Questions tagged [philosophy-of-language]
for philosophical questions concerning the nature, origins, and usage of natural language
463
questions
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1answer
74 views
Truth values of sentences
Frege proposed that the meaning of a sentence is its truth value in "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (close to "On Name and Meaning"). This is not correct because some (many) English sentences do not have ...
-3
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0answers
16 views
Analyze an Argument [closed]
Instructions
INSTRUCTIONS: In a 3-4 paper paper, provide a complete analysis of the two passages below. You must analyze BOTH passages. This is a formal paper so standard rules for academic papers ...
4
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1answer
95 views
How does the philosophy of science explore original research formulation?
Although rarely admitted or communicated, in scientific research it's quite common to change the originally formulated question once insurmountable obstacles have made an answer difficult or ...
3
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0answers
61 views
Are there any points of convergence between analytical and traditional concept based philosophy?
In many questions, answers and in comments, there appear to be differences in the type of answers and comments which fall into two roughly delineated trains of thought and exemplify the fault line ...
1
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1answer
240 views
Wittgenstein and theology
Wittgenstein noted that we engage in language games and quite often we borrow words from different games and misuse them such as using words with scientific connotations in religious discourse or ...
2
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0answers
31 views
Is there consensus on the framework of truth one should use when talking about moral statements?
My understanding is that for a moral realist, moral statements are propositions that have a true/false property that can guide reasoning. However, most articles I have read do not talk about what ...
1
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1answer
103 views
How does imprecise and ambiguous natural language relate to the equivocation fallacy and how can we know what words mean?
I am feeling really confused on how we colloquially use and redefine words and sometime use the equivocation fallacy. I have fallen into equivocation language traps before, and as I become more aware ...
0
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0answers
34 views
Is the act of intenstional definition metalinguistic?
Regarding the use-mention distinction in philosophy, is the act of providing an intensional definition, which creates an identity between a meaningless token and a set of meaningful tokens a ...
0
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4answers
138 views
Liars paradox towards a solution?
This statement is not true
2.This statement is true only if true and not true.
(1) and (2) are clearly different sentences, but do they express the same proposition?
If yes, then it becomes clear ...
3
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2answers
155 views
Is “lacking belief in X” equivalent to “belief in the nonexistence of X”?
Often I see atheists say they do not have an active belief in the nonexistence of God, only a lack of belief in God.
I see where they are coming from, but I have a suspicion that they're equivalent.
...
2
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1answer
149 views
Is there a form of set theory involving imperatives and interrogatives?
I finally read the article Is there a Logic of Imperatives? Conifold showed me and it elicited the question, for me, whether imperative programming is a form of imperative logic at all? The essay took ...
0
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2answers
115 views
Epistemology and definition of Theory in Science
Which branch of philosophy is the authority and thus has the capacity to define what IS theory in science? I have linked to the definition of Theory by Simon Blackburn in Oxford Dictionary of ...
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1answer
38 views
Freud's tripartite linguistic play
Maria Walsh in her book Art and Psychoanalysis says:
Uncanny sensations are triggered in the present by the creepy
evocation of a past that the subject has repressed, a past that should
have ...
0
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1answer
72 views
Are there any systems of mathematics that permit such a wide range of ways to formulate ideas
... that there is no algorithm for determining whether or not a given sequence of symbols is a wff ("well-formed formula"), but instead non-trivial proofs are required, so that some sequence of ...
1
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2answers
31 views
predicative and attributive adjectives?
I'm reading Peter Geach's Good and Evil, and am struggling to understand what predicative and attributive adjectives mean, the significance of the words and how they be applied to good and bad.
1
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1answer
48 views
On the Donald Davidson Discourse of Contradictory Beliefs
The following excerpt is taken from Donald Davidson, Problems of Rationality, Chapter 14, Who is Fooled (1997), page 217:
We should not agree that believing the contradictory or the contrary of a ...
1
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0answers
44 views
Difficulty finding real life examples of the bad reasons fallacy, is this fallacy committed often?
I understand that the bad reasons fallacy is committed when one assumes that a conclusion is false just because the argument is bad.
