Search

Anton Marty (Schwyz, 1847–Prague, 1914) contributed significantly to some of the central themes of Austrian philosophy. This collection contributes to assessing the specificity of his theses in relation with other Austrian philosophers. Although strongly inspired by his master, Franz Brentano, Marty developed his own theory of intentionality, understood as a sui generis relation of similarity. Moreover, he established a comprehensive philosophy of language, or'semasiology', based on descriptive psychology, and in which the utterer's meaning plays a central role, anticipating Grice's pragmatic semantics. The present volume, including sixteen articles by scholars in the field of the history of Austrian philosophy and in contemporary philosophy, aims at exposing some of Marty's most important contributions in philosophy of mind and language, but also in other fields of research such as ontology and metaphysics. As archive material, the volume contains the edition of a correspondence between Marty and Hans Cornelius on similarity. This book will interest scholars in the fields of the history of philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, historians of phenomenology, and, more broadly, contemporary theoretical philosophers.

There are thirty-six appearances of the Greek word exaíphnes in Plato's dialogues. Usually translated as “all of a sudden” or “suddenly,” exaíphnes emerges in several significant passages. For example, exaíphnes appears three times in the “allegory of the cave” from Republic vii and heralds the vision of the Beautiful in Symposium. Commonly translated in the Parmenides as “the instant,” exaíphnes also surfaces in a crucial section of the dialogue's training exercise. The Role of Exaíphnes in Early Greek Literature: Philosophical Transformation in Plato's Dialogues and Beyond connects the thirty-six scattered appearances of exaíphnes and reveals the role it plays in linking Plato's theory of Ideas with education. Joe Cimakasky discloses how Plato's step-by-step, methodical approach to philosophical education climaxes with a dynamic conversion experience signified by the appearance of exaíphnes.Cimakasky shows how Plato's conception of exaíphnes was transformative with respect to how the term was used in Greek literature by his predecessors and influential for ensuing philosophers. Following Plato, exaíphnes and its cognates came to represent the peak of philosophical or theological enlightenment. The Role of Exaíphnes in Early Greek Literature traces the meaning of the term in Greek literature prior to and contemporaneous with Plato, Plato's innovative use of exaíphnes, and the impact of Plato's notion of “the sudden” upon subsequent thinkers. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy, ancient philosophy, pedagogy, ethics, and hermeneutics. In addition, those working in religious studies will appreciate the focus on conversion narratives and their emergence in ancient philosophical and Biblical texts.

First published in 1990, this book argues that any theory of language constructs its ‘object'by separating ‘relevant'from ‘irrelevant'phenomena — excluding the latter. This leaves a ‘remainder'which consists of the untidy, creative part of how language is used — the essence of poetry and metaphor. Although this remainder can never be completely formalised, it must be fully recognised by any true account of language and thus this book attempts the first ‘theory of the remainder'. As such, whether it is language or the speaker who speaks is dealt with, leading to an analysis of how all speakers are ‘violently'constrained in their use of language by social and psychological realties.

Literatur leben, wie Ottmar Ette es versteht, meint mindestens dreierlei: Dass Literatur Leben und Überleben erst ermöglicht, dass auch die Literatur als etwas Lebendiges zu denken ist, und dass wir, die wir schreiben und lesen, an die Grenzen des Denkens von Tod und Leben nur gelangen können, wenn wir dies literarisch tun; was schreibend zumindest die Aussicht auf ein Überleben über den Tod hinaus eröffnet. Auf seinem bald vier Jahrzehnte währenden Weg durch die akademischen Landschaften des Wissens hat Ottmar Ette mehr Freundschaften geknüpft und Projekte zum Blühen gebracht, als sich zwischen zwei Buchdeckeln abbilden ließe. In diesem Band versuchen 68 Autorinnen und Autoren aus vier Kontinenten exemplarische Annäherungen an sein „viellogisches Denken“, das sich als Projekt einer anderen Moderne von Beginn an auf Alexander von Humboldts Verschränkung von ästhetischer und forschender Erfahrung gründet und insofern Stellung bezieht gegen den Pessimismus einer nachparadiesischen Welt.

The linguistic turn in critical theory has been routinely justified with the claim that Adorno's philosophy is trapped within the limits of consciousness philosophy. Yet Adorno's own philosophy of language has not yet been fully and systematically examined in its own right. Philip Hogh argues that it was in fact the linguistic turn in critical theory that prevented a thorough analysis of Adorno's philosophy of language. Here he reconstructs Adorno's philosophy of language and presents it as a coherent theory that demands to be understood as an important contribution to contemporary linguistic philosophy. By analysing all the key concepts in Adorno's thought (subjectivity, epistemology, social theory and aesthetics), and comparing them to Robert Brandom's material inferentialism, John McDowell's theory of conceptual experience and Jürgen Habermas'theory of communicative action, this book presents Adorno's theory as an important contribution to contemporary philosophy of language in its own right.

