Phil 420 Philosophy of Language

David Jensen

Our unifying theme in Philosophy 420 will be reference and representation, in particular with regard to names and descriptions. This has been one of the most important and vibrant areas of discussion in the philosophy of language during the past century. We will approach these topics by reading Frege, Russell, Strawson, Donnellan, Kripke, and Putnam. We will conclude with some discussion of "applied" issues in the Philosophy of Language (e.g. offensive language. . .)