Philosophy Of Language Research Articles

Translation, Mastery, and Ground; or, Overcoming Some Hermeneutic Fictions

ABSTRACT Comparative philosophy is dependent upon translation, often translations that will help preserve some fundamental commitments: to linguistic mastery, to the recovery or preservation of an original, and to the protection of an authenticity that will ground these commitments. Such a view can sometimes obscure a nostalgia for questionable causes. Comparative philosophy, especially with continental affinities, often relies on two moves: first, a boundary must be found (or produced) between philosophy itself and other forms of writing (literature or fiction, say), to ensure proper grounding. Second, it must be understood that this boundary depends upon an underlying philosophy of language: language speaks us, it speaks Being; to dwell in a different language is to dwell in a different house of being (Martin Heidegger). But how might this project – its historiography of return and grounding, and its mythologizing of linguistic and ontological recovery – be challenged by the very practice of translation itself? Perhaps this challenge is one of translation’s philosophical benefits.

Warum sich doch sinnvoll über Geschmack streiten lässt

Abstract When we use so-called predicates of personal taste to talk about an object, we express our subjective experience of the object. There is no objective truth about whether a given thing is, say, funny. I shall argue that it can make sense to argue about matters of taste anyway because (a) there are good reasons to want to change our interlocutor’s relevant experience, and (b) disputes about taste can bring about such a change. These reasons can be moral or political. My argument serves to connect debates in the philosophy of language, social epistemology, and ideology theory in illuminating ways.

A Study on the Symbolic Meaning of Territorial Names in Disputes Between China and Its Neighboring Countries — Taking the Diaoyu Islands as an Example

The territory in disputes between two countries often has different names. China and Japan have different names for Diaoyu Islands. It is called Diaoyu Islands in China, and Senkaku Islands in Japan. From the perspective of meaning reference theory, this paper analyzes the meanings behind the different symbolic names of Diaoyu Islands in China and Japan, the reasons and the impact of their use. Based on meaning reference theory and from the perspective of linguistic philosophy, this paper aims at proving that Diaoyu Islands is China’s inherent territory and further enriching relevant studies on meaning reference theory by applying it to political field.

Філософська спільнота і емансипація мислення: досвід Алуштинських шкіл

The article examines the methodological problems of the historical-philosophical research of the “Soviet philosophy.” The process of the emancipation of thinking is examined through the analysis of the tradition of the Alushta Schools of Young Philosophers in 1987–1993. These schools played a historically significant role in overcoming the prejudices and stereotypes of the Soviet consciousness by the Ukrainian philosophical community. The mentioned analysis led to a few conclusions regarding the methodology of historical-philosophical research of the intellectual legacy – primarily texts – of the Soviet era. (1) Soviet philosophy was certainly an anti-philosophy, a social machine of anti-thinking. (2) The basis of analyzing both texts and events of this philosophy should consider the phenomenon of doublethink – two simultaneous and parallel spaces of discourses’ (meanings’) existence. Doublethink reflects the situation when ideological officialdom, loyalty to which was necessary, and the opposing desire for true thinking coexisted. (3) This collision led to the development of and was characterized by a number of features: the “Aesopian language,” peculiar regimes of private trust, intellectual reservations, etc. The article corroborates that the change in the dynamics of the intellectual situation (language of philosophy, mode of communication, communities of intellectuals, ethos and ideals of scientific research, etc.) is the main subject of historical-philosophical research.

The picture theory of symbolic development in early childhood

Symbolic representation is a central facet of human development that enables people to depict experiences and communicate meaningful information with others. Participation in social interaction relies on graphical symbols, gestures, and symbolic artifacts to form relationships, acquire language, and represent the world. However, substantial theoretical differences between cognitive and social-constructivist accounts of the development of symbolic representation prevent a unified model from forming. Thus, the task of this work is to introduce a theoretical model for symbolic development in early childhood. Throughout this work, Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language is empirically grounded with nascent, cross-cultural research in iconicity and experimental semiotics in order to propose a picture theory of symbolic development in early childhood. Last, this work critically reformulates current debates regarding the representational facets of symbolic development and offers novel insights that bridge philosophy of language and cognitive anthropology.