With the recent publication of works from Heidegger's Collected Edition, it has become evident that language occupied a central place in his thought “from early on,” as he claimed in his later years. Heidegger's Path to Language takes on the timely task of guiding us through the development of his reflections on language from his younger years as a doctoral student to the later period of being-historical thinking. Wanda Torres Gregory argues that Heidegger continually pursued the question concerning the essence of language in what he later called his “background” discussions. She proposes that the clue lies in his often-implicit use of Aristotle's definition of logos in terms of apophansis, synthesis, and phone as the guideword for his thoughts on language. Torres Gregory uncovers three different stages of this buried path of logos that she correlates with his key philosophical principles at each step: the ideal of a pure logic, the existential analytic in the project of fundamental ontology, and the meditations on the appropriating-event. Her analysis of the constants and changes in Heidegger's way to language via logos continues with a systematic comparison of his different answers to age-old philosophical problems concerning how language relates to reality, thought, meaning, and truth. Torres Gregory concludes with a critique that unveils the later Heidegger's dogmas and inconsistencies and challenges his concept of the mysterious language of Er-eignis with an alternative (bio-linguistic) model of its appropriating force.Heidegger's Path to Language contributes to the scholarship in Heidegger, continental philosophy, philosophy of language, comparative literature, German studies, and linguistics. It is intended primarily for specialists in those fields and will thus be of interest mainly to college professors and graduate students.

An extraordinary amount of recent work by philosophers of language, meta-ethicists, and semanticists has focused on the meaning and function of language expressing concepts having to do with what is allowed, forbidden, required, or obligatory, in view of the requirements of morality, the law, one's preferences or goals, or what an authority has commanded: in short, deontic modality. This volume presents new work on the much-discussed topic of deontic modality by leading figures in the philosophy of language, meta-ethics, and linguistic semantics. The papers tackle issues about the place of decision and probability theory in the semantics of deontic modality, the viability of standard possible worlds treatments of the truth conditions of deontic modal sentences, the possibility of dynamic semantic treatments of deontic modality, the methodology of semantics for deontic modals, and the prospects for representationalist, expressivist, and inferentialist treatments of deontic modality.

This book offers a semantic and metasemantic inquiry into the representation of meaning in linguistic interaction. Kasia Jaszczolt's view represents the most radical stance on meaning to be found in the contextualist tradition and thereby the most radical take on the semantics/pragmatics boundary. It allows for the selection of the cognitively plausible object of enquiry without being constrained by such distinctions as what is said/what is implicated or what is linguistic and what is extralinguistic. She argues that this is the only promising stance on meaning. The analysis transcends the traditional distinctions drawn, and traditional questions posed, in post-Gricean pragmatics and philosophy of language. It heavily relies on the dynamic construction of meaning in discourse, using truth conditions as a tool but at the same time conforming to pragmatic compositionality? whereby aspects of meaning that enter this composition have very different provenance. Meaning in Linguistic Interaction builds on the author's earlier work on Default Semantics and adds new arguments in favour of radical contextualism as well as novel applications, focusing on the role of salience, the flexibility of word meaning, the literal/nonliteral distinction, and the dynamic nature of a character, as well as offering an entirely new perspective on the indexical/nonindexical distinction. It contains a state-of-the-art discussion of the semantics/pragmatics boundary disputes, focusing on varieties of semantic minimalism and contextualism and on the limitations of an indexicalism. Jaszczolt's work is illustrated with examples from a variety of languages and offers some formal representations of meaning in the metalanguage of Default Semantics.

The Immanent Word establishes that the philosophical study of language inaugurated in the 1759 works of Hamann and Lessing marks a paradigm shift in modern philosophy; it analyzes the transformation of that shift in works of Herder, Kant, Fichte, Novalis and Schlegel. It contends that recent studies of early linguistic philosophy obscure the most relevant commission of its thinkers, arguing against the theological appropriation of Hamann by John Milbank; against the'expressive'appropriation of Hamann and Herder by Christina Lafont and Charles Taylor; and against Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy's uncritical championing of Schlegel's ideological position.

»Die Umgangssprache hat keine exakte Logik« – diesem Urteil von Peter Strawson stimmen heute die meisten Philosophen zu. Dieses Buch beweist das Gegenteil: Die Schlussregeln des Alltags und der Philosophie lassen sich exakt und einfach beschreiben. Anhand zahlreicher Beispiele untersucht Schamberger zunächst umgangssprachliche Wenn-dann-Sätze und Argumente. Anschließend präsentiert er einen nicht-klassischen Kalkül des natürlichen Schließens, mit dem sich die logische Folgerung in der Umgangssprache exakt erfassen und überprüfen lässt. Das letzte Kapitel setzt sich kritisch mit dem Zweiwertigkeitsprinzip auseinander, das den Anwendungsbereich der Logik auf Sätze einschränkt, die entweder wahr oder falsch sind. Das Buch setzt von seinen Leserinnen und Lesern nur Grundkenntnisse der Logik voraus.

