Analytic Philosophy Of Language Research Articles

A pragmatic turn in the philosophy of language in the context of problems of preservation and development of minority languages

By the beginning of the twenty-first century essentialism is giving way to the constructivist paradigm in the field of social sciences and humanities. However, linguistic essentialism survived all the shocks and received a classical form in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativism. The application of this hypothesis to the analysis of linguistic communities puts majority and minority languages in different positions: it makes strong languages even stronger, and simply kills small ones. The task of preserving minority languages in programs built using this methodology turns out to be impossible. In our humble opinion, two research paradigms are more adequate for the purpose. One of them is associated with the pragmatic turn in the analytical philosophy of language and represents a transition from the analysis of the structure of the language itself to the analysis of the conditions of communication, taking into account all the sociocultural components of this process. The second methodology is Erving Goff man’s concept of social face and performative behavior.

Inference and indexicality, or how to solve Bakhtin's problem with heteroglossia

Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia was ambiguous on a central point: whether the styles or socio-ideological languages that constituted it were creations of novelistic discourse itself or were already established in everyday speech and incorporated into the novel. The sociolinguistic and anthropological literature on indexicality has greatly enriched our understanding of heteroglossia, but, it, too, leaves this question up in the air. After a brief review of writing on indexicality, we show that the idea of ‘n + 1’, higher-order, indexicality, first mooted by Silverstein, intersects with debates in analytic philosophy of language about the relative roles of inference and semiosis in linguistic understanding. Higher-order indexicality, crucially, depends upon inferential processes, ranging from simple analogy to complex argument, and this has consequences for where indexical values are established.

Citizens in Search of Facts: A Case Study from the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review on Measure 82

ABSTRACT Accounts of public deliberation often refer to the notion of ‘facts’ or ‘accurate information.’ These epistemological notions, however, lack a stable, reliable definition used in research across disciplines or in practical politics across ideological fault lines. We consider realist definitions of fact within the analytical philosophy of language, specifically recent proposals to distinguish between facts of nature and socially constructed facts (Searle), and pragmatist definitions of fact (Peirce, Dewey). We argue that a pragmatist approach to facts as agreed upon circumstances that define a problem, i.e., consistent social constructivism, is more suitable for deliberative theory and practice. We use a case of The Citizens’ Initiative Review, where participants are explicitly asked to agree on a set of factual statements about the legislation at stake, as a clear example of cognitive difficulties that people experience when facts are treated as atomistic units with a context-independent truth value. We propose that in contexts of ideological pluralism facts can be defined as key parameters of problem situations that are consistently brought up in competing opinions. In such contexts, agreeing on facts will involve a complex syntactic pattern that brings these parameters into a coherent description of disagreement.

Прагматическая концепция истины – теория коммуникации в аналитической философии

The article analyzes the pragmatic concept of truth in analytical philosophy. Attention is focused on its main ideas – generality of thoughts, practical use. The paper presents the main ideas of representatives of the pragmatic concept of truth: J. Austin, H. P. Grice, P. Strawson. The pragmatic concept of truth is one of the main concepts in the analytical philosophy of language. This concept is characterized by the ideas of practicality and demand of knowledge, the definability of truth by a person. According to this concept, the true idea is the one that solves certain issues, and the false idea is an almost impossible idea. The paper proves the hypothesis that it is the pragmatic concept of true meaning formation that is most acceptable for its understanding and development, rather than the corresponding one aimed at matching the concept to the object. It is also stated that the desire for unity of thoughts and their practical applicability are the main and popular ideas in the process of forming, understanding and using meaning. The author presents the idea that the pragmatic concept of true knowledge is aimed at solving issues of communication, speech communication, and establishing a dialogue between interlocutors. In contrast to this concept, the corresponding and coherent concepts of truth are characterized by a strict correspondence of the concept to the subject, as well as a clear relationship between the concepts in the sentence. The paper proves that it is the pragmatic concept that makes it possible to form, interpret and implement meanings in communication, thus providing an individual opportunity to use their own ideas and aspirations. Here it should be noted that the corresponding or coherent concepts represent a model in which a sample of the description and characteristics of the material world is expressed. Thus, the model of an ideal language, expressing a strict scheme of perception, interpretation and understanding of reality, restricts a person’s ability to individually understand and implement the formulated ideas. The article presents a version of the failure of the corresponding, coherent concepts of truth, since they do not provide a person with the opportunity for reasoning, for the independent search for truth by each of us and the development of speech communication. It is also argued that it is the ideas of the pragmatic concept of truth - the community of ideas, the desire to transfer knowledge to each other, the realizability of ideas that are the basis of communication and are the main ones in the development of speech communication. The subject of the article is the pragmatic concept of truth, its main ideas and representatives in analytical philosophy. Methods used in the research: hermeneutical, analytical and pragmatic.

