scholarly journals Dummett’s Legacy: Semantics, Metaphysics and Linguistic Competence

Disputatio ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (41) ◽  
pp. 207-229
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Vignolo
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Competence ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Important Lesson ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Michael Dummett ◽  
Theory Of Meaning

Abstract Throughout his philosophical career, Michael Dummett held firmly two theses: (I) the theory of meaning has a central position in philosophy and all other forms of philosophical inquiry rest upon semantic analysis, in particular semantic issues replace traditional metaphysical issues; (II) the theory of meaning is a theory of understanding. I will defend neither of them. However, I will argue that there is an important lesson we can learn by reflecting on the link between linguistic competence and semantics, which I take to be an important part of Dummett’s legacy in philosophy of language. I discuss this point in relation to Cappelen and Lepore’s criticism of Incompleteness Arguments.

The Structure of Truth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Truth Theory ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
First Time

Donald Davidson’s 1970 Locke Lectures appear in print for the first time in this volume, accompanied by an introduction highlighting their significance as a snapshot of his evolving views in the philosophy of language and describing their relationship to the work he published during his lifetime. The lectures comprise an invaluable historical document that illuminates how Davidson was thinking about the theory of meaning, the role of a truth theory therein, the ontological commitments of a truth theory, the notion of logical form, and so on, at a pivotal moment in the development of his thought. Unlike Davidson’s previously published work, they are written so as to be presented to an audience as a fully organized and coherent exposition of his program in the philosophy of language. Had these lectures been widely available in the years following 1970, the reception of Davidson’s work, especially in the philosophy of language, might have been very different. Given the systematic nature of the presentation of Davidson’s semantic program in these lectures, it is hoped that they will be of use to those encountering his thought for the first time.

Semantic Realism, Actually

Metaphysica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-254
Author(s):  
Simon Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Semantic Realism ◽  
Michael Dummett

AbstractMichael Dummett offered a semantic characterisation of a variety of realism-antirealism debates. This approach has fallen out of fashion. This has been to the detriment of metaphysics. This paper offers an accurate characterisation of Dummett’s view, often lacking in the literature, and then defends it against a range of attacks (from Devitt, Miller and Williamson). This understanding of realism debates is resilient, and if we take it seriously the philosophical terrain looks importantly different. In particular, the philosophy of language has a foundational role with respect to metaphysics.

Language, ancient philosophy of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Shields
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Singular Terms ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
Semantic Values ◽  
Independent Inquiry

The earliest interest in language during the ancient Greek period was largely instrumental: presumed facts about language and its features were pressed into service for the purpose of philosophical argumentation. Perhaps inevitably, this activity gave way to the analysis of language for its own sake. Claims, for example, about the relation between the semantic values of general terms and the existence of universals invited independent inquiry into the nature of the meanings of those general terms themselves. Language thus became an object of philosophical inquiry in its own right. Accordingly, philosophers at least from the time of Plato conducted inquiries proper to philosophy of language. They investigated: - how words acquire their semantic values; - how proper names and other singular terms refer; - how words combine to form larger semantic units; - the compositional principles necessary for language understanding; - how sentences, statements, or propositions come to be truth-evaluable; and, among later figures of the classical period, - (6) how propositions, as abstract, mind- and language-independent entities, are to be (a) characterized in terms of their constituents, (b) related to minds and the natural languages used to express them, and (c) related to the language-independent world.

scholarly journals What is interpretation? A dilemma for Davidson

Conceptus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (98) ◽  
pp. 54-66
Author(s):  
Nils Kürbis
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Empirical Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
Radical Interpreter

AbstractThe core idea of Davidson’s philosophy of language is that a theory of truth constructed as an empirical theory by a radical interpreter is a theory of meaning. I discuss an ambiguity that arises from Davidson's notion of interpretation: it can either be understood as the hypothetical process of constructing a theory of truth for a language or as a process that actually happens when speakers communicate. I argue that each disambiguation is problematic and does not result in a theory of meaning.

