No description available.

The study is concerned with some aspects of the philosophical development of Russell and Wittgenstein in the period in which their doctrines interacted closely with each other. The questions investigated -nay be summarised as follows: (i) What does it mean to say that language represents reality in an isomorphic manner ? (ii) How is it possible for language to represent reality isomorphically and yet be related to it in such a way that the relation it has in virtue of its sense is independent of the relation it has in virtue of its truth? In answering these questions, particular attention has been paid to Russell's unpublished Manuscript Epistemology (1913) because of the impact it had on Wittgenstein, who severely criticised it. These criticisms began to emerge, as an alternative to Russell's views, in 'Notes on Logic' and in the other pre-Tractarian writings. It is in the Tractatus, eventually, that the two-fold relation between language and reality, which Russell's position left unexplained, is accounted for, by virtue of the distinction form/structure. The following are the central theses of this study: (a) Although Russell and Wittgenstein share the assumption of linguistic isomorphic representation, their isomorphisms are totally different, since Wittgenstein makes the distinction form/structure and Russell does not; (b) Wittgenstein's development from the earlier writings to the Tractatus may be viewed in terms of the emergence of distinctions such as, the world as substance/the world as fact, possibilities/ actualities, form/structure, which lie at the heart of the Tractatus and serve to substantiate its central semantic doctrine concerning the language-reality relation of representation; (c) since the Tractatus maintains the principle that 'sense is independent of the facts' (i.e., that there is an independence or priority of sense over truth) then a proposition's relation to reality cannot be accounted for by means of ostension, for such an account involves the denial of the principle; (d) the divergence between Russell and Wittgenstein as regards the main concern of the Tractatus, centres on the divergence of their views concerning the vagueness of ordinary language; (e) a central aspect of the unity of Wittgenstein's entire philosophy, as regards the internal relation- ship between language and reality, lies in his conception of form.

No description available.

No description available.

In this dissertation I examine the issues concerning the problematics of historical-textual relations in the wake of the linguistic turn. I begin by showing how the emphasis on the generative rather than the mimetic properties of language has led a number of critics to reject the notion of knowledge as "accurate representation" (Richard Rorty), and then go on to demonstrate how this critical position has undermined the way in which literary and intellectual historians alike have traditionally understood such concepts as causality, human agency and social determination. / I show that, in the light afforded by the linguistic turn, there can be no unproblematic distinction between literature and history, text and context, but I also contest some of the more dogmatic versions of this position which make the claim that there can be no such thing as history prior to its textualization, or no such thing as human agency because individual human persons are thoroughly constrained by discursive structures. I suggest that in giving up the notion of an uninterpreted reality, we do not have to abandon the idea of the historically real, of reality, of agency, or of truth. / In doing so I examine the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and other critics who provide us with a productive way of approaching the methodological and philosophical issues that are raised by these questions, and then I examine a variety of literary texts which I believe give the questions further historical detail and relevance. In the letters which the twelfth-century abbess Heloise wrote to Abelard, in Geoffrey Chaucer's treatment of the problem of historical-textual relations, and in Brian Friel's inquiry into the linguistic embodiment of traditions in his play Translations we have a variety of testimonies to the dynamic way in which self and world, agency and structure, are related.

In an attempt to show how rational explanation of human and animal behaviour has a place in the scientific explanation of our physical world, Fodor advances the language of thought hypothesis. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that, contrary to the language of thought hypothesis, we need not possess a linguistic internal representational system distinct from any natural language to serve as the medium of thinking. I accept that we have an internal representational system, but by analyzing Fodor's theory of content, I show Fodor's argument that the internal system must be as expressive as any natural language, which he uses in arguing that the internal system is the linguistic medium of thought, is unsound. Distinguishing an informational theory of content from a causal theory of content, which Fodor conflates, I argue that internal representations, whose content is determined by information they carry, cannot be related in a way that corresponds to semantic associations between terms in natural languages, reflecting actual associations of items in the world. Furthermore, provided certain animal cognition, which is homogeneous with human cognition, can be explained without requiring that the internal system possess anything corresponding to the logical connectives, the internal system need not possess anything corresponding to the logical connectives. I give such an explanation of animal cognition by developing an approach to content in the Rylean/Dennettian tradition, based on the notion of embodied cognition, in which animals embody the hypotheses they entertain in virtue of their total dispositional state, rather than explicitly representing them. It follows that there are two features of natural languages, semantic associations of terms and possessing logical connectives, that the internal system need not have. Hence a rational interpretation of linguistic behaviour need not be derived from an intentional interpretation of the transformations on int

