Download or read book Definite Descriptions written by Gary Ostertag and published by Bradford Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For philosophy of language classes and seminars that focus on the semantics and pragmatics of descriptions, this volume provides a very good set of core readings." -- Mark Crimmins, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions sparked an ongoing debate concerning the proper logical and linguistic analysis of definite descriptions. While it is now widely acknowledged that, like the indexical expressions 'I', 'here', and 'now', definite descriptions in natural language are context-sensitive, there is significant disagreement as to the ultimate challenge this context-sensitivity poses to Russell's theory. This reader is intended both to introduce students to the philosophy of language via the theory of descriptions, and to provide scholars in analytic philosophy with ready access to some of the central contributions in this area. It includes classic works by Russell, Carnap, Strawson, Lambert, Donnellan, Grice, Peacocke, Kripke, Wettstein, Soames, Neale, and Schiffer.
Download or read book An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language written by Michael Morris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-14 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this textbook, Michael Morris offers a critical introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language. Each chapter focusses on one or two texts which have had a seminal influence on work in the subject, and uses these as a way of approaching both the central topics and the various traditions of dealing with them. Texts include classic writings by Frege, Russell, Kripke, Quine, Davidson, Austin, Grice and Wittgenstein. Theoretical jargon is kept to a minimum and is fully explained whenever it is introduced. The range of topics covered includes sense and reference, definite descriptions, proper names, natural-kind terms, de re and de dicto necessity, propositional attitudes, truth-theoretical approaches to meaning, radical interpretation, indeterminacy of translation, speech acts, intentional theories of meaning, and scepticism about meaning. The book will be invaluable to students and to all readers who are interested in the nature of linguistic meaning.
Download or read book Definite Descriptions written by Paul Elbourne and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Elbourne defends the Fregean view that definite descriptions ('the table', 'the King of France') refer to individuals, and offers a new and radical account of the semantics of pronouns. He draws on a wide range of work, from Frege, Peano, and Russell to the latest findings in linguistics, philosophy of language, and psycholinguistics.
Download or read book Anaphora and Definite Descriptions written by Jaakko Hintikka and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I n order to appreciate properly what we are doing in this book it is necessary to realize that our approach to linguistic theorizing differs from the prevailing views. Our approach can be described by indicating what distinguishes it from the methodological ideas current in theoretical linguistics, which I consider seriously misguided. Linguists typically construe their task in these days as that of making exceptionless generalizations from particular examples. This explanatory strategy is wrong in several different ways. It presupposes that we can have "intuitions" about particular examples, usually examples invented by the linguist himself or herself, reliable and sharp enough to serve as a basis of sharp generalizations. It also presupposes that we cannot have equally reliable direct access to general linguistic regularities. Both assumptions appear to me extremely dubious, and the first of them has in effect been challenged by linguists like Dwight Bol inger. There is also some evidence that the degree of unanimity among linguists is fairly low when it comes to less clear cases, even in connection with such relatively simple questions as grammaticality (acceptability). For this reason we have tried to rely more on quotations from contemporary fiction, newspapers and magazines than on linguists' and philosophers' ad hoc examples. I also find it strange that some of the same linguists as believe that we all possess innate ideas about general characteristics of humanly possible grammars assume that we can have access to them only via their particular consequences.
Download or read book Definiteness across languages written by Ana Aguilar-Guevara and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Definiteness has been a central topic in theoretical semantics since its modern foundation. However, despite its significance, there has been surprisingly scarce research on its cross-linguistic expression. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, the present volume gathers thirteen studies exploiting insights from formal semantics and syntax, typological and language specific studies, and, crucially, semantic fieldwork and cross-linguistic semantics, in order to address the expression and interpretation of definiteness in a diverse group of languages, most of them understudied. The papers presented in this volume aim to establish a dialogue between theory and data in order to answer the following questions: What formal strategies do natural languages employ to encode definiteness? What are the possible meanings associated to this notion across languages? Are there different types of definite reference? Which other functions (besides marking definite reference) are associated with definite descriptions? Each of the papers contained in this volume addresses at least one of these questions and, in doing so, they aim to enrich our understanding of definiteness.
