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[Frank Ebersole is a philosopher] whose contribution to philosophy . . . is the greatest of anyone this [the 20th] century, especially in the areas of philosophy of language, theory of knowledge, and perception.from Wittgenstein, Empiricism, and Language by John W. Cook (Oxford University Press, 1999). Meaning and Saying has five chapters that address philosophical problems about language and knowledge, and one essay (chapter 6: "Postscript") that provides insights into some of Frank Ebersoles basic ideas about philosophy. The five essays let you participate in his unique struggles to come to terms with such questions as: Is the meaning of a word central to the philosophy of language? Is the meaning of a word the part the word plays in speech acts? How does the action of making sounds fit into speech? Are conditions for knowing something the same as conditions required for saying one knows something? Should philosophers still be doing conceptual analysis? Can G. E. Moore really refute the philosophical skeptic by displaying his hand and saying "I know this is my hand"? This and its companion volume, Language and Perception, are not just other philosophy books about the philosophy of language. In both books Ebersole, by carefully using examples, convincingly shows that the problems are products of philosophical pictures. The examples also make the pictures less compelling. How the Second Edition Differs from the First Edition This edition differs from the first edition (University Press of America, 1979) in several ways. Two more essays are included: "Saying and Meaning" (chapter 4) is a revised version of an essay originally published in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy and Language, eds. Alice Ambrose and Morris Lazerowitz (George Allen and Unwin, London and Humanities Press, New York, 1972), pp. 186221. "Saying What You Know" (chapter 5) was first read as a paper in Coos Bay, Oregon on May 26, 1996 at the conference, "Where the Action Is." A modified version of the paper was then published in Philosophical Investigations, vol. 23, no. 3, July 2000. Now it has been expanded and revised. Material that was formerly part of the preface is now revised and placed as chapter 6 at the end, entitled Postscript. The text is improved. Throughout the book, Ebersole has made corrections, stylistic improvements, and changed wording to remove ambiguities. Summary Language and logic provide philosophers with a dual problem: (1) How is language connected to the world and (2) how can philosophers use language and logic with care so as not to contaminate their own thinking? Speech acts and the use of sentences are thought to be better ways for philosophers to understand language and logic. But do they do the job? Preface In the early 1920s philosophers argued that philosophy should be philosophy of language; but this was just old wine in new bottles; then the Wittgensteinian revolution occurred, which identified meaning as the use of words and thereafter identified the meaning of a word with the use of a word. The book addresses some problems with this revolution. Chapter 1: Meaning and Use
This is a volume of original essays on key aspects of John Searle's philosophy of language. It examines Searle's work in relation to current issues of central significance, including internalism versus externalism about mental and linguistic content, truth-conditional versus non-truth-conditional conceptions of content, the relative priorities of thought and language in the explanation of intentionality, the status of the distinction between force and sense in the theory of meaning, the issue of meaning scepticism in relation to rule-following, and the proper characterization of 'what is said' in relation to the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Written by a distinguished team of contemporary philosophers, and prefaced by an illuminating essay by Searle, the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle's work in philosophy of language, and to suggest innovative approaches to fundamental questions in that area.
This volume explores the rich history of philosophy of language in the Western tradition, from Plato and Aristotle to the twentieth century. A team of leading experts focus in particular on key metaphysical debates about linguistic content, including questions of ontological status and metaphysical grounding.
In the most comprehensive account to date of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of language, Alexander Stern explores the nature of meaning by putting Benjamin in dialogue with Wittgenstein. Known largely for his essays on culture, aesthetics, and literature, Walter Benjamin also wrote on the philosophy of language. This early work is famously obscure and considered hopelessly mystical by some. But for Alexander Stern, it contains important insights and anticipates—in some respects surpasses—the later thought of a central figure in the philosophy of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein. As described in The Fall of Language, Benjamin argues that “language as such” is not a means for communicating an extra-linguistic reality but an all-encompassing medium of expression in which everything shares. Borrowing from Johann Georg Hamann’s understanding of God’s creation as communication to humankind, Benjamin writes that all things express meanings, and that human language does not impose meaning on the objective world but translates meanings already extant in it. He describes the transformations that language as such undergoes while making its way into human language as the “fall of language.” This is a fall from “names”—language that responds mimetically to reality—to signs that designate reality arbitrarily. While Benjamin’s approach initially seems alien to Wittgenstein’s, both reject a designative understanding of language; both are preoccupied with Russell’s paradox; and both try to treat what Wittgenstein calls “the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language.” Putting Wittgenstein’s work in dialogue with Benjamin’s sheds light on its historical provenance and on the turn in Wittgenstein’s thought. Although the two philosophies diverge in crucial ways, in their comparison Stern finds paths for understanding what language is and what it does.