The new correspondence theory of truth without the concept of fact

AbstractTraditional correspondence theory of truth with the concept of fact encounters many serious difficulties, main one of which is that it is too difficult to explain clearly the concept of ‘fact’ and how propositions ‘correspond’ to facts. This does not mean that we should abandon the traditional correspondence theory of truth and turn to some other type theories of truth. In order to guarantee the objectivity of truth, any reasonable theory of truth must adhere to the core insight of the traditional correspondence theory: it is not something in our language, nor in our mind, but something in the external world, that make the propositions we use to describe the states of affairs in the world either true or false. It is entirely possible to formulate a new correspondence theory of truth without the concept of fact but still adhering to the core insights mentioned above of the traditional correspondence theory. New correspondence theory of truth has its own metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, and also its assumption in the philosophy of language. Because of the generativity of language, in defining the concept of truth, the new correspondence theory of truth must resort to Tarskian recursive procedure. First, it gives the semantic value of the components of a proposition, defines the truth of its atomic propositions, then gradually defines the truth of its more and more complex propositions and finally of the whole proposition. Coherence is the intrinsic element of truth. The concept of truth is by no means trivial and insignificant; on the contrary, it is very substantive. The pursuit of truth is our mission.

Title in English: (Analytic philosophy as a tributary of deliberative tributaries)

Ideas and knowledge are not born out of nothing but are a series of extensions and this is made clear by knowing the reference roots of pragmatics as it is a product of a number of cognitive materials such as philosophy, semiotics, etc. psychological and social research. Linguistic expressions are fraught with confusion, ambiguity, confusion, or falsity, and there are several schools, including the Cambridge School, represented by Wittgenstein, which subjects philosophical texts to linguistic analysis, and the Oxford School, called Ordinary Language Philosophy, represented by Austin and tries to analyze and clarify logical expressions until they become simple. Hence, analytic philosophy is the source from which the theory of speech acts, as the first deliberative school, drew its philosophical epistemological origins.

Re-generative Habit

‘Re-generative Habit: Dancing the mimetic faculty’ examines the role of habit in choreographic practice through a comparison with Walter Benjamin's concept of the 'mimetic faculty'. This article considers the intersection of habit, dance and language as being distinct yet interconnected expressions of an innate mimetic ability. Drawing on Benjamin's theories of the ‘mimetic faculty’ and ‘non-sensuous similarity’ from his philosophy of language, I examine how these concepts intersect in my choreographic practice, using my recent screendance project 'Mimeisthai' as a case study. This project presents a specific example of a 'performance-generating systems' approach to dance-making, inspired by Danish Canadian dance theorist Pil Hansen, and highlights the inherent tension between established habit and the desire for creative innovation. By emphasizing the relational, performative and dynamic aspects of habit within creative practice, this article challenges familiar views of habit as being simply automatic behaviour. Instead, habit is depicted as a flexible, versatile element that not only offers stability but also opens up possibilities for new forms of expression to emerge.

How to do robots with words: a performative view of the moral status of humans and nonhumans

Moral status arguments are typically formulated as descriptive statements that tell us something about the world. But philosophy of language teaches us that language can also be used performatively: we do things with words and use words to try to get others to do things. Does and should this theory extend to what we say about moral status, and what does it mean? Drawing on Austin, Searle, and Butler and further developing relational views of moral status, this article explores what it means to conceptualize moral status in a performative way and in a way that reaches deep down to its basis, proposes a distinction between strong and weak versions of this view, and discusses the implications for thinking about the moral status of humans and nonhumans. Next to contributing to theory about performativity in the moral domain in general, this effort helps to reveal, understand, and evaluate the performative dimension of utterances made in public discussions about the moral status of animals and artificial agents such as robots and artificial intelligence.

