1 / 24

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE. HOW TO TALK ABOUT TALK. WHAT IS THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE?. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT: COULD WE EVEN THINK WITHOUT LANGUAGE? LANGUAGE AND REALITY: WHAT IS TRUTH? LANGUAGE AND LOGIC: REASON AND INFERENCE MEANING REFERENCE. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT.

blake
Download Presentation

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE HOW TO TALK ABOUT TALK

  2. WHAT IS THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE? • LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT: COULD WE EVEN THINK WITHOUT LANGUAGE? • LANGUAGE AND REALITY: WHAT IS TRUTH? • LANGUAGE AND LOGIC: REASON AND INFERENCE • MEANING • REFERENCE

  3. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT • ARE WORDLESS THOUGHTS POSSIBLE? • DO DOGS THINK WORDLESSLY? • I CAN’T TELL YOU MY THOUGHTS WITHOUT USING LANGUAGE, CAN I? • IS THERE A SPECIAL LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT?

  4. LANGUAGE AND TRUTH • A SENTENCE OR THOUGHT IS TRUE IF THE WORLD IS EXACTLY THE WAY THE SENTENCE OR THOUGHT SAYS IT IS. RIGHT? • SO, IT’S TRUE THAT THERE IS LIFE ON MARS JUST IN CASE WE DISCOVER IT TO BE THERE. • THIS SECOND CLAIM IS PROBABLY TRUE, BUT THE FIRST IS NOT. APPLY IT TO THE SENTENCE IN BOLDFACE IS FALSE. WHAT DO YOU GET?

  5. LANGUAGE AND LOGIC • HERE’S AN EXAMPLE OF LOGICAL REASONING: • THERE’S A BAG OF 50 MARBLES ON THE DESK. • FOR ANY PAIR OF MARBLES AT LEAST ONE IS WHITE. • THERE’S AT LEAST ONE BLACK MARBLE. • HOW MANY BLACK MARBLES AND HOW MANY WHITE MARBLES ARE THERE?

  6. MEANING • WHAT IS THE MEANING OF A WORD? • ARE MEANINGS GIVEN BY DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS? (FOR EXAMPLE, “WASPS ARE HYMENOPTEROUS, CARNIVOROUS INSECTS EQUIPPED WITH A FORMIDABLE STING.”) • ARE MEANINGS IDEAS IN PEOPLES’ HEADS? • ARE THE MEANINGS OF WORDS THE THINGS IN THE WORLD TO WHICH THE WORDS APPLY? • CREATURE WITH A HEART = CREATURE WITH A KIDNEY

  7. REFERENCE • “Brothers and sisters have I none but that person’s father is my father’s son.” • Who is the speaker referring to? • That person’s father = my father’s son. • The reference of a word is the thing or things the word applies to. • THEREFORE, meaning and reference are not the same thing. Why? • Frege’s argument.

  8. ROGUES GALLERY RUSSELL FREGE KRIPKE

  9. FREGE AND RUSSELL • Frege was an obscure late 19th century German mathematician whose work was largely ignored by his contemporaries. Today he is revered as one of the greatest logicians and philosophers of all time. • Before Russell was 21, he had already written three books. His work was well-known to his contemporaries. He was a public figure, a member of Britain’s House of Lords, and a Nobel Prize winner. • 2005 is the 100 year anniversary of the publication of “On Denoting.”

  10. LOGIC AND ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY • Frege and Russell are both credited with initiating three major developments in the history of thought: mathematical logic, philosophy of language, and analytic philosophy. • The three topics are deeply interrelated. • “On Denoting” and “On Sense and Reference.”

  11. MATHEMATICAL LOGIC • Formalization of proof • Rigorous analysis of mathematical concepts • Logical grammar (Syntax) • Logical semantics • Frege’s Begriffschrift (concept writing) • Frege’s Grundgesetze • Principia Mathematica

  12. PAGE FROM BEGRIFFSCHRIFT

  13. PAGE FROM PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA

  14. ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY • Rigorous analysis of philosophical concepts. • New respect for clarity of exposition and formulation. • New respect for making definitions explicit. • New respect for making premises explicit. • New respect for making logical inferences explicit. • New respect for making sense and for common sense.

