Private Language Argument
The private language argument argues that a language understandable by only a single individual is incoherent. It was introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his later work, especially in the ''Philosophical Investigations''. The argument was central to philosophical discussion in the second half of the 20th century. In the ''Investigations'', Wittgenstein does not present his arguments in a succinct and linear fashion; instead, he describes particular uses of language and prompts the reader to contemplate the implications of those uses. This technique gives rise to considerable dispute about both the nature of the argument and its implications. Indeed, it has become common to talk of private language ''arguments''. Historians of philosophy see precursors of the private language argument in a variety of sources, notably in the work of Gottlob Frege and John Locke. Locke is also a prominent exponent of the view targeted by the argument, since he proposed in his '' An Essay Concerning ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. Despite his position, only one book of his philosophy was published during his entire life: the 75-page ''Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung'' (''Logical-Philosophical Treatise'', 1921), which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929); a book review; and a children's dictionary. #Works, His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book ''Philosophical Investigations''. A 1999 survey among American university and college teachers ranked the ''Investigations ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Philosophy And The Mirror Of Nature
''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature'' is a 1979 book by the American philosopher Richard Rorty, in which the author attempts to dissolve modern philosophical problems instead of solving them. Rorty does this by presenting them as pseudo-problems that only exist in the language-game of epistemological projects culminating in analytic philosophy. In a pragmatist gesture, Rorty suggests that philosophy must get past these pseudo-problems if it is to be productive. Background The main influences on Rorty's work were John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Wilfrid Sellars. Summary Rorty argues that philosophy has unduly relied on a representational theory of perception and a correspondence theory of truth, hoping our experience or language might mirror the way reality actually is. In doing so, he builds upon the work of philosophers such as Quine, Sellars, and Donald Davidson. Rorty opts out of the traditional objective/ subjective dialogue in favor of a co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Concepts In Epistemology
A concept is an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles, thoughts, and beliefs. Concepts play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied within such disciplines as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach, cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, three understandings of a concept prevail: * mental representations, such that a concept is an entity that exists in the mind (a mental object) * abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Fregean senses, abstract objects rather than a mental object or a mental state Concepts are classified into a hierarchy, higher levels of which are termed "superordinate" and lower levels termed "subordinate". A ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Intrapersonal Communication
Intrapersonal communication (also known as autocommunication or inner speech) is communication with oneself or self-to-self communication. Examples are thinking to oneself "I will do better next time" after having made a mistake or imagining a conversation with one's boss in preparation for leaving work early. It is often understood as an exchange of messages in which sender and receiver are the same person. Some theorists use a wider definition that goes beyond message-based accounts and focuses on the role of meaning and making sense of things. Intrapersonal communication can happen alone or in social situations. It may be prompted internally or occur as a response to changes in the environment. Intrapersonal communication encompasses a great variety of phenomena. A central type happens purely internally as an exchange within one's mind. Some researchers see this as the only form. In a wider sense, however, there are also types of self-to-self communication that are mediated ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kripkenstein
''Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language'' is a 1982 book by philosopher of language Saul Kripke in which he contends that the central argument of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ''Philosophical Investigations'' centers on a skeptical rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language. Kripke writes that this paradox is "the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date" (p. 60). He argues that Wittgenstein does not reject the argument that leads to the rule-following paradox, but accepts it and offers a "skeptical solution" to alleviate the paradox's destructive effects. Kripkenstein: Kripke's skeptical Wittgenstein While most commentators accept that the ''Philosophical Investigations'' contains the rule-following paradox as Kripke presents it, few have concurred in attributing Kripke's skeptical solution to Wittgenstein. Kripke expresses doubts in ''Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language'' a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Colin McGinn
Colin McGinn (born 10 March 1950) is a British philosopher. He has held teaching posts and professorships at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, and the University of Miami. McGinn is best known for his work in philosophy of mind, and in particular for what is known as new mysterianism, the idea that the human mind is not equipped to solve the problem of consciousness. He has written over 20 books on this and other areas of philosophy, including ''The Character of Mind'' (1982), ''The Problem of Consciousness'' (1991), ''Consciousness and Its Objects'' (2004), and ''The Meaning of Disgust'' (2011). In 2013, McGinn resigned from his tenured position at the University of Miami after a graduate student accused him of sexual harassment. His resignation touched off a debate about the prevalence of sexism and sexual harassment within academic philosophy. Early life and education McGinn was born in West Hartlepool, a town in County Durham, Engl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Peter Hacker
