Class Information
Syllabus
Schedule
Review for the Midterm Exam
Paper Informationmaterials below are from the previous offering of the course, and will be updated:
Notes and Handouts
Russell, Philosophy of Logical Atomism
Notes on Russell, Philosophy of Logical Atomism, lectures 1-3
Notes on Russell, Philosophy of Logical Atomism, lectures 4-6
Russell, Philosophy of Logical Atomism -- miscellaneous issuesTraditional Theories of Meaning
Notes on Lycan, Chapter 5
Early Modern Background (notes on Ian Hacking's discussion of Locke et al.)
Theories of Meaning: Meaning as Use; Grice's Theory
Wittgenstein, notes on sections 1-120
Grice's Account of Meaning (notes on Lycan, chapter 7)A. J. Ayer and Verificationism
Theories of Reference: Description and Causal-Historical
Kripke on the description theory of reference - tabular overview (pdf)
Kripke on the description theory - discursive summary (pdf)
Kripke's causal-historical account - tabular overview (pdf)J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words
Sections 1-3
Sections 4-7
Kinds of Illocutionary Acts (diagram in PDF format)Miscellaneous
Overview of the Class
Some Basic Distinctions
Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"
Some Logic Symbols
David Lewis, "Languages and Language" (very brief comments)
Metaphor (mostly notes on Lycan, chapter 14)
Links
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a number of online articles relevant to the philosophy of language (though many more are yet to come). See in particular the articles on Descriptions, Frege, The Language of Thought Hypothesis, Pragmatics, Private Language, Reference, Singular Propositions, Structured Propositions, Bertrand Russell (don't miss the sound clips from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech), logical atomism, and various theories of truth, including the coherence theory, deflationary theory, identity theory, and revision theory.
Survey article by Mark Crimmins in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Thomas C. Ryckman's links to online papers in the philosophy of language.