The Essence of Reference

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Sainsbury
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Reference Relation ◽  
The One ◽  
Complete Account

People use words and concepts to refer to things. There are agents who refer, there are acts of referring, and there are tools to refer with: words and concepts. Reference is a relation between people and things, and also between words or concepts and things, and perhaps it involves all three things at once. It is not just any relation between an action or word and a thing; the list of things which can refer, people, words and concepts, is probably not complete (scenes in more recent movies can refer to scenes in less recent movies); and a complete account would need to speak of cases in which the reference relation seems to involve three terms in a different way from the one already mentioned. In the philosophy of language, it has been customary to think of reference as a two-place relation, with some object as the second term and a word or phrase as the first.

scholarly journals When Both Utterances and Appearances are Deceptive: Deception in Multimodal Film Narrative

2021 ◽  
pp. 205-252
Author(s):  
Marta Dynel
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
Multimodal Analysis ◽  
American Television ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Withholding Information

AbstractThis article gives a comprehensive theoretical account of deception in multimodal film narrative in the light of the pragmatics of film discourse, the cognitive philosophy of film, multimodal analysis, studies of fictional narrative and – last but not least – the philosophy of lying and deception. Critically addressing the extant literature, a range or pertinent notions and issues are examined: multimodality, film narration and the status of the cinematic narrator, the pragmatics of film construction (notably, the characters’ communicative level and the one of the collective sender and the recipient), the fictional world and its truth, the recipient’s film engagement and make believing, as well as narrative unreliability. Previous accounts of deceptive films are revisited and three main types of film deception are proposed with regard to the two levels of communication on which it materialises, the characters’ level and the recipient’s level, as well as the intradiegetic and/or the extradiegetic narrator involved. This discussion is illustrated with multimodally transcribed examples of deception extracted from the American television seriesHouse.In the course of the analysis, attention is paid to how specific types of deception detailed in the philosophy of language (notably, lies, deceptive implicature, withholding information, covert ambiguity, and covert irrelevance) are deployed through multimodal means in the three types of film deception (extradiegetic deception, intradiegetic deception, and a combination of both when performed by both cinematic and intradiegetic narrators). Finally, inspired by the discussion of Hitchcock’s controversial lying flashback scene inStage Fright, as well as films relying on tacit intradiegetic, unreliable narrators (focalising characters) an attempt is made to answer the thorny question of when the extradiegetic (cinematic) narrator can perform lies (through mendacious multimodal assertions) addressed by the collective sender to the recipient, and not just only other forms of deception, as is commonly maintained.

Die Rahmung des Hintergrunds

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Freytag
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Individual Case ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The University

This work undertakes a systematic reconstruction of the debates that took place over the course of several decades up to the beginning of the 21st century between Derrida on the one hand and Searle and Habermas on the other. It shows that the linguistic theories and the theories of communicative understanding developed by Searle and Habermas are based on inferences from the contingent individual case to the general. Searle draws ontological, Habermas anthropo-political conclusions, both with essentially naturalistic signatures. Derrida, on the other hand, raises epistemological objections and consequently develops a metaphysics of free subjects for whom conversation cannot necessarlily be presumed. The explicit dedication to ethics in Derrida's late work is due to his insight that the possibility of language and understanding is due to silence. Derrida's lasting merit lies in enriching the philosophy of language with a secretology. This study has been awarded the Kant Prize of the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Bonn and the "Prix de la République Française", awarded by the French Embassy and the University of Bonn.

scholarly journals Law, language, and knowledge: Legal transplants from a cultural perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julio Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Legal Transplant ◽  
Language Knowledge ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Methodological Strategy

AbstractIn this Article, I have analyzed the philosophical grounds on which stands the conception of law implied in legal transplants. On the one hand, behind the idea of legal transplants lurks the misleading assumption that two different legal cultures share common epistemological accounts of what is meant by law; on the other, the idea that a certain legal institution verbally framed may be exported to another culture and touch off similar interpretations and conceptual performances reflects, at its core, a conception of language based on an isomorphic correspondence between legal words and the meanings those words are to stand for. My goal has been to critically expose the philosophical backdrop that lies behind the conception of law implied in the idea of a legal transplant with an eye to the cultural perspective. To this end, I have availed myself of different but convergent perspectives gathered from Wittgenstein’s pragmatic philosophy of language, Geertz’s cultural anthropology, Eco’s semiology, Harris’ integrational epistemology, and Rosen’s cultural theory of law, as a methodological strategy to spotlight different facets of the problem in three dimensions: Language, knowledge, and law.

