Formal languages in analytic philosophy Das Formalsprachenprogramm in der Analytischen Philosophie Les langages formels en philosophie analytique

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vern S. Poythress

Abstract This article uses tagmemic theory as a semiotic framework to analyze symbolic logic. It attends particularly to the issue of context for meaning and the role of personal observer/participants. It focuses on formal languages, which employ no ordinary words and from one point of view have “no meaning.” Attention to the context and the theorists who deploy these languages shows that formal languages have meanings at a higher level, colored by the purposes of the analysts. In fact, there is an indefinitely ascending hierarchy of theories of theories, each of which analyzes and evaluates the theories at a lower level. By analogy with Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theory, no level of the hierarchy can capture within formalism everything in a sufficiently complex system. The personal analysts always have to make judgments about how a formalized system is analogous to the world outside the system. Arguments in analytic philosophy can be useful in clarification, but neither clarification of terms nor clarification of the structure of arguments can eliminate the need for personal judgment.


Within contemporary, analytic philosophy, “Fictionalism”—broadly understood as a view that uses a notion of fiction in order to resolve certain philosophical problems that do not necessarily have anything to do with fiction—has been on the scene for some time. A well-known collection, Fictionalism in Metaphysics, provided a good indication of the scope of the view (and its problems) as things stood in the early 2000s. But more than a decade has passed since the appearance of that volume and much has happened in philosophy, including in the area of fictionalism. In addition to the fact that fictionalism in philosophy appears to be more popular than ever, there are now competing views about how to tackle some of the issues that fictionalists aim to address. Moreover, fictionalism has branched out into many more areas, and there is a continuing debate about what fictionalism in philosophy actually amounts to and about how precisely it ought to be pursued. There is thus a pressing need for a volume such as Fictionalism in Philosophy. After a detailed discussion in the book’s introductory chapter of how, in the light of these ongoing debates, philosophers should think of fictionalism and its connection to metaontology more generally, the remaining chapters provide readers with some of the most current and up-to-date work on fictionalism, both for and against. As such, the volume will be of interest to professional philosophers as well as to graduate students in philosophy and to advanced undergraduates.


Author(s):  
Ayon Maharaj

This chapter draws upon Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings and mystical testimony in order to develop a new conceptual framework for understanding the nature of mystical experience. In recent analytic philosophy of religion, two approaches to mystical experience have been especially influential: perennialism and constructivism. While perennialists maintain that there is a common core of all mystical experiences across various cultures, constructivists claim that a mystic’s cultural conditioning plays a major role in shaping his or her mystical experiences. After identifying the strengths and limitations of these two positions, Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna champions a “manifestationist” approach to mystical experience that provides a powerful dialectical alternative to both perennialism and constructivism. According to Sri Ramakrishna, mystics in various traditions experience different real manifestations of one and the same impersonal-personal Infinite Reality. Sri Ramakrishna’s manifestationist paradigm shares the advantages of both perennialism and constructivism but avoids their respective weaknesses and limitations.


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