Philosophy of Language

An introduction to philosophy language via a discussion of the meaning of counterfactuals.

Indexical expressions—those whose reference and content can shift from context to context, such as ‘I’, ‘now’, ‘here’, ‘she’, and ‘today’—and indexical attitudes have played a prominent role in theoretical reflections on language and the mind. In this class, we will consider the philosophical and linguistic implications of indexicality, starting with Kaplan’s theory of indexicals and then taking a close look at Perry’s and Lewis’s seminal arguments that indexicals and indexical thoughts pose exciting problems for traditional views about propositions and attitudes. We will then ask to what extent their observations have important consequences for epistemology, ethics, and other areas of philosophy outside of philosophy of language and mind, but also consider critical perspectives on the Perry-Lewis tradition. Throughout the quarter we will keep an eye on the relation between perspectival thought and talk and the more general phenomenon of subjectivity. (II)

Modal information—information conveyed by sentences such as ‘Mary might be at home’ or ‘Charles ought to give to the poor’—play an outstanding role in everyday discourse and reasoning. The goal of this class is to explain and evaluate contemporary semantic theories of modality by discussing a wide range of linguistic phenomena from the perspective of these theories. After introducing possible worlds semantics for modality developed in modal logic, we will consider current theories of modal semantics within linguistics as well as the most important empirical areas of research. Throughout, we will keep an eye on the relation between modality and other topics that are prominent in linguists and philosophy, including tense, conditionals, and discourse meaning. (B)

In this course we address one of the central and most fascinating philosophical questions about linguistic meaning: what is the relationship between meaning and reference? We will study a range of classical and contemporary theories about the semantics of referring expressions such as proper names, definite descriptions, and indexicals. Readings will include Frege, Russell, Strawson, Kripke, Donnellan, and Kaplan, among others. Throughout, we will try to reach of a better understanding of how questions about meaning and reference connect with a range of topics that are central to philosophical theorizing, including the connection between propositional attitudes and the explanation of action, the role of the principle of compositionality in formal semantics, the question of whether there is a level of mental experience that is epistemically transparent, the relation between thought and language, the nature of fictional and non-existent objects, and the interaction between semantics and pragmatics. (B)

This course will trace the history of the philosophical controversy over the analytic/synthetic distinction from Carnap and Klein through contemporary defenses by Gillian Russell and others.  (II) (III)

Linguists and philosophers have traditionally examined the role of language and thought as a medium for (mis)representing objective facts about the world we are living in. However, language is also an important tool for sharing subjective perspectives with others, and clearly not all thoughts are objective. Taking subjectivity as a sui generis phenomenon that does not reduce to another instance of descriptive talk and thought has repercussions that go beyond the traditional distinction between linguistics and philosophy: it impacts both the way that linguists tend to think to about the nature of linguistic meaning and philosophical attempts to understand the nature of normative thoughts. This is the second in a two-course sequence that addresses the resulting challenges in a systematic manner, to be offered jointly by Professors Chris Kennedy and Malte Willer. The first course will be taught in Fall 2014 by Malte Willer and will focus on foundational philosophical issues surrounding subjectivity in language and thought, including issues pertaining to normativity and general considerations about the shape a theory of natural language meaning must have to take the phenomenon of subjectivity seriously. The second course will be taught in Winter 2015 by Chris Kennedy and will focus on linguistic issues surrounding subjectivity, including a rich variety of empirical questions and the impact that treating subjectivity as a sui generis phenomenon has for theoretical linguistics. Despite their slight differences in focus, both courses are interdisciplinary by design and will appeal to linguists and philosophers alike. Students may take either one of these courses for credit without taking the other for credit. The two-course seminar is also the launching event for a three-year interdisciplinary working group on the nature of subjectivity in language and thought, led by Chris Kennedy and Malte Willer and funded by the generous support of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society.