Whither Rough Ground? On the “Ordinary” of Ordinary Aesthetics

AbstractThis article is a criticism of the narrative self-understanding offered by advocates of Ordinary Aesthetics. Even though the frustration with the philosophy of art (in contrast with philosophical aesthetics) is, in many ways, an overdetermined result, the sense of the ordinary as available through the withdrawal of this art-centred concern is misguided. This article argues that the reported death of art and the seemingly consistent suggestion that “anything goes” do not relieve contemporary philosophy from its being situated precisely in the wake of these practices of sense-making. I claim that Ordinary Aesthetics is dealing in an illusory conceit to the extent that defences of Ordinary Aesthetics are indebted to a demand that aesthetics may be a living field of philosophical inquiry today only if the fate of artworks is deleted from that narrative. Arguing this point requires an account of the idea of the death of art, associated with Hegel but perhaps more recently with Danto, and I sketch how Danto’s account does not cohere with the account provided in Ordinary Aesthetics. But because the claim of Ordinary Aesthetics amounts to a claim about the capacities of human sense-making independent of historical trajectories and a sense of the ordinary as that which is just available to a timeless abstraction of the human sensorium, my criticism of Ordinary Aesthetics requires a deeper defence of the relation of the faltering of narratives of art with the philosophical effort to make sense of ordinary experiences. Doing so requires that I provide alternatives: what I regard as two related though quite different philosophical approaches, namely, Cavell’s Ordinary Language Philosophy (which is startlingly absent from defences of Ordinary Aesthetics) and the program of a philosophical aesthetics elaborated in Adorno.

In This World or the Next: Investigation Over the “End of the World” in Contemplative Practice Through the Pāli Canon

Abstract This article is the result of a research dedicated to the analysis of the term loka (“world”) in the Pāli canon. This work consists mainly of a translation and analysis of the Pāli suttas concerning loka and related terms. What this study reveals is a peculiar conception of the world as a cognitive construct, with a close relationship to the philosophy of mind and language. The “end of the world” (lokanta) corresponds to the state of full consciousness necessary to become a Buddha. The figure of the world ender (lokantagū) is also fundamental as a metaphor for the Buddha as an otherworldly being (lokuttara), a concept we also find in the Abhidhamma and which will form a significant part of this study. Instead of an apocalyptic vision, the idea of the end of the world seems to be the main goal of meditation in Early Buddhism and part of the Buddhist epistemological panorama.

ReOrienting Religion?

This study presents a case of East–West entanglement not confined to dynamics internal to the Western trajectory of production and critique of Eurocentric notions of religion. It explores how the critical opening initiated by Wilfred Cantwell Smith in 1962 against reifying “religion” cannot be treated exclusively as an antecedent to the critical genealogy of religion performed by Talal Asad. We suggest that it needs to be read in the context of Smith’s collaboration with Toshihiko Izutsu, whose approach possessed a stronger counterhegemonic potential than the genealogists’ interventions in the critique of religion, which are still inscribed within a Western conceptual compass. We argue that thanks to his original skills as a philosopher of language, Izutsu put to better fruition Smith’s embryonic approach to the power-fraught character of language and discourse by studying Islamic traditions semantically, discursively, and contextually.

The Knowledge Norm of Assertion: Debates and Criticisms

Both in philosophy of science and philosophy of language, there exists a long-time debate on the knowledge norm of assertion. Recently, the focus of the discussion has been shifted from the necessity claim to the sufficiency claim. People who hold the view of “Isolated second-hand knowledge” challenge the sufficiency claim based on several counterexamples. They contend that a speaker’s assertion based solely on second-hand knowledge is epistemically inappropriate. This perspective has ignited a more profound debate between advocates and critics of the knowledge norm of assertion. What factors actually determine the appropriateness of an assertion? Aiming at the question, the present study puts forward an idea that the appropriateness of an assertion is influenced by hearer’s conceptual saturation of the speaker rather than the isolated second-hand knowledge.