Why Had Russell Not Written Any Books on Aesthetics?

Bertrand Russell, the great philosopher, was extremely prolific in various fields of philosophy, such as metaphysics, mathematical logic and mathematical philosophy, linguistic philosophy, ethics, epistemology, and social and political philosophy, but left little legacy in aesthetics. Some scholars regretted that “If the 20th-century had seen any polymath, Russell is the one. The only branch of philosophy he did not write on is aesthetics.” Although Russell did not write a book or article specifically on aesthetics, discussions on the subject can be found in his various writings, for example, the most prominent proposal of “the beauty of mathematics.” In addition, he also talked about how agnostics explain the beauty and harmony of nature from the perspective of epistemology. Views on aesthetics are scattered in Russell's writings, and no consistent views have been formed; some fragmented ideas about aesthetics are scattered in different philosophical writings. Compared with his profound contribution to other fields of philosophy, Russell did not deal with aesthetic issues systematically, nor did he attempt to answer the basic questions of aesthetics. In addition to personal qualities, there were certain constraints of the greater social environment. One of the main reasons is that in the English world of the 20th century, the analytical philosophy of language occupied the central stage, so that the space reserved for ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy was quite limited. Furthermore, aesthetics was indeed not a popular philosophical topic culturally acceptable at the time.

Bahasa dan Kekuasaan dalam Historiografi Islam Marshall G.S. Hodgson

Historian has been preserving a historical unity and continuity as a truth. There is an assumption that history has a ‘constant’. This paper explains and proves otherwise. This writing understands history is in fact filled with various ruptures, differences, and deviations. This uncertainty has taken place when ‘language’ becomes a focus of the study of history.
 In his L’Archeologie du savoir (1969), Michel Foucault (1926-1984) rejected the preconception of history as unity and continuity. He believed the history as a journey with various ruptures, differences, and irregularities that reveal uncertainty. This reversal has taken place when language as the focus’ study in the history of knowledge. Foucault has called this method as the Archaeology of Knowledge.
 This is the question which this paper is going to respond: “How does Michel Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, the analytical philosophy of language, elucidate the diversity within Marshall G.S. Hodgson’s history of Islam?”
 These three below mentioned questions respectively reflect a three-fold dimension of the diversity in Foucault’s thoughts as explained in his L’Archeologie du savoir (poststructuralism-structuralism, postmodernism, and philosophy of history).
 First, how does Hodgson, as a structuralist, write the history of Islam by way of developing system of discourses to reveal meaning; at the same time, as a poststructuralist, he reveals incoherence of discourses and its plurality of meanings? Second, how do we understand that the social structure in the history cannot be simply detached from the chains of power as a constitutive dimension of discourse? Third, how do we comprehend, that in every stages of history, they have its distinctive episteme and diversity of thoughts that support the formation of discourses?
 This research is essentially to explain the three perspectives of Foucault’s philosophy. At the same time, the three approaches in Hodgson’s writing on the history of Islam are also being explored. Both points of convergence and of divergence have become the whole study of this paper.