But is this fallacy committed very often?
2
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3answers
135 views
Is the true definition of a word “everything an object is not” until we learn otherwise?
..I am hoping that someone can help correct me if I am wrong or mislead.
Using a tree as an example to explain my question: it is difficult to narrow down an exact definition of a tree because every ...
1
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1answer
37 views
Difficulty trying to distinguish between an illocutionary act and speech act
Consider the following scenario: an impatient man is sitting in a restaurant, and asked the waiter 'Where is my dinner?'.
My understanding is this:
Asking for the location of the man's dinner is the ...
-3
votes
2answers
65 views
Rhetoric: How to frame redundancy in an argument as deficiency?
How can we categorize redundancy in an argument as deficiency? That is, weaken the argument because of its redundancy?
Suppose X is an argument that boasts coherence and clarity, but it has various ...
2
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0answers
46 views
General characteristics of rules [closed]
I'm starting a research on rules -- whether moral rules, laws, game rules, etc.
Can anyone point me to references which investigate rules as their object?
EDIT (in response to @YechiamWeiss )
@...
0
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1answer
376 views
Is Mercy Reverse Injustice or Reversed Injustice? [closed]
The problem, so easily, is that:
To have Mercy is to abuse against myself,i.e: to loss, or to give up some rights of mine to the real abuser or the real oppressor or whoever does the act of Injustice.
...
4
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3answers
165 views
Could philosophers via Logic prove the validity of some holy books, then use them as a source of trustful knowledge?
Could philosophy or philosophers or some philosophers prove the validity of the text of a holy book, e.g: Qur'an or the Bible, or some holy books, using logic and philosophical means, then use these ...
3
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2answers
210 views
Difference between objective and absolute idealism
While reading western philosophy, I found these three words. Subjective idealism of Berkeley, Absolute idealism and objective idealism of Hegel. So confusion arises between last two objective and ...
5
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4answers
107 views
Why are referring and predicating distinct from illocutionary acts?
I have been reading Searle's Speech Acts and he mentioned that in the four sentences mentioned below, while they share the same reference (Sam) and predication (smoking habitually), they are four ...
1
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2answers
61 views
Clarification on what is and isn't a logical statement
After reading the article from Wikipedia I feel more confused on what the scope of the definition of a 'logical statement' or proposition is. First, is the statement "It is raining" considered to be ...
1
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4answers
92 views
Who first said that words express emotions, and do not describe objects?
I was reading a critique of Daniel Dennett's 'From Bacteria to Bach and Back', and in this criticism it is alleged that Dennett's conception of words as object descriptions is false. The suggestion ...
1
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1answer
93 views
Language and Sociology [closed]
Could someone systematically, methodologically, organisedly research Sociology, Civilisation, Culture through Language?
I.e The state of Language would be the observation and one would give a ...
2
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2answers
58 views
Semantics of Properties - Are categories of extensions members or subsets?
For example:
"Cars have wheels."
If we take "have wheels" as a property of a set A, would cars as a category be an element of set A, or only a subset of A?
0
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2answers
91 views
What truth-functions of elementary propositions can be consired to form a picture?
In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein says that every elementary proposition is a picture. It is clear that we must make a distinction between elementary propositions and other ...
1
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2answers
83 views
What criteria are sufficient for precision in formal semantics?
For example:
A) "I have finished dinner, so I'm not hungry."
B) "I have read long books, so I can read this one."
One could say the function of "have" in these sentences is to communicate that the ...
5
votes
15answers
6k views
Is every sentence we write or utter either true or false? [closed]
Please read the complete description before putting any answer / comment, Thank you.
I've been just thinking through this question which I can frame it like this:
Can I write or utter any sentence ...
2
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0answers
74 views
How does contemporary analytic philosophy reply to the late Wittgenstein's injunction against theory?
In the In Our Time episode on Wittgenstein philosopher Ray Monk says the following:
It's a central view of the later Wittgenstein that there can be no such thing as a philosophical theory. I think ...
2
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1answer
223 views
Do those who deny a univocal understanding of “God is good” conflate sense and connotation?
