PHIL 134: Philosophy of Language
Instructor: AgustĖn Rayo
Office: HSS 8061
Phone: (858) 822-2686
E-mail: arayo@ucsd.edu
Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 4:00 - 5:00, or by appointment.Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-12:20
Room: WLH 2208Course Website: http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/~arayo/PHIL134-W05.html
This course is an introduction to the philosophy of language. Although philosophy of language concerns a large number of topics, we will focus our attention on only two of them: meaning and reference.
Peter Ludlow, Readings in the Philosophy of Language, MIT Press, 1997.
David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol 1. Oxford, 1983
(Both of these books will be available for purchase at the UCSD Bookstore, but the latter may not arrive before January 5th.)
Required reading: Gottlob Frege, ``The Thought: A Logical
Inquiry'' (in Ludlow textbook)
Homework due: Thursday January 6,
10:00 AM
Students not yet enrolled in the course may download the
assignment here. Students
who are enrolled in the course must submit the homework using WebCT. (See
below for more information.)
Further readings: Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language, Duckworth, 1973; Michael Beany (ed.) The Frege Reader, Blackwell, 1997.
Required reading: Donald Davidson, ``Truth and Meaning'' (in
Ludlow textbook)
Homework due: Thursday January 13, 10:00 AM
Students not yet enrolled in the course may download the assignment here. Students
who are enrolled in the course must submit the homework using WebCT. (See
below for more information.)
Further readings: Michael Dummett, ``What is a Theory of Meaning'' (in Ludlow textbook); Donald Davidson, ``The Logical Form of Action Sentences'' (in Ludlow textbook); Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd edition, Clarendon Press, 2001.
Required reading: Willard Quine, ``Translation and Meaning'' (in
Ludlow textbook)
Homework due: Thursday January 20, 10:00 AM
Students not yet enrolled in the course may download the assignment here. Students
who are enrolled in the course must submit the homework using WebCT. (See
below for more information.)
Further readings: remainder of chapter 2 from Willard Quine, Word and Object, MIT Press, 1960; Willard Quine, ``Ontological Relativity'' in Willard Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, Columbia, 1969; Willard Quine, Word and Object, MIT Press, 1960; Hilary Putnam, ``Models and Reality'' The Journal of Symbolic Logic 45, 1980, 464-82 (reprinted in Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam (eds.) Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings, second edition Cambridge, 1983); Crispin Wright, ``The Indeterminacy of Translation'' in Bob Hale and Crispin Wright (editors) A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell, 1997.
Required reading: Paul Grice, ''Meaning''
(The Philosophical Review, Vol. 66, No. 3, Jul 1957, pp. 377-388) The
article can be downloaded here.
(If you are working off-campus, you may have to configure your browser
in order to gain access to this site; instructions for doing so can be
found
here.)
Homework due: Thursday January 27, 10:00 AM
Students not yet enrolled in the course may download the assignment here.
Students
who are enrolled in the course must submit the homework using WebCT. (See
below for more information.)
Further readings: Paul Grice, Studies in the Ways of Words, Harvard University Press, 1989; Stephen Schiffer Meaning, Oxford University Press, 1972.
Required reading: David Lewis, ``Languages and Language'' (in
Lewis textbook) Section IV may be skipped.
Homework due: Thursday February 3, 10:00 AM
Students not yet enrolled in the course may download the assignment here.
Students
who are enrolled in the course must submit the homework using WebCT. (See
below for more information.)
Further readings: David Lewis, Convention: A Philosophical Study, Harvard, 1969; David Lewis, ``General Semantics'' (in Lewis textbook); Stephen Schiffer Meaning, Oxford University Press, 1972; Anita Avramides, ``Intention and Convention'' in Bob Hale and Crispin Wright (editors) A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell, 1997.
