Class meetings: TTH 11:00 - 12:15 in 320-221.
An optional discussion section will be arranged if there is interest..

Readings:

• Martinich, Philosophy of Language,fifth edition. We will use this anthology heavily. The bookstore should have it. You should be able to get by with an earlier edition.
• Many readings are available online, and are linked from this website.
• We will mostly be looking at primary sources, but if you feel that a more textbooky perspective on the debates would help, you might look at Ken Taylor's Truth and Meaning and/or Bill Lycan's Philosophy of Language. Both of these are on reserve in Tanner.

Assignments:

• Three papers: two short-ish (about 1500 words, the other longer (about 2000 - 2500 words):
  1. First Paper due at start of class on 4/16.
  2. Second Paper due at start of class on 5/7.
  3. Term Paper due at 5pm on 6/5.
  You may submit either hard copies or emailed copies in Word, RTF, or PDF formats; if you do the latter, it's your responsibility to send the right document, to attach it correctly, to hit the send button, etc.
• Reading reactions: each class day, by two hours before class time, please email me some thoughtful reactions to the day's main reading(s). There are no requirements as to length or structure; please put your remarks in the body of the email rather than sending an attachment, and include "reading reaction" in the subject field.

Goal: To achieve a reasonable familiarity with some main strands in analytic philosophy of language.

Keep an eye on this website for revisions, links, and suggestions about other readings.

3/31: Introduction, initial distinctions, and a space of issues

• See this article from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (you must be on campus): "Philosophy of Language" (Crimmins)

4/2, 4/7 : Frege's "On Sense and Nominatum"

• Frege, Begriffschrift, excerpts,to be distributed at the second meeting.
• Frege, "On Sense and Nominatum"

  In studying Frege's argument for his multi-level conception of linguistic meaning, try to keep track of the connections Frege relies on between meaning and "epistemological" concepts like "understand", "believe", "know", "a priori", "substantive". At the same time, keep track of his reliance on concepts to do with how language "corresponds" to the word---concepts like "truth" and "reference (nominatum)". Is his focus, in the theory of meaning, on truth (descriptive accuracy) to the exclusion of such other things as emotional content, cognitive associations, and so on, arbitrary, or can it be defended as central in some deep sense? In the first meeting, we will focus very closely on the first paragraph of this important piece.

• Also, these encyclopedia pieces may be helpful: from the Routledge Encyclopedia: "Gottlob Frege" (George and Heck, at least the first five sections), and "Sense and Reference" (Marti); and from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Frege (Zalta).

4/9, 4/14: Descriptions, Reference and Logical Form

• Russell, "On Denoting" and "Descriptions"

  Focus on how Russell, too, is driven by both epistemological and correspondence concerns in developing his account of the denotation of "denoting phrases" like definite descripitions. We will attempt to unravel Russell's baffling "Gray's Elegy" argument in class, but do give it a try on your own.

• Strawson, "On Referring"

  Is Strawson fair to Russell? Study Strawson’s suggestions for a more nuanced semantic account of language than he takes Russell to provide. In particular, Strawson's notion of something being "presupposed” rather than “entailed” by an utterance. Is this a useful notion? Is it clear how to establish whether something is presupposed versus being entailed?

• You may also be interested in "Descriptions" (Ludlow), from the Stanford Encyclopedia, and these articles from the Routledge Encyclopedia: "Bertrand Russell" (Griffin), "Peter Strawson" (Snowdon), "Descriptions" (Neale), "Logical Form" (Menzel).

4/16, 4/21, 4/23, 4/28: Reference, Names, and Natural Kinds

• Kripke, "Naming and Necessity"

  Kripke’s lectures have had enormous influence in structuring debates in many, many fields of philosophy; you cannot be too familiar with them. Try to get very clear about the different roles Kripke says descriptions can play in descriptive accounts of proper-name reference (being equivalent in meaning, fixing reference). What are his key arguments that descriptions are not equivalent in meaning to proper names? What are his key arguments that they do not fix the referents of proper names? Try also to get very clear about Kripke’s explanation of the distinction between necessity/possibility and a priority/a posteriority, and also about the role played in Kripke’s conception of language by the notion of a sentence being true considered as describing a certain possible world.

