The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy of Language

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Stalmaszczyk ◽  
Mieszko Tałasiewicz
Author(s):  
Yemima Ben-Menahem

This chapter examines three stories by Jorge Luis Borges: “Funes: His Memory,” “Averroës's Search,” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” Each of these highlights the intricate nature of concepts and replication in the broad sense. The common theme running through these three stories is the word–world relation and the problems this relation generates. In each story, Borges explores one aspect of the process of conceptualization, an endeavor that has engaged philosophers ever since ancient Greece and is still at the center of contemporary philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Together, Borges's stories present a complex picture of concepts and processes of conceptualization.


Author(s):  
Marga Reimer ◽  
Elisabeth Camp

Metaphor has traditionally been construed as a linguistic phenomenon: as something produced and understood by speakers of natural language. So understood, metaphors are naturally viewed as linguistic expressions of a particular type, or as linguistic expressions used in a particular type of way. This linguistic conception of metaphor is adopted in this article. In doing so, the article does not intend to rule out the possibility of non-linguistic forms of metaphor. Many theorists think that non-linguistic objects (such as paintings or dance performances) or conceptual structures (like love as a journey or argument as war) should also be treated as metaphors. Indeed, the idea that metaphors are in the first instance conceptual phenomena, and linguistic devices only derivatively, is the dominant view in what is now the dominant area of metaphor research: cognitive science. In construing metaphor as linguistic, the article merely intends to impose appropriate constraints on a discussion whose focus is the understanding and analysis of metaphor within contemporary philosophy of language.


2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-28
Author(s):  
Shyam Ranganathan ◽  

In this paper I address anew the problem of determinacy in translation by examining the Western philosophical and translation theoretic traditions of the last century. Translation theory and the philosophy of language have largely gone their separate ways (the former opting to rebrand itself as “translation studies” to emphasize its empirical and anti-theoretical underpinnings). Yet translation theory and the philosophy of language predominantly share a common assumption that stands in the way of determinate translation. It is that languages, not texts, are the objects of translation and the subjects of semantics. The way to overcome the theoretical problems surrounding the possibility and determinacy of translation is to marry the philosopher of language’s concern for determinacy and semantic accuracy in translation with the notion of a “text-type” from the translation theory literature. The resulting theory capable of explaining determinacy in translation is what I call the text-type conception of semantics (TTS). It is a novel alternative to the salient positions of Contextualism and Semantic Minimalism in the contemporary philosophy of language.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Malpas

AbstractOne of the most influential and significant developments in the philosophy of language over the last thirty years has been the rise of externalist conceptions of content. This essay aims to explore the implications of a form of externalism, largely derived from the work of Donald Davidson, for thinking about history, and in so doing to suggest one way in which contemporary philosophy of language may engage with contemporary philosophy of history. Much of the discussion focuses on the elaboration of the externalism that is at issue, along with the holistic approach to content with which it is connected. It will be argued that such holistic externalism is itself thoroughly in keeping with the very character of historical inquiry itself, and can be seen to provide an underpinning to certain contemporary developments in historical thinking.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 625-656
Author(s):  
Sofya Gevorkyan ◽  
Carlos A. Segovia

AbstractOur purpose in this study – which stands at the crossroads of contemporary philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies – is to assess critically the plea for radical contingency in contemporary thought, with special attention to the work of Meillassoux, in light, among other things, of the symptomatic presence of Pauline motifs in the late twentieth to early twenty first-century philosophical arena, from Vattimo to Agamben and especially Badiou. Drawing on Aristotle’s treatment of τύχη and Hilan Bensusan’s neo-monadology (as well as on the network biology of David George Haskell, Scott Gilbert’s holobiont hypothesis, and Terrence Deacon’s teleo-dynamics), we ask what is missing in such plea, from a theoretical standpoint. Next, we examine the relation between radical contingency and worldlessness in dialogue with Leroi-Gourhan’s theory of biocultural evolution, Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, Pierre Clastres’s ethnography, Heidegger’s philosophy of language, and contemporary authors like Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Patrice Maniglier. These two parallel lines of inquiry help us explore what radical contingency, in turn, prevents us from thinking: the intersection of ontology, cosmopolitics, and modality.


2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Thau ◽  
Ben Caplan

By any reasonable reckoning, Gottlob Frege's ‘On Sense and Reference’ is one of the more important philosophical papers of all time. Although Frege briefly discusses the sense-reference distinction in an earlier work (‘Function and Concept,’ in 1891), it is through ‘Sense and Reference’ that most philosophers have become familiar with it. And the distinction so thoroughly permeates contemporary philosophy of language and mind that it is almost impossible to imagine these subjects without it.The distinction between the sense and the referent of a name is introduced in the second paragraph of ‘Sense and Reference.’


Author(s):  
Heda Festini

There was a number of even world known philosophers who worked in Zadar in the 19th century. These were: Bottura, Putić, Politeo, Nad i A. Petrić. On the occasion of the anniversary of tne Liberal Arts faculty in Zadar which actually is a succesor od the Zadar high school and lycée from the 19th century the people here remembered at least Iwo eminent philosophers from those times who were in some way the founders of these organizations. These philosophers were P. Bottura and J. Pulić, the teachers in the mentioned schools in Zadar. Our aim is to point out the similarities in the lives of P. Bottura who taught in Zadar and was the headmaster of the high school and lycée and J. Pulić who studied in Zadar and latter replaced Bottura as the headmaster ol the high school. It is shown that both of them were highly estimated by one of the gi-eatest Intellectuals in Dalmatia. N. Tamaseo. They ware given equal honors posthumously. But their interest in language was different. Bottura was interested in language, as he said himself, in order to apply philosophy to grammar which actually was an attempt to found logical Linguist ios. Pulić was primarily interested in language from the si and point ol' the analytical procedures in research as it is done today in the philosophy of science. The author stresses Bottura’s activites in relation lo Ihc contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics while Pullć’s contribution is stressed in relation Io Peirce’s invention of retroduction as a method in scientific discovery procedures


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