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The philosophy of language is a branch of philosophy. It does
not ask what particular words mean, or whether particular sentences are true (except of course for words and sentences about language). Rather, it asks what the meaning in general is. What are the meanings of the word "meaning"? How do we
understand this concept?
Language, meaning, and truth are important not just because they are used daily with important effects; language has shaped
our human development, from our earliest childhood and continuing to the present. We each have a whole integrated set of concepts
which we have associated with certain words -- words like "object," "love," "good,"
"God," "masculine," "feminine," "art," "government," and
so on. Some philosophers have even thought that it is impossible to have thoughts without having learned a language. By learning
the meanings of these words, each of us has shaped an entire view of the universe
and our place in it. This is not to say that one's philosophy is only one's understanding of what important words mean; of course
there's much more to it than that. But in arriving at a present philosophical outlook, questions about meaning play a central,
extremely important role. Accordingly it's not by accident that philosophical discussions often begin by clarifying terminology,
drawing distinctions between different senses of words, and so forth. The philosophy of language is important because language is
important, and language is important because it is so useful in our relationships and in our development and education.
History and the analytic tradition
Language became so central to western, and especially English-speaking philosophical discussions during the 20th Century that
philosophy of language became virtually synonymous with the main school, analytic philosophy. This trend began with a reaction against the idealism of Hegel and
Nietzsche. In Principia Mathematica Bertrand Russell
and Alfred North Whitehead attempted to produce a
formal language with which the truth of all mathematical statements could be demonstrated from first principles. Russell desired
to extend this to all possible true statements, a scheme he called logical atomism. For a while it appeared that Wittgenstein had succeeded in this plan with his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus".
At the same time G. E. Moore was developing an approach which sought to
examine philosophical difficulties by a close analyse of the language used in order to determine its meaning. In this way Moore
sought to expunge philosophical absurdities such as "time is unreal".
This close examination of natural language is a powerful
philosophical technique. Other practitioners have include J. L. Austin,
P. F. Strawson, John
Searle, R. M. Hare and R. S. Peters. Wittgenstein himself
returned to philosophy after becoming aware that there was much more to natural languages than he has summarised in his Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus. The result, "Philosophical Investigations", confirmed the central place of natural languages in the
philosophy of language.
However there is still much that can be done by using formal logic to show how natural languages might work. Saul Kripke's analysis of reference is a case in point. Donald Davidson proposed simply translating
natural languages into first-order
predicate calculus in order to reduce meaning to a function of truth.
In 1950s, an artificial language loglan was invented that is based on first order predicate logic.
Key issues
- Meaning and speech acts
- Sense and reference
- Meaning and intentionality
- Meaning and truth
See also
connotation and denotation (intension and extension) -- definite
description -- epistemology -- logic -- meaning -- proper names -- sense and reference --
truth
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