Dieses Buch verteidigt die These, dass bis auf leicht ausgrenzbare Ausnahmen die Ersetzung von Synonyma in einem Satz die Wahrheit oder Falschheit des Satzes nicht beeinflusst. Maik Sühr liefert eine sorgsame Formulierung der These, indem er sie aus dem im Allgemeinen akzeptierten Prinzip der Kompositionalität ableitet. Er konfrontiert sie im Anschluss mit zum Teil noch weithin unbekannten augenscheinlichen Gegenbeispielen und macht eine Reihe von neuen Vorschlägen, um diese zu entkräften. In diesem Zusammenhang setzt sich Sühr mit verschiedenen Themen innerhalb der Sprachphilosophie und der Philosophie des Geistes auseinander. So bespricht er u.a. Freges Sinnhierarchie, kognitive Äquivalenz sowie verschiedene Aspekte der Semantik von Allquantifikationen und weil-Sätzen. Ferner nimmt er mit neuen Argumenten Stellung zur Debatte zwischen Externalisten und Internalisten in Bezug auf mentalen Gehalt und plädiert für eine grundsätzliche Unterscheidung zwischen semantischen und mentalen Gehalt. Im Schlussteil wendet er die Ersetzbarkeits-These auf das sogenannte Paradox der Analyse an. Im Zuge seiner kritischen Diskussion verschiedener Theorien über Begriffsanalysen entwickelt er dabei seine eigene Konzeption von Analysen als Erklärungen.

Almost everything that one claims about meaning is likely to be questioned or disputed. Translation studies also abound in numerous controversies. However, there is no doubt that translations entail a transfer of meaning, even if the exact sense of the word'meaning'remains vague. The same applies to the term'translation equivalence'. This book is an attempt to cope with conceptual, terminological, theoretical, and practical difficulties resulting from this nebula of issues. Numerous examples of translated legal, religious and artistic texts are provided to substantiate the claim that translation equivalence, except in the most trivial sense of the term, is indeed a delusion. The book is addressed to all those persons who are interested in mutual relations between semantics and translation studies.

This book deals with the main proponents of the causal and descriptivist reference theories on natural kind terms. The two main types of contemporary reference theories on natural kind terms are the causal and the descriptivist theories. The author analyzes the main versions of these two types of theories and claims that the differences between them are not as great as it is usually assumed. He alleges that the ostensive reference fixing and reference borrowing theories should be descriptive-causal, and he also adduces that the relation of kind-identity depends on the views on kind-identity and thus involves descriptive elements. This book is an important contribution to the debate on reference in contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics.

Nach skizzenhafter, historischer Darstellung einzelner pädagogischer Theorierichtungen bis hin zu systemisch-konstruktivistischen, erziehungswissenschaftlich-pädagogischen Theorieansätzen - von Piaget bis hin zu Luhmann und Kersten Reich - erfolgen die Darstellungen der zentralen termini technici der Systemtheorie (unter Einbeziehung der „Differenzentheorie“ George Spencer Browns, die für Luhmann essenziell ist) und der Sprachspieltheorie. Auf der Grundlage dieser Begriffssonden der beiden Theorierichtungen versucht der Autor eine Synopse zwischen der Systemtheorie Luhmanns und der Sprachspieltheorie Wittgensteins zu skizzieren, indem er zentrale Überlegungen zur Integration der Sprachspieltheorie in die Systemtheorie und die Bezüge auf Sozialisation, Erziehung und Unterricht als spezifisches „sozialisatorisches Interaktionssystem“ präsentiert. Ausgangsintention dieses Synopse-Versuches ist der oftmals geäußerte Kritikpunkt an der Systemtheorie, insbesondere an deren problematischer Verortung der Sprache, die von Luhmann nicht als eigenes „System“ angesehen wird. Demgegenüber plädiert der Verfasser, zur Überwindung dieses „systemtheoretischen Dilemmas“, die Sprache (Wittgenstein versteht darunter die Vielzahl von Sprachspielen) als eigene sozialsystemische Kategorie aufzufassen und Sozialisation, Erziehung und Unterricht als „sprachbasierte Interaktionssysteme“ selbstreferentiell zu beobachten und daraus entsprechende Konsequenzen für die Unterrichts- und Erziehungspraxis zu ziehen.

