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Two Dimensionalism
Two-dimensionalism is an approach to semantics in analytic philosophy. It is a theory of how to determine the sense and reference of a word and the truth-value of a sentence. It is intended to resolve the puzzle: How is it possible to discover empirically that a necessary truth is true? Two-dimensionalism provides an analysis of the semantics of words and sentences that makes sense of this possibility. The theory was first developed by Robert Stalnaker, but it has been advocated by numerous philosophers since, including David Chalmers. Two-dimensional semantic analysis Any given sentence, for example, the words, :"Water is H2O" is taken to express two distinct propositions, often referred to as a ''primary intension'' and a ''secondary intension'', which together compose its meaning. The primary intension of a word or sentence is its sense, i.e., is the idea or method by which we find its referent. The primary intension of "water" might be a description, such as ''watery stuf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ..., linguistics and computer science. History In English, the study of meaning in language has been known by many names that involve the Ancient Greek word (''sema'', "sign, mark, token"). In 1690, a Greek rendering of the term ''semiotics'', the interpretation of signs and symbols, finds an early allusion in John Locke's ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'': The third Branch may be called [''simeiotikí'', "semiotics"], or the Doctrine of Signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contingency (philosophy)
In philosophy and logic, contingency is the status of propositions that are neither true under every possible valuation (i.e. tautologies) nor false under every possible valuation (i.e. contradictions). A contingent proposition is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. Overview Propositions that are contingent may be so because they contain logical connectives which, along with the truth value of any of its atomic parts, determine the truth value of the proposition. This is to say that the truth value of the proposition is ''contingent'' upon the truth values of the sentences which comprise it. Contingent propositions depend on the facts, whereas analytic propositions are true without regard to any facts about which they speak. Along with contingent propositions, there are at least three other classes of propositions, some of which overlap: * '' Tautological'' propositions, which ''must'' be true, no matter what the circumstances are or could be (example: "It is the cas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Kaplan (philosopher)
David Benjamin Kaplan (; born September 17, 1933) is an American philosopher. He is the Hans Reichenbach Professor of Scientific Philosophy at the UCLA Department of Philosophy. His philosophical work focuses on the philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of Frege and Russell. He is best known for his work on demonstratives, propositions, and reference in intensional contexts. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1983 and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2007. Education and career Kaplan began as an undergraduate at UCLA in 1951, admitted on academic probation "owing to poor grades." While he started as a music major due to his interest in jazz, he was soon persuaded by his academic counselor Veronica Kalish to take the logic course taught by her husband Donald Kalish. Kaplan went on to earn a BA in philosophy in 1956 and a BA in mathematics in 1957, continuing in the department of philosophy ... [...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] |
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic philosophy, concentrating on the philosophy of language, logic, and mathematics. Though he was largely ignored during his lifetime, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and, to some extent, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) introduced his work to later generations of philosophers. Frege is widely considered to be the greatest logician since Aristotle, and one of the most profound philosophers of mathematics ever. His contributions include the development of modern logic in the ''Begriffsschrift'' and work in the foundations of mathematics. His book the ''Foundations of Arithmetic'' is the seminal text of the logicist project, and is cited by Michael Dummett as where to pinpoint the linguistic turn. His philosophical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"Bertrand Russell" 1 May 2003. He was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians, and a founder of analytic philosophy, along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, his friend and colleague G. E. Moore and his student and protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against idealism". Together with his former teacher A. N. Whitehead, Russell wrote ''Principia Mathematica'', a milestone in the development of classical logic, and a major attempt to reduce the whole ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scott Soames
Scott Soames (; born 1945) is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California (since 2004), and before that at Princeton University. He specializes in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy. He is well known for defending and expanding on the program in the philosophy of language started by Saul Kripke as well as being a major critic of two-dimensionalist theories of meaning. Life and career Scott Soames was born in 1945. He did his undergraduate work in philosophy at Stanford University and his graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in linguistics and philosophy. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from MIT in 1976.From Soames'web page at USC Soames taught briefly at Yale University (from 1976 to 1980) and, then, from 1980 to 2004 at Princeton University. His departure from Princeton in 2004 was seen as a major loss at the philosophy department there. Gilbert Harman, one of So ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neutral Monism
Neutral monism is an umbrella term for a class of metaphysical theories in the philosophy of mind. These theories reject the dichotomy of mind and matter, believing the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is "neutral". Craig, Edward. (1998). ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. Routledge. p. 816. Relations to other theories Physicalists believe reality is fundamentally material, idealists believe reality is fundamentally mental, dualists believe reality consists of both fundamentally mental and fundamentally physical elements, and neutral monists believe reality consists of elements that are neither fundamentally physical nor mental. Monism Neutral monism largely overlaps with dual-aspect theory. However, it shares little in common with other forms of monism, such as idealism and physicalism. Dualism Neutral monism is similar to dualism in that both take reality to have both mental and physical properties irreducible to one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophical Zombie
A philosophical zombie or p-zombie argument is a thought experiment in philosophy of mind that imagines a hypothetical being that is physically identical to and indistinguishable from a normal person but does not have consciousness, conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. For example, if a philosophical zombie were poked with a sharp object it would not inwardly feel any pain, yet it would outwardly behave exactly as if it did feel pain, including verbally expressing pain. Relatedly, a zombie world is a hypothetical world indistinguishable from our world but in which all beings lack conscious experience. Philosophical zombie arguments are used in support of mind-body dualism against forms of physicalism such as materialism, behaviorism and Functionalism (philosophy of mind), functionalism. These arguments aim to resist the possibility of any physicalist solution to the "hard problem of consciousness" (the problem of accounting for subjective, intrinsic, first-person, What is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phenomenal Consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scientists. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of mind. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, or self-awareness either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked. Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: simple wakefulness, one's sense of selfhood or soul explored ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modal Logic
Modal logic is a collection of formal systems developed to represent statements about necessity and possibility. It plays a major role in philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and natural language semantics. Modal logics extend other systems by adding unary operators \Diamond and \Box, representing possibility and necessity respectively. For instance the modal formula \Diamond P can be read as "possibly P" while \Box P can be read as "necessarily P". Modal logics can be used to represent different phenomena depending on what kind of necessity and possibility is under consideration. When \Box is used to represent epistemic necessity, \Box P states that P is epistemically necessary, or in other words that it is known. When \Box is used to represent deontic necessity, \Box P states that P is a moral or legal obligation. In the standard relational semantics for modal logic, formulas are assigned truth values relative to a ''possible world''. A formula's truth value at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemic
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas: # The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge, such as truth and justification # Potential sources of knowledge and justified belief, such as perception, reason, memory, and testimony # The structure of a body of knowledge or justified belief, including whether all justified beliefs must be derived from justified foundational beliefs or whether justification requires only a coherent set of beliefs # Philosophical skepticism, which questions the possibili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