You and I might identify as all sorts of things: as an American, a woman, a teacher, a student, a hip hop enthusiast, a vegetarian, a knitter, a computer nerd, a chef, a caucasian, a runner, a news junkie, a bleeding heart liberal, a member of the tea party, a football fan, and so on. Call everything on that list a practical identity. Some practical identities are optional—we can choose or whether or not to adopt them—while others, such as gender, are such that the law requires us to adopt them. But in each of these cases, there is a question as to whether the relevant practical identity has a prescriptive or a descriptive flavor. When I tell you I’m a vegetarian, am I describing the way I am, or laying down a plan for how I’d like to be? Are vegetarians a special kind of person all of whom share a special, deep, common core, or are they just the set of people who happen to follow the convention of not eating meat? Does the way we talk about vegetarianism affect what it means to be a vegetarian—what vegetarians are or could be? This quarter, we will approach these questions through the specific case of gender identity. You might think it’s straightforward to say what it means to be a man: you’re a man just in case you have a Y chromosome, and a woman just in case you have two X chromosomes. But what about an intersex baby who is arbitrarily assigned a gender at birth? Or someone with Klinefelter syndrome, who according to the above definition would be both a man and a woman? What about someone who was born biologically female, underwent sex reassignment surgery as an adult, and now identifies as a man? What about someone who prefers not to adopt any gender identity? There is often a temptation to dismiss these examples as aberrant borderline cases. But the past few decades have seen an explosion of new gender categories, many of which may very well take center stage in our culture sooner than we think. If we decide to write them off, we need to tell some story about how our gender concepts license us to do so. If not, then we are faced with the interesting challenge of explaining what gender now is, in light of these developments.

Linguists and philosophers have traditionally examined the role of language and thought as a medium for (mis)representing objective facts about the world we are living in. However, language is also an important tool for sharing subjective perspectives with others, and clearly not all thoughts are objective. Taking subjectivity as a sui generis phenomenon that does not reduce to another instance of descriptive talk and thought has repercussions that go beyond the traditional distinction between linguistics and philosophy: it impacts philosophical attempts to understand the nature of normative thoughts no less than the way linguists tend to think to about the nature of linguistic meaning. This is the first in a two-course sequence that addresses the exciting resulting challenges in a systematic manner, to be offered jointly by Professors Chris Kennedy and Malte Willer. The first course will be taught by Malte Willer and focus on foundational philosophical issues surrounding subjectivity in language and thought, including issues pertaining to normativity and general considerations about the shape a theory of natural language meaning must have to take the phenomenon of subjectivity seriously. The second course will be taught by Chris Kennedy in the Winter Quarter, 2015 and focus on linguistic issues surrounding subjectivity, including a rich variety of empirical questions and the impact that treating subjectivity as a sui generis phenomenon has for theoretical linguistics. Despite their slight differences in focus, both courses are interdisciplinary by design and will appeal to linguists and philosophers alike. Students may take either one of these courses for credit without taking the other for credit. The two-course seminar is also the launching event for a three-year interdisciplinary working group on the nature of subjectivity in language and thought, led by Chris Kennedy and Malte Willer and funded by the generous support of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. (II) 

The question how thought and speech refers, and in particular what role descriptions play in a comprehensive philosophical analysis of referring expressions, has played an outstanding role in 20th century philosophy and remains influential until today. In this class we will trace the discussion about the relation between reference and description from Fregean beginnings to the most recent two-dimensionalist attempts to overcome Kripke’s seminal arguments against descriptive analyses of referring expressions. Throughout, we will try to reach a better understanding of why questions about reference and description are of foundational importance for a range of topics that are central to philosophical theorizing, including the analysis of propositional attitudes such as belief and knowledge, the nature of possibility and necessity, the question of whether there is a level of mental experience that is epistemically transparent, the relation between thought and language, the role of the principle of compositionality in semantics, and the intersection between semantics and pragmatics. (B)

In this course we will examine attempts to solve the problem of philosophical skepticism through reflection on the nature of linguistic meaning. We will focus on three such attempts: early 20th century logical empiricism, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and the contemporary movement of epistemological contextualism. In each case, we will ask whether the claims advanced about the nature of language can be sustained, and whether they really do have the power to defeat the skeptical challenge.