Metasemantics comprises new work on the philosophical foundations of linguistic semantics, by a diverse group of established and emerging experts in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the theory of content. The science of semantics aspires to systematically specify the meanings of linguistic expressions in context. The paradigmatic metasemantic question is accordingly: what more basic or fundamental features of the world metaphysically determine these semantic facts? Efforts to answer this question inevitably raise others. Where are the boundaries of semantics? What is the essence of the meaning relation? Which framework should we use for semantic theorizing? What are the intrinsic natures of semantic values? Are the semantic facts metaphysically determinate? What is semantic competence? Metasemantic inquiry has long been recognized as a central part of the philosophy of language, but recent developments in metaphysics and semantics itself now allow us to approach these classic questions with an unprecedented degree of precision. The essays collected here provide promising new perspectives on old problems, pose questions that suggest novel research projects, and taken together, greatly sharpen our understanding of linguistic representation.
In this classic collection of wide-ranging and interdisciplinary essays, Stanley Cavell explores a remarkably broad range of philosophical issues from politics and ethics to the arts and philosophy. The essays explore issues as diverse as the opposing approaches of 'analytic' and 'Continental' philosophy, modernism, Wittgenstein, abstract expressionism and Schoenberg, Shakespeare on human needs, the difficulties of authorship, Kierkegaard and post-Enlightenment religion. Presented in a fresh twenty-first century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface, written by Stephen Mulhall, illuminating its continuing importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this influential work is now available for a new generation of readers.
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 contains some of the most important basic sources in philosophy of language, including a number of classic essays by philosophers such as Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Grice, Davidson, Strawson, Austin, and Putnam, as well as more recent contributions by scholars including John McDowell, Stephen Neale, Ruth Millikan, Stephen Schiffer, Paul Horwich, and Anthony Brueckner, among others, who are on the leading edge of innovation in this increasingly influential area of philosophy. The result is a lively mix of readings, together with the editors' discussions of the material, which provides a rigorous introduction to the subject.
The limit of language is one of the most pervasive notions found in Wittgenstein’s work, both in his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later writings. Moreover, the idea of a limit of language is intimately related to important scholarly debates on Wittgenstein’s philosophy, such as the debate between the so-called traditional and resolute interpretations, Wittgenstein’s stance on transcendental idealism, and the philosophical import of Wittgenstein’s latest work On Certainty. This collection includes thirteen original essays that provide a comprehensive overview of the various ways in which Wittgenstein appeals to the limit of language at different stages of his philosophical development. The essays connect the idea of a limit of language to the most important themes discussed by Wittgenstein—his conception of logic and grammar, the method of philosophy, the nature of the subject, and the foundations of knowledge—as well as his views on ethics, aesthetics, and religion. The essays also relate Wittgenstein’s thought to his contemporaries, including Carnap, Frege, Heidegger, Levinas, and Moore.
Garry Hagberg presents an original philosophical investigation of self-description. He explores the profound implications that Wittgenstein's later work has for our understanding of the human condition, and offers philosophical interpretations of a fascinating range of autobiographical writings, by Goethe, Dostoevsky, Iris Murdoch, and others.
The papers in this collection discuss the central questions about the connections between language, reality and human understanding. The complex relations between accounts of meaning and facts about ordinary speakers’ understanding of their language are examined so as to illuminate the philosophical character of the connections between language and reality. The collection as a whole is a thematically unified treatment of some of the most central questions within contemporary philosophy of language.