Language and Philosophy

Fülszöveg

LANGUAGE AND PHILOSOPHY
Edited by Sidney Hook
The "revolution in philosophy," about which so much has been written describing contemporary philosophical developments, may be said to have begun with the discovery of the central importance of the word, of language habits and language games, of the meanings of "meaning." Although not professionally interested in language, or the study of comparative languages, many philosophers concluded that the perennial problems of philosophy resulted from failure to understand the logical grammar or rules of language, and that when proper distinctions were made there was no such thing as philosophical knowledge or truth.
According to this view, philosophy was an activity of analysis or insight into the aberrant uses of language, and genuine knowledge about the world could only be acquired by the empirical methods of scientific inquiry. The basic syntax of language and grammar did not reflect the metaphysical structure of the world, but was... Tovább

Fülszöveg

LANGUAGE AND PHILOSOPHY
Edited by Sidney Hook
The "revolution in philosophy," about which so much has been written describing contemporary philosophical developments, may be said to have begun with the discovery of the central importance of the word, of language habits and language games, of the meanings of "meaning." Although not professionally interested in language, or the study of comparative languages, many philosophers concluded that the perennial problems of philosophy resulted from failure to understand the logical grammar or rules of language, and that when proper distinctions were made there was no such thing as philosophical knowledge or truth.
According to this view, philosophy was an activity of analysis or insight into the aberrant uses of language, and genuine knowledge about the world could only be acquired by the empirical methods of scientific inquiry. The basic syntax of language and grammar did not reflect the metaphysical structure of the world, but was acquired through the same processes of experience by which other skills, habits, techniques, and knowledge were learned.
There now occurred an interesting development. Some professional students of linguistics, notably Noam Chomsky, have
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challenged these conclusions on the basis ot comparative linguistic studies and a study of the way any language is learned. They assert that there is a universal grammar common to all languages of which the child has an unconscious but perfect knowledge. Unless we assume that men are endowed with "innate ideas" and specific "mental faculties," in this view, we cannot understand the science of linguistics. It is this "counter-revolution" in philosophy— which claims that the empirical tradition in knowledge from Locke down is false and the rationalistic tradition of Leibnitz is sound— that is the chief topic of debate in this interesting exchange between philosopher, linguist, and anthropologist. The facts are not in dispute but their philosophical interpretations are.
A little knowledge of the surface grammar of language seems to have brought traditional philosophy into disrepute. Will further knowledge of depth grammar reinstate philosophy as an independent discipline? The issue is squarely joined in this volume. Vissza