2007 Handbooks

How is meaning possible? What constitutes the fact that a linguistic symbol means one thing rather than another? Can meaning be explained in naturalistic or scientific terms? What is the relationship between language and thought, between linguistic meaning and mental content? Questions such as these dominate philosophy of language, and this course provides an overview of the main themes in 20th century and contemporary philosophical theorising about language.

Topics covered include: Frege on sense and reference, Russell's theory of definite descriptions, logical positivism and the verification principle, Quine on the analytic/synthetic distinction and the indeterminacy of translation, Kripke's and Wittgenstein's meaning-scepticism, naturalistic theories of meaning, non-reductionism about meaning, Grice's theory of meaning, Davidson on Tarskian truth-theories and truth-conditional semantics.