The Philosophy of Language

Citation

Martinich, A. P., & Sosa, D. (Eds.). (2012). The Philosophy of Language (6th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

This is an anthology of forty-eight readings in eight sections, published in November 2012 as a paperback of roughly 700 to 750 pages. David Sosa joined A. P. Martinich as coeditor for the sixth edition, which has eighteen new articles. A general introduction and an introduction to each section place the readings, and each section ends with a bibliography of suggested further reading. The readings are arranged by problem, and their original publication dates run from 1699 to 2000.

I. Names (readings 1–7)

Mill's "Of Names" (1881) and Frege's "On Sense and Reference" (1892) start the section, followed by Searle's "Proper Names" (1958), an extract from Kripke's Naming and Necessity (1972), Putnam's "Meaning and Reference" (1973), Evans's "The Causal Theory of Names" (1973) and an extract from Salmon's Frege's Puzzle (1986). The section moves from classical accounts of names to the causal theory and later work.

II. Descriptions (readings 8–13)

Russell's "On Denoting" (1905) and "Descriptions" (1919) are followed by Strawson's "On Referring" (1950) and Russell's reply, "Mr. Strawson on Referring" (1957); then Donnellan's "Reference and Definite Descriptions" (1966) and Kripke's "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference" (1977). The titles show an exchange in which later pieces respond to earlier ones.

III. Ascriptions (readings 14–20)

Quine's "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes" (1956), Kaplan's "Quantifying In" (1968), Davidson's "On Saying That" (1968), Mates's "Synonymity" (1952), Kripke's "A Puzzle about Belief" (1979), Sosa's "The Import of the Puzzle about Belief" (1996) and Schiffer's "Belief Ascription" (1992) deal with attitude reports and the puzzles they raise.

IV. Communication (readings 21–26)

This section turns to what speakers do with language: Grice's "Meaning" (1957), Austin's "Performative Utterances" (1961), Searle's "The Structure of Illocutionary Acts" (1969), Grice's "Logic and Conversation" (1975), Davidson's "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" (1985) and Bach's "Conversational Impliciture" (1994).

V. Truth (readings 27–31)

Frege's "The Thought" (1918), Tarski's "The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics" (1944), Field's "Tarski's Theory of Truth" (1972), Davidson's "Truth and Meaning" (1967) and Dummett's "What Is a Theory of Meaning?" (1975) link truth to the question of what a theory of meaning is.

VI. Analyticity (readings 32–34)

Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) is paired with Grice and Strawson's "In Defense of a Dogma" (1956) and Putnam's '"Two Dogmas" Revisited' (1976).

VII. Indeterminacies (readings 35–42)

The section has three clusters. On context: Stalnaker's "Assertion" (1978), Kaplan's "Demonstratives" (1977) and Perry's "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" (1979). On rule-following: an extract from Kripke's On Rules and Private Language (1982) and Boghossian's "The Rule-Following Considerations" (1989). On vagueness: an extract from Sorenson's Blindspots (1988), Raffman's "Vagueness without Paradox" (1994) and Fara's "Shifting Sands" (2000).

VIII. Language (readings 43–48)

The closing section asks about language itself: Locke's "Of Words" (1699), an extract from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953), Hempel's "Empiricist Criteria of Cognitive Significance" (1950), Lewis's "Languages and Language" (1975), Stampe's "Toward a Causal Theory of Linguistic Representation" (1977) and Chomsky's "Language and Problems of Knowledge" (1988).

Key Concepts

Sections I–IV

• Sense and reference: Frege's distinction, the starting point for later theories of names and descriptions.
• Causal theory of names: the topic of Evans's reading, placed alongside the Kripke and Putnam selections.
• Definite descriptions: the topic of the Russell, Strawson and Donnellan readings.
• Propositional attitudes and belief ascription: reports of what people believe and the puzzles about them.
• Speech acts and illocutionary acts: what speakers do in saying something, in Austin and Searle.
• Conversation and meaning: Grice's work on speaker meaning and on conversation.

Sections V–VIII

• Theory of meaning: whether a truth theory of the Tarskian kind can serve as a theory of meaning.
• Analyticity: the dispute opened by Quine and answered by Grice, Strawson and Putnam.
• Indexicals and demonstratives: context-dependent expressions in Kaplan and Perry.
• Rule-following and vagueness: the other topics grouped with context under indeterminacies.
• What a language is: the topic of the final section, from Locke through Wittgenstein and Lewis to Chomsky.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Primary papers in one place. The anthology collects the founding papers on names, descriptions, speech acts, truth and analyticity, so students read arguments in the words of those who made them.
• Readings that answer each other. Many sections pair a paper with its reply (Russell and Strawson, Quine with Grice and Strawson and with Putnam, Kripke with Donnellan, Tarski with Field), which lets students follow a debate through its stages.
• Editorial support. A general introduction, an introduction to each section and a further-reading bibliography after each section give background on how the readings connect.
• Teacher endorsements. The publisher quotes instructors calling it a good fit for a first course in the field and an upper-level undergraduate or graduate introduction.

Limitations

• Some selections are extracts. Five items are marked "from": Kripke's Naming and Necessity, Salmon's Frege's Puzzle, Kripke's On Rules and Private Language, Sorenson's Blindspots and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. The surrounding argument has to be recovered from the full works.
• Nothing after 2000. The latest dated selection is 2000, so work in the twelve years before the edition appeared is not represented.
• Formal vocabulary and length. Quantification, Tarskian truth theory and necessity appear in titles from several sections, and with forty-eight readings the book cannot be read straight through in one term.
• No continuous narrative. The introductions orient the reader, but a student with no earlier course will need a companion textbook.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the course's reader of primary sources. Michael Morris's introduction is built around classic texts and Colin McGinn's explains ten often-anthologised texts step by step, so either can be read alongside the matching sections; William Lycan's textbook, organised around reference, theories of meaning, pragmatics and figurative language, and Alexander Miller's demanding survey of the analytic tradition from Frege give the connecting narrative the anthology lacks.

Donald Davidson's Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation is the natural advanced follow-up. Three Davidson papers, "On Saying That," "Truth and Meaning" and "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs," are in the anthology, and the collection develops his programme of a theory of meaning in the form of a theory of truth at length.

How to Use This Book

Readers should have an introductory course in philosophy of language or logic, or take the book together with a textbook. It is a reader to be used selectively over a course rather than read from cover to cover.

A practical plan: begin with the general introduction, then treat Names and Descriptions (thirteen readings) as the core cluster on reference, the topic the anthology puts first. Add Communication and Truth next. Ascriptions, Analyticity, Indeterminacies and Language can be taken in any order according to what the course covers; each cluster within Indeterminacies (context, rule-following, vagueness) can stand alone.

For each reading, read the section introduction first, then write one paragraph stating the problem, the thesis and the main argument. Where a section includes a reply, compare the pair. For the extracts, consult the full book if the argument seems incomplete. Pair each week's reading with the corresponding chapter of a companion textbook, and use the further-reading lists for essay topics.