Rudyard Kipling and Representation of Language Family in the World: A Study of the Philosophy of Language

The paper is to explain linguistical image of Rudyard Kipling in the poetry “The Ballad of East and West” and to relate with family of language over the world. It is found, the words “west” and “east” refer to the different location but it is from the similar pronunciation. It like “atala” in Sanskrit, “od” in Greek, and has relation with the word “Atlantic” in English. The data will be approached by the philosophy of language, particularly in the perspective of the fixed thing (Greek: esse) and the changed thing (percipi). The result, the word has the same essence. The trace of family of the word “east” and “west” could be proved in the language of Austronesian, particularly in Javanese poem. There is hybridity of reality in the area of language in the world. It could be recommended that an evidence in language is a medium of learning related with education, culture, and reality of Austronesian.
 Keywords: Philosophy of Language, Language Family, Rudyard Kipling

Cook Wilson on judgement

ABSTRACT John Cook Wilson is increasingly recognized as an important predecessor of ordinary language philosophy. He emphasizes the authority of ordinary language in philosophical theorizing. At the same time, however, he circumscribes the limits of that authority and identifies cases in which it threatens to mislead us. My aim is to consider in detail one case where, according to Cook Wilson, ordinary language has mislead philosophical theorizing. Judgement was one of the core notions of the logic, epistemology, and philosophy of mind of Cook Wilson’s time. Cook Wilson rejects this notion, in the form developed by his contemporaries, in part because it is based on a problematic analogy between ordinary language and the thoughts expressed in that language. Cook Wilson’s discussion of judgement also highlights the extent to which Cook Wilson was critical of, but also responsive to, his contemporaries. In addition, variants of the language-thought analogy Cook Wilson opposes continue to feature in twenty-first century epistemology and philosophy of mind. Cook Wilson’s criticism of the analogy thus raises questions about recent work as well as the theories of his contemporaries.

An objective metric for Explainable AI: How and why to estimate the degree of explainability

This paper presents a new method for objectively measuring the explainability of textual information, such as the outputs of Explainable AI (XAI). We introduce a metric called Degree of Explainability (DoX), drawing inspiration from Ordinary Language Philosophy and Achinstein’s theory of explanations. It assumes that the degree of explainability is directly proportional to the number of relevant questions that a piece of information can correctly answer. We have operationalized this concept by formalizing the DoX metric through a mathematical formula, which we have integrated into a software tool named DoXpy. DoXpy relies on pre-trained deep language models for knowledge extraction and answer retrieval in order to estimate the DoX, transforming our theoretical insights into a practical tool for real-world applications. To confirm the effectiveness and consistency of our approach, we conducted comprehensive experiments and user studies with over 190 participants. These studies evaluated the quality of explanations by healthcare and finance XAI-based software systems. Our results demonstrate a correlation between increases in objective explanation usability and increments in the DoX score. These findings suggest that the DoX metric is congruent with other mainstream explainability measures. It provides a more objective and cost-effective alternative to non-deterministic user studies. Thus, we discuss the potential of DoX as a tool to evaluate the legal compliance of XAI systems. By bridging the gap between theory and practice in Explainable AI, our work fosters transparency, understandability, and legal compliance. DoXpy and related materials have been made available online to ensure reproducibility.

The Sacred Soundscapes of Mountain Wilderness

Sound and silence in nature intensify our perception of the non-anthropogenic world, of that which seems unaffected by humans and has been considered transcendent, eternal, and sacred. This is especially true in mountain settings. Mountain wilderness manifests a reality beyond anthropocentrism, and this reality becomes perceivable, in part, through sound. When described in the language of soundscape ecology, mountain soundscapes can be characterized by a lack or reduction of anthrophonic sounds and the presence or increase of geophonic and biophonic sounds. When described in the language of philosophy and religion, these soundscapes have been said to offer an ideal space beyond impermanence and rational explanation and contain that which is unchanging and inexplicable. The search for personal contact with that which is unchanging and inexplicable, and the attendant belief that these qualities reveal a higher form of reality, is a search for the sacred, and mountain soundscapes have played a significant but as yet unexamined role in this search. Across different religions and secular practices, in different cultures and historical periods, mountain soundscapes have acted as catalysts for sacred experience. This article uses the combined perspectives of philosophy, religion, and soundscape ecology to map some of the physical and intellectual terrain in which such experience has taken place.

