Phil 3220 Philosophy of Language. 2^nd paper. Due November 11^th.

Answer one or two questions (and that you can run other questions by me for approval).

Your two answers combined should run from 2,500 to 4,500 words (roughly, 7 to 14 double-spaced typed pages). Please double-space. No covers.

1) Explicate, assess, and connect together what Wittgenstein has to say about “following a rule,” “private language,” and “pain” (“hunger,” sensations). Is he successful in “outing the mental”? (Pay attention to the hand-out of the first pages of his Investigations; there is plenty of web stuff on the later Wittgenstein; possibly you might find parts of Leiber’s “On What Sort of Speech Act Wittgenstein’s Investigations Is” paper relevant.)

2a) (do 2a or 2b) What do Austin and Grice hold to be wrong about many philosophers’ views about language (especially logical empiricists and skeptics). How do they support their censures and are their positive views about language? In particular what is Grice trying to get at in distinguishing “meaning^n” and “meaning^nn,” what invalidates Charles Stevenson’s, and what is Grice’s general formula for determining speaker’s meaning. 2b) Respecting Austin, distinguish performatives and constantives (statements, descriptions, reports, etc.) and explain why he thinks that they actually are a continuum. Explain his notion of felicitous and infelicitous utterances. Add if you want what is your take on their criticisms of logical positivist approach to meaning – of course this will appear in your exposition as well.

3) Explicate and critique Quine’s assault on the “empiricist dogmas” of analyticity and reductionism. Why they are “at root” the same? Why does he call himself a pragmatist? Explicate “Each man is given a scientific heritage plus a continuing barrage of sensory stimulation; and the considerations which guide him in warping his scientific heritage to fit his continuing sensory promptings are, where rational, pragmatic.” Note that although Quine suggests that even logical propositions (such as p v ~p (p or not-p)) are not completely analytic or unrevisable in face of experience and also that even sensory sentences (I experience pain now) are not purely synthetic and atomic (true or false independently of the truth or falsity of any other statement), Quine thinks both are a rational part of our web of belief; on the other hand he spends half of “Two Dogmas” suggesting we throw out “statements of synonymy” and related constructions. Why? Has Quine really discarded his logical positivism?

4) Elucidate, compare, contrast, and assess Fodor and Dennett on the prospects for a viable intentional or propositional attitude psychology. What does Fodor mean by “PAs” and “fused” (as in “John believes-it’s-raining”) and Dennett by “folk psychology.” Where do they agree, where do they differ? Who’s right?

[this is probably a bad question because we haven’t really got to Fodor and Dennett.]

5) Explain and assess H. P. Grice’s theory of conversation and “conversational implicatures.” How does he conciliate formalist and informalist views about conjunctions (p and q) and conditionals (if p, then q).

6) Is language a precondition for thought?; Is thinking talking to oneself and others (is such talk characteristically propositional attitude talk)? Explain how this view is explicit and implicit in Descartes’ Meditations. Does it make plausible the claim that animals feel pain and have sensory experiences, etc., but do not think?--- frame your answer so that to a considerable degree it brings in some of the views of Fodor, Grice, and Wittgenstein, etc.

7) Consider the issues raised in Leiber’s “the child discovers minds not a mind.” Farr believes a human child has “direct access to his/her own mind” but not to other minds, which he grasps indirectly, reasoning by analogy that when his own mind directs his/her body to behave in characteristic patterns, the appearance of similar patterns in others’ behavior will have mental actions much like his own as causes. Explain how Leiber, or Leiber’s Descartes, reaches opposite conclusions that the child discovers his/her own mind in the same way and at the same time as he/her discovers other minds (noting features of Descartes’ views that are echoed in today’s Theory of Mind).