Philosophy of Language Commons^™

Slurs And Register: A Case Study In Meaning Pluralism, Justina Diaz-Legaspe, Chang Liu, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

An Ascombean Reference For 'I'?, Andrew Botterell, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

Re-Reading Anscombe On 'I', Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

Unarticulated Constituents And Theories Of Meaning, Jesse Rappaport

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work is an investigation into a phenomenon introduced by John Perry that I call ‘totally unarticulated constituents.’ These are entities that are part of the propositional content of a speech act, but are not represented by any part of the sentence uttered or of the thought that is being expressed - that is, they are fully unarticulated. After offering a novel definition of this phenomenon, I argue that totally unarticulated constituents are attested in natural language, and may in fact be quite common. This raises fatal problems for a prominent theory of underspecification defended by Jason Stanley, according to which ...

Flag-Waving: Visual Arguments, Verbal Reconstruction, And Speaker Intentions, Brian Larson

Brian Larson

Double/Cross: Erasure In Theory And Poetry, John Nyman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigates the implications of overt textual erasure on literary and philosophical meaning, especially with reference to the poststructuralist phenomenological tradition culminating in the work of Jacques Derrida. Responding both to the emergence of “erasure poetry” as a recognizable genre of experimental literature and to the relative paucity of serious scholarship on Derrida’s “writing under erasure,” I focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary and philosophical works in which visible evidence of erasure is an intended component of the finished (i.e., printed and disseminated) document. Erasure, I argue, performs a complex doubling or double/crossing of meaning according ...

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim ...

From Davao City To Daly City: Examining Translanguaging And Transnationalism In The 1.5-Generation Filipin(A/O) Americans Of Daly City, Rita Ewing

Master's Theses

In the field of migration studies, research on transnationalism has been well

established. Applying an intersectional framework of post-colonial narrative and

linguistic anthropology to transnational migration, this research allows us to better

understand how the transnational immigrant deploys language. Through a nostalgia

studies approach, this study is able to analyze how transnational immigrants place value

on their heritage and second languages, and reflexively deploy their language sets to

reflect their unique positionality. This paper is a case study examination of five adult

members of the 1.5-generation of Filipin(a/o) American immigrants, who immigrated to

the US before the ...

Plato's Parmenides: On Being And Non-Being, Syed Husain

Student Theses

In this paper I will discuss the Eight Hypotheses in Plato's Parmenides and draw out my own conclusion from them without any external help or secondary literature. I will then use this conclusion to address problems concerning the Parmenides in the Platonic Scholarship. The main conclusion I have drawn is that the Hypotheses are closing the gulf between Being and Non-Being via the concepts of Sameness, Difference, Becoming, Time and the Instant. In addition, the confluence of Being and Non-Being illuminates a subsidiary conclusion of this text possessing grounds for a new metaphysical presupposition of Being-Non-Being. I propose in ...

Literarische Filmsimulation: Heinrich Eduard Jacobs Medienphilosophische Filmästhetik In "Blut Und Zelluloid", Paula Vosse

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heinrich Eduard Jacob´s novel Blut und Zelluloid was published in 1929 and therefore mostly reviewed as a critical artwork regarding European film-propaganda before the outbreak of the Second World War. This thesis provides the interested scholar with a different approach: It discusses Jacob´s media-philosophical method to simulate the upcoming medium film in literature. With his implicitly and explicitly organized systems of diverse media, he circumvents constraints of the Paragone-discourse and offers a well-balanced literary construction.

Jacob´s method is compared with Pinthus´ Kinobuch and Pirandello´s Shoot!, while Simmel and Benjamin provide the thesis with a fundament to ...

Explaining The Obvious: Privileged Hermeneutics And The Irony Of Explicitly Literal Interpretation, Joshua Alkire

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine why so many uses of the word literal (whether taken from everyday contemporary speech or the works of well-respected ancient writers) seem at odds with the word’s theoretical definition and to explore the implications of this disparity for those who privilege a literal interpretation of Scripture. The examples will show that the meaning of literal was not altered at a particular point in time, nor is it altered on an ongoing basis by a small subset of particularly idiosyncratic individuals. Rather, the word is predisposed to behave strangely the moment it ...

Communication Ethics: Ellul's Complexity Of Form, Marianne Pabis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to enlarge understanding of Ellul’s dilemma of the ethical Christian communicator through a hermeneutic exploration of his intentionally un-paradigmatic treatment of technology as the determining factor in the formation of contemporary structural realities, a claim central to Ellul’s theory of technological society. It attends to the question of why, over the course of more than 50 books and over 1,000 articles, Ellul has refused to expound upon this claim as an overarching theoretical construct. As a contribution to the field of communication ethics from Ellul’s Christocentric perspective, this work also explicates the importance ...

