philosophixia-blog

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A documentary about Buddhism.

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A documentary about American philosophy. 

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Consider the following sentences:

1. "sataa ulkona ja vittu etta ma vihaan etta"

3. "11001011001101011"

4. "it is raining outside, and i fucking hate that"

5. "raining hate is fucking it and outside that i"

What is the difference between the above sentences?

How are we able to understand sentence (4), but not the other ones?

How is a computer able to understand (3), but not the other ones?

How is it possible that we are able to mean and understand stuff through language?

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The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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John Searle explaining philosophy of language and the linguistic turn. I think this is one of the best clarifications of philosophy I have ever seen. 

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The Puzzle of the Philosophy of Language

Somewhere around the beginning of the twentieth century, philosophers, especially in the Anglo-Saxon parts of the world, took a “linguistic turn”, making language a central issue in the subject matter and methodology of their philosophy. In the words of three representatives of this analytical school of philosophy:

Richard Rorty: “I shall mean by ʻlinguistic philosophyʼ the view that philosophical problems are problems which may be solved (or dissolved) either by reforming language, or by understanding more about the language we presently use.” 

A.J. Ayer:  “The philosopher, as an analyst, is not directly concerned with the physical properties of things. He is concerned only with the way in which we speak about them. In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character - that is, they do not describe the behavior of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions.”

Michael Dummett: “Only with Frege was the proper object of philosophy finally established: namely, first, that the goal of philosophy is the analysis of the structure of thought: secondly, that the study of thought is to be sharply distinguished from the study of the psychological process of thinking; and, finally, that the only proper method for analyzing thought consists in the analysis of language. The acceptance of these three tenets is common to the entire analytical school.”

The herald of this linguistic turn to analytic philosophy was Gottlob Frege. The big project of this german philosopher and mathematician was to provide a logical foundation for arithmetic (a project that was notoriously undermined by Russell’s paradox). In working on this project, Frege had to assign linguistic expressions (such as names) to certain mathematical entities (such as numbers), which brought up the question of how linguistic expressions do refer to non-linguistic entities, such as numbers or objects. And thus, philosophy of language was born. 

Another reason for the linguistic turn to analytic philosophy is this. Before philosophy of language it was epistemology that was in the driver’s seat of philosophy, and before epistemology it was metaphysics (and right now it is probably philosophy of mind). The central issue of metaphysics was to get an account of what reality ultimately looks like. Next, epistemology tried to get around this metaphysical question by asking whether and how we can have knowledge of this reality in the first place. Philosophy of language, in turn, tried to get around this epistemological question by asking what is meant by “reality” and “knowledge” in the first place.  

And, finally, a related reason for the linguistic turn is this. Philosophy is ultimately concerned with truth. Philosophers basically want to find out what is true. Truth, however, is intrinsically linked with our minds and the way we think about things. So, in order to get to truth, it is useful to study the structure of human thought. Unfortunately, thoughts are not readily accessible as an object of study. It seems that the only way to study the architecture of our minds is by studying language, the vehicle by which our thoughts occur. The hope is, therefore, that by studying language we can learn some important stuff about our conceptual framework; and that by learning important stuff about our conceptual framework we can get some insight in the notion of truth and how we can get there. 

So, there you go. Those are the main reasons for the linguistic turn and the reason why philosophers nowadays are so primarily concerned with language. To round things up, here are some of the central questions and issues in the philosophy of language: 

The Puzzle of Meaning. How do words, sentences, and other linguistic expressions get their meaning? How are we able to mean something with certain linguistic expressions, and how are we able to understand certain linguistic expressions?

The Puzzle of Reference. How do words, sentences, and other linguistic expressions refer to something beyond, or outside of that linguistic expression? How are we able to refer with language to something that is non-linguistic? 

The Puzzle of Identity (Frege’s puzzle). Suppose that we have a certain linguistic expression “a”, and a certain linguistic expression “b”. Further, suppose that “a” is synonymous with, or identical to “b”, so that “a=b” is true. Then, what is the difference between “a=a” and “a=b”? 

The Puzzle of Proper Names. How do names work semantically? Where do names get their meanings from? How are we able to refer with a name, like “Barack Obama”, to a person? And how are we able to understand a name, like “Sherlock Holmes”, that does not refer to a person?  

The Puzzle of Predicates. How do predicates work semantically? Where do predicates get their meanings from? How are we able to refer with a predicate, like “green”, to the color of a certain object? And how do we know what predicate to use?

The Puzzle of Rules. Being able to speak and understand a language involves being able to follow certain rules. But how are we able to follow rules? And how do we know what rule to follow? 