Required reading: David Lewis, ``Radical Interpretation'' (in
Lewis textbook)
Homework due: Thursday February 10, 10:00 AM
Further readings: Donald Davidson Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation 2nd edn, Clarendon Press, 2001 (especially essays 9 and 10); Robert Stalnaker Inquiry, MIT Press, 1987 (especially chapter 1).
Required reading: Gottlob Frege ``Sense and Reference'' (in Ludlow
textbook)
Homework due: Thursday February 17, 10:00 AM
Further readings: John Searle, ``Proper names'' (in Ludlow textbook); Tyler Burge ``Reference and Proper Names'' (in Ludlow textbook); Michael Beany (ed.) The Frege Reader, Blackwell, 1997.
Required reading: Bertrand Russell ``Descriptions'' (in
Ludlow
textbook)
Homework due: Thursday February 24, 10:00 AM
Further readings: Peter Strawson ``On Referring'' (in Ludlow textbook); Keith Donnellan ``Reference and Definite Descriptions'' (in Ludlow textbook).
Required reading: Saul Kripke Lecture II of Naming and
Necessity (in Ludlow textbook)
Homework due: Thursday March
3, 10:00 AM
Further readings: Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Harvard University Press, 1972; John Searle, ``Proper Names'' (in Ludlow textbook); Gareth Evans ``The Causal Theory of Names'' (in Ludlow textbook).
Required reading: Hilary Putnam, ``The Meaning of
`Meaning' '' (read everything up to and including the section entitled
`Indexicality and rigidity'). The article can be downloaded here. (If you are working off-campus, you may have to configure your browser in order to gain access to this site; instructions for doing so can be found here.)
The article first appeared in Gunderson (ed.)
Language, Mind and Knowledge, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of
Science, VII, University of Minnesota Press, 1975; it is reprinted in Hilary
Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2,
Cambridge, 1975.
Homework due: Thursday March 10, 10:00 AM
Further readings: The remainder of ``The Meaning of Meaning''; Tyler Burge, 1979, ``Individualism and the Mental'' (avaliable here), Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4, 73-121; Frank Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis, Oxford, 1998.
30% Homework Assignments 30% Mid-term exam (due Monday February 14, 5:00 PM); word limit: 4000 words. 40% Final exam (due Monday March 14, 2:30 PM); word limit: 3000 words.
Exams should be handed to me directly, or placed in my pigeon-hole on the 7th floor of the HSS tower. Late exams will not be accepted. Borderline cases will be decided on the basis of class participation.
- Homework Assignments
There will be a homework assignment each week (see tentative schedule for due-dates). Homework assignments are only accessible through WebCT, and must be submitted using WebCT. Instructions for getting started are available at
http://iwdc.ucsd.edu/step1_webct4.pdf
Late assignments will not be accepted.
- Exams
Each exam will consist of a (take-home) essay. The final exam must contain no more than 3,000 words. Shorter essays are acceptable, but it is typically difficult to produce enough content to get a good grade without coming close to the word limit. Do not underestimate the difficulty of writing a good essay. The constraint on length makes it more difficult to get a good grade, not easier. This is not the sort project you should begin two or three nights before the due-date.
Essays may be on any topic which engages with the material discussed in class. I encourage you to contact me beforehand to discuss possible topics and to talk about how your essay is going.
Writing a good philosophy essay can very different from writing a good essay in other subjects. Please read James Pryor's ``Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper'':
http://www.princeton.edu/~jimpryor/general/writing.html
Your essay should conform to these guidelines, and will be graded in accordance with the criteria listed in the section of the guidelines entitled `How You'll Be Graded'.
Late assignments will not be accepted.
Important notes
- Class announcements may be sent to students' UCSD email accounts. It is your responsibility to check your UCSD account for any email about the class.
- The Academic Honor Code must be observed in this course.
- If accommodations are needed for a disability, please notify me as soon as possible.
- If any course requirement conflicts with a religious requirement or university-related obligation, please notify me as soon as possible.