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Millianism
In the philosophy of language, a proper name examples include a name of a specific person or place is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely identify its referent in the world. As such it presents particular challenges for theories of meaning, and it has become a central problem in analytic philosophy. The common-sense view was originally formulated by John Stuart Mill in ''A System of Logic'' (1843), where he defines it as "a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about but not of telling anything about it". This view was criticized when philosophers applied principles of formal logic to linguistic propositions. Gottlob Frege pointed out that proper names may apply to imaginary and nonexistent entities, without becoming meaningless, and he showed that sometimes more than one proper name may identify the same entity without having the same ''sense'', so that the phrase "Homer believed the morning star was the evening star" could be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Descriptivist Theory Of Names
In the philosophy of language, the descriptivist theory of proper names (also descriptivist theory of reference) is the view that the meaning or semantic content of a proper name is identical to the descriptions associated with it by speakers, while their referents are determined to be the objects that satisfy these descriptions. Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege have both been associated with the descriptivist theory, which is sometimes called the ''mediated reference theory'' or ''Frege–Russell view''. In the 1970s, this theory came under attack from causal theorists such as Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and others. However, it has seen something of a revival in recent years, especially under the form of what are called two-dimensional semantic theories. This latter trend is exemplified by the theories of David Chalmers, among others. The descriptive theory and its merits A simple descriptivist theory of names can be thought of as follows: for every proper name ''p'', there is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought. Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell were pivotal figures in analytic philosophy's "linguistic turn". These writers were followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein ('' Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''), the Vienna Circle, logical positivists, and Willard Van Orman Quine. In continental philosophy, language is not studied as a separate discipline. Rather, it is an inextricable part of many other areas of thought, such as phenomenology, structural semiotics, language of mathematics, hermeneutics, existentialism, deconstruction and critical theory. History Ancient philosophy In the West, inquiry into language stretches back to the 5th century BC with Socrates, Plato, Aristotl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation. A connotation is frequently described as either positive or negative, with regard to its pleasing or displeasing emotional connection. For example, a stubborn person may be described as being either ''strong-willed'' or ''pig-headed''; although these have the same literal meaning (''stubborn''), ''strong-willed'' connotes admiration for the level of someone's will (a positive connotation), while ''pig-headed'' connotes frustration in dealing with someone (a negative connotation). Usage "Connotation" branches into a mixture of different meanings. These could include the contrast of a word or phrase with its primary, literal meaning (known as a denotation), with what that word or phrase specifically denotes. The connotation essentially relates to how anything may be associated with a word or phras ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rigid Designation
In modal logic and the philosophy of language, a term is said to be a rigid designator or absolute substantial term when it designates (picks out, denotes, refers to) the same thing in ''all possible worlds'' in which that thing exists. A designator is ''persistently rigid'' if it also designates nothing in all other possible worlds. A designator is ''obstinately rigid'' if it designates the same thing in every possible world, period, whether or not that thing exists in that world. Rigid designators are contrasted with ''connotative terms'', ''non-rigid'' or ''flaccid designators'', which may designate different things in different possible worlds. History The Scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages developed a theory of properties of terms in which different classifications of concepts feature prominently. Concepts, and the terms that signify them, can be divided into absolute or connotative, according to the mode in which they signify. If they signify something absolutely, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naming And Necessity
''Naming and Necessity'' is a 1980 book with the transcript of three lectures, given by the philosopher Saul Kripke, at Princeton University in 1970, in which he dealt with the debates of proper names in the philosophy of language. The transcript was brought out originally in 1972 in ''Semantics of Natural Language'', edited by Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman. Among analytic philosophers, ''Naming and Necessity'' is widely considered one of the most important philosophical works of the twentieth century. Overview Language is a primary concern of analytic philosophers, particularly the use of language to express concepts and to refer to individuals. In ''Naming and Necessity'', Kripke considers several questions that are important within analytic philosophy: *How do names refer to things in the world? (the problem of intensionality) *Are all statements that can be known ''a priori'' necessarily true, and are all statements that are known '' a posteriori'' contingently true? *D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causal Theory Of Names