Wenn wir an Sprache denken, dann meist an Grammatiken, Rechtschreibung und Lexika. Sprache scheint demnach in der Form von Regeln und Wissen zu existieren. Dieser Band, der aus der Jahrestagung des IDS 2015 hervorgegangen ist, vertritt eine andere Vorstellung von Sprache: Sprache ist Werkzeug und Lebensform im sozialen und leiblichen Kontext. Sprechen und Schreiben bestehen aus routinisierten Praktiken, die an konkrete körperliche, sequenzielle, mediale und materielle Kontexte gebunden sind und bestimmten Zwecken dienen. Der Bezug auf Objekte und mediale Oberflächen und die leibliche Verfasstheit der Akteure und ihre Situiertheit im Raum sind unhintergehbare Bestimmungsstücke der Verwendung von Sprache. Sprache ist eingelassen in zwischenmenschliche Interaktionen, die sie selbst prägt, aus denen sie ihre Bedeutung bezieht und innerhalb derer sie sich wandelt und neue Verwendungen und Ausprägungen gewinnt. Die in diesem Band versammelten Beiträge zeigen Anwendungen und Nutzen des Praktikenkonzepts in unterschiedlichen Feldern der Linguistik, wie der interaktionalen Linguistik, der Sozio-, Text- und Medienlinguistik, der synchronen und historischen Pragmatik und der Literalitätsforschung. Dabei rücken über die Perspektive der Praktiken auch die Schnittstellen der Linguistik zu ihren sozialwissenschaftlichen Nachbarwissenschaften, insbesondere zu Soziologie und Medienwissenschaft, in den Fokus.

Vašíčkovy eseje nad díly Andreje Platonova, Borise Pasternaka, Josepha Conrada, Josefa Váchala, Josefa Lady, Ernesta Gellnera, Alana D. Sokala a dalších se soustřeďují na otázku vztahu skutečně obecných, vědeckých pojmů k výrazům „běžného“ jazyka. Zkoumá se zde konstituce pojmů (předpojmy, ideje-matky, vůdčí ideje, zakladatelské mýty) a jednotlivě jsou vyšetřovány celek, obraz, krajina, styl, banalita, metafora.

Frege y Russell: el problema de los nombres. / El camino de la lógica y los albores de la filosofía analítica. / El lenguaje ideal y la teoría de las descripciones. / Nombres y descripciones: los verdaderos nombre propios. / Las teorías descripcionistas y las teorías de la referencia. / Los nombres y sus usos. / Los nombres y su rigidez. / Wittgenstein y la perfecta significatividad de los nombres de ficción. / El juego de la ficción: rutas, reglas, tejidos y mundos.

In this innovative comparison of Gadamer and Wittgenstein, the author explores their common concern with the relation of language to reality. Patrick Horn's starting point is the widely accepted view that both philosophers rejected a certain metaphysical account of that relation in which reality determines the nature of language. Horn proceeds to argue that Gadamer never completely escaped metaphysical assumptions in his search for the unity of language. In this respect, argues Horn, Gadamer's work is nearer to the earlier rather than to the later Wittgenstein. The final chapter of the book highlights the work of Wittgenstein's pupil Rush Rhees, who shows that Wittgenstein's own later emphasis on language games, while doing justice to the variety of language, does less than justice to the dialogical relation between speakers of a language, wherein the unity of language resides. Contrasting Rhees's account of the unity of language with those given by Gadamer and the early Wittgenstein brings out the importance of understanding reality in terms of the life that people share rather than in terms of what philosophers say about reality.

This book, originally published in 1987, considers how the science of linguistics creates its own objects of study. It argues that language is the one essential tool in the ‘social construction of reality'– the way in which our environment as we perceive and respond to it is actually created by the cultural constructs we bring to bear on it – and that it is also the means by which this reality, once constructed, is preserved and transmitted from person to person and from generation to generation. Hence it is entirely appropriate to refer to the linguistic construction of reality.

There are no men so dull and stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words, and thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood.... On the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect or happily circumstanced which can do the like.—DescartesLanguage is more like a snowflake than a giraffe's neck. Its specific properties are determined by laws of nature, they have not developed through the accumulation of historical accidents.—Noam ChomskyIn I Speak, Therefore I Am, the Italian linguist and neuroscientist Andrea Moro composes an album of his favorite quotations from the history of linguistics, beginning with the Book of Genesis and the power of naming and concluding with Noam Chomsky's metaphor that language is a snowflake. Moro's seventeen linguistic thoughts and his commentary on them display the humanness of language: our need to name and interpret this world and create imaginary ones, to express and understand ourselves. This book is sure to delight anyone who enjoys the ineffable paradox that is human language.

The book explores the way in which apophatic discourse of negative theology has illuminated contemporary critical theory. It demonstrates the significance of apophasis both in Jacques Derrida's search for a «new language», responsive to singularity and alterity, and in the analyses of the experience of transgression, developed by Maurice Blanchot, George Bataille and Michel Foucault. Following Derrida's understanding of negative theology as a transgressive concept that transcends the linguistic, historical and religious contexts from which it arises, the book proves that apophasis is not merely a discourse on language restricted to one theological tradition, but should be viewed as a mode of dialogue and openness, essential to all responsible thinking.

