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Meaning Holism
Semantic holism is a theory in the philosophy of language to the effect that a certain part of language, be it a term or a complete sentence, can only be understood through its relations to a (previously understood) larger segment of language. There is substantial controversy, however, as to exactly what the larger segment of language in question consists of. In recent years, the debate surrounding semantic holism, which is one among the many forms of holism that are debated and discussed in contemporary philosophy, has tended to centre on the view that the "whole" in question consists of an entire language. Background Since the '' use'' of a linguistic expression is only possible if the speaker who uses it understands its ''meaning'', one of the central problems for analytic philosophers has always been the question of meaning. What is it? Where does it come from? How is it communicated? And, among these questions, what is the smallest unit of meaning, the smallest fragment of l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophical Theory
A philosophical theory or philosophical positionBothamley, Jennifer (1993), ''Dictionary of Theories'', Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press is a view that attempts to explain or account for a particular problem in philosophy. The use of the term "theory" is a statement of colloquial English and not a technical term. While any sort of thesis or opinion may be termed a position, in analytic philosophy it is thought best to reserve the word "theory" for systematic, comprehensive attempts to solve problems. Overview The elements that comprise a philosophical position consist of statements which are believed to be true by the thinkers who accept them, and which may or may not be empirical. The sciences have a very clear idea of what a theory is; however in the arts such as philosophy, the definition is more hazy. Philosophical positions are not necessarily scientific theories, although they may consist of both empirical and non-empirical statements. The collective statements of all phi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thought Experiment
A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario that is meant to elucidate or test an argument or theory. It is often an experiment that would be hard, impossible, or unethical to actually perform. It can also be an abstract hypothetical that is meant to test our intuitions about morality or other fundamental philosophical questions. History The ancient Greek , "was the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof", and existed before Euclidean geometry, Euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thought experiment. Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the equivalent German term . Ørsted was also the first to use the equivalent term in 1820. By 1883, Ernst Mach used in a different sense, to denote exclusively the conduct of a experiment that would be subsequently performed as a by his students. Physical and mental experimentation could then be contrasted: Mach asked hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis (mathematician), Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem. Putnam applied equal scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposed its flaws. As a result, he acquired a reputation for frequently changing his positions. In philosophy of mind, Putnam argued against the type physicalism, type-identity of mental and physical states based on his hypothesis of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Of Mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness and the nature of particular mental states.Siegel, S.: ''The Contents of Visual Experience''. New York: Oxford University Press. 2010.Macpherson, F. & Haddock, A., editors, ''Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Aspects of the mind that are studied include mental events, mental functions, mental property, mental properties, consciousness and neural correlates of consciousness, its neural correlates, the ontology of the mind, the nature of cognition and of thought, and the relationship of the mind to the body. Dualism (philosophy of mind), Dualism and monism are the two central schools of thought on the mind–bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Externalism
Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which argues that the conscious mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system (or the brain), but also what ''occurs'' or ''exists'' outside the subject. It is contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges from neural activity alone. Externalism is a belief that the mind is not just the brain or functions of the brain. There are different versions of externalism based on different beliefs about what the mind is taken to be. Externalism stresses factors external to the nervous system. At one extreme, the mind could ''possibly'' depend on external factors. At the opposite extreme, the mind ''necessarily'' depends on external factors. The extreme view of externalism argues either that the mind is ''constituted by'' or ''identical with'' processes partially or totally external to the nervous system. Another important criterion in externalist theory is to which aspect of the mind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Of Thought
The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH), sometimes known as thought ordered mental expression (TOME), is a view in linguistics, philosophy of mind and cognitive science, put forward by American philosopher Jerry Fodor. It describes the nature of thought as possessing "language-like" or compositional structure (sometimes known as ''mentalese''). On this view, simple concepts combine in systematic ways (akin to the rules of grammar in language) to build thoughts. In its most basic form, the theory states that thought, like language, has syntax. Using empirical evidence drawn from linguistics and cognitive science to describe mental representation from a philosophical vantage-point, the hypothesis states that thinking takes place in a language of thought (LOT): cognition and cognitive processes are only 'remotely plausible' when expressed as a system of representations that is "tokened" by a linguistic or semantic structure and operated upon by means of a combinatorial syntax. Lingu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inferential Role Semantics
Inferential role semantics (also conceptual role semantics, functional role semantics, procedural semantics, semantic inferentialism) is an approach to the theory of meaning that identifies the meaning of an expression with its relationship to other expressions (typically its inferential relations with other expressions), in contradistinction to denotationalism, according to which denotations are the primary sort of meaning. Overview Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is considered an early proponent of what is now called inferentialism.P. Stekeler-Weithofer (2016)"Hegel's Analytic Pragmatism", University of Leipzig, pp. 122–4. He believed that the ground for the axioms and the foundation for the validity of the inferences are the right consequences and that the axioms do not explain the consequence. In its current form, inferential role semantics originated in the work of Wilfrid Sellars. Contemporary proponents of semantic inferentialism include Robert Brandom, Gilbert Harman, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Pagin
Peter Pagin (born 1953) is Professor of Philosophy at Stockholm University. Stockholm University He is a specialist in the philosophy of language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ... and has worked extensively on foundational issues in semantics and on technical and philosophical problems about the compositionality of meaning.
Work One of Pagin's principal aims is to provide the foundations for seemingly basic semantic concepts like truth and reference in terms ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compositionality
In semantics, mathematical logic and related disciplines, the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them. The principle is also called Frege's principle, because Gottlob Frege is widely credited for the first modern formulation of it. However, the principle has never been explicitly stated by Frege, and arguably it was already assumed by George Boole decades before Frege's work. The principle of compositionality (also known as semantic compositionalism) is highly debated in linguistics. Among its most challenging problems there are the issues of contextuality, the non-compositionality of idiomatic expressions, and the non-compositionality of quotations. History Discussion of compositionality started to appear at the beginning of the 19th century, during which it was debated whether what was most fundamental in language was compositionalit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Constant
In logic, a logical constant or constant symbol of a language \mathcal is a symbol that has the same semantic value under every interpretation of \mathcal. Two important types of logical constants are logical connectives and quantifiers. The equality predicate (usually written '=') is also treated as a logical constant in many systems of logic. One of the fundamental questions in the philosophy of logic is "What is a logical constant?"; that is, what special feature of certain constants makes them ''logical'' in nature? Some symbols that are commonly treated as logical constants are: Many of these logical constants are sometimes denoted by alternate symbols (for instance, the use of the symbol "&" rather than "∧" to denote the logical and). Defining logical constants is a major part of the work of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Russell returned to the subject of logical constants in the preface to the second edition (1937) of '' The Principles of Mathematics'' not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carlo Penco
Carlo Penco, August 1948 –, is an Italian analytic philosopher and full professor in philosophy of language at the University of Genoa in Italy. Biography Born to Emilio Penco (engineer) and Margherita Castello (high school Italian teacher), Penco received his Ph.D. in Philosophy ''Summa cum Laude'' at the University of Genoa in 1972 with a specialization in the philosophy of science (at the time in Italy there were no PhD; he became a member of the PhD program later as a teacher). He studied with Evandro Agazzi in Genoa, with Michael Dummett in Oxford, and later with Robert Brandom and John McDowell John Henry McDowell (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, anci ... at the University of Pittsburgh (he later organized congress on Brandom's analytic pragmatism. He has received various academic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
