PHIL 129Philosophy of Language

3 credits · Philosophy · Penn State

Philosophy of language asks the following sorts of questions: What makes a system of symbols a language? What is meaning? How does a term or a symbol refer to an object? In what way is speech also an action? How does language affect the way we see the world? This course offers a critical survey of key concepts, topics, and texts from Classical authors (e.g., Plato and Aristotle) and more recent thinkers, in the post-Fregean analytic tradition, the Peircean pragmatic tradition, and the post-Husserlian or Saussurean continental tradition. It shows how the debates about language and its relation to the world shed light on other major problems of philosophy. Due to the formal nature of its subject-matter, the course helps students develop skill in the logical analysis of sentences and descriptions.