Monday, December 18, 2006
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Ideas originate in experience; belief in necessary connections is unjustified; arguments over liberty and necessity are merely verbal disagreements.
Labels:
causality,
empiricism,
experience,
Hume,
ideas,
liberty,
necessity,
verbal disagreements
Francis Jeffrey Pelletier and Richmond H. Thomason, "Twenty Five Years of Linguistics and Philosophy"
Surveys the history of interaction between linguistics and philosophy; focuses on the development in linguistics of Strawson's sortal predicates and of studies of causality and becoming.
Labels:
becoming,
causality,
Lewis,
linguistics,
P.F. Strawson,
Pelletier,
sortals,
Thomason
Friday, December 15, 2006
C.G. New, "A Plea for Linguistics"
Argues that Austin's claims about when we would say that someone did something deliberately in "A Plea for Excuses" are mistaken; recommends a more assiduous gathering of linguistic data before any claims about "what we say" are made.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Tom McCarthy, Tintin and the Secret of Literature
Tintin is the guardian of that which makes literature possible. Or something.
Labels:
french theory,
literary theory,
literature,
tintin
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Michel de Montaigne, "On Experience"
An account of the things that Montaigne has learned by experience. We should pursue our natural inclinations, informed by wisdom, as Socrates did.
Michel de Montaigne, "On Physiognomy"
It is okay to have opinions based on authority and trust. We know who to trust, in part, by observation--by looking at someone's face, for example. But beauty and ugliness are not guides to a good nature (Socrates had the best human nature, but had an ugly face).
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Structure of a Semantic Theory
Explains what semantics should and should not try to explain and sketches the interaction of dictionary entries and projection rules. Semantics should be concerned with explaining ambiguity, anomalousness and paraphraseability. It should not be concerned with giving rules for how interpretations of sentences are settled in context.
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