Philosophy of Language

An introduction to philosophical thought about the nature of language. The questions we will address include: What is meaning? What is truth? How does language relate to thought? How do languages relate to each other? What is metaphor? What is fiction? The focus will be on classic work in the analytic tradition (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Tarski, Quine, Austin, Grice, Davidson, Donnellan, Putnam, Searle, Kaplan, Kripke) but we will also read, and relate to this modern work, some current work in the philosophical literature and some seminal discussions of language in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. (II)

(NOTE: This course will take place during the last 8 weeks of the quarter).Language is for imparting information, but it is equally a tool for communicating ignorance. This course aims to do three things: (i) introduce some of the more well-known ways that what we say depends upon uncertain or incomplete information, (ii) survey some basic tools for representing uncertainty and show how they can fit into a general semantic theory, and (iii) push the boundaries on aims (i) and (ii).

This seminar will examine one of the primary devices by means of which we talk about language ad mental content. Topics will include the varieties of quotation: direct, indirect, mixed, pure, and non-literal (scare-quotes); various current theories of direct and indirect quotation; the relation between quotation and meaning; context-sensitivity and quotation; and the pictorial character of quotation. More generally, the seminar will investigate quotation as a phenomenon on the border between semantics and pragmatics and between linguistic and non-linguistic modes of representation. Readings will be drawn from authors such as Frege, Quine, Tarski, Davidson, Bennett, Cappelen and Lepore, H. Clark, Recanti, Garcia-Carpintero, Geurts, C. Potts, Kaplan, T. Parsons, Predelli, BUrge Peacocke, Brandom, Reimer, Richard, Saka, Sperber and Wilson, and Washington. (II)

Expressivism---the contemporary incarnation of the noncognitivist reaearch program of philosophers such as Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare---and its comprehensive view about the nature of both normative language and normative thought have recently been applied to many topics elsewhere in philosophy, including logic, probability, knowledge, belief, and modality. After reviewing the key motivations behind expressivism and its scope beyond the realm of the metaethical, the class will focus on the semantic commitments of expressivism. Of special interests will be the prospects of expressivism to resolve the Frege-Geach problem and, more generally, to arrive at a satisfying model of everyday discourse and reasoning. In addressing these questions, we will consider a number of non-classical semantic frameworks that have recently been proposed in philosophy of language, compare their vices and virtues, and see to what extent they are compatible with the key intuitions behind the expressivist agenda. (II)

Our readings are in the works of J. L. Austin, mainly How to Do Things with Words, and essays related to those lectures. If time permits, we consider later developments in the works of Grice and Cavell, among others. (II) (B)

This course is a survey of recent theories of names, descriptions, and truth. We discuss the relation of reference to meaning, as well as the epistemological and metaphysical consequences drawn from theses about reference. After briefly reviewing classical sources (e.g., Frege, Russell, Tarski), we concentrate on current work by Searle, Kripke, Donnellan, Kaplan, Putnam, Evans, Davidson, and Burge. (II) (B)

Topic: Language, Time, and Nature (instructor: M. Teichman)

Many philosophers have thought that studying the way we speak can lead to philosophical insight--that investigating language can itself be a way of doing philosophy.  This tutorial will investigate whether that is a viable endeavor.  We will look at Quine's influential argument to the effect that one can draw philosophical conclusions from linguistic investigations, followed by one its most serious criticisms.  Then, to answer that criticism, we will examine two topics in some depth.  First, through texts by such authors as Leibniz, Russell, Kenny, and Emmon Bach, we will consider whether tense and grammatical aspect have anything to tell us about the nature of time.  Second, through texts by such authors as Aristotle, Kripke, and Carlson, we will consider whether loose commonsense generalizations have anything to tell us about the status of natural or artificial kinds.  We will conclude the course by revisiting the major line of criticism against linguistic philosophy and considering whether, based on these two case studies, there is anything to say in response.

Topic: Rationality and Animal Minds (instructor: A. Browne)

The topic of animal minds has often proved divisive among philosophers.  Rene Descartes claimed that believing brutes think is ``the greatest of all prejudices we have retained from infancy'', while David Hume found no truth more evident than that ``beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men''.  In this course we will be looking at a recent version of this controversy, one that stems from the idea that the concept of rationality should be central to our understanding of the mind and its place in nature. Our main concern will be where the minds of non-rational animals fit in this picture.  Along the way we will consider such questions as what it is to have a mind and how we recognize another, how our intellectual capacities differ from those of other creatures, and why philosophers have been led to say seemingly implausible things about the minds of non-human animals.  Authors we will read include Frege, Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, John McDowell, David Finkelstein, Jason Bridges, Susan Hurley, Elizabeth Camp, Alasdair MacIntrye, and Matthew Boyle.

Topic: Language, Time, and Nature (instructor: M. Teichman)
Many philosophers have thought that studying the way we speak can lead to philosophical insight--that investigating language can itself be a way of doing philosophy.  This tutorial will investigate whether that is a viable endeavor.  We will look at Quine's influential argument to the effect that one can draw philosophical conclusions from linguistic investigations, followed by one its most serious criticisms.  Then, to answer that criticism, we will examine two topics in some depth.  First, through texts by such authors as Leibniz, Russell, Kenny, and Emmon Bach, we will consider whether tense and grammatical aspect have anything to tell us about the nature of time.  Second, through texts by such authors as Aristotle, Kripke, and Carlson, we will consider whether loose commonsense generalizations have anything to tell us about the status of natural or artificial kinds.  We will conclude the course by revisiting the major line of criticism against linguistic philosophy and considering whether, based on these two case studies, there is anything to say in response.

Topic: Rationality and Animal Minds (instructor: A. Browne)

The topic of animal minds has often proved divisive among philosophers.  Rene Descartes claimed that believing brutes think is ``the greatest of all prejudices we have retained from infancy'', while David Hume found no truth more evident than that ``beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men''.  In this course we will be looking at a recent version of this controversy, one that stems from the idea that the concept of rationality should be central to our understanding of the mind and its place in nature. Our main concern will be where the minds of non-rational animals fit in this picture.  Along the way we will consider such questions as what it is to have a mind and how we recognize another, how our intellectual capacities differ from those of other creatures, and why philosophers have been led to say seemingly implausible things about the minds of non-human animals.  Authors we will read include Frege, Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, John McDowell, David Finkelstein, Jason Bridges, Susan Hurley, Elizabeth Camp, Alasdair MacIntrye, and Matthew Boyle.

This course will provide a general introduction to the most widely discussed proposals for how to analyze the meaning of counterfactual (or subjunctive) conditional claims, such as “If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then somebody else would have.” In addition to the standard Stalnaker-Lewis “possible worlds” semantics for counterfactuals, we will also examine epistemic interpretations of counterfactuals, such as those proposed by Ramsey and Ginsberg. Readings for the course will include works by Goodman, Adams, Lewis, Fine and Bennett, among others. (B)

An introduction to the foundations and applications of dynamic approaches to natural language semantics. We will study the formal details and empirical motivations of various major dynamic semantic frameworks such as File Change Semantics, Discourse Representation Theory, Dynamic Predicate Logic, and Update Semantics, and see how they address a number of puzzling natural language phenomena such as donkey anaphora and presupposition projection. In parallel to the formal component, the empirical and theoretical advantages and drawbacks of dynamic semantics will come under scrutiny, and we will also pay close attention to the philosophical repercussions of a dynamic approach to discourse and reasoning. (B) (II)