This volume is concerned with issues in experimental philosophy and experimental linguistics. Examining experiments in language from a variety of perspectives, it asks what form they should take and what should count as evidence. There is particular focus on the status of linguistic intuitions and the use of language corpora. A number of papers address issues of methodology in experimental work, while other contributions examine the use of thought experiments and what the hypothetical can tell us about the actual. The aim of this collection is to bring together the work of linguists and philosophers in order that they may learn from one another, and to help both groups understand how the use of experimental methods can affect the arguments they employ and the claims they make.

This monograph on indirect reports offers insights on the semantics/pragmatics interface and a refinement of the notion of explicature. The volume is written in an engaging style and guides the reader through the theoretical problems and their ramifications. The thorniest problem in the study of indirect reports is their polyphonic nature, and how the listener distinguishes between the reporter's voice and the original speaker's voice, either by contextual clues or, in the absence of such clues, by resorting to pragmatic principles. The introductory chapter discusses the main issues that will be addressed in the volume. The next chapters focus on the various aspects of indirect reports, covering both theory and practical applications.

Context and Communication offers an introduction to a central theme in the study of language: the various ways in which what we say (or ask, or think) depends on the context of speech and thought. The period since 1970 has produced a vast literature on this topic, both by philosophers and by linguists. It is one of the areas of philosophy (and linguistics) where most progress has been made over the last few decades. This book explores some of the central data, questions, concepts, and theories of context sensitivity. It is written to be accessible to someone with no prior knowledge of the material or, indeed, any prior knowledge of philosophy, and is ideal for use as part of a philosophy of language course by students of philosophy or linguistics. Context and Communication is the first in the series Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy of Language. Each book in the series provides an introduction to an important topic in philosophy of language. Three more volumes are in preparation, on reference, the metaphysics of meaning, and conceptual analysis and philosophical methodology. These textbooks can be used as a module in a philosophy of language course, for either undergraduate or graduate students.

The first text to critically discuss Edmund Husserl's concept of the'life-world,'The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem reflects Jan Patocka's youthful conversations with the founder of phenomenology and two of his closest disciples, Eugen Fink and Ludwig Landgrebe. Now available in English for the first time, this translation includes an introduction by Landgrebe and two self-critical afterwords added by Patocka in the 1970s. Unique in its extremely broad range of references, the work addresses the views of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Carnap alongside Husserl and Heidegger, in a spirit that considerably broadens the understanding of phenomenology in relation to other twentieth-century trends in philosophy. Even eighty years after first appearing, it is of great value as a general introduction to philosophy, and it is essential reading for students of the history of phenomenology as well as for those desiring a full understanding of Patocka's contribution to contemporary thought.

No detailed description available for'Philosophies of language in eighteenth-century France'.

Language requires investigation within a broad framework, which can only be achieved if the elements studied belong to all realms of verbal (and to some extent non-verbal) communication. Grammar is merely the systematized aspect of language: by drawing on data from oral communication in a number of languages – with its phonological, pragmatic and gestural aspects – and taking into account palaeontology, anthropology, psychology and evolutionary biology, it is possible to shed new light on the phenomenon of language, meant and designed for communication, and not merely grammar. This book explores why language operates the way it does, why it is acquired the way it is, how it evolved in the first place, and why it is that some phenomena in language are universal while others are not. The author also considers whether apparently separate defining properties of our species are in fact narrowly correlated aspects of one and the same biological reality, which converges in language. Finally, the book explores the possibility that language is both the reason and the effect of the intrinsic responsibility that we feel for our fellow beings, akin to that which in different contexts is called love for our neighbour, or altruism.

L'intérêt pour la langue est un trait dominant de la philosophie contemporaine. Non que nos contemporains soient les premiers à découvrir le langage. Celui-ci a toujours été à la place d'honneur dans la philosophie, tant il est vrai que la compréhension que l'homme prend de lui-même et de son monde s'articule et s'exprime dans le langage ; les sophistes grecs sont sans doute les premiers à en avoir pris une conscience aiguë ; Socrate cherche les « définitions », c'est-à-dire le sens permanent de nos mots et de nos phrases ; Platon...

The papers in this collection discuss the central questions about the connections between language, reality and human understanding. The complex relations between accounts of meaning and facts about ordinary speakers'understanding of their language are examined so as to illuminate the philosophical character of the connections between language and reality. The collection as a whole is a thematically unified treatment of some of the most central questions within contemporary philosophy of language.

In 1963 Vilém Flusser presented a series of lectures at the Brazilian Institute of Philosophy (IBF) in São Paulo concerning the philosophy of language. The resulting ten essays would eventually be published in 1965 in the annual magazine of the Brazilian Institute of Technology and Aeronautics (ITA), and published here for the first time in book form. Flusser prepared each lecture as a response to the dialogs that followed the preceding lecture, thereby expanding and explicating his philosophy of language in an intense dialogical process. Despite the fact that the other side of the dialogue was not recorded, it becomes clear to the reader that the resulting discussions and polemics generated by the lectures progressively and profoundly changed Flusser's intended trajectory for the course. This kind of philosophy in fieri was in part the result of a group effort between all of those present, and subsequently synthesized by Flusser in every essay. As a result of this experience, Flusser adopted this dialogic method as an integral part of his future work.