Download or read book What Truth is written by Mark Jago and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Jago offers a new metaphysical account of truth. He argues that to be true is to be made true by the existence of a suitable worldly entity. Truth arises as a relation between a proposition - the content of our sayings, thoughts, beliefs, and so on - and an entity (or entities) in the world.
Download or read book Definite Descriptions written by Gary Ostertag and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reader is intended both to introduce students to the philosophy of language via the theory of descriptions, and to provide scholars in analytic philosophy with ready access to some of the central contributions in this area. Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions sparked an ongoing debate concerning the proper logical and linguistic analysis of definite descriptions. While it is now widely acknowledged that, like the indexical expressions 'I', 'here', and 'now', definite descriptions in natural language are context-sensitive, there is significant disagreement as to the ultimate challenge this context-sensitivity poses to Russell's theory. This reader is intended both to introduce students to the philosophy of language via the theory of descriptions, and to provide scholars in analytic philosophy with ready access to some of the central contributions in this area. It includes classic works by Russell, Carnap, Strawson, Lambert, Donnellan, Grice, Peacocke, Kripke, Wettstein, Soames, Neale, and Schiffer.
Download or read book Principia Mathematica written by Alfred North Whitehead and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Descriptions written by Stephen Neale and published by Bradford Books. This book was released on 1993-09-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1905, Bertrand Russell argued that certain logical puzzles are solved if definite descriptions are treated as quantified expressions rather than referential expression, as Frege had thought. Since then, philosophers and, more recently, linguists have debated the relevance of this paradigm to the study of the semantics of natural language. In Descriptions, Stephen Neale provides the first sustained defense and extension of Russell's theory, placing it in the center of a theory of singular and nonsingular descriptive phrases and anaphoric pronouns.Stephen Neale is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell written by Nicholas Griffin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-23 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mathematics in and behind Russell's logicism, and its reception / I. Grattan-Guinness -- Russell's philosophical background / Nicholas Griffin -- Russell and Moore, 1898-1905 / Richard L. Cartwright -- Russell and Frege / Michael Beaney -- Bertrand Russell's logicism / Martin Godwyn and Andrew D. Irvine -- The theory of descriptions / Peter Hylton -- Russell's substitutional theory / Gregory Landini -- The theory of types / Alasdair Urquhart -- Russell's method of analysis / Paul Hager -- Russell's neutral monism / R.E. Tully -- The metaphysics of logical atomism / Bernard Linksy -- Russell's structuralism and the absolute description of the world / William Demopoulos -- From knowledge by acquaintance to knowledge by causation / Thomas Baldwin -- Russell, experience, and the roots of science / A.C. Grayling -- Bertrand Russell: moral philosopher or unphilosophical moralist? / Charles R. Pidgen.
Download or read book Symbolic Logic written by Odysseus Makridis and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-02-21 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the essential elements of standard (classical) symbolic logic. Key topics covered include: · The characteristic nature and scope of logic as a discipline · The construction of a series of distinctly named formal languages suitable for formal translation · Semantic models · The construction of decision procedures · The execution of proof-theoretic arrangements like natural deduction and proof-sequent systems The book covers both the semantics and proof theory of the standard sentential (propositional) logic and predicate (first-order) logic. Other topics covered include: parsing trees, extraction of alternative notations (for instance, Polish notation), Fitch-style proof-theory, sequent and ‘tree’ proof systems, comparisons and contrasts with intuitionistic logic, and presentations of predicate logic models. An ancillary chapter on elements of set theory is conveniently placed at the end and includes insights into the Zermelo-Fraenkel systematization of set theory. The philosophy of logic is also explored. Exercises in the text provide instruction on mathematical induction for the construction of formula, tests for the well-formedness of Polish notation, and functional completeness. Symbolic Logic is essential reading for all philosophy students taking intermediate level formal logic courses and will also appeal to diligent first year students of logic. The text is replete with exercises on both the formal machinery and the philosophical aspects of logic.
