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0:06
As we saw in the previous tutorial, much is still happening in the fields of debate within current philosophy. We looked at some interesting authors and concepts in ethics and the next generation of the Frankfurt school. Now we will take a look at some of the debate happening right now in logic, philosophy of language, and epistemology. As we are aware by now, these topics are intrinsically connected: logical truth engenders a theory of semantics in philosophy of language
0:33
and a theory of truth in epistemology. Undoubtedly, one of the most influential names in the latter half of the 20th century in these areas and others is Saul Kripke. After many attacks from the analytic, positivist, and naturalistic standpoints against metaphysics, Kripke revived the debate differentiating between “metaphysical” and “a priori”: the first in the ontological sense of existence and the second in the epistemological sense. They do not
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represent any supernatural qualities beyond that of the natural sciences, but hypothetical and statistical connections with the probability or necessity of something existing when comparing with other scenarios. A logically “rigid” designator would then be one that represents something in all possible worlds we can imagine: water or a wooden chair, for example, would be rigid designators as they would be H2O and a chair made of wood respectively
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in every conceivable universe – if what was called “water” was actually a chemical with hypothetical formula “XYZ” or the wooden chair was actually made of iron, they wouldn’t be what we call water or a wooden chair; simply equivocated illusions. The water example also demonstrates what he calls “a posteriori necessity”, something that is invariably universal in all possible worlds through an empirically verifiable analysis. This informs and develops debates in all aforementioned
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areas and then some, making him a main reference in the later decades of the 20th century Jerry Fodor is another important name since the latter half of the 20th century, as he criticized the behaviorist conception of psychology present in many areas of philosophy, which saw the mind and behavior as almost a blank slate subjected to input and output stimuli of one’s experiences. Though a naturalist to some degree, Fodor defended the notion that mental processes were irreducible
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functions of our phenotype, or how our physical characteristics manifest themselves biologically, in a “computational” perspective. Like software in computer hardware, our mind would be a functional feature of our nervous system and other parts of our physiology, and as such one cannot point to a specific physical part of the computer and say that point is specifically where the software part of it is, as it manifests itself from the different functioning of those different areas
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involved. The simpler systems involved in our apprehension and processing of information and language would then be modular, as in versatile enough to function in different manners given different contexts. It’d be able to process equally versatile representations sorted similarly to our natural languages in our nervous system, allowing thus for logical analysis. Ruth Millikan also shares this functional focus toward linguistic analysis from a
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naturalistic perspective. Semantics, or the meaning of communicative symbols, would have a biologically selected function with intentional content. This means that, for example, when bees move in a certain way to signal to other bees the path to pollination targets, there are inherently “proper functions” being represented toward the evolutionary goal of surviving – though not every function is strictly biological, such as that of complex tools. Her
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view is called “teleosemantics”, from the Greek “telos” which we’ve already seen means “end”, symbolizing the functional aspect of meaning. Mental representations are generated by these intentional items when we become able to identify what such symbols intend to purport more than once when realizing their function. Language and thought then, for example, could be understood as biological categories instead of metaphysical or purely abstract ones.
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Finally, Karl-Otto Apel, who we mentioned in the previous tutorial for developing the discourse ethics tool, is another author that attempts to bridge the analytic-continental debate with a focus on pragmatics and critical theory. The result, his “transcendental pragmatics”, focuses on communication in a Wittgensteinian perspective of analyzing the context of discourse in as many degrees as possible – from the localized communication to the societal
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background engendered in it. Truth, then, would symbolize a consensus between everyone involved in discourse in an ideal environment, where everyone is able to communicate adequately. This condition for proper discourse would then be a transcendental one, thus explaining his position. Though again a short list and not nearly a proper representation of current philosophy, hopefully this helped to provide some insight into the developments occurring right now in philosophy
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throughout the world. In the next tutorial, we’ll check on some more epistemology and then proceed with philosophy of perception, experimental philosophy, and a few other interesting topics.
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