Philosophy of Language

Beginner

Nothing here assumes you have read philosophy before. Every term is defined where it first appears, and the motivating example comes before the formalism.

What Meaning IsPlanned
Words, sentences, and the difference between using an expression and talking about it
8 min
Words and the WorldPlanned
How a name picks out a thing and a predicate picks out a feature
9 min
Sentences and Truth ConditionsPlanned
Knowing what a sentence means as knowing what the world would have to be like for it to be true
10 min
Sense and ReferencePlanned
Frege's puzzle about informative identities and the idea of a mode of presentation
11 min
Names and DescriptionsPlanned
Whether a proper name is shorthand for a description of its bearer
10 min
Saying and ImplyingPlanned
The gap between what a sentence means and what a speaker gets across by uttering it
10 min
Doing Things with WordsPlanned
Promising, naming, and warning, and why some utterances are acts rather than reports
10 min
I, Here, NowPlanned
Words whose reference shifts with who speaks, where, and when
9 min
Ambiguity and Figurative SpeechPlanned
Sentences with two meanings, and sentences that mean one thing and say another
9 min
Meaning and UsePlanned
The later Wittgenstein's suggestion that meaning lies in how words are used in a practice
10 min