The book is exceptional because it applies the notion of foms of life to the context of human action. It provides answers to the following questions: Why do we act in a specific way? Why do we make particular decisions? Does one's form of life and language games determine our actions and decisions? Wittgenstein proposes a holistic method which enables us to give coherent answers to these questions. To answer the question of the contents of actions and decisions we have to explain how we have institutionalized these actions or decisions. To this aim we shall reveal the frame within which language games are introduced and have come to function as practice and custom. The scheme of order underlying the language games is illustrated. Human actions and decisions follow particular rules. By highlighting the underlying scheme of order we may gain a perspicuous view of these rules. The aim of this book is to show that actions and decisions generate rational choice. This choice is explained by demonstrating the particular functions of the language games involved.

This book showcases the history and theory of pragmatism and its alignment to the sensibilities of contemporary analytic philosophy. It does this not only by describing its mode of operation and explaining its legitimating rationale, but also by substantiating its claims by a series of instructive case studies. The unifying insight of this approach is that the natural criterion of merit within any goal-oriented enterprise—be its orientation practical or cognitive—pivots on its contribution to the effective and efficient realization of the aims at issue. The aim of this volume is to describe and illustrate this broadened conception of pragmatism as a far-reaching and many-sided approach to philosophical inquiry. Theoretical considering apart, it offers a variety of case studies to illustrate the range and fertility of this approach.Nicholas Rescher has published extensively on the history and theory of pragmatism and on its alignment to the sensibilities of contemporary analytic philosophy over the last 30 years.

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century.In clear, precise, and non-technical language, Chomsky elaborates on fifty years of scientific development in the study of language, sketching how his own work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations that language bears to thought, and its eventual biological basis. He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects of language. Chomsky reviews how new discoveries about language overcome what seemed to be highly problematic assumptions in the past. He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive capacities and what the human mind can seriously investigate, in the light of history of science and philosophical reflection and current understanding. Moving from language and mind to society and politics, he concludes with a searching exploration and philosophical defense of a position he describes as'libertarian socialism,'tracing its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the ideas of Marx and Mill, demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our historical past and urgent relation to matters of the present.

Post-Analytic Tractatus establishes Wittgenstein's early work in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as an invaluable source for exploring current debate on analytic philosophy in its origins, history, limits and relations with European philosophy. Drawing together new work from the leading figures in interpretation of the Tractatus - Conant and Diamond - with work by respected Wittgenstein commentators such as Kremer and Hutto, together with a reprint of a relevant and striking text by Brouwer, this timely collection offers a valuable resource for exploring the Tractatus'connections to approaches other than logical positivism, mathematical logic and formal semantics. Examining links with the work of Leibniz, Kant, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, James, Heidegger and others, the contributors consider key themes in twentieth-century philosophy including symbols and expression, language and metaphysics, objects and signs, logical form, structure and syntax, limits of philosophical discourse, Idealism and transcendental arguments, distinguishing sense and nonsense, showing and saying in communication, mysticism and transcendence in experience, ethical and aesthetic value, the worlds of solipsism and religion, philosophy as an activity and as a system. Particularly timely in establishing the Tractatus as a source for comparable debates across Continental and Analytic philosophy, this collection will prove of value to scholars of twentieth-century philosophy, Wittgenstein, and Post-Analytic philosophy.

Que Condillac soit philosophe, au sens du XVIIIe siècle, et qu'il ait beaucoup écrit sur le langage suffit-il à faire de lui un « philosophe du langage » au sens où le XXe siècle en a consacré l'expression...

Cet ouvrage rassemble des textes étalés sur une quarantaine d'années, sans cohésion préétablie. Avec le recul, on y perçoit une tonalité commune dans la confrontation récurrente entre la pulsion des philosophes pour le « système » - incarné par Hegel - et sa contestation par le langage en son effervescence subversive - arcboutée à la traque par Humboldt du potentiel langagier coextensif à l'humanité. Avec, à l'horizon, l'espoir d'une fécondation mutuelle, non garantie, d'autant plus exigible.

It is generally accepted that language is primarily a means of communication. But do we always mean what we say – must we mean something when we talk? This book explores the other side of language, where words are incoherent and meaning fails us. it argues that this shadey side of language is more important in our everyday speech than linguists and philosophers recognize. Historically this other side of language known as has attracted more attention in France than elsewhere. It is particularly interesting because it brings together texts from a wide range of fields, including fiction, poetry and linguistics. The author also discusses the kind of linguistics that must be developed to deal with such texts, a linguistics which makes use of psychoanalytic knowledge. This tradition of writing has produced a major philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. This book provides an introduction to his work, an account of his original theory of meaning and an analysis of the celebrated Anti-Oedipus, which takes délire as one of its main themes.