A causal theory of reference or historical chain theory of reference is a theory of how terms acquire specific referents based on evidence. Such theories have been used to describe many referring terms, particularly logical terms, proper names, and natural kind terms. In the case of names, for example, a causal theory of reference typically involves the following claims: * a name's referent is fixed by an original act of naming (also called a "dubbing" or, by Saul Kripke, an "initial baptism"), whereupon the name becomes a rigid designator of that object. * later uses of the name succeed in referring to the referent by being linked to that original act via a causal chain. Weaker versions of the position (perhaps not properly called "causal theories"), claim merely that, in many cases, events in the causal history of a speaker's use of the term, including when the term was first acquired, must be considered to correctly assign references to the speaker's words. Causal theories of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tyler Burge
Tyler Burge (; born 1946) is an American philosopher who is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Burge has made contributions to many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, philosophy of logic, epistemology, philosophy of language, and the history of philosophy. Education and career In 1967, Burge received his bachelor of arts from Wesleyan University. He earned his PhD in philosophy from Princeton University in 1971 where he worked with Donald Davidson and John Wallace. He joined the UCLA faculty that year (1971), and has taught there ever since, with visiting professorships also at Stanford University, Harvard University, and MIT. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1993 and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy since 1999. In 2007, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. He was the recipient of the 2010 Jean Nicod Prize. Philosophical work Anti-individualism Burge has argued for ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Searle
John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Language and Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley until 2019. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Searle was secretary of "Students against Joseph McCarthy". He received all his university degrees, BA, MA, and DPhil, from the University of Oxford, where he held his first faculty positions. Later, at UC Berkeley, he became the first tenured professor to join the 1964–1965 Free Speech Movement. In the late 1980s, Searle challenged the restrictions of Berkeley's 1980 rent stabilization ordinance. Following what came to be known as the California Supreme Court's "Searle Decision" of 1990, Berkeley changed its rent cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Definite Description
In formal semantics and philosophy of language, a definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. The definite description is ''proper'' if X applies to a unique individual or object. For example: " the first person in space" and " the 42nd President of the United States of America", are proper. The definite descriptions "the person in space" and "the Senator from Ohio" are ''improper'' because the noun phrase X applies to more than one thing, and the definite descriptions "the first man on Mars" and "the Senator from some Country" are ''improper'' because X applies to nothing. Improper descriptions raise some difficult questions about the law of excluded middle, denotation, modality, and mental content. Russell's analysis As France is currently a republic, it has no king. Bertrand Russell pointed out that this raises a puzzle about the truth value of the sentence "The present King of France is bald." The sen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John McDowell
John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work has been in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. McDowell was one of three recipients of the 2010 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award, and is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the British Academy. McDowell has, throughout his career, understood philosophy to be "therapeutic" and thereby to "leave everything as it is" (Ludwig Wittgenstein, ''Philosophical Investigations''), which he understands to be a form of philosophical quietism (although he does not consider himself to be a "quietist"). The philosophical quietist believes that philosophy cannot make any explanatory comment about how, for example, tho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tautology (grammar)
In literary criticism and rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea, using near-synonymous morphemes, words or phrases, effectively "saying the same thing twice". Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature. Like pleonasm, tautology is often considered a fault of style when unintentional. Intentional repetition may emphasize a thought or help the listener or reader understand a point. Sometimes logical tautologies like "Boys will be boys" are conflated with language tautologies, but a language tautology is not inherently true, while a logical tautology always is. Etymology The word was coined in Hellenistic Greek from ('the same') plus ('word' or 'idea'), and transmitted through 3rd-century Latin and French . It first appeared in English in the 16th century. The use of the term logical tautology was introduced in English by Wittgenstein in 1919, perhaps following Auguste Comte's usage in 1835. Examples * "Only time will tell if w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
