Transcript Mestrado – Terminologia e Tradução

Philosophy and language
Philosophy and language
• Three areas of philosophy relevant to the
understanding of language
– Epistemology or the theory of knowledge
– The Philosophy of Language
– Linguistic Philosophy
Epistemology
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How do we know?
Why do we know?
What do we know?
What can we know?
‘Knowing that’
‘Knowing how’
(Question: ‘know’ = ‘saber’ / ‘conhecer’ ?)
Main questions
• Is knowledge innate or acquired?
– Are we somehow pre-destined to ‘know’ certain
things?
– How far do we acquire knowledge only from
experience?
• Rationalism v empiricism
– Do we arrive at our view of the world through
reason alone?
– Do we deduce all we know from experience?
Other questions
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What is perception?
What is reason?
What is reality?
What is appearance?
What is ‘our knowledge of the external
world’?
Other questions
• How reliable is our perception of the external
world?
• How do we solve the ‘other minds’ problem?
• How far can we reach agreement on the nature of
what we perceive individually and collectively?
• What part does language play in our
understanding of the world?
Other questions
• What is it to know something?
• What is truth?
• What counts as evidence for or against a particular
theory?
• What is meant by a proof?
• Or even, as the Greek Skeptics asked, is human
knowledge possible at all, or is human access to
the world such that no knowledge and no certitude
about it is possible?
Origins of knowledge
• Consider the notions of:
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Ideas in mathematics
Innate v. Learned
Rationalism v. Empiricism
‘Tabula rasa’
Skepticism
Notes on early Epistemology
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Sophists - sophistry
Socrates – ‘what is piety?’
Plato – Platonic ‘ideas’
Aristotle – passive intellect and active intellect
Skepticism - knowledge is impossible
St. Augustine – ideas and illumination
Medieval philosophy - "faith seeking reason"
‘Modern’ philosophy – 17 c.
• Faith/revelation and reason
• Impact of modern science on epistemology
• Descartes
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intuition and deduction
“Cogito, ergo sum”
Innate ideas
Duality of mind and body
‘Modern’ philosophy – 18-19 c.
• The empiricists
– Locke – ‘tabula rasa’
– Berkeley
– Hume
• Kant – the “transcendental idealist”
• Hegel – ‘all knowledge must be expressible
in language’
Contemporary philosophy – 20c
Continental philosophy
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Husserl – phenomenology
Heidegger – Being and Time
Merleau-Ponty – Phenomenology of Perception
Sartre - Being-in-itself (en soi) v being-for-itself
(pour soi)
• Foucault - The Archaeology of Knowledge
• Derrida - deconstruction
• Dewey – experience = an interaction between a
living being and his environment
Contemporary philosophy
- Analytic philosophy
• ‘The most distinctive feature of analytic
philosophy is its emphasis upon the role that
language plays in the creation and resolution of
philosophical problems’
• Derived from:
– Symbolic logic
– British Empiricism
• Leading to:
– Formal approach
– Ordinary language approach
Anthropology, Sociology and
Semantics
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Humboldt
Boas
Sapir
Whorf
Late Wittgenstein
Bernstein
Psychology and Semantics
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Piaget – developmental psychology
Chomsky – Language and Mind
Jackendoff - Semantics and Cognition
Langacker – cognitive linguistics
Lakoff – Metaphors we live by and Women, Fire
and Dangerous Things
• Penrose – The Emperor’s New Mind
• Patricia Churchland - Neurophilosophy
• Damásio – Descartes’ Error
Non-Vocal Communication
& Semantics
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Sign
Signal
Icon
Symbol
Gestures – Kinesics
Proxemics
Pictures, diagrams etc
The Semantic triangle 1
Real world
‘Mental’
representation
Name
Language universals
Universals coming from innate ideas
- Part of our ‘soul’ / ‘spirit’
- ‘God’-given
- Part of our ‘mind’
• Genetically programmed part of the brain
• Holistic knowledge
Linguistic relativism
• Learning from experience of the world
• Language as a social / cultural ‘contract’
• Languages provide prisms through which we view
the world – therefore all languages provide a
different possibility for understanding the world
• Different social groups filter the language
differently
• Each individual has a unique vision of the world
The Semantic Triangle 2
‘Res’
Concept
Word / term
‘Res’
• Variation of understanding due to:
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Geographical differences
Cultural differences
Social differences
Educational differences
Individual differences
Concept
• ‘Objective’ conceptualisation
– Concrete objects
– Observable actions
– Observable qualities of the world
• ‘Subjective’ conceptualisation
– Abstract ideas
– Mental processes
– Subjective appreciation of the world
• REMEMBER: the distinction between ‘objective’
and ‘subjective’ is fuzzy