In Potential Questions at the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface Edgar Onea proposes a novel component for question under discussion based discourse pragmatic theories thereby combining such theories with new ideas from inquisitive semantics. He shows how potential questions account for an entire range of grammatical phenomena. These phenomena include the semantics of indefinite determiners, the meaning contribution of nominal appositives, specificational constructions and non restrictive relative clauses. This book delivers a comprehensive and empirically rich investigation into the role of questions in natural language interpretation. Drawing on data from German, English, Hungarian and Russian, Edgar Onea's study significantly broadens our understanding of conventional sensitivity to questions through formally rigorous analyses of specificational particles, parentheticals and indefinites. The Potential Questions framework offers a new and exciting perspective on utterance meanings as not just addressing, but also raising questions, with important consequences for integrated analyses of discourse structure and discourse relations. This book is essential reading for anybody interested in the semantics-pragmatics interface.Judith Tonhauser, The Ohio State University

“THIS BOOK is an attempt to fill the present striking need for an introduction to contemporary linguistic philosophy as it bears on theological discourse. Wherever I have gone, recently, among educated Christians in Britain and America, I have encountered profound curiosity—and a good deal of anxiety—concerning modern methods in philosophy as they relate to the logical nature and validity of theological affirmations. Similarly I have found many of my students in contemporary philosophy and in the philosophy of religion becoming deeply absorbed in the issues raised by a critical examination of theological speech. From both groups, the intellectually alert Christians and the thoughtful graduate and undergraduate students of philosophy and religion, I have been heavily bombarded with appeals for direction to some book which would (1) set forth the central issues and arguments concerning theological discourse for readers who have familiarity with traditional philosophy but who are relatively untrained in contemporary philosophical practices and (2) place into perspective the present state of philosophical and theological discussion in this area of burgeoning interest. To my frustration, I have had to answer such requests with the admission that no such book exists and with the promise that I would try, some day, to provide that book myself. In preparing this volume, therefore, I have done my best to keep those promises in mind.”

Die Beiträge des Bandes, die aus den Vorträgen der 4. Jahrestagung „Diskurs – interdisziplinär“ 2014 hervorgehen, fokussieren in unterschiedlicher disziplinärer Perspektivierung die diskursanalytische Konstante der Historizität. Das im Titel genannte historische Apriori indiziert gleichermaßen die Diskursivität sprachlichen Handelns als kontextuelles Bedingt-Sein von Aussagen wie auch die Geschichtlichkeit und damit Relativität sprachlicher Artefakte, für die hier Texte als eine weite Kategorie von Kommunikaten stehen. Im ersten Bandabschnitt „Historische Semantik und Pragmatik“ werden sprachliche Phänomene und, auf einer Metaebene, linguistische Kategorien unter dem Vorzeichen diskursiver Varianz in den Blick genommen. Die Beiträge des zweiten Abschnitts „Literatur und Texte“ reflektieren die Historizität und soziale Wirksamkeit literarischer Formen. Im dritten Teil „Gesellschaft und Politik“ werden Wissens- und Normbildungsprozesse in den Diskursen verschiedener sozialer Felder fokussiert.

Bienvenue dans la collection Les Fiches de lecture d'UniversalisNoam Chomsky est né en 1938 dans une famille d'universitaires (son père est professeur d'hébreu). Après à des recherches en phonologie qui aboutissent à la publication, en collaboration avec Morris Halle, de The Sound Pattern of English (1968), il oriente ses recherches vers la grammaire, en montrant un mélange de fascination et de défiance pour les deux orientations majeures de la linguistique américaine de l'après-guerre : le béhaviorisme en psychologie et les théories mathématiques de l'information.Une fiche de lecture spécialement conçue pour le numérique, pour tout savoir sur Structures syntaxiques de Noam ChomskyChaque fiche de lecture présente une œuvre clé de la littérature ou de la pensée. Cette présentation est couplée avec un article de synthèse sur l'auteur de l'œuvre.A propos de l'Encyclopaedia Universalis : Reconnue mondialement pour la qualité et la fiabilité incomparable de ses publications, Encyclopaedia Universalis met la connaissance à la portée de tous. Écrite par plus de 7 200 auteurs spécialistes et riche de près de 30 000 médias (vidéos, photos, cartes, dessins…), l'Encyclopaedia Universalis est la plus fiable collection de référence disponible en français. Elle aborde tous les domaines du savoir.

