Questions tagged [philosophy-of-language]
for philosophical questions concerning the nature, origins, and usage of natural language
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Evolution of Logos
I asked this question in linguistics but I don't know if you have a better idea
So this term has had a lot of impact religiously and philosophically, yet I still do not understand why logos as ...
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Confused On The Definition Of A Proposition
One definition I encountered was something that is either true or false.
(for example, I ate vegetables yesterday is a proposition).
Another definition I encountered is the meaning of a sentence
(for ...
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Is the mass/count-noun distinction the same as the continuous/discrete one?
Justification for this as a PhilosophySE questions: there are two SEP articles concerning this topic:
The Logic of Mass Expressions (Nicolas[18]).
The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions (Steen[22]).
...
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Don't some grammar rules in natural language imply or require classical logic to be true?
Languages, natural like English or French, or subject to specification
like the mathematical language or formal logic itself, do not make any
assumption, and this for the obvious reason that ...
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Philosophy presupposes the individuality of the Whole?
I thought of a flaw in the very essence of philosophy
Philosophy presuppose that the individualisation of the Whole, which is created by language, corresponds with the Whole as it is, and that it is ...
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In the liar/similar sentences, are the characteristic predicates being used more generally or more particularly, or neither?
Between (1) and (2), it seems like "is true" is more particular in the latter than the former:
The truth predicate ("is true") is a predicate attaching to (interpreted) sentences ...
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How serious are believers in the private language argument?
From time to time I come across people who endorse Wittgenstein's notion that language is a fundamentally public activity, and that a private language would be meaningless.
I always feel somewhat ...
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Who ever argued that natural languages have an exact logic?
Peter F. Strawson famously concluded his 1950 critique of Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions by the somewhat irrelevant remark that ordinary language has "no exact logic". Russell, in ...
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Do performative utterances fix conditions of satisfaction?
I recently listened to a lecture by John Searle regarding performative utterances, in which he argued that performative utterances require both a performative verb and extralinguistic information. For ...
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Going against the limits of language
I vaguely remember a sentence of Wittgenstein which was about the duty of philosophy: that is, to go against the limits of the language. This was in his late period of philosophy.
What is the precise ...
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Asking a question in the "True Language"
Definition: the True Language is so named not because it satisfies the concept from antiquity of a language whose expressions were naturally isomorphic to their referents in some essentialistic way, ...
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Liar's Paradox and Truth
I found myself thinking about the liar's paradox of the form "This sentence is false" and how it relates to one's conception of "Truth" and "Falsity". After deliberating ...
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What's the meaning and roots of the notion of "fault"?
This may sound naive and I'm not a native english speaker, but recently I've started wondering what people really mean by the notion of "fault", for example in the context of saying "it'...
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What are some ways of understanding plural predication (and what are some academic resources on the matter)?
The particular case I'm thinking about has to do with existence. Peter Van Inwagen writes:
'When I say that affirmation of existence is denial of the number zero, I
mean only that to say that Fs exist ...
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Can vague concepts have a modality?
Can vague concepts, which I am thinking of as concepts without boundaries, though there are I assume other ways of thinking about them, be necessary, especially if that modality changes?
Supposing it'...
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Conjunction with questions: an issue more of logic or of language (if not both)?
Assume that questions can be conjoined with other questions, e.g.:
Who is Shawn Balt? What is prawn salt?
Who is Shawn Balt and what is prawn salt?
Assume that wh-terms are (plurally) agglomerative ...
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What is the philosophy of words in languages? [closed]
It has always been a question for me that when we humans did not have a language to communicate with each other and then we needed to create a language to communicate with each other, how exactly did ...
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What is the point of philosophy if it is itself the fruit of words and that therefore is limited?
Philosophy is often considered as the pursuit of wisdom, the love of knowledge, or the quest for truth. However, philosophy relies entirely on language, which is itself a human construct that may not ...
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Relative to Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis, was it ever resolved for a person to deduce what a scientific theory states?
In science, if I want to falsify someone's theory, then before embarking on a venture to do such, I need to be able to correctly interpret what the theory states. From what I have read about Quine's ...
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Why not creat more words for philosophy?
I often get the impression that philosophy is about replacing words (concepts) with others. If that's the case, then why not create more words, more concepts?
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What's the difference between analytic and synthetic AND implicit/explicit?
The statement 'a bachelor is an unmarried man' is an implicit and analytic statement.
What is the difference between implicit/explicity and analytic/synthetic? Is there even a difference?
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Would there be a concept of lying in a philosophical zombie world?
I asked a similar question before, here: Would language have meaning, if there was no consciousness?, but the current question is more specific.
Consider a world like ours, but without consciousness, ...
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What does it mean "to provide semantics" in the context of formal logic?
When reading some SEP articles, this is a phrase I commonly came across, "this provides a semantics for this logic". But what does it mean?
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If calculating the p-value post-hoc is meaningless, why is it reasonable to believe the Grimm's Law (and other laws of historical phonology) is true?
Why is it reasonable to believe that the Grimm's Law is true? How can those things be scientifically investigated?An obvious answer is that we can take an dictionary of native Gothic words and the ...
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Where is the line between semantics and ontology?
To be more specific, for a long time, it's seemed to me that a lot of open questions in philosophy, such as "What is consciousness?" or "What is truth?" come down, in large part, ...
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How would a logician define the phrase "all other things being the same"?