Truth in grammar in the realist tradition as a universal way of perception and understanding the world in the analytical philosophy of language

Truth in grammar in the realist tradition as a universal way of perception and understanding the world in the analytical philosophy of language

ИСТОРИЧНОСТЬ ЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСКОЙ ТРАНСЦЕНДЕНТАЛЬНОСТИ В ТРАНСЦЕНДЕНТАЛЬНОМ ТОМИЗМЕ РИХАРДА ШЕФФЛЕРА

In the 20th century European culture found itself in a situation of mutual alienation of many areas of culture – science, religion, ethics, art, etc., what, in turn, raised a theme of the relationship between cognition and history in the transcendental theory of knowledge with new acuity. A significant role in that process belongs to philosophers: members of the Vienna Circle and, later, analytical philosophers, neo-Kantians of the Marburg and Baden schools, representatives of transcendental Thomism. Among the projects aimed at overcoming the crisis there is the project of Richard Scheffler, a German philosopher and theologian. Following after Kant, Schaeffler turns to the most different areas of philosophy: phenomenology, hermeneutics, neo-Kantianism of Cohen and Cassirer, analytical philosophy of language. In addition, the influence of the theology of Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Wilhelm Lotz can be traced in the writings of Schaeffler. The article considers the concept of religious experience by Richard Schaeffler, the underlying Schaeffler’s visions of the need of interpretation the regulating idea of God as a postulate of theoretical reason in the perspective of religious experience. It considers Schaeffler’s idea of the transcendental nature of the prayer speech and its performativity.

Pressupostos filosóficos da teoria da linguagem de Hjelmslev: a Filosofia Analítica de Frege e de Wittgenstein

O presente artigo investiga os pressupostos filosóficos de quatro sentenças apresentadas por Hjelmslev ao final do seu “Ensaio de uma teoria dos morfemas” (1991). Inicialmente, situa-se o quadro referencial teórico do linguista dinamarquês em um paradigma específico. Em seguida, as sentenças de Hjelmslev são postas em diálogo com o pensamento de dois filósofos da linguagem: Frege e Wittgenstein. Por fim, aponta-se as influências filosóficas – diretas e indiretas – sobre Hjelmslev e vê-se que as conclusões finais realizadas pelo linguista, ao final do seu texto ensaístico, já estavam bem sedimentadas pela Filosofia Analítica da Linguagem.

Olson’s Domestication of Goody’s Literacy Hypothesis: (How) Can Philosophers of Language Help?

With, The Mind on Paper, Olson hopes to amass the strongest empirical evidence needed, in his view, to support a more promising version of Goody’s insights on literacy’s impact on social and psychological change (Goody, The domestication of the savage mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977). The book is also the synthetic work in which Olson looks at analytic philosophy of language as a great resource for the conceptual clarifications needed. Albeit implicitly, Olson’s investigations deploy an insight many philosophers of language will not find surprising, namely that language is a sui generis cognitive ability and practice, and that even its social or normative aspects are to some extent special or unique. This now separates Olson’s construal of Goody’s position from those of cultural anthropologists or sociologists of literacy who vigorously attacked Goody’s work (Collins, American Review of Anthropology 24:75–93, 1995, Finnegan, in: Wagner DA, Venezky RL, Street BV (eds) Literacy: An international handbook, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1999, Raven, Social Science Information 40:37, 2001, Ungureanu, AVANT 2:97–123, 2013). It is still unclear, however, whether the philosophical positions juxtaposed in Olson’s book can provide a consistent view of literate competenclies. But the book succeeds to highlight a blind spot in contemporary philosophy of language: a construal of writing and literate competencies is needed also for those interested in a naturalized philosophy of language, i.e., connected to inquiries in the psychological and social sciences of language.