Dieser Band befasst sich mit sprachtheoretischen Texten Walter Benjamins und widmet sich der Fragestellung, welche Bedeutung und Funktion in diesem Rahmen dem Bildlichen zukommt. Dabei geht es vor allem um die Frage nach dem Einsatz des Bildlichen in Texten, die sich mit den Anfängen des Sprechens und Schreibens unter philosophischen, anthropologischen, ästhetischen oder poetischen Vorzeichen beschäftigen. Die Spannung, die sich durch dieses Aufeinandertreffen von Bild und Sprache ergibt, erweist sich dabei als ein Produktivmoment des untersuchten Schreibens und Denkens. Dieses Moment leistet einer Erkenntnisweise Vorschub, die Brüche zulässt und Homogenisierungstendenzen zuwiderläuft. Die'Dialektik des Bildlichen'ist dabei ein Befund wie auch eine Strategie, der der Autor in den Texten Benjamins nachspürt. Inwiefern kann das Bildliche als konstitutives Moment der Sprache begriffen werden, ohne dieses Moment mystifizieren zu müssen und ohne die Bedeutung der semiotischen Dimension in Frage zu stellen?

No words in English are shorter than'I'and few, if any, play a more fundamental role in language and thought. In Understanding'I': Thought and Language José Luis Bermúdez continues his longstanding work on the self and self-consciousness. Bermúdez develops a model of how language-users understand sentences involving the first person pronoun'I'. This model illuminates the unique psychological role that self-conscious thoughts (typically expressed using'I') play in action and thought - a unique role often summarized by describing'I'as an essential indexical. The book opens with an argument directly supporting the indispensability of'I'-thoughts in explaining action. After motivating a broadly Fregean approach linguistic understanding it critically examines Frege's own remarks on'I'as well as the Fregean account offered by Gareth Evans. The main part of the book develops an account of the sense of'I'that explains a cluster of related phenomena, including essential indexicality, immunity to error through misidentification, the shareability of'I'-thoughts, the relation between'I'and'you', and the role of autobiographical memory in self-consciousness.

Welche Bedeutung hat das Erzählen von Märchen für die Bildung von Kindern und Jugendlichen? Was erweckt in uns den Wunsch, dieses Kulturgut zu tradieren und zu bewahren? Dass das Märchenerzählen weit über seine Unterhaltungsfunktion hinausgeht, zeigt dieses Buch. Es begreift das Märchenerzählen als eine imaginäre mimetische Spielhandlung, die in vielfältigen Prozessen zwischen Erzählenden und Zuhörenden gemeinsames Wissen und eine wechselseitige Verbundenheit in einem Spiel-, Entwicklungs- und Bildungsraum entstehen lässt. Beim Erzählen überlieferter oder erfundener Märchen thematisieren Erzählerinnen und Erzähler gemeinsam mit ihrer Zuhörerschaft im Nachgestalten, Umgestalten und Verlassen der Realität auch Fragen und Probleme ihrer eigenen Existenz. In diesem produktiven Nachschaffen werden Phantasie, Sprachkompetenz und Moral entwickelt.Für das Verständnis dieser multidimensionalen Prozesse ist ein ebenso vielseitiger Ansatz notwendig. In diesem Buch werden u.a. die Theorie der Mimesis, die Bildungstheorie und Sprachphilosophie Humboldts, die Sprachtheorie Vygotskijs und Oerters Theorie des Spiels herangezogen.

This book explores the many disciplinary and theoretical links between language, linguistics, and mathematics. It examines trends in linguistics, such as structuralism, conceptual metaphor theory, and other relevant theories, to show that language and mathematics have a similar structure, but differential functions, even though one without the other would not exist.

Language is a human universal reflecting our deeply social nature. Among its essential functions, language enables us to quickly and efficiently share information. We tell each other that many things are true—that is, we routinely make assertions. Information shared this way plays a critical role in the decisions and plans we make. In Knowledge and the Norm of Assertion, a distinguished philosopher and cognitive scientist investigates the rules or norms that structure our social practice of assertion. Combining evidence from philosophy, psychology, and biology, John Turri shows that knowledge is the central norm of assertion and explains why knowledge plays this role. Concise, comprehensive, non-technical, and thoroughly accessible, this volume quickly brings readers to the cutting edge of a major research program at the intersection of philosophy and science. It presupposes no philosophical or scientific training. It will be of interest to philosophers and scientists, is suitable for use in graduate and undergraduate courses, and will appeal to general readers interested in human nature, social cognition, and communication.

This volume highlights important aspects of the complex relationship between common language and legal practice. It hosts an interdisciplinary discussion between cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of law, in which an international group of authors aims to promote, enrich and refine this new debate. Philosophers of law have always shown a keen interest in cognitive science and philosophy of language in order to find tools to solve their problems: recently this interest was reciprocated and scholars from cognitive science and philosophy of language now look to the law as a testing ground for their theses.Using the most sophisticated tools available to pragmatics, sociolinguistics, cognitive sciences and legal theory, an interdisciplinary, international group of authors address questions like: Does legal interpretation differ from ordinary understanding? Is the common pragmatic apparatus appropriate to legal practice? What can pragmatics teach about the concept of law and pervasive legal phenomena such as testimony or legal disagreements?