Meaning and rule-following

By Smith, Barry C.

Wittgenstein’s discussion of rules and rule-following, and the recent responses to it, have been widely regarded as providing the deepest and most challenging issues surrounding the notions of ...

Private states and language

By Craig, Edward

Something is ’private’ if it can be known to one person only. Many have held that perceptions and bodily sensations are in this sense private, being knowable only ...

Normativity

By Darwall, Stephen

Something is said by philosophers to have ‘normativity’ when it entails that some action, attitude or mental state of some other kind is justified, an action one ought ...

Wittgensteinian ethics

By Lovibond, Sabina

Although the strict ‘fact-value distinction’ of Wittgenstein’s early period has shaped much subsequent work on ethics, his most profound influence on the subject stems from the later Philosophical ...

Objectivity

Objectivity is one of the central concepts of metaphysics. Philosophers distinguish between objectivity and agreement: ‘Ice-cream tastes nice’ is not objective merely because there is widespread agreement that ...

Meaning and communication

By Blackburn, Simon

The two fundamental facts about language are that we use it to mean things and we use it to communicate. So the philosophy of language tries to explain ...

Language, social nature of

By Smith, Barry C.

Language is mostly used in a social setting. We use it to communicate with others. We depend on others when learning language, and we constantly borrow one another’s ...

Reference

By Devitt, Michael

It is usual to think that referential relations hold between language and thoughts on one hand, and the world on the other. The most striking example of such ...

Twentieth-century philosophy

By Livingston, Paul M.

Although it is difficult to generalize, twentieth-century philosophy has a number of broadly characteristic and widely shared concerns. These include the ambition to clarify the nature and foundations ...

Communication and intention

By Blackburn, Simon

The classic attempt to understand communication in terms of the intentions of a person making an utterance was put forward by Paul Grice in 1957. Grice was concerned ...

Kripke, Saul Aaron (1940–)

Saul Kripke is one of the most influential philosophers to have written on logic, metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind in the twentieth century. ...

McDowell, John Henry (1942–)

By Smith, Nicholas H.

McDowell taught philosophy at Oxford from 1967 to 1986, where he established himself as a key figure in analytic philosophy, mounting forceful arguments in favour of a realist ...

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann (1889–1951)

By Heal, Jane

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889 and died in Cambridge on 29 April 1951. He spent his childhood and youth in Austria and Germany, ...

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann (1889–1951)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on 26 April 1889 and died in Cambridge on 29 April 1951. He spent his childhood and youth in Austria and Germany, ...

Moral judgement

By Cullity, Garrett

The term ‘moral judgement’ can refer to an activity, a state, a state-content, a capacity or a virtue. The activity of moral judgement is that of thinking about ...

Moral judgement

The term ‘moral judgement’ can refer to an activity, a state, a state-content, a capacity or a virtue. The activity of moral judgement is that of thinking about ...

Sellars, Wilfrid Stalker (1912–89)

Wilfrid Sellars was an original, systematic philosopher in post-Second World War America. At a time when many thought of philosophy as piecemeal puzzle-solving, Sellars sought to develop a ...

Language, philosophy of

By Crimmins, Mark

Philosophical interest in language, while ancient and enduring (see Language, ancient philosophy of; Language, medieval theories of; Language, Renaissance philosophy of; Language, early modern philosophy of), has blossomed ...

Sellars, Wilfrid Stalker (1912–89)

By Rosenberg, Jay F.

Wilfrid Sellars was among the most systematic and innovative of post-war American philosophers. His critical destruction of the ‘Myth of the Given’ established him as a leading voice ...