Abstract
In this paper I suggest that, despite the overlap between philosophy of language and linguistics, philosophy of science has neglected linguistics. I argue that this has been to the detriment of philosophy of language. I examine the philosophical and linguistic treatments of definite descriptions as a case study to make this point.
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- 1.
For exegesis of Russell’s metaphysics of propositions, see Graham Stevens, The Russellian Origins of Analytical Philosophy. London: Routledge 2005.
- 2.
Bertrand Russell, “On Scientific Method in Philosophy” (1914), in: Mysticism and Logic. London: Routledge 1917.
- 3.
Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World. London: Routledge 1914.
- 4.
Russell, “On Denoting” (1905), reprinted in: Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge Essays 1901-1950, ed. R.C. Marsh, London: Routledge 1956, p. 41.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
For further discussion of the relation between complex demonstratives and Russell’s denoting phrases, see Graham Stevens, The Theory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2011, Ch. 5.
- 8.
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1910–1913 in 3 vols.
- 9.
Stephen Neale, Descriptions. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press 1990.
- 10.
Neale’s claim has met with fierce opposition from some Russell scholars, most notably Bernard Linsky. See Bernard Linsky, “The Logical Form of Descriptions”, in: Dialogue, XXXI, 1992, pp. 677-83 and “Russell’s Logical Form, LF, and Truth-Conditions”, in: G. Preyer and G. Peter, Logical Form and Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2002. See Stevens, The Theory of Descriptions, op. cit., Ch. 4 for a defence of Neale on this point.
- 11.
Whitehead and Russell, Principia Mathematica, vol. 1, p. 67.
- 12.
Linsky, “Russell’s Logical Form, LF, and Truth-Conditions”, op. cit., p. 404.
- 13.
Stephen Neale, “Grammatical Form, Logical Form, and Incomplete Symbols”, in: A.D. Irvine and G.A. Wedeking (Eds.), Russell and Analytic Philosophy. Toronto: Toronto University Press 1993; reprinted in: G. Ostertag (Ed.), Descriptions: A Reader. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press 1998, p. 95.
- 14.
Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982.
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Stevens, G. (2013). Philosophy, Linguistics, and the Philosophy of Linguistics. In: Andersen, H., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Uebel, T., Wheeler, G. (eds) New Challenges to Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_35
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5845-2_35
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