Disembodied... Never Disengaged!
Philosophy, Politics and Society, all in one place.
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True or False?: An updated look at the fictive use of language
Posted on October 12th, 2009 No commentsThe truth-value and function of fictive uses of language have plagued analytic philosophers. The greats have all given different answers when faced with a statement like “Tom Sawyer ran away from home”, true or false, even though a 12 year old tends to have no problem with the question. (Blocker 27) Meinong said it was true, after some conceptual additions to language; Russell said it was false because there was no Tom Sawyer; and Strawson said “none of the above” because it wasn’t a statement at all. Since the works of all three of these philosophers, and many others on the subject, the issue has still not been totally resolved. Works by H. Gene Blocker and Richard M. Gale may be able to shed light on the issue, however, from its two most important aspects. Gale spends his time focusing on what it means to use language fictively, what is actually being done when an actor utters a statement like “Hamlet killed his father” or an author writes in his novel “four legs good, two legs bad.” Meanwhile, Blocker explores what can be said about those fictive words, whether we can truthfully say Claudius said Hamlet killed his own father or a talking pig said “four legs good, two legs bad.” The combined effect of these two is to give a greater insight into how we use language, generally, and what it means to use language fictively.
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No Difference: Quine, Strawson and Grice on the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction
Posted on October 12th, 2009 No commentsAccording to Quine, a statement is analytic if it is true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact. While this definition immediately calls into question what “meanings” are, Quine argues that the concept of meaning is unnecessary because of a further distinction he draws within the concept of analyticity to narrow his eventual criticism. He argues that there are two types of analytic statements, and it is the second type that is of real concern for his argument. The first type are statements that are “logically true” (his words), meaning they are true under any and all reinterpretations because of their logical components. An example of this type of statement would be “no unmarried man is married”. The second, and more important type, are “synonymously true” (my words) statements, which can be made into logically true statements by substituting synonyms for synonyms. An example of this type of statement would be “no bachelor is married” which could be made logically true by substituting “unmarried man”, a synonym for “bachelor”, into the statement, producing the same statement given as an example of the first type. If these types of analytic statements are the problem ones then there is no longer a concern for meaning but rather for synonymy, which must be clarified.