scholarly journals The Development, Morphology and Budding of the Ascidian Diazona

1948 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. J. Berrill
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Asexual Reproduction ◽  
Basic Type ◽  
The Other ◽  
Strong Argument ◽  
Bud Formation ◽  
Present Account ◽  
The Family ◽  
The One ◽  
Complete Account

Diazona is represented in European waters only by Diazona violacea Savigny. It is a compound ascidian forming massive colonies of spectacular size and appearance. In many ways it is the most interesting of all ascidians, for in its adult structure it straddles two commonly accepted orders and in itself is a strong argument against such a division; it is the only oviparous and small egged compound ascidian, two features undoubtedly primitive; and its manner of budding is the simplest and probably is the basic type for the group as a whole. Only fragmentary descriptions of the morphology and reproduction exist, and a more or less complete account of the various stages of the life cycle may be of some value. The family Diazonidae includes, in addition to Diazona itself, the genera Tylobranchion of subantarctic regions, and Rhopalea of Mediterranean and northern waters. In its entirety Diazona appears to link with such divergent forms as Ciona on the one hand and Archidistoma on the other. The fact that Diazona is obtained by dredging in relatively swift offshore waters and lives poorly in an aquarium probably accounts for the existing unsatisfactory state of knowledge of most of its phases. Most of what is known concerns asexual reproduction; and attention has been given, at various times, primarily to the process of regeneration, rather than bud formation, for example by Della Valle (1884), Caullery (1914), Oka (1906) under the name Aphanobranchion, and by Salfi (1926).The material of the present account was collected at various times in the Plymouth area from the Mewstone and Eddystone grounds.

Referential Intentions

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-44
Author(s):  
Michael O'Rourke
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophy Of Action ◽  
Full Account ◽  
The One

This chapter presents a critical review of research on referential intentions, in the fields of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology, focusing both on what makes them referential and how they function as intentions. This project is distinctively philosophical—the concept referential intention combines elements of language with those of action, and a full account of it should blend theoretical work on reference in linguistics and the philosophy of language with theoretical work on intention in psychology and the philosophy of action. While such an account is beyond the scope of this chapter, the aim is to make progress toward it by outlining ways in which referential intentions are conceptually constrained by reference on the one side and intention on the other. The goal is to supply an overview of these states that does justice to their variety while introducing constraints on their implementation in semantic and pragmatic theories of natural language.

scholarly journals Can we say what we mean?

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Navarro-Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Basic Assumption ◽  
Critical Part ◽  
The One ◽  
Methodological Strategy

The aim of this paper is to discuss a basic assumption tacitly shared by many philosophers of mind and language: that whatever can be meant, can be said. It specifically targets John Searle’s account of this idea, focusing on his Principle of Expressibility (PE henceforth). In the first part of the paper, PE is exposed underlining its analyticity (1) and its relevance for the philosophy of language (2), mind (3), society and action (4). In the critical part, the notion of Background is taken into account in order to re-evaluate two basic distinctions: the one between sentence and utterance meanings (5), and the one between native and type speakers (6). PE is reconsidered in the light of the previous arguments as a methodological strategy that does not prevent uses of language from eventual semantic excesses and deficits (7), and a complementary Principle of Expression Fallibility is finally proposed (8).

scholarly journals Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, Czy historia i filologia mogą umiejętnie rozwiązać swoje zadanie bez ścisłego związku z filozofią, a mianowicie z filozofią historii i filozofią języka?

