Gary Kemp - What is this thing called Philosophy of Language?

In the second edition: new are .

Most students approaching the philosophy of language for the first time are baffled by it. They are baffled in way that they are not baffled by moral philosophy, political philosophy or the theory of knowledge. Partly because some of the hardest steps come right at the beginning, they find it excruciatingly difficult to find their feet with the subject, as if they were learning to surf or to ski.

The situation is not helped by the fact that most of the primary materials are written at the highest philosophical level, with many technical terms and principles assumed to be already understood that will be Greek to the neophyte. This textbook is meant to help the beginning student into the subject. There are of course some excellent textbooks already but few for the genuine beginner. Ill name one that is pitched at roughly the same level as this: William Lycans Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, second edition, 2008). The book is outstanding, but there are large differences between his book and this one. His book is arranged topically; it is full of names and isms, and the problems, replies and counter-replies come thick and fast. The approach works for the smartest students, who will come away well equipped to take part in more recent debates. By contrast, this book is for the most part theory-based and often theorist-based, more concerned to keep ones eyes fixed on the larger issues and themes, with far fewer names mentioned, a much smaller range of problems considered and crucially a slower pace. There is no getting around the difficulty of the first steps, but this book attempts to immerse the student into a few paramount theories and their authors Frege, Russell, etc. in order to get them used to thinking within the authors point of view and to get them to see why one would think as the author does.

In addition, and perhaps most importantly, I hope the student will come away with a coherent picture of the history of the subject. The history will not be thorough; the sketch is only of the main lines and only of those lines if such there be which are for the newcomer both interesting and relatively easy to learn. It is designed to fit comfortably into one semester of teaching. There is nothing or precious little of Burge, Church, Dummett, Evans, Fodor, Geach, D. Lewis, Millikan, Montague, Schiffer, Sellars, Stalnaker and Tarski, and only selected bits of Carnap, Ayer, Grice, Searle and Kaplan. Nothing or precious little of teleosemantics, truth-maker semantics, conceptual role semantics, situation semantics, game-theoretic semantics, dynamic semantics, intention-based semantics, semantical minimalism, expressivist semantics, realism versus anti-realism, relevance theory or the theory of truth. I hope that students will be able to pursue those topics once theyve got their feet wet in the philosophy of language by studying this book and the authors it discusses.

A likely criticism of the book is that it is too much weighted towards the history of the subject, even that it is old-fashioned. This boils down to a philosophical difference about how to teach the philosophy of language. In my view the subject is not like mathematical logic or geometry, which normally are taught in complete detachment from their histories. The subject is too contentious, as evinced by the broad range of isms and theories just mentioned. I think that one is better placed to review more recent material and controversies if one first has a solid understanding of the basics of Frege, Russell and so on. A related criticism is that philosophy of language has in recent years shifted towards empirical linguistics informed by a more detailed conception of syntax and pragmatics when in this book those subjects are relatively minor. My response is simply that the subject of this book is not linguistics or the philosophy of linguistics but the philosophy of language as understood in the past one-hundred years; one has ones eyes on the pursuance of philosophical questions through reflection on language on the fundamentals of thought and meaning rather than a detailed theory of actual language.

Another likely criticism is that, outside the study questions, it is not very critical. I admit but do not repent. I do feel that a big mistake that is often made in teaching the philosophy of language is to criticise a position almost the moment its on the table. In my experience, it takes some time for a position to sink in, especially to see why one might hold it. If the teacher criticises the view from the get-go, the student is likely to think it not worth spending time on it aside from exam-taking purposes and may wonder why the position is being taught if it is so obviously full of holes. At the risk of betraying my Californian roots, I want to put a more positive spin on the material.