  15. G. E. Moore • I have, then, given two conclusive proofs of the existence of external objects. The first was a proof that two human hands existed at the time when I gave the proof…nothing is easier than to prove the existence of external objects.

  16. NON-ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY • What is to be researched is the being [das Seiende], and other than that--nothing; the being alone and more than that--nothing; only the being and beyond that--nothing. How stands it with this nothing? ... Is there the nothing only because there is the not, i.e. negation? Or is it the reverse? Is there negation and the not only because there is the nothing? ... We claim: The nothing is more primordial that the not and negation.... Where do we seek the nothing? How do we find the nothing? ... We know the nothing.... Angst reveals the nothing.... That before which and about which we had Angst was `actually'-- nothing. In fact: the nothing itself--as such--was there.... How stands it with the nothing? ... The nothing itself nihilates. Martin Heidegger (Was Ist Metaphysic?)

  17. Logical grammar is simpler than traditional grammar. Common nouns, adjectives and verbs are lumped together and called predicates. Two kinds of predicates: relational and non-relational. Then there are names. Names combine with predicates to form sentences. The predicates come first as in German. Logical Operators Examples: man, red, walks, taller than. Examples: red, taller than. Examples: Fred,Paul, the Rocky Mountains, pi. Examples: Taller than(Rocky Mountains, Fred) Man(Paul) LANGUAGE AND LOGIC

  18. Two kinds of logical operators:(1) makes new sentences out of old ones. (2) makes sentences out of predicates. Symbols:for predicates there are predicate letters, F, G, H… Symbols: For names there are name letters, a, b, c… Symbols:for the logical operators, we have: & (and),  (if…then…),  (everything and some things) etc. Examples of (1): and, or, if…then…, not (true that). Thus: man(Paul) and man(Fred) Examples of (2): everything, some things, nothing. (These are called quantifiers.) Thus: everything makes sense, some things make sense, nothing makes sense Examples: (M(f) & M(p)) x S(x) x S(x) x y T(x,y) Logical Operators

  19. NAMES AND DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS • Basic proper names are single words normally used to stand for single objects. Proper names can be formed by stringing basic proper names together. Examples? • Question: What does the name Santa Claus name? • A definite description is a phrase of the form the so and so. Like names, these stand for single objects.For example, the center of mass of the Earth; the oldest person alive; the fountain of youth. • Question: What if there’s a tie to be the oldest person? • Question: What does the definite description the fountain of youth stand for? • Note: Frege does not distinguish between proper names and definite descriptions. He calls them both “proper names.”

  20. Predicates stand for classes of things. Names stand for single things. Sentences stand for their truth value, truth or falsity. Logical operators don’t stand for anything on their own. The predicate man stands for the class of men. The predicate taller than stands for the class of pairs of objects (x, y) such that x is taller than y. The name Fred stands for Fred. The sentence Two plus two is four stands for truth. LOGICAL SEMANTICS

  21. FREGE’S “ON SENSE AND REFERENCE” 1. Is Sameness (identity) a relation? A relation between objects? Or a relation between signs or names of objects? • 2. Fregeargues that neither option is correct. 3. His argument is that neither option is correct is based on the following pair of observations: • (a) A true identity statement of the form • a = b • (i.e. one in which the names flanking the identity sign are different) may contain valuable extensions of our knowledge and • “cannot always be justified in an a priori manner.”

  22. FREGE’S “ON SENSE AND REFERENCE” Examples: “the sun is not new each morning but remains the same.” “the reidentification of a comet or planetoid is not always a matter which is self evident.” (later) the Morning Star = the Evening Star. (Phosphorus = Hesperus) • Superman = Clark Kent • the murderer = Bernard J. Ortcutt • By contrast, a statement of the form • (b) a = a

  23. FREGE’S “ON SENSE AND REFERENCE” • (where the names flanking the identity sign are the same) cannot contain a valuable extension of our knowledge and are both a priori and analytic.

  24. QUIZ ON LOGICAL SEMANTICS • What does the noun apple stand for or refer to? • What kind of expression is Kenton Machina? • What is the semantic status of the logical operator everything? • What does the sentence Two plus two is five refer to? • Give an example of two expressions that have the same reference but differ in meaning.

More Related