LingVaria ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2(32)) ◽  
pp. 259-279
Author(s):  
Mateusz Kowalski
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Young Researcher ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Academic Activity ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One

Can History and Philology Competently Address Their Tasks without a Close Connection with Philosophy, Namely Philosophy of History and Philosophy of Language? The thesis by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay published here is probably the oldest of the texts by the Polish linguist. The text was submitted in 1864 as a part of the logic and philosophy course taught at the Warsaw Main School by Henryk Struve. It clearly shows an attempt by the young researcher to embark on a scholarly path, which turns out to be far from the one Baudouin de Courtenay took later in his academic activity. The future linguist argues here in defence of linguistics as a so-called physical science (a natural skill, as he often calls it in his dissertation), thus contrasting it with philology and history.

scholarly journals Language and Its Limits: Meaning, Reference and the Ineffable in Buddhist Philosophy

Topoi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Blomberg ◽  
Przemysław Żywiczyński
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conceptual Thinking ◽  
Linguistic Description ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Buddhist Doctrine ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The One ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractBuddhist schools of thought share two fundamental assumptions about language. On the one hand, language (śabda) is identified with conceptual thinking (kalpanā), which according to the Buddhist doctrine (dharma) separates us from the momentary and fleeting nature of reality (satya, “truth”). Language is comprised of generally applicable forms, which fuel the reificatory proclivity for clinging to the distorted – and ultimately fictious – belief in substantial existence. On the other hand, the distrust of language is mitigated by the doctrine of ineffability (anirdeśya), which although asserts that reality is beyond the scope of linguistic description, submits that philosophical analyses of key Buddhist concepts is a means of overcoming the limitations that language imposes on our experience and facilitating insight into the nature of reality (bodhi). This paper provides an overview of Buddhist philosophy of language, with an emphasis on the dialectical view of language as indispensable but ultimately insufficient for contemplation. The Buddhist discussions of ineffability are explicated and compared with its treatment in modern Occidental thought, specifically the similarities and differences with Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language.

Möchte Chomsky erklären, was Wittgenstein beschreibt?

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-123
Author(s):  
Melanie Uth
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
The One ◽  
Language Meaning

AbstractThis article examines the relation between the philosophy of language proposed by the later Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations, and his ambition to cure philosophy from the mapping of linguistic expressions to extra-linguistic entities, on the one hand, and Chomsky's statements regarding language, meaning, and thought, and regarding the sense and non-sense of different fields of linguistic research, on the other. After a brief descriptive comparison of both approaches, it is argued that Chomsky's criticism on Wittgenstein's theory of meaning (Chomsky 1974 – 1996), or on Wittgenstein's basic concepts such as e. g. rule-following (Chomsky 2000 onwards), respectively, is (a) unwarranted and (b) caused by a fundamental misconception. Moreover, it is argued that the hypothesis evoked by Grewendorf (1985: 126), according to which „Chomsky would like to explain what Wittgenstein describes“, is misleading since the objects of investigation of Chomsky and Wittgenstein are in complementary distribution one to the other.

scholarly journals Benjamin’s Profane Uses of Theology: The Invisible Organon

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Francisco Naishtat
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Jorge Luis Borges ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Language Theory ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Past

Invisible, but suggestive and fruitful; deprived of any reference to doctrine or ultimate assertive foundations, but nevertheless used in Benjamin like written images, crystallized as “images of thought”; as doctrinally mute as it is heuristically audible, Benjamin’s use of theology reminds us of the ironical use that Jorge Luis Borges himself made of theology and metaphysics as part of his own poetic forms. As such, these images of thought are located both in the place of philosophical use and in the one of methodological cunning or Metis, across the various levels of the corpus: a metaphysics of experience, literary criticism, philosophy of language, theory of history and Marxism. Therefore, accepting that criticism (Kritik) is the visible organon and the object of Benjaminian philosophy, is not theology, then, its invisible organon? What seems to be particular to Benjamin, however, is the agonistic but nevertheless heuristic way in which he intends to use theology in order to upset, disarray, and deconstruct the established philosophy, and specially its dominant trends in the field of the theory of history: historicism, positivism, and the evolutionary Hegelian–Marxist philosophy of history. In this article we try to demonstrate how this theological perspective is applied to a Benjaminian grammar of time. We conclude agonistically, confronting the resulting Benjaminian notion of historical past against Heiddeger’s own vision of historical time.

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