Essays in Linguistic Ontology
Essays in Linguistic Ontology

Author: Jack Kaminsky

Publisher:

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13:

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"Metaphysical questions relating to what ex­ists do not seem to fade away" notes Jack Kaminsky in this book, which takes as its starting point the Quinian view that we de­termine what exists by means of the formal systems we construct to explain the world. This starting point, Kaminsky points out, is not novel; philosophers have often tried to construct formal systems, and from these systems they have been able to deduce what can be said to exist. Contemporary formal systems are different from earlier ones, how­ever, because they make more extensive use of the results of linguistics, logic, and mathe­matics studies. But these contemporary formal systems also must state eventually what their commitments to existence are, and they must be able to show their commit­ments to be free of paradox, ambiguity, and contradiction. Given these conditions, Kaminsky exam­ines the difficulties inherent in the existence claims of contemporary formal language systems. To do this he uses only a minimum of the technical elements of propositional and first-order quantificational logic. He concludes: many existential commitments are relative to the formal systems of time; some commitments seem to be absolute; and some problems--those relating to vacuous terms--arise only because no distinction is made between humanly constructed objects and naturally constructed objects.

Essays on Linguistic Realism
Essays on Linguistic Realism

Author: Christina Behme

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-07-26

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9027263949

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This book contains new articles by leading philosophers and linguists discussing a promising philosophical framework distinct from currently dominant ones: Linguistic Realism. As opposed to Nominalism and Chomskyian Conceptualism, this approach distinguishes between use of language, knowledge of language, and language as such. The latter is conceived as part of the realm of abstract objects. The authors show how adopting Linguistic Realism overcomes entrenched problems with other frameworks and suggest that Linguistic Realism will best serve those interested in formal linguistics, the cognitive dimension of natural language, and linguistic philosophy. The essays offer different perspectives on Linguistic Realism, either supporting this paradigm or taking it as a starting point for developing modified conceptions of linguistics and for further tying linguistics to the kind of formal theories of sensory cognition that were pioneered in visual perception by David Marr—whose work is predicated on exactly the object/knowledge distinction made by Linguistic Realists.

Thought, Language, and Ontology
Thought, Language, and Ontology

Author: Francesco Orilia

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9401150524

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The late Hector-Neri Castañeda, the Mahlon Powell Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, and founding editor of Noûs, has deeply influenced current analytic pjilosophy with diverse contributions, including guise theory, the theory on indicators and quasi-indicators, and the proposition/practition theory. This volume collects 15 papers - for the most part previously unpublished - in ontology, philosophy of language, cognitive science and related areas by ex-students of Professor Castañeda, most of whom are now well-known researchers or even distinguished scholars. The authors share the conviction that Castañeda's work must continue to be explored and that his philosophical methodology must continue to be applied in an effort to further illuminate all the issues that he so deeply investigated. The topics covered by the contributions include intensional contexts, possible worlds, quasi-indicators, guise theory, property theory, Russell's substitutional theory of propositions, event theory, the adverbial theory of mental attitudes, existentialist ontology, and Plato's, Leibniz's, Kant's and Peirce's ontologies. An introduction by the editors relates all these themes to Castañeda's philosophical interests and methodology.

Language, World, and God
Language, World, and God

Author: Thomas Augustine Francis Kelly

Publisher: International Scholars Publications

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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Linguistic Content
Linguistic Content

Author: Margaret Cameron

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-03-19

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0191046337

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Philosophy of language has a rich and varied history stretching back to the Ancient Greeks. Twelve specially written essays explore this richness, from Plato and Aristotle, through the Stoics, to medieval thinkers, both Islamic and Christian; from the Renaissance and the early modern period, all the way up to the twentieth Century. Among the many topics that arise across this 2500-year trajectory are metaphysical questions about linguistic content. A first focal point of the volume is the issue of which broad ontological family linguistic contents belong to. Are linguistic contents mental ideas, physical particulars, abstract Forms, social practices, or something else again? And do different sorts of linguistic contents belong to different ontological categories-e.g., might it be that names stand for ideas, whereas logical terms stand for mental processes? The second focal point is the metaphysical grounding of linguistic content: that is, in virtue of what more basic facts do content facts obtain? Do words mean what they do because of natural resemblances? Because of causal relations? Because of arbitrary conventional usage? Or because of some combination of the above?

Language, World and God
Language, World and God

Author: Thomas A. F. Kelly

Publisher: International Scholars Publications

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9781856072113

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The understanding of ontology that is elaborated in this essay is one that sees ontology as the linguistically conditioned account of what is and of what existence is, an account which becomes, coordinately and equally, onto-theology and onto-anthropology, in which latter, the nature of person is adumbrated as transcendence towards Beings as value and value of Being. Notions examined include language, entity, contingency, temporality, Divinity, and the transcendentals.

Metametaphysics
Metametaphysics

Author: David Chalmers

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 2009-02-19

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 0199546045

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Metaphysics asks questions about existence: for example, do numbers really exist? Metametaphysics asksquestions about metaphysics: for example, do its questions have determinate answers? If so, are these answers deep and important, or are they merely a matter of how we use words? What is the proper methodology for their resolution? These questions have received a heightened degree of attention lately with new varieties of ontological deflationism and pluralism challenging the kind of realism that has become orthodoxy in contemporary analytic metaphysics.This volume concerns the status and ambitions of metaphysics as a discipline. It brings together many of the central figures in the debate with their most recent work on the semantics, epistemology, and methodology of metaphysics.