Here are some Examples of the Phrase
All other things Being the Same
All other things being the same, the juice of a Granny Smith Apple is more acidic than a the juice of a Red Delicious Apple.
All ...
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Logic and intuitions as outcomes of different languages?
So the way I see it there seem to be three different kind of languages we humans are capable of. The first is speaking language which include phrases such as: "we do not convey words, we convey ...
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A refutation of Kripke's Feynman-Gellman case?
McGinn explains Kripke's Feynman-Gellman problem as follows (Philosophy of Language: The Classics Explained)
Most people are not experts in physics and will not be able to tell you what Feynman's ...
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How many isolated concept clusters are there?
Let me start by explaining what I mean by an isolated concept cluster. It is often remarked that you can't define any moral term without using other moral terms. For example, you can define obligation ...
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What is the difference between understanding and interpretation?
What is the difference in the cognitive processes of understanding and interpreting an utterance (especially written discourse like a legal statute)?
What does a judge do when they interpret law; is ...
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Identity in Quantified Modal Logic
Why is ¬(◇(a=b)∧◇¬(a=b)) a validity in Quantified Modal Logic (QML)? For example, let a:=“the present King of France” and b:=“the richest bald person alive”. Then, it seems ◇(a=b)∧◇¬(a=b) is not a ...
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Is the statement "They like curry chicken." an objective or subjective statement?
I'm inclined to believe it's objective because isn't them liking curry chicken the case regardless of how anyone else feels about it?
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Why do people speak as though "all" does not imply "some"? [closed]
Suppose someone asks whether some of the people in a classroom are over 20 years old, and then someone says, "No, all of the people are". Why would they say that? Why can't they say ...
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Does anyone distinguish linguistic univocity/analogy from metaphysical univocity/analogy?
Classical Theists (and other Realists) inherit Plato's Theory of Forms, and posit the existence of Forms such as Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Justice, and so on. Non-Christian Realists might say these ...
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Introductory texts to formal ontology and mereology?
I’m a grad student of Mathematics, doing research in Formal Semantics (a topic in Computational Linguistics) and some of my more tangential reading has made me privy to the existence of formal ...
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The limits on formal semantics: compositionality, context and truth values
I am a little bit surprised by the principle of composionality in semantics (I'm very new to all of this), which states that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its ...
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Are there any clear differences between the contributions of an AI bot and a human being to fora like Stack Exchange?
I perform the same tasks an AI Bot does when answering questions here: I go online and make sure that my answer can be validated online as a self-check. Is there a practical difference between me and ...
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What is the standard of determining whether someone understanding the concept? [closed]
A typical example would be aphantasia, a group of people who can't imagine pictures in mind. That means they are unable to imagine concrete object like geometry and it's almost the only way to know ...
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Forming a countermodel to support the semantics of Stalnaker's Conditional?
How might one go about forming a countermodel (against the material conditional) to show that a given argument is valid through Stalnaker's conditional? As I understand it (and I admit that my ...
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To what extent can one admit that language is an adequate outlet for explicit feelings and experiencings?
If I am sharing my thoughts and another person goes “oh, that’s relatable,” or “yeah, I totally get it,” and other variations like “I feel you on that one!” Do they, really? Is language ever enough, ...
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For what theories of meaning are ambiguous referents problematic?
Suppose I am talking to an English friend of mine and I say, "Boston is in Massachusetts." Since I am referring to the American city, I consider this sentence to be true. My friend evaluates ...
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What is the difference between a "question" and an "answer"?
All I was able to find through Google regarding the subject is from The Blind Spot, where it says, in part,
The question at stake is the nature of mathematical knowledge
and the difference between a ...
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"This statement is false" is neither true or false... Am I correct?
I have no background in philosophy. So I apologize if this question seems silly.
The reason "This statement is false" is sometimes considered to be a statement that can be evaluated as ...
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How to represent concepts without words or gestures (purely in your mind) in a discrete and easily "navigable" way?
I have spent a lot of time thinking about language and how humans may have evolved language, and keep going further and further back into the depths of what may have been known at a certain time, and ...
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Is the unlearned nature of language a la Chomsky a way back into logical empiricist epistemology?
***I'm struggling to erect the supports of this question because of lack of knowledge, I hope that it makes sense and is useful and appropriate for this site.
I'm hoping there's a form of logical ...
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An introductory book on philosophy of language and logic?
I tried self teaching philosophy of language, logic, modal logic but I am lost as a headless chicken. Can anyone help me please? I have a full time job, but I can take an hour everyday and learn a bit....
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
This is a question more about how we can discuss about objects which no longer exist. For example, let's say that Socrates no longer exists (ignore any religious side of this and consider Socrates as ...
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Does a definite description such as "the train" or "the student" always signal uniqueness of the referent?
Some authors claims that a definite description such as "the king" does not necessarily signal uniqueness. Examples given:
(1) I’ve got this data from the student of a linguist. — Poesio (...
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What is there to philosophy these days, other than intellectual self-gratification?
Preliminary notes
I understand that the title of my question has a provocative note. However it also stems from a genuine question.
I come from the standpoint of being a radical agnostic and ...
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What's the solution to Sorites paradox?
Suppose you have a heap of sand. You remove one grain. Is there still a heap? You remove another, until you get down to a heap with three grains, a heap with two grains, a heap with one grain, and ...
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