Download or read book Reference and Representation in Thought and Language written by María Ponte and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers novel views on the precise relation between reference to an object by means of a linguistic expression and our mental representation of that object, long a source of debate in the philosophy of language, linguistics, and cognitive science. Chapters in this volume deal with our devices for singular reference and singular representation, with most focusing on linguistic expressions that are used to refer to particular objects, persons, or places. These expressions include proper names such as Mary and John; indexicals such as I and tomorrow; demonstrative pronouns such as this and that; and some definite and indefinite descriptions such as The Queen of England or a medical doctor. Other chapters examine the ways we represent objects in thought, particularly the first-person perspective and the self, and one explores a notion common to reference and representation: salience. The volume includes the latest views on these complex topics from some of the most prominent authors in the field and will be of interest to anyone working on issues of reference and representation in thought and language.
Download or read book Naming and Necessity written by Saul A. Kripke and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics or in philosophy of language, this is it. Ever since the publication of its original version, Naming and Necessity has had great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in particular of naming, and of identity. From a critique of the dominant tendency to assimilate names to descriptions and more generally to treat their reference as a function of their Fregean sense, surprisingly deep and widespread consequences may be drawn. The largely discredited distinction between accidental and essential properties, both of individual things (including people) and of kinds of things, is revived. So is a consequent view of science as what seeks out the essences of natural kinds. Traditional objections to such views are dealt with by sharpening distinctions between epistemic and metaphysical necessity; in particular by the startling admission of necessary a posteriori truths. From these, in particular from identity statements using rigid designators whether of things or of kinds, further remarkable consequences are drawn for the natures of things, of people, and of kinds; strong objections follow, for example to identity versions of materialism as a theory of the mind. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here published with a substantial new Preface by the author.
Download or read book Death and Nonexistence written by Palle Yourgrau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dead are gone. They count for nothing. Yet, if we count the dead, their number is staggering. And they account for most of what is great about civilization. Compared to the greatness of the dead, the accomplishments of the living are paltry. Which is it then: are the dead still there to be counted or not? And if they are still there, where exactly is "there"? We are confronted with the ancient paradox of nonexistence bequeathed us by Parmenides. The mystery of death is the mystery of nonexistence. A successful attempt to provide a metaphysics of death, then, must resolve the paradox of nonexistence. That is the aim of this study. At the same time, the metaphysics of death, of ceasing to exist, must serve as an account of birth, of coming to exist; the primary thesis of this book is that this demands going beyond existence and nonexistence to include what underlies both, which one can call, following tradition, "being." The dead and the unborn are therefore objects that lack existence but not being. Nonexistent objects - not corpses, or skeletons, or memories, all of which are existent objects - are what are "there" to be counted when we count the dead.
Download or read book Frege written by Michael Dummett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 756 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one has figured more prominently in the study of German philosopher Gottlob Frege than Michael Dummett. This highly acclaimed book is a major contribution to the philosophy of language as well as a systematic interpretation of Frege, indisputably the father of analytic philosophy. Frege: Philosophy of Language remains indispensable for an understanding of contemporary philosophy. Harvard University Press is pleased to reissue this classic book in paperback.
Download or read book Linguistics Meets Philosophy written by Daniel Altshuler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With input from a team of scholars, this book brings together linguistics and philosophy, empowering new conversations in the process.
Download or read book Reference Without Referents written by Richard Mark Sainsbury and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reference is a central topic in philosophy of language. This book sets out a new approach to the concept, which promises to bring to an end some long-standing debates in semantic theory. It also includes an historical survey. It will be of interest to those working in logic, mind, and metaphysics.