Definite Descriptions in Argument: Gettier’s Ten-Coins Example

In this article, I use Edmund Gettier’s Ten Coins hypothetical scenario to illustrate some reasoning errors in the use of definite descriptions. The Gettier problem, central as it is to modern epistemology, is first and foremost an argument, which Gettier (Analysis 23(6):121–123, 1963) constructs to prove a contrary conclusion to a widely held view in epistemology. Whereas the epistemological claims in the case have been extensively analysed conceptually, the strategies and tools from other philosophical disciplines such as analytic philosophy of language, logic and argumentation that Gettier deploys in the case have scarcely received any attention. This work abstracts from the epistemological content and examines Gettier’s handling of the definite description involved, and how that affects the cogency of his argument.

From Non-Self-Representationalism to the Social Structure of Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness

Why should we think that there is such a thing as pre-reflective self-awareness? And how is this kind of self-awareness to be characterized? This paper traces a theoretical and a phenomenological line of argument in favor of the notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness and explores how this notion can be further illuminated by appealing to recent work in the analytical philosophy of language and mind. In particular, it argues that the self is not represented in the (nonconceptual) content of experience, but is rather implicit in the mode. Further, it argues that pre-reflective self-consciousness is best understood as a form of knowledge-how. Finally, it will be argued that our sense of self is thoroughly social, even at the basic, pre-reflective level.

Processing Contingency with Theology: A Defense of Whitehead’s Pragmatism

Research Article| January 01 2019 Processing Contingency with Theology: A Defense of Whitehead’s Pragmatism Lisa Landoe Hedrick Lisa Landoe Hedrick University of Chicago Divinity School Lisa Landoe Hedrick is a PhD candidate in theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where she holds the 2018–2019 Provost Dissertation Fellowship. Her dissertation addresses the problem of intentionality in analytic philosophy of mind by deploying a Whiteheadian critique of the tacit metaphysical assumptions upon which intentionality continues to seem problematic. In addition to analytic philosophy of mind and Whiteheadian philosophy, her research interests include American pragmatism, analytic philosophy of language, the history of method in theological discourse, the philosophy of science, and the metaphysics of democracy. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Journal of Theology & Philosophy (2019) 40 (1): 36–53. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjtheophil.40.1.0036 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Lisa Landoe Hedrick; Processing Contingency with Theology: A Defense of Whitehead’s Pragmatism. American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 1 January 2019; 40 (1): 36–53. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjtheophil.40.1.0036 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressAmerican Journal of Theology & Philosophy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

K. Grue-Sørensen imellem filosofi og pædagogik

The philosophical situation at Copenhagen University in the 1960’s was dominated by two positivists. Th elogical positivist Jørgen Jørgensen – who had written the history of the “movement” – and the legal positivistAlf Ross. There were also two “outsiders”: Peter Zinkernagel, who did more analytical philosophy of language in the British style, and K. Grue Sørensen who was working in the traditions of neo-Kantianism. In 1955 Grue-Sørensen was hired as the first professor in education – after a long controversy about the scientific status ofeducation as a discipline – but with a focus on the history of education. He had received a doctoral degree in philosophy in 1950 with a dissertation on refl exivity as a philosophical concept and a thesis about the reflexivity of consciousness. He was also an objectivist in ethics, and had been critical of the prevalent moral relativism and subjectivism found in recent philosophy. Jørgensen and Ross had done important work on moral argumentation with more technical work on the logic of imperatives and norms. Moral objectivism was not only wrong but in a way also “immoral” because it undermined their belief in democracy. Especially Jørgensen also thought that the idea of reflexivity was wrong when applied to consciousness. Neither statements nor consciousness could be reflexive – that is refer to themselves/itself. The reflexivity of consciousness is – according to Jørgensen – simply not an empirical psychological fact. Grue-Sørensen tried to establish the foundation of a theory of education based both on conceptions of consciousness and of the relation between scientific knowledge – facts – and moral values – in a neo-Kantian fashion. For him the interplay between ethics and knowledge was a central part of a theory of education – a belief due to which he never became a professor of philosophy – having tried many times. These debates in philosophy and in education were superseded in the 1970’s by the rise in influence of the German inspiration from Critical Theory and the demise of logical positivism.

