Concept
Philosophy of language
Overview
Philosophy of language is the study of the nature of language. It investigates the relationship between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, indexicality, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought.
Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell were pivotal figures in analytic philosophy's "linguistic turn". These writers were followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), the Vienna Circle, logical positivists, and Willard Van Orman Quine.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
States what Philosophy of language is; the author is tied to Philosophy of language in the knowledge graph.
The subject of language is one which has not been studied with sufficient care in traditional philosophy. It was taken for granted that words exist to express “thoughts,” and generally also that “thoughts” have “objects” which are what the words “mean”.
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
The author is tied to Philosophy of language in the knowledge graph.
With this view, as much meaning as possible should be thrown into the formation of the word itself; the aids of derivation and analogy being made available to keep alive a consciousness of all that is signified by it. In this respect those languages have an immense advantage which form their compounds and derivatives from native roots, like the German, and not from those of a foreign or dead language, as is so much…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
The author is tied to Philosophy of language in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Philosophy of language
- Gilbert Ryle
- Graham Oppy
- Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Avicenna
- Georg Henrik von Wright
- Hans-Georg Gadamer
- John Searle
- David Kaplan (philosopher)
- J. O. Urmson
- Gilbert Harman
- Jaakko Hintikka
- Friedrich Waismann
- Al-Farabi
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Karl-Otto Apel
- Mozi
- A. J. Ayer
- Richard Rorty
- David Malet Armstrong
- John McDowell
- Noam Chomsky
- Philosophical Investigations
- J. L. Austin
- J. L. Mackie
Related ideas
- Gilbert Ryle
- Naming and Necessity
- Empiricism
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Conjunction (grammar)
- German language
- Greek language
- George Orwell
- Grammar
- Philosophical realism
- Grammatical gender
- Course in General Linguistics
- Western philosophy
- John Searle
- Japanese language
- John Stuart Mill
- John Wilkins
- Analytic philosophy
- Psycholinguistics
- John Locke
- Truth value
- Language
- Latin
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of philosophy.
Narrower topics:
- Athanasius Kircher
- Chinese characters
- Didacticism
- Epithet
- Animal communication
- Metonymy
- Ruth Millikan
- Indexicality
- Jason Josephson Storm
- Stephen Neale
- Framing (social sciences)
- Paul Horwich
- Profanity
- IKEA
- Jean François Pons
- Philosophical language
- Stylistics
- Truth-conditional semantics
- Cognitive semantics
- Genus (philosophy)
- Jan Pinborg
- Martin of Dacia
- Synonym
- Horapollo