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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Yesterdog (talk | contribs) at 06:07, 26 April 2006 ([[speech-act philosophy]]). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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What needs to be done

The categories seem complete, but there's still a need to flesh out the areas of

- "Ordinary Language Philosophy"
- "Mind and Language"
- "Social Semantics"
- Pragmatism and meaning (consequences)
- Rhetoric

There's also a need to address Banno's point about having a brief overview of the discipline. I'll post any ideas I get here.

Lucidish 23:56, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hello team
Looks like the article needs a very big trim. I've been splitting portions out to other articles. Any beefs, write 'em here! Lucidish
  • More work needs to be done on "Continental" philosophy of language. The German Romantics - Schleiermacher, Schlegel, Novalis, etc. - did some deep work in this area, in connection with the Kantian epistemological project. I'm not sure whether the early phenomenologists (Brentano to Heidegger) should get more than a passing mention. Influential - yes, massively. But they weren't expressly concerned with language per se. Derrida definitely needs some discussion. There should also be some discussion on how analytic philosophers have interacted with the Continental tradition in the philosophy of language. --- Skubicki 08:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Old stuff

Merge with Analytic philosophy?

Analytic philosophy

No, it should not. B 02:05, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

The core material is identical, so unless someone wishes to add some content to philosophy of language that would not also be appropriate in analytic philosophy, why not move phil. Lang material to analytic philosophy, and re-direct.

It shouldn't be identical. The meat of this article, the key issues, has not even been written yet. B 02:05, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, there's a difference between them. A merge is neither necessary nor warranted. Lucidish 02:57, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would argue that it should not be merged with Analytic philosophy. Philosophy of language is a sub-discipline of Analytic, yes, but cramming details about every subsection of Analytic onto one page is extremely cumbersome. Furthermore, Philosophy of language is, in and of itself, a seperate line of inquiry from Analytic and should therefore remain seperate.

I do agree though that the Phil. of language page should mention more about general theories (i.e. an outline of the tradition). As it is currently, the page merely gives a brief "why" and then links to the philosophers involved in the discipline. Maclyn611 00:02, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Seconded. Analytic philosophy is much more than merely the philosophy of language. B 02:05, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

Remarks on reforms

This page is well written, which makes it harder to correct a few difficulties.

The most obvious problem is that it is written in the first person. To my mind, this undermines the neutral point of view that the article should adopt. If nothing else, given that the page has more than one author, who is the I it refers to?

Secondly, although the page will provide motivation to look further, it does not provide an outline of the topic. A brief account of the basic themes and arguments would be a great help!

Finally, and I suspect as a result of the second point, it does not provide links to related ideas and authorities. Not even a link to Wittgenstein! This could be corrected by including a stronger outline of the field.

Banno


By way of explanation, I’ve made the following changes:

  • The introductory text is no longer in the first person.
  • Remove references to “truth” – “meaning” is the central problem of philosophy of language
  • Removed a few paragraphs that appeared not to add to the content
  • Added a brief summary of 20th Century English philosophy of language, including links to some of the proponents.

Hope it is an improvement, or perhaps that it is so bad someone will have to fix it… Banno 22:55, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Better information on the non-English versions?

If the Analytic bias is a problem, why not simply translate over some of the material from the non-English versions of the page? I don't really speak Spanish, French, or German, but I can see from some of the words (and with the help of the Google translation tool) that there are plenty of references to topics from Continental philosophy there. Some ties to Literary Theory and Literary Criticism could help, too. -- Wclark

What about non-analytic philosophy of language?

Some areas:

  • Ancient philosophers on philosophy of language, especially from Plato and the Organon;
  • Proto-analytics, eg. Brentano;
  • Continental philsophers, esp. Heidegger, Gadamer.

Beyond my knowledge to write this up myself, I have to say, but we shouldn't be talking as if there is nothing more to philosophy of language than analytic philosophy. ---- Charles Stewart 01:43, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Other fields requiring exposition: - Literary Theory / Hermeneutics - Cultural criticism - Ordinary language philosophy - Mind and language - Ideas and Meaning Lucidish 22:34, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

stupider and stupider

this article is getting stupider and stupider. the main thread of philosophy of language is realy just Russel's lead and ramifications. But this article, lead by the stupid NPOV juggarnaut, is now becoming some general philosophy of language, literally, to include stupid feminist shits.

the orignal version with the first-person write up is much better in content. Xah Lee 13:10, 2004 Dec 19 (UTC)

What are you talking about? What would you like to see? What is NPOV here? Why should the philosophy of language, as a field, be restricted to the works of Russell and the analytic tradition? Lucidish 18:36, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Limits of understanding

I've probably got the wrong philosophy article, but I thought that one of the key ideas of Wittgenstein's linguistic turn was the question

Does the language you have learnt and use, limit your ability to formulate new ideas.

Or conversely, 'are some key problems of philosophy just confusions over the language used to phrase the question'.

