scholarly journals Logical and Analogical Thinking

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Gottfried Gabriel

The contrast between logical and analogical thinking is illustrated by the representative views of Frege and Nietzsche. These ways of thinking turn out to be expressions of different ways of conceiving the world. They stand for two opposing traditions of contemporary philosophy: scientific-analytic philosophy and postmodern deconstruction. Based on Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, it is argued that neither of the two perspectives is absolute, but that both should complement each other.

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-76
Author(s):  
Milos Sumonja

From a canonical writing of the analytic philosophy to an existentialist diversion inside the scientific worldview - not many major works of the contemporary philosophy have become a subject of so divergent interpretations as Wittgenstein?s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This paper attempts to elucidate the meaning of the Tractatus from the perspective of the insight that the modern conflict in the ways of seeing the world between scientific Enlightenment and aesthetic Counter-Enlightement has informed the historical context of the book?s emergence, as well as its interpretative history. It is argued that Wittgenstein resorts to modernist irony so as to show by the example of the Tractatus itself the irrationality of the Enlightenment?s core belief that both sides in the aforesaid historical, ideological and exegetical dispute share, which is that scientific method exhaustes human rationality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (61) ◽  
pp. 111-133
Author(s):  
Philip Mills

Against the apparent casting away of poetry from contemporary philosophy of language and aesthetics which has left poetry forceless, I argue that poetry has a linguistic, philosophical, and even political force. Against the idea that literature (as novel) can teach us facts about the world, I argue that the force of literature (as poetry) resides in its capacity to change our ways of seeing. First, I contest views which consider poetry forceless by discussing Austin’s and Sartre’s views. Second, I explore the concept of force in the realm of art—focusing on Nietzsche’s philosophy and Menke’s Kraft der Kunst—and the relations between linguistic, artistic, and political forces. Third, I consider how the transformative force of poetry can be considered political by turning to Kristeva’s Revolution in Poetic Language and Meschonnic’s conception of poetry according to which the poem does something to language and the subject. To illustrate this transformative force of poetry, I analyse Caroline Zekri’s poem ‘Un pur rapport grammatical’. I therefore think of poetry not only as doing something with language, but also as doing something to language. To rephrase Austin’s famous title, and thus reverse his evaluation of poetry, poetry might reveal to us not only How to Do Things with Words, but how to do things to words and, through this doing, how to transform and affect the world.


2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leszek Koczanowicz

The Dialogical concept of consciousness in L.S. Vygotsky and G.H. Mead and its relevance for contemporary discussions on consciousness In my paper I show the relevance of cultural-activity theory for solving the puzzles of the concept of consciousness which encounter contemporary philosophy. I reconstruct the main categories of cultural-activity theory as developed by M.M. Bakhtin, L.S. Vygotsky, G.H. Mead, and J. Dewey. For the concept of consciousness the most important thing is that the phenomenon of human consciousness is consider to be an effect of intersection of language, social relations, and activity. Therefore consciousness cannot be reduced to merely sensual experience but it has to be treated as a complex process in which experience is converted into language expressions which in turn are used for establishing interpersonal relationships. Consciousness thus can be accounted for by its reference to objectivity of social relationships rather than to the world of physical or biological phenomena.


Author(s):  
Ruth Garrett Millikan

This book weaves together themes from natural ontology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and information, areas of inquiry that have not recently been treated together. The sprawling topic is Kant’s how is knowledge possible? but viewed from a contemporary naturalist standpoint. The assumption is that we are evolved creatures that use cognition as a guide in dealing with the natural world, and that the natural world is roughly as natural science has tried to describe it. Very unlike Kant, then, we must begin with ontology, with a rough understanding of what the world is like prior to cognition, only later developing theories about the nature of cognition within that world and how it manages to reflect the rest of nature. And in trying to get from ontology to cognition we must traverse another non-Kantian domain: questions about the transmission of information both through natural signs and through purposeful signs including, especially, language. Novelties are the introduction of unitrackers and unicepts whose job is to recognize the same again as manifested through the jargon of experience, a direct reference theory for common nouns and other extensional terms, a naturalist sketch of uniceptual—roughly conceptual— development, a theory of natural information and of language function that shows how properly functioning language carries natural information, a novel description of the semantics/pragmatics distinction, a discussion of perception as translation from natural informational signs, new descriptions of indexicals and demonstratives and of intensional contexts and a new analysis of the reference of incomplete descriptions.


Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadeusz Szubka

Abstract The paper begins with an account of the emergence of analytic philosophy of language in the twentieth century in the context of the development of logic and the linguistic turn. Subsequently, it describes two examples of analytic philosophy of language in its heyday when the discipline was conceived as first philosophy. Finally, it provides, by way of conclusion, a succinct outline of the current state of philosophy of language, marked by modesty and fragmentation. It is claimed that even if one retains optimism about the prospects of philosophy of language in the first century of the new millennium, it would be unreasonable to disagree with the opinion that the present-day philosophy of language is a highly specialized and diversified discipline and no longer so central for philosophical enterprise as it used to be.


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.


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