• Evans, "The Causal Theory of Reference"

  Evans takes Kripke’s “picture” of how proper names secure reference, and tries to lay the groundwork for a serious theory of the matter, grounded in an account of “cognitive reference” (an issue that has become very hot in the philosophy of psychology). Does Evans’ account work? Try to keep clear the differences among what a name refers to (for a community), what it refers to as used on a particular occasion by a speaker, and what the speaker intends to refer to.

• Putnam, "Meaning and Reference"

  Think about the connection between Putnam’s target (with respect to “kind terms”) and Kripke’s (with respect to proper names. Also, think about this: some philosophers have suggested that it is because natural kind terms (like ‘gold’ and ‘water’) work approximately according to Putnam’s (nondescriptional) story, that we are able to retain in science a single subject matter as our theories change. Is this right?

• Also see the Routledge Encyclopedia entries for "Reference" and "Proper Names".

4/30, 5/5: Meaning and Communication

• Grice, "Meaning"

  A “reductive” account of a certain kind of fact says that facts of that kind are really only more or less complicated packages of facts of another kind. Grice is trying to reduce facts about what speakers mean to other sorts of fact. Which sorts? What is his methodology---how does he test hypothesis about what constitutes a speaker meaning something?

• Grice, "Logic and Conversation"

  How does Grice’s task here connect with his task in “Meaning”? The piece is framed by what Grice regards as a case of dubious philosophical methodology: arguing from differences in the use of logical connectives and their English counterparts to a difference in their literal meaning. On Grice’s theory of cooperative constraints on conversation, how can we determine whether two expressions have the same literal meaning? Study Grice’s accounts of particular examples of what he considers “conversational implicatures”, including cases of metaphor and irony. Are his “deductions” plausible reconstructions of how hearers actually figure out what speakers are getting at?

• OPTIONAL (good possibility for a term paper topic): Davidson, "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs"

  Try to situate Davidson’s arguments with respect to the accounts of meaning we have just been studying, including especially Grice. Davidson emphasizes the flexibility of meaning and argues that this calls into question the explanatory centrality of a notion of “standing meaning” as what’s commonly known in a linguistic community, what’s learned by language learners, and what’s relied on in figuring out what speakers mean on particular occasions. Grice treats the notion of literal meaning as playing those roles. As ever, play devil’s advocate while studying this piece, and ask how someone like Grice might defend their theory against Davidson’s arguments.

• See "Grice" in the Routledge Encyclopedia, and "Paul Grice" (Grandy and Warner) in the Stanford Encyclopedia.

5/7: Descriptions again: Referential/Attributive

• Donnellan, "Reference and Definite Descriptions"

  Donnellan presents evidence that there are two types of uses of definite descriptions, and argues that the accounts both of Russell and of Strawson fail to explain this. Focusing on his critique of Russell, try to think how Russell might defend his unitary account in the face of Donnellan’s evidence.

• Kripke, "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference".

  Kripke adapts Grice's distinction between what is said and what is merely meant to provide a defense of Russell's theory from Donnellan's argument. How, if at all, can we tell whether Donnellan's observations reveal a genuine semantical ambiguity in Kripke's sense?

5/12, 5/14, 5/19: Propositional Attitude Statements

• Kripke, "A Puzzle about Belief"

  Keep track of the dialectical situation in which Kripke is writing: Kripke (in Naming and Necessity): proper names are not descriptional. Critics: but how then can you explain what descriptional theories explain so well, including true negative existentials (‘Santa Claus does not exist’) and propositional attitude sentences (‘Lois belives that Superman can fly’ is true, while ‘Lois believes that Clark can fly’ is false)? Kripke never published his extensive study of negative existentials, but “Puzzle” is his reply on the issue of propositional attitudes. He argues: descriptional theories don’t really do so well with attitude sentences anyway. The central argument, however, is that, all theories aside, our ordinary practices of using these sentences to describe people are inherently problematic. Don’t blame my theory of names, he is saying, blame an incoherent set of rules governing attitude sentences. Can this really get him off the hook? And is his argument for incoherence convincing?

