Philosophy of Language Commons^™

Ineffability, Emptiness And The Aesthetics Of Logic, Andreas Kapsner

Comparative Philosophy

In this essay, I explore the nature of the logical analysis of Buddhist thought that Graham Priest has offered in his book The Fifth Corner of Four (5of4). The paper traces the development of a logical value in- troduced in 5of4, which Priest has called e. The paper points out that certain criticisms I have made earlier still stand, but focuses on a recon- ceptualization of 5of4 in which these arguments carry less weight. This new perspective on the book, inspired by a response to my arguments by Priest himself, sees the logical analysis of Buddhism …

Theorizing, Bounded Rationality, And Expertise: Cognitive Sociology And The Quasi-Realism Of Problem-Solving As A Course Of Activity, Michael W. Raphael

Publications and Research

The question facing sociology is whether it is a field or a discipline. If it is a field, then there is no need for theorizing. However, if sociology is a discipline, then problem-solving cannot be disentangled from theorizing without a loss of intelligibility – the inability to explain the social as the concept of the discipline. Through the quasi-realism of problem-solving as a course of activity, this chapter presents cognitive sociology as a paradigm appropriate to the concept of the social understood as an ongoing course of activity. In doing so, it is shown how bounded rationality and expertise play …

Necessity, Essence And Analyticity: Toward An Analytic Essentialist Account Of Necessity, Dongwoo Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Some truths could not have failed to hold. Such are called metaphysically necessary truths. As Michael Dummett once aptly formulated, the philosophical problem about necessity is twofold: what makes necessary truths necessarily true and how do we recognize them as such? This dissertation aims to address these questions by developing and defending a novel account of necessity, which has the following three main theses: (1) the necessity of a statement about an entity is established as a consequence of a general principle implying that if the entity is a certain way then it is necessarily that way and the fact …

Epistemic Priors, Social Justice, And The Ethics Of Humor, Paul Butterfield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I set out a theory of humor ethics and, in particular, I establish what difference humorousness makes to an instance of speech’s moral value. I set out by making the case for this approach to the topic, demonstrating that focusing on how humorous speech differs, morally, from non-humorous speech allows us to avoid getting caught up in prior ethical debates that are not strictly about humor itself – a shortcoming that is common to many treatments of humor ethics in the existing literature. I show that, in cases of humorous speech, we typically do not assert the …

Pervasive Nonarbitrariness: Meaning From Form In Natural Language, David J. Neely

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is generally assumed that the expressions of a natural language are largely arbitrary. That is, any expressions that display a nonarbitrary connection between what their utterances sound like and what they mean are small in number and of no real theoretical importance.

This thesis challenges such a position. I argue that nonarbitrariness is a pervasive feature of natural language and that understanding the sound/meaning connections that exist in language is necessary if to appreciate how languages work.

I begin, in Chapter 1, by showing that many theorists are committed to the idea that nonarbitrary sound/meaning connections are of little …

How Speech Act Theory Can Help Address Problems In Theology And Church Posed By Modern Philosophy, Charles W. Westby

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Westby, Charles W. “How Speech Act Theory Can Help Address Problems in Theology and Church Posed by Modern Philosophy.” Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2022. 347 pp.

This dissertation analyzes modern idealism as developed by René Descartes and Immanuel Kant to show how modern philosophy has impacted conservative theology, focusing on the theology of Carl F. H. Henry. The relationship between theology and philosophy is analyzed in terms of foundationalism, using postliberal theological analysis propounded by Hans Frei and George Lindbeck. Speech Act Theory as propounded by J. L. Austin and John R. Searle is used to critique modern idealism in …

Attention, Reflection, And Contemplation: Approaching The Divine Through Romantic Poiesis, Katelynn Tyner

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

Often the techniques of the said and the unsaid work together. This paper will explore ways in which poets embrace iconophilic or iconoclastic postures toward divine poiesis. One objective will be to focus on the arrangement of an abundance of images into itineraries and poetic landscapes. Another objective will be to demonstrate how these patterns of cultivation can be related to a divine poiesis. Through poetry, there are ways of attending to, reflecting on, and contemplating divine images that can return us to forms of participation with the sacred. First examining poetic attention, I identify poets who demonstrate …

..., Claire Alfonso

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Words are fickle, easily misunderstood, and often put us at a loss... but we all have so much we feel we need to express. This begs the question: Is there any safe way of communication? Can anything ever really be communicated how you mean it? Will you ever see the reflection of what you feel, think, and dream outside of yourself? In response to this existential dilemma, I imagine an alternative language of images, sounds, color, feelings, and non-identification. My thesis is a meditation on the issues with standard language and the idea of alternative language. In my argument I …

Indeterminacy, Disagreement, And Reasonable Reference Magnetism, Jaocb (Hengyun) Yang

Undergraduate Honors Theses

According to reference magnetism, some properties are easier to refer than others. The proposal finds many applications in the different fields of philosophy, but it has also been criticized as an ad hoc solution to philosophical problems. This thesis provides a novel account of reference magnetism that preserves its explanatory power but is, hopefully, more reasonable.

Robert Brandom On Semantics And The Objectivity Of Conceptual Norms, Jiayu Wu

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In arguing for an inferentialist understanding of conceptual contents, Robert Brandom claims that a fundamental feature of the norms that govern our concept-using practices is that they are objective. Brandom believes that the objective aspect of conceptual norms is grounded in the distinction between the normative status of a performance being a correct (or incorrect) application of a concept and the normative attitude of a performance being taken as a correct (or incorrect) application. In the first two sections of this thesis, I will offer an overview of Brandom’s inferential approach to semantics and his normative approach to pragmatics. In …

Reading And Understanding: A Defense Of Heideggerian Hermeneutics And Philogy, Phillip M. Gandy

LSU Master's Theses

This paper addresses methodologies espoused by the hermeneutic tradition begun under Martin Heidegger. I argue for the methodologies of Philology, Destruktion and the use of poetic language in order to understand and communicate fundamental truths about Dasein. I demonstrate that these methods provide us, hermeneutically, with a closer and more precise understanding than simple communication in common speech.

Mephistopheles' Atopy, Allotry, Lottery. On Textual Proliferations In Goethe's Faust I And Ii, Pasqual Solass

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Combining a careful reading of selected passages from Goethe’s Faust I and II and of marginal but nevertheless revealing lines on maybe the actual protagonist of the “Tragödie”, Mephistopheles, this paper aims to present aspects of what one could call Goethe’s vision of a modern devil. Taking departure from etymological considerations on the root of “diabolus”, i.e. diabállein, meaning to cast apart, to scatter, but also to accuse, as well as from different beliefs of German “Aberglaube” (superstition), it will become clear that one if not the major feature of Goethe’s Mephistopheles-figure is movement, not just …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

Wave By Wave: A Fantasy Author's Guide For Refining A Creative Writing Style, Michael Bose

Senior Honors Theses

Writing a novel is a great undertaking. Many would-be writers have set out to create a novel and give up halfway through, uncertain where or how they failed. This project aims to help prospective authors get past that barrier. By analyzing one’s own writing style, a writer can ascertain greater insight into the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own work and therefore help rectify mistakes one might make otherwise, or learn to see a chapter from a new angle. The author will demonstrate this method on himself first by way of focused revisions. A sample chapter of a fantasy novel, …

Wittgenstein And Hume On Miracles, Samuel Wheeler

Undergraduate Research Symposium

In this paper, I intend to contrast the positions of Ludwig Wittgenstein and David Hume on miracles. While Hume holds that miracles are violations of laws of nature which can never be probable, Wittgenstein would reject this definition. Instead, he takes a broader stance on miracles and holds that many events which are not transgressions of laws of nature can be seen as miraculous. And the point of this is to highlight the vastly different events we call miracles. Contra Hume, Wittgenstein thinks that even some of our greatest certainties can call up in us a sense of absolute wonder …

Inferring Inferences: Relational Propositions For Argument Mining, Andrew Potter

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics

Inferential reasoning is an essential feature of argumentation. Therefore, a method for mining discourse for inferential structures would be of value for argument analysis and assessment. The logic of relational propositions is a procedure for rendering texts as expressions in propositional logic directly from their rhetorical structures. From rhetorical structures, relational propositions are defined, and from these propositions, logical expressions are then generated. There are, however, unsettled issues associated with Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), some of which are problematic for inference mining. This paper takes a deep dive into some of these issues, with the aim of elucidating the problems …

Elgin's "Native Tongue": A "Me Too" Universe?, Amir Barati

Tête-à-Tête

Suzette Haden Elgin’s novel Native Tongue (1984) provides a fascinating critique of the ideologies inscribed into patriarchal language and evokes an extremely valuable linguistic and political awareness. This article will examine the liability of the ways the novel revolts against the patriarchal society via the introduction of a gynocentric linguistic intervention. I claim, Elgin’s novel showcases an invaluable instance of how it is possible for women to revolt against the pillars of patriarchy through manipulations at the gestalt and schematic level of language and most specifically, the bodily metaphoric quality of the English. This proposed transformation of the schematic and …

Candles, Stoners, Emotions, Oh My!, Ashley Gruca

Emerging Writers

This paper focuses on the topic of our language constantly changing while using the word “lit” to show this. Analysis of examples from personal experience like yearbook signings as well as lyrics from Travis Scott songs demonstrate how a word's meaning can shift depending on its generational context.

Heart Hurts From Higging, Nia Pettway

Emerging Writers

This essay examines an emotion that does not have a word and offers a neologism to apply. "Higgs," the neologism in question, defines a feeling of nostalgia for the present that blends itself with a fear of moving into the future. With the word having such a timeless, yet relevant application, this essay takes readers through its creation, examples in contemporary media, as well as how implementation of the word may help users better understand the emotion it describes.

A Bad Time To Name Your Pet: Pet Names In The Age Of Witches, Evan Velez

Emerging Writers

In early America, there were many strange superstitions about witches. Colonists looked for all sorts of forms of witchcraft “evidence”. According to The Penguin Book of Witches, the nature of pet names may have served as an unconscious form of evidence (Howe 239). While the author thought of this suggestion as a form of social logic, this essay investigates it as a phenomenon of language. Pet names had a key role in influencing negative feelings towards animals labeled as “familiars.” This affected colonists’ perceptions of an animal, and resulted in the familiar eventually becoming a hated “pet.”