PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
Overview
Philosophy of language was considered by many to be the new "first philosophy." As a
distinct sub-discipline, it really came of age in the 1960's and early 1970's. There were at least
four reasons* for this: (1) With the publication of Translations from the Philosophical Writings
of Gottlob Frege in 1952, Frege had finally come to be widely recognized as the father of
20th-century philosophy; and the influence of his work on language was being strongly felt by this
time. (2) The failure of the Logical Positivists' account of meaning was still sorely in need of
interpretation. (3) Although the earlier "linguistic philosophy" (both ordinary language
philosophy and logical constructivism) had come under attack, during this period the strong
points of these movements were combined: logical theory was brought to bear on ordinary
language, with the aim of understanding it rather than merely reforming it. (4) There occurred at
this time a revival of interest in traditional issues about singular reference. We
shall explore the fruits of each of these developments.
Texts
A. P. Martinich (ed.), The Philosophy of Language, 4th edition (Oxford, 2000).
Additional readings, available online.
Suggested: A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy 1: A Guide Through the Subject (Oxford, 1998).
Books On Reserve
For those of you who are especially interested in a topic or who are having difficulty
understanding a particular topic, I have put a number of ancillary works on reserve in the Central
Library. The bibliographies in some of these works may be of special interest when writing your
term papers.
Course Objectives
You will demonstrate an adequate understanding of the central figures and of the main philosophical problems discussed in this course. You will also acquire knowledge of key works in the field that will enable you to read the contemporary literature in this sub-disciplinary area with care and comprehension. You will display this latter ability together with a knowledge of philosophical methods of analysis and the ability to write clear, effective, and thoughtful philosophical prose in writing your term paper.
Evaluation of Students' Performance
Semester grades will be determined on the basis of your performance on a midterm take-home examination, a final (10- to 12-page) paper, a series of Reading Topic Paragraphs (RTPs), and class attendance. Your grades on the exam, paper, RTPs, and attendance will be weighted equally; that is, each will count as 25% of your overall semester grade. More will be said about the nature and timing of the exam and the paper, as the semester progresses. I shall be taking attendance daily. You will begin with an 'A' in attendance and lose one-third of a letter grade for every day you miss. The resulting grade will account for that (25%) portion of your overall semester grade.
The RTPs are to be brief, one-paragraph, descriptions of each of the assigned readings. For each
reading, you are to answer the following two questions in your RTP: (i) What is the main point or
conclusion for which the author argues in this work? (ii) What is the main argument for that
point? You are to turn in an RTP, during class, at the beginning of our discussion of each
chapter or article. (The RTPs will be due at the beginning of our actualdiscussion of the relevant
chapter or article, which will not necessarily coincide with the beginning of our tentatively
scheduled discussion of that material.)
List of Readings
INTRODUCTION
Richard Kirkham, Theories of Truth: A critical introduction, Chapter 1, "Projects of Theories of Truth" (1992).
[on e-reserve]
"ANCIENT HISTORY" AND THE ATTACK ON ANALYTICITY
Gottlob Frege, "On Sense and Nominatum" (1892). [in Martinich]
Alexius Meinong, "The Theory of Objects," Parts 1-4 (1904). [on e-reserve]
Bertrand Russell, "On Denoting" (1905). [in Martinich]
W. V. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951). [in Martinich]
Quine, "Carnap and Logical Truth" (1954). [on e-reserve]
H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson, "In Defense of a Dogma," The Philosophical Review, 65 (1956): pp. 141-158. [in JSTOR]
Hilary Putnam, "The Analytic and the Synthetic" (1962). [on e-reserve]
REFERENCE AND NAMING
Strawson, "On Referring" (1950). [in Martinich]
Keith Donnellan, "Reference and Definite Descriptions" (1966). [in Martinich]
Saul Kripke, excerpt from Naming and Necessity (1972). [in Martinich]
Putnam, "Meaning and Reference" (1973). [in Martinich]
Gareth Evans, "The Causal Theory of Names" (1973). [in Martinich]
Bjorn Ramberg, Donald Davidson's Philosophy of Language, Chapter 3, "Reference" (1989). [on e-reserve]
TRUTH AND MEANING
Alfred Tarski, "The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics" (1944). [in Martinich]
Strawson, "Truth" (1950). [on e-reserve]
Grice, "Meaning" (1957). [in Martinich]
Michael Dummett, "Truth" (1959). [on e-reserve]
Quine, Word and Object, Chapter 2, "Translation and Meaning" (1960). [on e-reserve]
Donald Davidson, "Truth and Meaning" (1967). [in Martinich]
Dummett, "Truth and Meaning" (1985). [on e-reserve]
Ruth Millikan, "Truth Rules, Hoverflies, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein Paradox" (1990). [in Martinich]
Jerry Fodor and Ernest LePore, "Why Meaning (Probably) Isn't Conceptual Role" (1991). [on e-reserve]
Robert Brandom, Articulating Reasons, Chapter 1, "Semantic Inferentialism and Logical Expressivism" (2000). [on e-reserve]
Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, The Faculty of Language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science, 298 (22 November 2002): pp. 1569-1579. [in online Library holdings]
*Cf. Tyler Burge, "Philosophy of Language and Mind: 1950-1990," The Philosophical Review, 101 (January, 1992), pp. 14-15.