There seams to be remarkably little discussion of Wittgenstein here, despite the fact that this article is second major link in the opening paragraph of the Wittgenstein article. -- Solipsist 08:17, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's certainly an article in progress. If you want to follow up by adding more on Wittgenstein (both pre- and post- 'Philosophical Investigations'), go right ahead. Lucidish 01:44, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Thanks! I was beginning to suspect this was some Bizarro world philosophy of language. Wittgenstein is probably, perhaps discounting Russell, THE philosopher of language. He has definitely been more influential than any other philosopher in that area. And until five minutes ago -- when I added him myself -- he wasn't even featured in the "Important Theorists" field, which however does include incredibly tangential figures to the philosophy of language, like Julia Kristeva and Michel Foucault. I'd agree to a rewrite of the whole article if there was a vote. Wittgenstein and his philosophy definitely need its own section, the whole article needs to be trimmed down and be made coherent, and unimportant theorists must not be given so much room. -- Miai
So rewrite it. Be bold, etc. Just don't scrap legitimate material.
Also not really sure what "unimportant theorists" have been given room, here. Everyone who is talked about at any length has made a contribution that is influential, or at least significant. Lucidish 01:31, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Where are we now?

I don't really like the sectioning in this article. The role of sense and reference should not be a subsection of meaning. Also, I only skimmed the article, but I don't see a mention of either John Stuart Mill or Saul Kripke. That is blasphemy. KSchutte 18:41, 27 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

S&R should be a part of the meaning subset for artificial system-based philosophers (Frege and Russell), because for them, from what I've learned, meaning is exhausted by reference. (In all honesty, I have my doubts about even that, but if you're wondering about the logic behind my decision, there it is.)
Kripke was indeed mentioned in the direct reference section, which had to be scuttled off into a separate article because of size problems. Mill was never mentioned, so yeah, that's long overdue.
In retrospect, though, I agree with your point: most of the article does appear to be devoted to meaning and not enough to issues of reference, mind, and societies. Much of it, perhaps, may be split off to the article titled "the meaning of meaning". Lucidish
Kripke and Mill were name-dropped. Will work on more substantial descriptions of their work as I learn it. Also, reference now has its own section. Rest of the sectioning seems fine to me. Lucidish

Plagiarism accusation

Recently an anonymous accusation of plagiarism has been made on the Social Interaction section of this page (by IP 165.21.7.102).

I wrote that section. The phrasing of each paragraph is novel -- I wrote it. The source for the phrase "metasemantics" was Robert Stainton (see citation). The sources for the rest can be found at the respective primary sources and links.

Plagiarism is an extremely serious charge. I do not take it lightly, on the internet or otherwise. If the anonymous person wishes to demonstrate where I supposedly copied the text from, they may do so here, and follow the appropriate steps put forward by Wikipedia. In the meantime, the text will be reverted. Lucidish 17:46, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Murder, rape or crimes against humanity are extremely serious charges. Plagiarism is a serious charge, but let's try to keep things in perspective, shall we? -- Miai
I am somewhat confused as to what measurement scale you would have one measure the difference between "serious" and "extremely serious". A frown-o-meter? Lucidish
Putting "extremely" in boldface gave your comment a (presumably unintentional) air of self-parody, and I found it so amusing that I just had to make a remark -- that's all. I have unfortunately no suggestions for what an appropriate scale of seriousness would look like, but I'll promise to give the matter some thought. In the interim, let's stick with the frown-o-meter. -- Miai
Shenanigans aside, I do not take accusations of that kind lightly, and was not writing ironically in my comments. However, I no longer take this particular accusation seriously, since the person who posted it is an acknowledged crank. Lucidish 16:15, 10 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Incoherence

The theorists section is, as of now, very confused. It does list some theorists, but most entries seem to be about theories, which is something else. I don't want to restructure it myself, since I'm unsure of what it was intended for in the first place -- theories or theorists. Nonetheless, it can't be left as it is, as its present state doesn't make any sense. -- Miai

Fair enough. Done and done. Lucidish

Direct Refence Theory

This page has Bertand Russell credited with Direct Reference Theory. But from everything i know, John Stuart Mill created this theory. Russell dealt with definite descriptions as a realistic explanation of Frege's senses, e.g.

"The present Chairman of the Board of Microsoft is the richest man in the world."

would be analyzed as such according to Russell:

  • (1) There is at least one present Chairman of the Board of Microsoft.
  • (2) There is at least one richest man in the world.
  • (3) There is no more than one present Chairman of the Board of Microsoft.
  • (4) There is no more than one richest man in the world.
  • (5) Whoever satisfies (1) and (3) also satisfies (2) and (4).

Unless someone greatly disagrees, i will edit this wiki soon to reflect this.

Russell is a tough nut to crack, he actually had elements of both Fregeanism and Millianism in his view. In fact, Direct reference is often called the "Russell-Mill" view, and the mediated reference view is often called the "Frege-Russell" view. This comes from Russell's stance of logically proper names (which are few and far between) being a direct reference view, while the view on ordinary proper names was a mediated view. I've tried to make it clearer. Also, I don't think anyone (Mill or Russell) had it that "The president of the United States" was directly referential. 69.230.232.54 07:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Major cleanup

I've transferred much of the material from the meaning section into its own article, since it was hogging the majority of this one. A more general cleanup will be required in the future as well. Lucidish 22:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Should this redirect here?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It might do well to redirect it to more focused articles on Pragmatics, or speech acts, etc. But I'm not sure why it needs a redirect at all, since the page doesn't exist as of this writing. Lucidish 21:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's linked from Habermas article. I recently wikified it, and I am wondering if some red links can be piped.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 01:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It might be better to just modify the Habermas article. I'll do it.Lucidish 01:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I believe in creation of redirects. There are over 500 sites that use the term "speech-act philosophy", and we should have either a redirect or an article on that subject.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 02:02, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, whatever you think is best, there's no harm in it. Lucidish 03:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It should redirect to "Speech-Act Theory" which, if it doesn't exist, should, and should be linked from here. Yesterdog 06:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]