Peter Michael Stephan Hacker (born 15 July 1939) is a British philosopher. His principal expertise is in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophical anthropology. He is known for his detailed exegesis and interpretation of the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, his critique of cognitive neuroscience, and for his comprehensive studies of human nature. Professional biography Hacker studied philosophy, politics and economics at The Queen's College, Oxford, from 1960 to 1963. In 1963–65, he was senior scholar at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he began graduate work under the supervision of H. L. A. Hart. His D.Phil. thesis "Rules and Duties" was completed in 1966 during a junior research fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford. Since 1966, Hacker has been a fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and a member of the Oxford University philosophy faculty. His visiting positions at other universities include Makerere College, Uganda (1968); Swarthmore Co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gordon Park Baker
Gordon Park Baker (born at Englewood, New Jersey, 20 April 1938; died at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 25 June 2002) was an American-English philosopher. His topics of interest included Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gottlob Frege, Friedrich Waismann, Bertrand Russell, the Vienna Circle, and René Descartes. He was noted for his collaboration with Peter Hacker and his disagreements with Michael Dummett. Biography Baker was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ... (major in mathematics),Staff"Phi Betes Vote" '' The Harvard Crimson'', November 25, 1958. Accessed November 2, 2012. "Phi Beta Kappa elected the Senior Sixteen in its annual fall election last night. Chosen were Gordon P. Baker of Lowell House and Englewood, N.J." ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grue And Bleen
The new riddle of induction was presented by Nelson Goodman in ''Fact, Fiction, and Forecast'' as a successor to problem of induction, Hume's original problem. It presents the logical Predicate (mathematical logic), predicates grue and bleen which are unusual due to their time-dependence. Many have tried to solve the new riddle on those terms, but Hilary Putnam and others have argued such time-dependency depends on the language adopted, and in some languages it is equally true for natural-sounding predicates such as "green". For Goodman they illustrate the problem of projectible predicates and ultimately, which empirical generalizations are Scientific law, law-like and which are not. Goodman's construction and use of ''grue'' and ''bleen'' illustrates how philosophers use simple examples in analytic philosophy, conceptual analysis. Grue and bleen Goodman defined "grue" relative to an arbitrary but fixed time ''t'': an object is grue if and only if it is observed before ''t'' and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wittgenstein On Rules And Private Language
''Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language'' is a 1982 book by philosopher of language Saul Kripke in which he contends that the central argument of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ''Philosophical Investigations'' centers on a skeptical rule-following paradox that undermines the possibility of our ever following rules in our use of language. Kripke writes that this paradox is "the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date" (p. 60). He argues that Wittgenstein does not reject the argument that leads to the rule-following paradox, but accepts it and offers a "skeptical solution" to alleviate the paradox's destructive effects. Kripkenstein: Kripke's skeptical Wittgenstein While most commentators accept that the ''Philosophical Investigations'' contains the rule-following paradox as Kripke presents it, few have concurred in attributing Kripke's skeptical solution to Wittgenstein. Kripke expresses doubts in ''Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language'' a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American analytic philosophy, analytic philosopher and logician. He was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and emeritus professor at Princeton University. From the 1960s until his death, he was a central figure in a number of fields related to mathematical logic, mathematical and modal logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of mathematics, mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and recursion theory. Kripke made influential and original contributions to logic, especially modal logic. His principal contribution is a semantics for modal logic involving possible worlds, now called Kripke semantics. He received the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. Kripke was also partly responsible for the revival of metaphysics and Scientific essentialism, essentialism after the decline of logical positivism, claiming Metaphysical necessity, necessity is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cartesianism
Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably François Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge. Aristotle and St. Augustine's work influenced Descartes's cogito argument. Additionally, there is similarity between Descartes's work and that of Scottish philosopher George Campbell's 1776 publication, titled ''Philosophy of Rhetoric''. In his ''Meditations on First Philosophy'' he writes, " t what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, onceives affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels." Cartesians view the mind as being wholly separate from the corporeal body. Sensation and the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |