Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Philosophy of Mind (4)
- Epistemology (2)
- History of Philosophy (2)
- Aesthetics (1)
- American Literature (1)
-
- American Studies (1)
- Comparative Philosophy (1)
- English Language and Literature (1)
- Literature in English, North America (1)
- Metaphysics (1)
- Philosophy of Science (1)
- Religion (1)
- Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion (1)
- Science and Technology Studies (1)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (1)
- Institution
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy of Language
Making-To-Be: Documents, Facta, And Material-Discursive Agency, Elliott Hauser
Making-To-Be: Documents, Facta, And Material-Discursive Agency, Elliott Hauser
Proceedings from the Document Academy
This paper presents the performative analysis of agency within and surrounding documents as a path towards uniting the otherwise incompatible insights of both meaningcentric and materialcentric approaches. I contrast the terms agentical, providing agency, and agentic, possessing agency, to help clarify the apparent incompatibilities of prior approaches. I argue that a relational conception of agency, wherein the agentical/agentic distinction is blurred, preserves important virtues of both meaning and materialcentric approaches to documents. This paves the way for a unified materialdiscursive account of documents and a cure for document studies’ inherited duality malady. Extending prior work on capta (Drucker, 2011) and …
“Wilfrid Sellars And Pragmatism”, Willem A. Devries
“Wilfrid Sellars And Pragmatism”, Willem A. Devries
Faculty Publications
A brief survey of Wilfrid Sellars' relation to Pragmatism, focusing on the priority of the practical in the constitution of meaning, the critique of the given, and sociality of thought and inquiry.
Quasi-Dogwhistles: A Case Study Of Creating Meaning, Clyde Lemoine
Quasi-Dogwhistles: A Case Study Of Creating Meaning, Clyde Lemoine
Senior Theses
In 2017, a group of users on the website 4chan attempted to establish a new meaning of the common “OK” hand gesture. Claiming the sign meant “white power” the intention of this act was to trick left-leaning internet users and the media that an innocuous sign was racist, hence turning everyone unaware against them. A common narrative surrounding the situation was that the new meaning for the gesture as established by this group was a “hoax”. This situation serves as an interesting case study into understanding how we mean things by the use of signs. I will argue that the …
Elucidation And The Solipsism Of The Tractatus, Jacob Phillips
Elucidation And The Solipsism Of The Tractatus, Jacob Phillips
Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects
In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) of 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein presents his metaphysical account of the logical structure of the world and language. He aims to establish the possibility of the connection between “pictures” of the world—including linguistic constructions as sentences—and the constituent elements of the world. The account Wittgenstein promotes yields, by his own admission, a form of solipsism. Underlying the difficulties in interpreting the details of Wittgenstein’s solipsism (which he does little to explicate), there is a fundamental tension between solipsism of any sort and a metaphysical account that relies on language, something which seems essentially shared and …
Emociones, Ofensa Y Registro Sociolinguistico: El Caso De Los “Usos Distantes” De Los Términos Discriminatorios, Justina Diaz Legaspe, Robert Stainton
Emociones, Ofensa Y Registro Sociolinguistico: El Caso De Los “Usos Distantes” De Los Términos Discriminatorios, Justina Diaz Legaspe, Robert Stainton
Philosophy Publications
There is a particular kind of use of slurs in which the negative emotions typically associated with them (hatred, anger) are not present in the occurrence. Even so, these uses still resonate as incorrect or inadequate. This kind of “detached use” is not only an interesting, rarely mentioned phenomenon per se; it also offers some support to a novel approach to slurs based on the sociolinguistic notion of “register”. This paper examines some types of detached uses, extracts some of their essential features and assesses the way the register-based approach to slurs can account for them.
Explaining The Obvious: Privileged Hermeneutics And The Irony Of Explicitly Literal Interpretation, Joshua Alkire
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 is …
Meaning Through Things, Marilynn Johnson
Meaning Through Things, Marilynn Johnson
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Interpretation is the process by which we find meaning in the things in the world around us: clouds on the horizon, bones, street signs, hairbrushes, uniforms, paintings, letters, and utterances. But where does that meaning come from and on what basis are we justified in saying a particular meaning is the right meaning? Drawing from debates in the philosophy of language, I argue that a complete theory of meaning and interpretation must be grounded in intentions. My argument employs research in the philosophy of language, aesthetics, linguistics, and cognitive science to develop a general framework of interpretation. This framework is …
Semantic Holism Revisited, Chun-Ping Yen
Semantic Holism Revisited, Chun-Ping Yen
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
I defend semantic holism, the view that the meaning of an expression is determined by its relations to every other expression in the language of individual competent users. I argue that, once properly understood, most disadvantages attributed to holism can be dissolved and suggest that the core division between the holist and the non-holist is on the question whether invariant meanings shared across all possible occasions where the corresponded expressions are uttered are necessary for the explanation of meaning sharing. I give reason why the answer is negative and demonstrate how to explain our linguistic interaction without such invariant meanings.
A Tightrope Over An Abyss: Humanity And The Lords Of Life, Timothy Francis Urban
A Tightrope Over An Abyss: Humanity And The Lords Of Life, Timothy Francis Urban
The Graduate Review
The American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson is a precursor to the thought of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's writings have often admitted to the profound influence Emerson had on the latter's own philosophy. Both thinkers shared common ground in viewing philosophy and language as an active process, always in a state of becoming, where the subject is the sole creator of meaning. This paper argues that Emerson and Nietzsche recognized the liberating quality of language in the creation of one's subjectivity. Emerson and Nietzsche dismissed notions of objective knowledge by looking at how language is arbitrary, and, as such, …