Philosophy 2011: Philosophy of Language

David Cole

Main Texts

Devitt and Sterelny Language and Reality Second Edition
and
Pinker The Language Instinct

Supplementary Materials available here

Main Theories of Language

John Locke excerpt from Book III of The Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus selections

A Defence of Mill's Account of Names (Reply to four arguments in Devitt and Sterelny against a purely referential view of the meaning of names)

Willam James: Lectures on Pragmatism: Lecture 6: Pragmatism's conception of truth

John Humphrey's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language pages at Mankato State