The Multi-Component Model for the semantic analysis of slurs

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-240
Author(s):  
Björn Technau
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Component Model ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Multiple Component ◽  
Analysis Models

Abstract The semantics of slur terms has provoked some debate within the philosophy of language, and different analysis models have been proposed to account for the complex meaning of these terms. The present paper acknowledges the complexity of the matter and presents an analysis model that is inspired by multiple-component approaches to slurs, such as those by Camp (2018) and Jeshion (2018). The Multi-Component Model for the semantic analysis of slurs (MCM) tracks down altogether four meaning components in group-based slur terms: a referential and a pejorative meaning component (being xy and despicable because of it), as well as a scalar component capturing the term’s individual degree of offensiveness, and an expressive component indexing heightened emotions in all contexts of use. The notion of individual offensiveness degrees (that are fed by a multitude of semantic, pragmatic, and/or extralinguistic sources) allows us to account for the differences between slurs for the same ethnic group (such as nigger, negro, coon, darkie for Blacks); and the separation of the expressive component from the pejorative component can (1) explain the high frequency of non-pejorative uses, and (2) correctly describe these uses as expressive.

The Meaning of the Hermeneutic Tradition in Contemporary Philosophy

1996 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Andrew Bowie
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Friedrich Schlegel ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Michael Dummett ◽  
Philosophy Today ◽  
Theory Of Meaning

In his Notes on Philosophy, which he began writing in 1796, Friedrich Schlegel asserts that ‘The fact that one person understands the other is philosophically incomprehensible, but it is certainly magical.’ In the interim a large amount of philosophical effort has been expended on trying to refute Schlegel's first claim. The fact is, though, that what Michael Dummett calls a ‘fullblooded theory of meaning’ is now looking less and less like a really feasible philosophical enterprise, so Schlegel may have actually been right. Dummett maintains that a ‘full-blooded theory of meaning’ ‘must give an explicit account, not only of what anyone must know in order to know the meaning of any given expression, but of what constitutes having such knowledge’. However, as I shall try to show via aspects of the hermeneutic tradition, it is precisely this way of talking about meaning and understanding that renders them incomprehensible. The differences between approaching the issue of understanding from the hermeneutic tradition and approaching it from the analytical tradition can, I want to suggest, tell us something important about the state of philosophy today. My aim is eventually to suggest that we need to understand the analytical version of the ‘linguistic turn’ in modern philosophy as a perhaps rather questionable aspect of a much more important ‘hermeneutic turn’, whose implications are now becoming apparent in more and more diverse areas of contemporary philosophy.

Berkeley’s Theory of Meaning

1975 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen K. Land
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Contextual Meaning

Summary Recent scholars disagree over whether Berkeley’s theory of meaning constitutes a radical departure from Locke in the direction of current philosophy of language or offers no real alternative to the semantics of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding. Berkeley agrees with Locke that linguistic meaning consists in the transmission of ideas from speaker to hearer by means of words, but he does not accept the Lockean account of this transmission. Specifically he departs from Locke at two fundamental points: he insists that ideas themselves have meanings and stand in need of interpretation, and he holds that the meanings of ideas may vary with the contexts in which they occur. To accommodate Berkeley’s principle of contextual meaning the account of communication must relate not individual ideas to individual words but strings of ideas to strings of words. Words and ideas, moreover, are not isomorphic as Locke implies they are: Berkeley indicates in particular the cases of general terms and names for spiritual substances, for neither of which Corresponding ideas can be discovered. To accommodate such cases within the general theory that meaning depends upon corresponding ideas an encoding process must be introduced into the account of the verbal transmission of ideas, a process whereby verbal structures including such terms as universals and names for spirits can be related to different ideational structures in which no such terms appear. The conclusion is that Berkeley accepts from Locke the fundamental principle that meaning depends upon corresponding ideas in the mind but that he holds this relation of correspondence to be much more complex than Locke allowed: in particular Berkeley introduces structural considerations by abandoning the traditional view that words and ideas correspond on a one-to-one basis, and he requires the mind to perform certain interpretative encoding procedures in translating between verbal and ideational structures.

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