Weizenbaum’s nightmare: The decay of language in AI-generated communication

Half a century on from the ELIZA program, with the rapid and widespread emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) programs, we are now on the cusp of realizing Joseph Weizenbaum’s nightmare: an absurd world that is not only populated by machines that can convincingly simulate human communication in its various forms (e.g. writing, visual art, performance and music) but in which these machines are readily accepted as authentic replacements. Drawing on the existentialist language philosophy of Vilém Flusser, this article argues that to defer cultural communication to generative AI programs is to step outside the ‘great conversation’ of human culture and to be condemned to an unutterable nothingness. To demonstrate this, I analyse several illustrative examples including Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) language model, the text-based roleplaying game AI Dungeon (Latitude 2019), and the art installation UUmwelt (Huyghe 2018). I argue that generative AI programs only appear to ‘speak’ in a language we understand while continuing to ‘think’ in the formal language of mathematics and that their communications are merely transliterations of numbers. As such, these programs are not bound by the same moral and syntactical rules that we observe and abide by in cultural communication, and in using generative AI programs, we may very well bypass these rules to express raw intention. Though mechanized in the form of technical images, such a mode of expression would be akin to the nonsensical cries of animals in that it fulfils a fundamental desire but reveals nothing of a consciousness within. By deferring the labour of communication to an AI program, the human retreats inward and disappears from culture as they ‘speak’ in one language but ‘think’ in another. Thus, the nightmarish future that Weizenbaum envisioned is one filled with illusions of artistic expression, projected by both machines and humans, and yet there is no evidence of humanity in such a culture.

Thought: Parmenides' prohibition / Gorgias' self-will

The paper presents the philosophical arguments of the Sophist Gorgias of Leontius. For a long time, he was considered a judicial orator, rhetorician, teacher of eloquence. It's time to talk about Gorgias as a philosopher. His ontology, epistemology, and epistemology are as important as his rhetorical legacy. In this article, Gorgias appears as a broad-minded thinker. His ideas were echoed in German classical philosophy and French existentialism. Its cosmology was in tune with the concepts of physics of the XXI century. Gorgias is at the origin of the idea of an infinite number of Universes and quantum worlds. The author explores the speech personality of Gorgias, his games with language, his experiments with the genres of literature, poetry, and rhetoric. Gorgias had a great influence on the modern analytical philosophy of language. An important place in the article is given to the controversy between Gorgias and Parmenides, which goes far beyond the narrow limits of the “Eleatic question”.

Phenomenology of Language as Praeambula Fidei: A Study Based on Edith Stein

The 20th century “linguistic turn” seems to have established itself as one of the main defining aspects of contemporary philosophy. This is especially visible in analytic philosophy’s emphasis on the study of language, ultimately disconnecting and isolating it from its deep connection to the person. Without denying the validity and meaning of this type of approach, the aim of this article is to highlight that, in Edith Stein’s work, it is possible to find a phenomenology of language, in which the connection with the totality of the person, with its spiritual dimension, is essential. Although it is true that none of the works by this author systematically deal with questions related to language as such, both in her more strictly phenomenological works as well as in those that are also inspired in the philosophy of Aquinas, we find thought-provoking reflections on the question of language. Once the philosophy of language becomes re-connected to philosophical anthropology, it is transformed by Stein into the praeambula fidei, which enables dialogue with theology, especially with the theology of the body and what Vatican II calls the “ecclesiology of the sign”.