What is this thing called Philosophy of Language?

Philosophy of language explores some of the most abstract yet most fundamental questions in philosophy. The ideas of some of the subject's great founding figures, such as Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, as well as of more recent figures such as Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, are central to a great many philosophical debates to this day. In this clear and carefully structured introduction to the subject Gary Kemp explains the following key topics: the basic nature of philosophy of language, its concepts, and its historical development Frege’s theory of sense and reference; Russell's theory of definite descriptions Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Ayer, and the Logical Positivists recent perspectives including Kripke, Kaplan and Putnam; arguments concerning necessity, indexicals, rigid designation and natural kinds The pragmatics of language, including speech-acts, presupposition and conversational implicature Davidson’s theory of language, the ‘principle of charity’, and the indeterminacy of interpretation puzzles surrounding the propositional attitudes (sentences which ascribe beliefs to people) Quine’s naturalism and its consequences for philosophy of language. The challenges presented by the later Wittgenstein Contemporary directions, including contextualism, fictional objects and the phenomenon of slurs This second edition has been thoroughly revised to include new key topics and updated material. Chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of language and will be particularly useful for students coming to the subject for the first time.

Contents List of figures and tables Preface Introduction 1 eight preparatory notes 2 cognitive meaning and expressive meaning 3 meaning and force 4 context-dependence 5 the roles of propositions 6 compositionality, structure and understanding note 1 Naïve semantics and the language of logic 1 naïve theory: singular terms, predicates and reference 2 truth and meaning for atomic sentences 3 logical syntax and logical operators historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading notes 2 Fregean semantics 1 two problems for naïve semantics 2 the sense-reference distinction 3 the distinction extended 4 compositionality again; the reference of a sentence 5 applying the theory 6 substitutivity and extensionality 7 the analysis of propositional attitudes 8 the objectivity of sense 9 predicate reference and the concept horse problem 10 further discussion: the context principle historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading secondary reading notes 3 Russellian semantics 1 the task for russell 2 the theory of definite descriptions 3 Applying the theory of descriptions 4 names as disguised definite descriptions 5 knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading secondary reading notes 4 Russell’s Theory of Judgement, The Early Wittgenstein, and Logical Positivism propositions, facts, and russell’s theory of judgement The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus verificationism i: ayer verificationism ii: carnap’s logical empiricism the vienna circle and the protocol debate historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading secondary reading notes 5 Kripke on naming and necessity 1 necessity, possibility and possible worlds: a primer 2 the descriptivist paradigm 3 kripke’s objections to the description theory of proper names 4 rigid designation 5 fixing the reference i: causal chains 6 fixing the reference ii: descriptions 7 lingering issues from russell and frege 8 further discussion: intensional semantics historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading notes 6 Context dependence, indexicality and natural kinds 1 indexicals and demonstratives 2 putnam on natural kind terms and essence 3 is meaning in the head? 4 the actual world as a context 5 two-dimensionalism: context of utterance versus circumstance of evaluation 6 further discussion: rigid designation again 7 the indispensability of indexicals 8 indexicals and fregean sense historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading note 7 Pragmatics 1 mood and force revisited 2 speech act theory 3 implicature 4 some applications of the concept of implicature 5 presupposition; strawson’s and donnellan’s objections to russell’s theory of descriptions 6 metaphor historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading secondary reading note 8 The propositional attitudes 1 extensionality revisited 2 referential opacity and frege on the attitudes 3 further discussion: multiple hyper-intensional embedding 4 de re and de dicto necessity 5 de re and de dicto belief 6 ralph’s predicament 7 belief attributions and explicit indexicals; belief de se 8 an implicit indexical element 9 direct reference, the attitudes, and the semantic de re historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading notes 9 Davidson’s philosophy of language 1 methodology 2 the general form of a theory of meaning 3 the exact form of a theory of meaning 4 the empirical confirmation of a theory of meaning: radical interpretation 5 the principle of charity and the interdependence of belief and meaning historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading secondary reading notes 10 Quine’s philosophy of language 1 quine’s naturalism 2 the jungle linguist 3 indeterminacy 4 meaning and analytic truth 5 the argument of ‘two dogmas of empiricism’ 6 quine proposes replacement, not analysis 7 the place of naturalism historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading secondary reading 11 The Late Wittgenstein 1 language games 2 family resemblance, tools and cities 3 to follow a rule i 4 to follow a rule ii 5 private language historical notes chapter summary study questions primary reading secondary reading 12 Modern directions assertion context-relativity fictional objects inferentialism slurs chapter summary study questions primary reading secondary reading Glossary Bibliography Index

Gary Kemp is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, UK. He has authored or edited various books and articles in the Philosophy of language, including Quine versus Davidson: Truth, Reference and Meaning.