The Two Inexical Uses Theory Of Proper Names And Frege's Puzzle, Daniel S. Shabasson

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I formulate a novel theory of proper names that is neither Millian nor Fregean to solve Frege’s puzzle. I argue that proper names are used as two kinds of indexicals. Sometimes a name is used indexically just to refer to its bearer. I call this a ‘Millian use’ of a name. Other times, a name is used indexically to refer to its bearer and to contribute the speaker’s descriptive conception of that bearer to the proposition. I call this a ‘Conception-indicating use’ of a name. Names are always rigid designators, both on Millian and Conception-indicating uses. I explain ...

The Speech Act Of Naming In Context: A Linguistic Study Of Naming In The Old Testament, Lauren Yost

Linguistics Senior Research Projects

This research sought to study the act of naming in the context of the Old Testament using speech act theory. To analyze naming as presented in the Old Testament, I first studied the Hebrew words qārāʾ and šēm, creating from my findings the following extended definition: (naming is) the act of giving a name within particular specified circumstances by one with authority over the name-receiver, whose authority is respected by others such that the name spoken is hence used to identify and represent the receiver. This, along with an understanding of Alston (2000) and the example of Arcadi (2013), shaped ...

A Conferralist Account Of Individuality, Zachary Auwerda

Theses

The individual is at the center of liberal political theory. Despite this, oppressed groups that are members of liberal societies are not respected as individuals. This paper attempts to explain one way in which this happens. I argue that some people are not treated as individuals, because they are in fact not individuals. In some cases, to be an individual requires recognition as an individual. I attempt to show that certain uses of the term “individual” refer to conferred properties. A conferred property is a property that is given to an object by a subject. Thus, conferred properties are not ...

Learning As Anamnesis In Augustine’S De Magistro, Evan Kramer

University of Iowa Honors Theses

This paper discusses illumination, recollection, and dialectic in Augustine’s early works, but chiefly in the De Magistro. The fundamental contention of my essay is that illumination and recollection are not competing theories as they are sometimes presented in the secondary literature. Rather, Augustine has a doctrine of both, and once the nature of each has been correctly explained, the concord and harmony of the theories becomes apparent. The first part of the essay explains Augustine’s attack on the knowledge-transmission model of language in the De Magistro, arguing that knowledge is not the kind of thing, given the nature ...

Indispensability Arguments For Non-Existents., Jason Messerschmitt

University of Iowa Honors Theses

This essay is chiefly concerned with two fields of philosophy in which non-existent objects appear in indispensability claims for their existence, namely philosophy of mind and truthmaker theory. In the former, indispensability claims are derived from the apparent data of intentionality, understood as the mind’s direction upon objects. An intuitive survey of the apparent objects of thought will reveal an apparent array of non-existents, either coherent or incoherent. We may, for instance, apparently think of objects of fiction such as Sherlock Holmes or Pegasus, to name some famous examples from the literature. We may also apparently think of objects ...

Nature As Theophany: Exploring Coleridge's Scientific And Theological Inquiries Into The Imagination, Adam Walker

Master’s Theses

My thesis seeks to provide a new understanding of Coleridge’s imagination and, consequently, his poetry, by considering his study of science and theology, particularly through the writings of J.F. Blumenbach, Erasmus Darwin, and Johannes Scottus Eriugena. Contextualizing my study within Coleridge’s evolving engagement with pantheism, my thesis will examine: 1) how Coleridge’s incorporation of Blumenbach’s theory of generation, Darwin’s imitation theory, and Eriugena’s concept of nature informed the poet’s ideas about the relationship between nature and the mind; and 2) how, from this incorporation, Coleridge developed a theory of poetic creativity that ...

Meaning And Modality, Jesse Fitts

Doctoral Dissertations

I intended to write four papers whose topics faintly concerned separate issues in meaning and modality. As it turned out, chapters 1-3 all roughly concern the same topic: propositions. While I argue for two different theses in chapters 1 and 2, I try to understand the changing propositions literature in both. In addition to arguing for the respective theses in chapters 1 and 2, accounting for this change is a parallel goal for the chapters taken together. Chapter 3 examines particular propositional roles---the objects of the attitudes and the objects of credence. Finally, chapter 4 changes the subject to the ...

Should We Be Moved By What Motivates Expressivism?, Terence Cuneo

Philosophic Exchange

When two views differ as sharply as do realism and expressivism, it is easy for their proponents to talk past one another, failing to understand the other’s most fundamental commitments. My project in this essay is to bring these two very different views into conversation. I begin by offering a more specific characterization of both expressivism and realism, noting where some of their important differences lie. I then identify the primary rationale that expressivists offer for rejecting moral realism in favor of their view, an argument that has a long history in the expressivist tradition, which I refer to ...