The Puzzle of Translation. We are able to translate a certain language into another language, and understanding other people is also a form of translation. But how are we able to do this? How do we know which expressions of the one language stand for expressions of the other language? 

The Puzzle of the Definition. To give a true definition of something is to exhaust all the possible occurrences of that something in a linguistic expression. With such a definition, you have given the true meaning of that something. But how is this possible, given the large amount of occurrences, and the variety of how language is used? How can you cover this whole domain by a linguistic expression? (To see that this is seemingly impossible, try to define the word “game”; remember, you have only given a true definition of the word “game” if there are no usages of the word “game” that escape your definition.) And if this is impossible, how can we give the exact meanings of linguistic expressions? And if we can't give the exact meanings of linguistic expressions, how are we able to speak and understand a language? 

There are a lot of other interesting problems and issues at work in the philosophy of language, but these are the most easily explained. In sum, philosophy of language is the attempt to figure out how we are able to do the things with language that we so carelessly do. At first sight, speaking and understanding a language seem to be very unproblematic phenomena. Even children can do it perfectly. But what it is that we are able to do so unproblematically is thereby not explained. And that is the puzzle of the philosophy of language.   

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Three minute philosophy - Aristotle: the pupil of Plato. 

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Three minute philosophy - Plato; the guy who basically invented philosophy.

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One seems forced to choose between the picture of an elephant which rests on a tortoise (what supports the tortoise?) and the picture of a great Hegelian serpent of knowledge with its tail in its mouth (where does it begin?). Neither will do. For empirical knowledge, like its sophisticated extension, science, is rational not because it has a foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim to the test, though not all at once.

Wilfrid Sellars on the problem of justification

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What is the difference between a=a and a=b, given that a=b is true?

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#realitycheck by @joerogan

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“Several years have now passed since I first realized how numerous were the false opinions that in my youth I had taken to be true, and thus how doubtful were all those that I had subsequently build upon them. And thus I realized that once in my life I had to raze everything to the ground and begin again from the original foundations, if I wanted to establish anything firm and lasting in the sciences.”

Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy

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The Puzzle of Epistemology

What is epistemology? People who claim that they know what epistemology is probably also have an answer to its central question: What is knowledge? 

Epistemology is traditionally conceived as the study (logos) of human knowledge (episteme), and it asks the questions: What is knowledge? What do we know? And how do we know?

Suppose you want to make a list of the things you know, and you consider the following categories:

External world. I believe I know that there is a world outside myself, an external reality in which things such as my laptop exist independent of my subjective experience. But do I really know this? Am I absolutely certain that I could not be wrong? What if I'm constantly dreaming, or just imagining all this? What if I'm the victim of a deceiving scenario such as The Matrix in which the world outside me is fake? Do I know that this skeptical scenario is not the case?  

General facts. I believe I know that two plus two equals four, and that Paris is the capital of France. But do I really know this? Am I absolutely certain that I could not be wrong? What if my mind makes me think that these general facts are true, but that actually two plus two equals sixteen, and Paris does not even exist? Do I know that this skeptical scenario is not the case?  

Past (and future). I believe I know that I had a terrible headache this morning as I have a vivid memory of this. And I believe I know that there was a world war going on some sixty years ago. But do I really know this? Am I absolutely certain that I could not be wrong? What if my memory doesn't function properly? What if the whole universe popped into existence only five minutes ago, together with all the memories that people now have? Do I know that this skeptical scenario is not the case?   

Other minds. I  believe I know that other people have minds just like my own, and that they have thoughts and feelings similar to mine. But do I really know this? Am I absolutely certain that I could not be wrong? What if all the people around my are in fact zombies, without minds, thoughts, or feelings, just hollow robots? Do I know that this skeptical scenario is not the case? 

Induction and Causality. I believe I know that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that the sun causes the warm feeling on my skin. But do I really know this? Am I absolutely certain that I could not be wrong? Does the fact that the sun has risen every morning for as long as we remember actually guarantee that it will rise tomorrow morning as well? Does the fact that the shining of the sun and the subsequent warmth of my skin actually guarantee that the formed event was the cause of the latter? 

In short, I have all these beliefs about myself, my life, and the world around me. But do I really know all these things? Or are they just mere beliefs? Do I really know them to be true? Am I really justified in believing them? Am I absolutely certain that I could not possibly be wrong? And how can I be absolutely certain about that? 

These are the basically the main issues that surround the philosophical discipline called 'epistemology'. Just so you know. Or do you? 

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Three Minute Philosophy: David Hume

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Three Minute Philosophy: René Descartes

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A clear introduction to analytic epistemology