• Braun, "Understanding Belief Reports"

  Braun defends the surprising (and surprisingly popular) view that substitution of names in that-clauses actually does preserve truth value. His strategy is to attribute very widespread error to ordinary speakers. But how much error is in principle possible? When does attribution of widespread error about meaning conflict with the important fact that meaning arises from ordinary use?

• Crimmins, "Hesperus and Phosphorus", Philosophical Review, v.107, 1998 (it is in the 5th edition of the Martinich anthology, or if you have an earlier edition, download it from jstor from any Stanford computer.

  This is my attempt to provide a “positive solution” to the propositional attitude problem for a Kripkean about the semantic function of proper names. I make a distinction between the linguistic function of a name (which I take to be Kripkean) and what a use of the name ultimately contributes in settling what the speaker is saying. In doing so I claim that propositional attitude sentences are used both to “make as if” to say something and really to say something. Two questions to keep in mind: does the account “predict the data” (does it correctly predict which sentences we will consider true in which circumstances)? And, are the mechanisms postulated by the account (i.e., semantic pretense) really at work in ordinary speakers?

• Also see "Propositional Attitude Statements" (Taylor) in the Routledge Encyclopedia, and "Propositional Attitude Reports" (McKay and Nelson) in the Stanford Encyclopedia.

5/21, 5/26: Verification Conditions and Meanings: Carnap and Quine

• Carnap "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology", in Meaning and Necessity.

  Carnap's theory is aimed to disintegrate many philosophical debates by showing them to be based on improperly taking certain sorts of questions ("external questions") to be capable of true and false answers. One consequence of his view is that certain sentences in a language are "analytic" in that the rules defining the language guarantee that they are true or acceptable, requiring no empirical evidence for their justification. Quine will argue that this reveals a deep mistake about the nature of language.

• Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"

  This monument of 20th Century philosophy is remarkable in many ways--not least for its being basically ignored by most of the authors we’ve read so far. Here, Quine argues for the very radical conclusion that any account of meaning (including the ones we’ve seen already) that makes good sense of the notions of synonymy (having the same meaning) and analyticity (being true simply in virtue of meaning), is totally indefensible. Thus, he favors abandoning the conception of semantics as providing truth-conditions for (uses of) sentences (for that would make sense of synonymy and analyticity). In place of that whole conception of semantics, Quine favors a view according to which what is central about meaning is the role that expressions play for us in the inferential web of language/belief, whose point is the empirical one of helping us to predict our sense experiences.

• See "Quine" in the Routledge Encyclopedia.

5/28, 6/2: Against Truth-Conditions: Kripkenstein

• Kripke, "On Rules and Private Language"

  Kripkenstein (Kripke’s tentative reconstruction of the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein) argues that there are no facts about a speaker that can constitute their literally meaning any one particular thing with a word. Get clear about exactly what Kripkenstein is arguing against, and try to get clear about the offered replacement--a theory of meaning that has to do with “assertibility conditions” rather than truth-conditions. Ask yourself: does Kripkenstein think that there is something that can constitute a speaker’s using a word with particular assertibility conditions? If so, how do assertibility conditions escape the argument against truth conditions? If not, what is Kripkenstein’s position?

• Millikan, "Truth Rules, Hoverfiles, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein Paradox"

  Millikan has a large project of finding room in nature for normative facts, by relying on "teleological" notions that she takes to be central to biology, including especially the evolution-based notion of the biological function of some part or aspect of an organism. In this paper she argues that biological functions can help provide a straight solution to Kripkenstein's skeptical argument. Do pay attention to the details of the resolution of the sceptical doubts (does it work?), but also take in the big picture of how Millikan proposes to explain the normativity of language in a naturalistically respectable way.

• See "Meaning and Rule-Following" in the Routledge Encyclopedia.