Several theologians following Aquinas have said that when we say things like "God is good" that this must mean something different to when we call other things good; this is called analogical use of ...
0
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1answer
100 views
How to make sense of minds of others? [closed]
I've asked a question about the criteria for existence, but here I want to focus on a particular aspect. What does it mean If I say: Bob has a mind - Bob's mind exists - Bob is not a philosophical ...
7
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8answers
3k views
What is to be understood by the phrase “Israel's right to exist”? [closed]
As someone who is interested in the Israeli-Palestinian question one phrase that comes up in the pro-Israeli position is the insistence that the Palestinians recognise '"Israel's right to exist". (In ...
2
votes
4answers
349 views
How much background do I need to read the book: Tractatus logico-philosophicus?
Upon careful consideration of the literature I want to read in the following months, I have stumbled into a particular book which is called: Tractatus logico-philosophicus, written by brilliand author ...
2
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1answer
219 views
Is it possible that philosophical problems arise because of confusions on our language?
People ask: "Who am I" or "What is a matter" but:
Is it possible that those questions arise because of confusions in our language?
The questions seem intangible and hugely based on the luxuries that ...
0
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0answers
71 views
What is a dog? (or car, city, etc)
background: I recall in my undergrad linguistics class being given the prompt "What is a dog?" The key takeaway is that one can remove almost any single trait (e.g. has four legs) and still have ...
3
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6answers
977 views
Is art a form of communication?
I recently got into a discussion where the other person claimed that art is a form of communication. Bearing in mind that the definition of art is disputed, did any philosophers argue that a work ...
0
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1answer
62 views
Can you imply something ironic?
Obviously you can imply something in an ironic phrase, but can you imply something ironic? Can the irony be left unsaid, and still be irony?
If so, is that verbal irony, or some other sort?
1
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1answer
110 views
can sentences be true or false
I am confused about the relationship between sentences and propositions.
Admittedly what a proposition is has been controversial. I have heard people characterizing it as the meaning and truth-...
1
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1answer
73 views
What is the meaning of “object of” in this context?
This is the context:
...object of self-reference: 1) a sentence that negates its own truth. 2) an event that negates its own existence...
The topic is about the concept of self-reference in ...
0
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1answer
47 views
What is the distinction Donnellan uses between referential use and attributive use in regards to Strawson and Russell?
Donnellan called attention to what he called the referential use, as opposed to the attributive use, of a definite description.
Donnellan’s objection to the Theory of Descriptions is just that ...
1
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1answer
60 views
Logical, semantic and self-referential paradoxes: The Truth teller and the Liar (draft) can an expert on the matter give feedback?
Title: Logical semantic and self-referential paradoxes: The Truthteller and the Liar (draft, informal)
(major) assumption: A statement is either true or not true (law of excluded middle, classical ...
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0answers
71 views
Intellectual History of Idea in A Geneaology of Morals Essay One
In Nietzsche's first essay in A Geneaology of Morals, he suggests that use of language in which subjects and verbs are distinguished may influence or at least correspond to conceptual distinctions in ...
2
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0answers
52 views
Can a Rigid Designator still exist if there is only one possible world?
According to Kripke, a rigid designator is a pronoun (but not all pronouns are rigid designators) and they pick out the same unique individual in each possible world. I understand this, however, if ...
0
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0answers
84 views
What are the limits of language?
Provably (or by sufficiently rigorous arguments), what are the limits of language (natural & formal)? What can a language not speak about? If there is something non-senseless which language cannot ...
3
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0answers
52 views
De Re, Counterfactuals, and rigidity
This is going to come off as vague or obscure; but, I hope the idea is performatively expressed:
Two questions:
Do you think that Kripke would argue that the impossibility of de re counterfactuals ...
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1answer
83 views
Is the normative value of linguistic usage a counterexample to the impossibility of deriving “ ought” from “is”?
I really believe that one cannot derive " ought" from "is".
But the case of linguistic usage causes me some intellectual trouble.
(1) Linguistic usage is a simple fact.
(2) Linguistic usage ...
