Philosophy of Language: Meaning and Reference
Professor: Chienkuo Mi
Department of Philosophy, Soochow University
Fall Semester, 2004
Course Description:
Descartes’ distinctive prioritizing of philosophical concerns had afforded a new and deeply
influential paradigm of philosophical inquiry, effectively dethroning the scholastic metaphysical
concerns which had dominated the medieval period, and establishing epistemology as first
philosophy. If it was Descartes who had set up the epistemological turn in the 17th century, then
it might as well be said that it was Frege/Russell who set up the linguistic turn in the 20 th
century. Frege and Russell redraw the confines of the discipline by putting at center stage—by
specifying as step one toward any systematic inquiry or construction—questions about
meaning, truth, and the structure of argument. Their achievements constitute a paradigm shift
in which philosophical logic or the philosophy of language becomes first philosophy throughout
much of the 20th century.
The purpose of this course is to help students understand and appreciate the contributions
made by G. Frege (1848-1925) and B. Russell (1872-1970) to the methodology and subject
matter of 20th-century philosophy, especially to the philosophy of language. Two questions
stand forth immediately as the main focus of our concerns: (1) How did mathematical logic
become such a principal tool in the study of language? (2) How did logical analysis help us
grasp the concept of “meaning” and the related issues such as “reference” and “naming”, which
have been taken as the central notions in the philosophy of language? By establishing the
thesis of logicism—the thesis that mathematics is a branch of logic, in the sense that the truths
of mathematics rest only on the laws of logic—I will explain how Frege and Russell lay the
groundwork for the development of modern logic and for the creation of the philosophy of
language as an autonomous area of inquiry. I will further explain that in so doing they also
develop an analytic approach to philosophical questions, which has had enduring and
pervasive effects on the argumentative methods and the standards of rigor that characterize
the discipline of philosophy.
What has been developing out of Frege’s and Russell’s achievements and contributions has
later been called the analytic philosophy. Scott Soames argues in his new work (published in
2004) that two methodological developments in this analytic tradition have remade the whole
philosophical landscape. They are (1) analytic philosophers’ success in understanding, and
distinguishing the notions of logical consequence, logical truth, a priori truth, and necessary
truth, and (2) gradual acceptance of the idea that philosophical speculation must be grounded
in sound pre-philosophical thought. Accompanying these two developments, analytic
philosophers have also engaged in interaction between different separate and specialized
areas, such as the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and
epistemology. And the results have been fruitful. One of the most striking results involves the
growth and development of symbolic logic into a largely autonomous discipline with important
philosophical applications, and significant interest to philosophy. Another involves the
emergence of modern linguistics and the scientific study of the natural language, to which
developments in the philosophy of language and logic have made significant contributions.
Analytic philosophy is not a unified set of doctrines adhered to by the broad range of
philosophers. It is a movement, or a tendency. It is a rational quest for knowledge and truth. It
is pursuing toward clarification, argument, and equipped intuition. The philosophy of language
is only one of the branches in this tradition of analytic philosophy, although it is a crucial and
dominated branch. If we divide the development of the philosophy of language in this tradition
into two parts, the first part of it can be viewed as aiming at constructing a theory of meaning in
which the notion of meaning can be well defined. With this dream, the myth of meanings
follows. The second part of this tradition is a gradual waking up from the dreaming, and its main
concern is to solve the myth of meanings. This course will focus mostly on the first part
(approximately the first half of the 20th century) of its development and figure out how the notion
of meaning played its role and got its content (or definition) in both Frege’s and Russell’s
logicist perspectives.
Required Textbook:
Sullivan, Arthur
Logicism and the Philosophy of Language: Selections from Frege and
Russell, Broadview Press, 2003.
Suggested Texts:
Soames, Scott
Course Evaluation:
Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volumes 1 & 2,
Princeton University Press, 2003
1. In-class presentation, 30%
2. Term paper (10 pages minimum), 70%
3. You are strongly encouraged to write your paper in English