidson's analytic semantics and hermeneutic theory. (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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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 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.

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)

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)

In this chapter we focus on Rorty’s core commitments with respect to language, and consider their role in Rorty’s stormy relations to mainstream analytic philosophy. Further, we bring out key features of Rorty’s position by tracing his engagement with WittgensteinWittgenstein, SellarsSellars, QuineQuine, DavidsonDavidson, and KuhnKuhn.

A typical device in film is to have a character narrating what is going on, but this narration is not always a reliable guide to the events. According to Maier, distortions may be caused by the narrator’s intent, naivety, use of drugs, and/or cognitive disorder/illness. What is common to these various causes, he argues, is the presence of a point of view, which appears in a movie as shots. While this perspective-based account of unreliability covers most cases, I unpack its (...) methodological consequences and gesture at a possibility that Maier’s analysis overlooks. A narration, I suggest, can be unreliable simply because it is ill-timed with the events shown on screen. In such a case, the distortion is not due to any character’s point of view; rather, it comes from the film medium’s ability to divorce what is seen and what is heard. As a consequence of this mismatch, it is possible to have a reliable narrator but an unreliable narration. Since voice and context of utterance usually match in ordinary speech, I conclude that philosophy of language may be ill-suited to properly understand this particular phenomenon. (shrink)

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)

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)

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)

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.

Accused of the murder of two men and the rape and murder of a Tombstone businessman's fiancâee, Matt Donohue must find the girl in the middle of Apache territory in order to clear his name.

How language works — its functions, mechanisms, and limitations — matters to the early moderns as much as it does to contemporary philosophers. Many of the moderns make reflection on language central to their philosophical projects, both as a tool for explaining human cognition and as a weapon to be used against competing views. Even in philosophers for whom language is less central, we can find important connections between their views on language and their other philosophical (...) commitments. (shrink)

This article considers the implications of inferentialist philosophy of language for debates in the historiography of philosophy. My intention is to mediate and refine the polemics between contextualist historians and ‘analytic’ or presentist historians. I claim that much of Robert Brandom’s nuanced defence of presentism can be accepted and even adopted by contextualists, so that inferentialism turns out to provide an important justification for orthodox history of philosophy. In the concluding sections I argue that the application (...) of Brandom’s theory has important limits, and that some polemics by contextualists against presentists are therefore justified. (shrink)

This book not only sets the historical record straight but also champions the Herderian tradition for its philosophical depth and breadth.

Philosophers of language have tended to focus on examples that are not politically significant in any way. We spend a lot of time analyzing natural kind terms: We think hard about “water” and “pain” and “arthritis.” But we don’t think much about the far more politically significant kind terms (natural or social—it's a matter for dispute) like “race,” “sex,” “gender,” “woman,” “man,” “gay,” and “straight.” In this essay, I will try to show, using the example of “woman,” that it's (...) worth thinking about terms like these, for at least three reasons: (1) There are some interesting puzzles. (2) Politically significant terms matter to people's lives— and it's worth spending at least some of our energy thinking about things that matter in this way. (3) Most importantly, interesting methodological issues emerge at the intersection of philosophy of language and politics. (shrink)

In this book Christopher Norris develops the case for scientific realism by tackling various adversary arguments from a range of anti-realist positions. Through a close critical reading he shows how they fail to make adequate sense on any rational, consistent and scientifically informed survey of the evidence. Along the way he incorporates a number of detailed case-studies from the history and philosophy of science. Norris devotes much of his discussion to some of the most prominent and widely influential source-texts (...) of anti-realism. Also included are the sophisticated versions of verificationism developed by thinkers such as Michael Dummett and Bas van Fraassen. Central to Norris's argument is a prolonged engagement with the once highly influential but nowadays neglected work of Norwood Russell Hanson. This book will be welcomed especially by readers who possess some knowledge of the background debate and who wish to deepen and extend their understanding of these issues beyond an introductory level. (shrink)

This volume marks the first English translation of Jnanasrimitra's Monograph on Exclusion, a careful, critical investigation into language, perception, and conceptual awareness.

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, Sixth Edition, is an excellent introduction to such fundamental questions. Incorporating insights from new coeditor David Sosa, the sixth edition collects forty-eight 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 sixth edition features eighteen new articles, including influential work by Kent Bach, Paul Boghossian, M. A. E. Dummett, Delia Graff Fara, Hartry Field, H. P. Grice and P.F. Strawson, Carl G. Hempel, Saul Kripke, Benson Mates, Hilary Putnam, Diana Raffman, Nathan Salmon, Stephen Schiffer, John R. Searle, Roy Sorenson, David Sosa, Dennis Stampe, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A general introduction and introductions to each section give students background to the issues and explain the connections between them. A bibliography of suggested further reading follows each section. (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.

This chapter contains sections titled: Pre‐Socratics and Sophists Socrates Socrates and Plato Aristotle Hellenistic Philosophy Conclusion Bibliography.

Dummett's output has been prolific and highly influential, but not always as accessible as it deserves to be. This book sets out to rectify this situation.

When asked to contribute to this lecture series, my first thought was to talk about philosophy of biology, a new and increasingly influential field in philosophy, surely destined to have great impact in the coming years. But when a preliminary schedule for the series was circulated, I noticed that no one was speaking on language. Given the hegemony of philosophy of language at mid-century, after ‘the linguistic turn’, this seemed to require comment. How did (...) class='Hi'>philosophy of language achieve such status at mid-century, and why is it losing it now? Has the Anglo-American tradition really begun to put the philosophy of language in better perspective? I hope so. Indeed, I will end with suggestions for how to keep it more securely in its proper place. (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)

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)

The paper presetns a criticism on Donald Davidson's philosophy of language that tries to dispence with theory of meaning.

Some of the most distinguished active contributors to the field join together for a collection of their most recent work. Brings together important new papers by many of the most distinguished philosophers of language Takes up some of the central issues in the field in recent years Includes some of the best cutting-edge work in philosophy of language.

Review of Philosophy of Language, by Scott Soames.