Speech acts

By Bach, Kent

Making a statement may be the paradigmatic use of language, but there are all sorts of other things we can do with words. We can make requests, ask ...

Feminist philosophy

By Mason, Elinor

Feminist philosophy is philosophy that is aimed at understanding and challenging the oppression of women. Feminist philosophy examines issues that are traditionally found in practical ethics and political ...

Pragmatics

By Recanati, Francois

Analytic philosophers have made lasting contributions to the scientific study of language. Semantics (the study of meaning) and pragmatics (the study of language in use) are two important ...

Searle, John (1932–)

By Lepore, Ernie

John Searle was a pupil of J.L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s. He is the Mills Professor of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley, ...

Assertion

By Yang, Guiming; Goldberg, Sanford C.

In the past two to three decades, most of the philosophical attention that has been paid to the speech act of assertion aims to characterize the nature of ...

Performatives

By Bach, Kent

There are certain things one can do just by saying what one is doing. This is possible if one uses a verb that names the very sort of ...

Searle, John (1932–)

John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. This analytic philosopher has made major contributions to the ...

Discourse semantics

By Asher, Nicholas

Discourse and its interpretation have interested philosophers since ancient times, and have been studied in different areas of philosophy such as rhetoric, the philosophy of language and the ...

The Aesthetics of Richard Wollheim (1923–2003)

By Kemp, Gary

Article Summary ...

Metaphor

By Martinich, A.P.

A standard dictionary definition describes a metaphor as ‘a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object is used in place ...

Habermas, Jürgen (1929–)

By Baynes, Kenneth

Jürgen Habermas, German philosopher and social theorist, is perhaps best known for his wide-ranging defence of the modern public sphere and its related ideals of publicity and free ...

Prayer

By Mavrodes, George I.

The concept of prayer is now most commonly applied to any sort of communication which is addressed to God. That is, prayer is that activity in which believers ...

Frege–Geach problem

By Schroeder, Mark

The Frege–Geach problem is an important and well-known obstacle to metaethical theories belonging to the broadly noncognitivist tradition, including emotivism, prescriptivism and expressivism. It is also sometimes called ...

Frege, Gottlob (1848–1925)

By George, Alexander; Heck, Richard

A German philosopher-mathematician, Gottlob Frege was primarily interested in understanding both the nature of mathematical truths and the means whereby they are ultimately to be justified. In general, ...

Testimony

By Coady, C.A.J.

Philosophical treatment of the problems posed by the concept of knowledge has been curiously blind to the role played by testimony in the accumulation and validation of knowledge ...

Reinach, Adolf (1883–1917)

By Smith, Barry

Adolf Reinach, a German philosopher of Jewish extraction, was born in Mainz and died on the battlefield in Flanders. He is of principal note as the inventor, in ...

Emotive meaning

By Phillips, David

Emotive meaning contrasts with descriptive meaning. Terms have descriptive meaning if they do the job of stating facts: they have emotive meaning if they do the job of ...

Use/mention distinction and quotation

By Washington, Corey

Speakers ‘use’ the expressions they utter and ‘mention’ the individuals they talk about. Connected with the roles of used expressions and mentioned individuals is a way of uniting ...

Imperative logic

By Green, Mitchell

Imperatives lie at the heart of both practical and moral reasoning, yet they have been overshadowed by propositions and relegated by many philosophers to the status of exclamations. ...

Communicative rationality

By Dews, Peter

The concept of ‘communicative rationality’ is primarily associated with the work of the philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas. According to Habermas, communication through language necessarily involves the ...

Certeau, Michel de (1925–86)

By Conley, Tom

Michel de Certeau, a French philosopher trained in history and ethnography, was a peripatetic teacher in Europe, South America and North America. His thought has inflected four areas ...

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 ...

Indirect discourse

By Segal, Gabriel

Indirect discourse is a mode of speech-reporting whereby a speaker conveys the content of someone’s utterance without quoting the actual words. Thus, if Pierre says, ‘Paris est belle’, ...

Transcendence

By Westphal, Merold

The concept of transcendence has its primary home in philosophical theology. Drawing on symbols of height that are widespread in prereflective religious life, it suggests that God or ...

Ambiguity

By Bach, Kent

A word, phrase or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. The word ‘light’, for example, can mean not very heavy or not very dark. ...