Philosophy of Language

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

The philosophy of language has been one of the dominant areas of philosophy during the 20th century. This course is designed to be a survey of the seminal articles of 20th century analytic philosophy of language by focusing on a number of fundamental topics: Truth and Meaning (Frege, Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, Grice, Dummett, Katz and Davidson); Logical Form (Davidson, Harman); the Theory of Reference and Descriptions (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Strawson, Donnellen, Kripke, Searle, Evans, Putnam, Katz and Kaplan); Naming, Necessity and Externalism (Searle, Burge, Kripke, Putnam and Evans); and the Semantics of Attitude Reports (Carnap, Sheffler, Quine, Davidson, Partee, Schiffer & Kripke). Peter Ludlow (ed): Readings in the Philosophy of Language (1997, MIT Press). One oral presentation and two 10-page papers.