During the past decade film analysis and semiotic inquiry have meshed to produce significant changes in film theory. This thesis discusses the philosophical and epistemological shift represented by this development, resulting in the creation of semiotic models (e.g. those of Christian Metz and Umberto Eco) which consistently overemphasize the textual framework for cinematic expression. As a result, problems of performance and interpretation are ignored. / The thesis proposes a radically different strategy to explain meaning in film. To solve problems of performance the new concept of projections is proposed. Projections are defined not as images or pictures, but as sites (or performance events) of signification in film. The concept marks a fundamental shift away from close textual readings in its insistence that the cinema must be analyzed as part of a complex process of communication and exchange.

This thesis is a study of the theory of meaning developed by the seventeenth century Indian Naiyāyika philosopher Gadādhara Bhaṭṭācārya. It has four chapters and an appendix. In chapter 1, I highlight some of the problems about meaning and reference thematised by the Indian philosophical tradition during its 'classical' period (third century B.C.E. to seventh century C.E). The work of the earliest grammarians proved very influential We tend to associate the name of the grammarian Vyddi with the origins of the study of singular reference in classical India, and I look at his theory, the problems it faced, and the innovations of early Nyāya, Mimāṃsā and grammarian authors. In the second chapter, I discuss Gadādhara's analysis of the semantics of nominal stems, his construction of a 'two-component' theory of meaning, and his criticisms of the work of earlier Navya-Naiyāyikas, especially Vardhamāna and Raghunātha. The main theme of this debate concerns the failure of a realist or referential theory of meaning to serve as a complete theory of meaning, one which recognises both the intensional and the context-invariant elements in the meaning of nominal expressions. The third chapter deals with Gadādhara's theory of anaphoric pronouns. I argue in particular that Gadādhara's use of a two-component meaning theory enables him to construct a theory ofpronouns which significantly improves on the proposals of earlier Navya-Nyāya authors. In the fourth chapter, I discuss the epistemological dimension to the Nyāya conception of language; the Nyāya doctrine that linguistic competence consists in the knowledge of a compositional meaning theory; the role of convention in the Nyāya theory, and their thesis that conventions are grounded in the authority of the name-giver. I have added an appendix in which I examine the technical language by means of which Gadādhara is able to give his arguments great precision. I show that this language can be translated into a certain fragment of quantified first-order predicate logic.

This thesis develops a complex theoretical model for conceptualizing the relationships among philosophy, religion, and art and, then, examines the philosophical writings and the novels of Iris Murdoch from this perspective. The theoretical model in its most general form is based on the premiss that philosophy, religion, and art can be thought of as conventionally defined linguistic fields analogous to Wittgensteinian language-games. Relations among the linguistic fields are, in turn, analysed as exclusive ("Disparate" Model), inclusive ("Reductionist" Model), or interactional ("Dialectical" and "Tensional" Models), the latter pair being most appropriate for figurative language, the former pair for non-figurative language. The Dialectical and Tensional Models are assimilated, respectively, to Roman Jakobson's theory of metaphor and metonymy as the fundamental poles of language. Emphasis falls upon the continuum between the dialectical-metaphoric and the tensional-metonymic poles as the area in which creative, imaginative activities, such as the writing of novels or deliberation upon ethical problems, takes place. Iris Murdoch's theories of "crystalline" and "journalistic," "open" and "closed" novels and the related ways of thinking are coordinated with this continuum as a paradigm. Moreover, a creative tension is revealed in her philosophical writings between a resisted impetus towards totalizing explanations and the experience of the inherent contingency of philosophical thought. Thus, there is in Murdoch's philosophy, as in her creative prose, an exploration of the dynamics between the dialectical-metaphoric pole of thought and language and the tensional-metonymic pole, with an increasing, though never finally realized tendency towards the tensional-metonymic pole. Detailed analyses of Murdoch's aesthetic and ethical thought and of a wide selection of her novels illustrate this thesis.

No description available.