Editorial

This special issue of Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodologies: Writing Organizations: Management, Leadership and Appraisal presents to readers seven articles with particular focus on ‘writing’ as a methodological tool. As guest editors, what encounters were we opening to/up when we invited contributions on writing as a methodological tool and writing about being/becoming in assemblages of leadership, management and appraisal? We hoped for a shift, an unsettling of what was thought of as ‘writing’. Semetsky and Stables draw on the concept of edusemiotics to challenge the traditional notion of writing; "While more often than not signs are taken as solely linguistic and in compliance with analytic philosophy of language, edusemiotics includes images, pictures and, indeed, anything that potentially signifies ..." (2014, p. 1)1. We called contributors to consider ‘writing’ as various edusemiotic, nomadic, embodied and embedded, artistic and scholarly gestures, experimentations, playful interventions, exchanges, encounters, ruminations, rhizomatic entanglements and practical philosophical discussions.

Truth Analysis of the Gettier Argument

AbstractGettier (1963) presented the now famous Gettier problem as a challenge to epistemology. The methods Gettier used to construct his challenge, however, utilized certain principles of formal logic that are actually inappropriate for the natural language discourse of the Gettier cases. In that challenge to epistemology, Gettier also makes truth claims that would be considered controversial in analytic philosophy of language. The Gettier challenge has escaped scrutiny in these other relevant academic disciplines, however, because of its façade as an epistemological analysis. This article examines Gettier's methods with the analytical tools of logic and analytic philosophy of language.

Language or Experience? – That’s not the Question

Analytic philosophy of language has often criticized classical pragmatism for holding to an unwarranted notion of experience which lapses into epistemological foundationalism; defenders of the classics have denied such a consequence. The paper tries to move this debate forward by pointing out that the criticism of the empiricist “given” is not wedded to a specific philosophical method, be it linguistic or pragmatist. From a broader historical perspective drawing in particular on Kant, antifoundationalism turns out to be deeply rooted in modern western philosophy and its ambivalent attitude towards the success of the empirical sciences. This diagnosis allows to reassess classical pragmatism beyond the perceived alternative “language vs. experience”, and to concentrate on antifoundationalism as the real challenge to any modern, epistemologically oriented philosophy. In that perspective, classical pragmatism’s genuine contribution is to do justice to antifoundationalism by focusing on the experimental dynamic of scientific practice, which is most commonly ignored by the analytic tradition. Pragmatism identifies rationality with the practical operation of reflexively determining and articulating what is being experienced. With this approach, it is argued, experiential pragmatism serves modern antifoundationalism ends better than its analytic siblings.

An Echo of the Classical Analytic Philosophy of Language from China

An Echo of the Classical Analytic Philosophy of Language from China

On Two Arguments for Temporally Neutral Propositions

In Transient Truths, Berit Brogaard 2012 offers a forcefully argued defense of what she calls ‘temporalism’: the view that many sentences express contents whose truth value can change over time. In recent years various arguments against temporalism have been posed by what seems to be the eternalist orthodoxy in analytic philosophy of language. I take Brogaard’s book as the most complete and up-todate reply to the eternalist attacks. Hence, I bypass this discussion here to critically examine two self-standing arguments she offers directly against the eternalist, and for temporally neutral contents. Sections 1 and 3 argue that at the moment the arguments are not entirely successful, while section 2 expresses strong doubts over Brogaard’s choice of sentences such as ‘John is a firefighter’ to motivate and exemplify her view.

At T-time, the Inchoative Nick of Time, and “Statements about the Past”: Time and History in the Analytic Philosophy of Language

Abstract The paper, drawing on articles by J. M. E. McTaggart, G. E. Moore, D. Davidson, J. L. Austin, B. Russell, A. J. Ayer and G. E. M. Anscombe, argues that the philosophy of language in the analytic tradition has developed an “inchoative” view of time, and history is a problem as regards the existence of events in the past and how these events can be known. An alternative view is hinted at through the work of L. Wittgenstein and S. Cavell.