Philosophy of Language

by Scott Soames

A masterful overview of the philosophy of language from one of its most important thinkersIn this book one of the world's foremost philosophers of language presents his unifying vision of the field--its principal achievements, its most pressing current questions, and its most promising future directions. In addition to explaining the progress philosophers have made toward creating a theoretical framework for the study of language, Scott Soames investigates foundational concepts--such as truth, reference, and meaning--that are central to the philosophy of language and important to philosophy as a whole. The first part of the book describes how philosophers from Frege, Russell, Tarski, and Carnap to Kripke, Kaplan, and Montague developed precise techniques for understanding the languages of logic and mathematics, and how these techniques have been refined and extended to the study of natural human languages. The book then builds on this account, exploring new thinking about propositions, possibility, and the relationship between meaning, assertion, and other aspects of language use.An invaluable overview of the philosophy of language by one of its most important practitioners, this book will be essential reading for all serious students of philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 26, 2010

About the author

Scott Soames is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He specializes in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy.

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Take my rating with a grain of salt: this book just isn't suited for my purposes. It is focused very minutely on one tradition in p of l, to wit, the "let's get a theory of meaning from the application of formal logic to natural languages" tradition, which means none of those loose-talking Wittgensteinians, Austinians, Searlians, linguists, and so on.

It is further unsuited for my purposes in that, although I did some p of l at uni, and some logic, and have read most of the big names, I had nowhere near enough logic to deal with much of the text. A friend (a professional philosopher) suggests that this book is really designed for graduate students and professors in, e.g., phil of mind, who need some way to structure the p of l classes they're obliged to teach, and that seems about right. In other words: if you already know this stuff, you'll be glad to have Soames' book on hand so you can state it really, really, really precisely. If you don't already know it, though, he's not interested in teaching you.

So those are some problems specific to me. More generally, there's something very wrong when a book about language is so horrifically written. I don't just mean the reliance on unnecessary logical notation; I mean the fact that Soames' explanations of his own logical notation is often less clear than the notation itself. I mean that many of his sentences appear to be syntactically incomplete, and those that are complete are usually composed by him in the passive for no very good reason. It's a bit like reading a poorly put together statute, which aims for total clarity and precision and, for that precise reason, ends up incomprehensible.

Which fact is a lesson for p of l itself: *why* think that formal languages are the right road to a theory of meaning in natural languages? Natural languages *aren't* precise, or clear. And, to be fair, the logic people know that, and they are tweaking their systems to account for the fact that (most) language doesn't work as do the traditional "Socrates was a philosopher" philosophical statements (Soames' own work is in this area, and he describes it in the last chapter. At least, I think he describes it, it's hard to tell. Within the post-Tarski context he's set up, he seems right, but again, I can't really tell). Unfortunately, by the time you get to Soames' description of his own work, you just might have lost faith in the project, and be wishing that someone who actually used human languages in their work would take on the task of explaining how, exactly, language provides meanings to its users.

[Jonathan Hockey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I criticised another of his works, but this one, where he is being a bit more explicit about what his own project and perspective is, I find a lot more worthwhile. His basic idea from what I can make of it, is that the projects of the likes of Russell and Frege were not totally in vain. We can have this kind of ideal-type approach to language with propositional discourse with truth-conditions analysis substituted for natural language sentences, for instance. But we just need to redefine slightly what we mean by some of these terms in line with Modal concepts, and Kripkean concepts such as rigid designators. A semantic theory of demonstratives, seems to be the key thing to be determined in this area. He criticises also those sceptical views such as Quine and Wittgenstein, by undermining the basis of their scepticism. He also argues that an account of a radical interpreter such as with Davidson is not sufficient to capture what we mean within natural language. To go into his arguments would be too complex, but really I would just recommend reading Kripke, because all that Soames is explicating is either implicit or also explicit and in more understandable terminology in the work of Kripke. Soames is trying to take things that step further by being more explicit about this process of baptism of naming and how it could work in detail as being the source of semantic meaning for propositional discourse and truth-conditional claims, and by using modal approaches more rigorously and also more explicitly. I think it is an important direction of study, because we do need to avoid the relativist complacency that seems to result from scepticism about meaning in the views of figures like Wittgenstein, and the scientific ontological complacency that arises in others who think we can have a descriptivist approach in philosophy, as an adjunct to science, with no problems. Far far from this, I don't think an externalised account, of radical interpretation can salvage the descriptive paradigm. You could argue that what is at stake here is the basic ability to have reasonable discourse, as independent reasoning individuals, because if there is scepticism and there is no propositional, truth-conditional discourse, then what is the source of authority in reasoning? The answer of course is that powerful interests will dominate, such the media with their emotive narratives, and scientific experts with their appeal to authority. These are not ways of engaging reasonable discourse, and of course the Foucault analysis laps up this state of affairs as an argument that all discourse reduces to power interests. But then we are vulnerable to relativism and all of its dangers...

[Nat]

In part 1, Soames tells a Whiggish history of philosophy of language, where mathematically minded philosopher-logicians like Frege, Russell, Tarski and Carnap get things rolling (while making some mistakes), Montague, Lewis, Kaplan and Kripke make huge contributions (but also some mistakes), and Davidson's project has been shown not to work out. This approach to the history of the subject, which makes it look like the path to "normal science" (in the Kuhnian sense) will be maddening if you think that there is philosophical payoff in working through the subtleties in the views of these (and other, unmentioned) historical figures (Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy don't come up.) But it will be refreshing if you think that the subject is currently in its golden age.

In part 2, Soames defends his views in areas of foundational importance, including the nature of propositions, modality, and the relation between semantics and pragmatics. Soames ends up defending a "pragmatic enrichment" account of the content of what is asserted, against the classic Gricean picture and the contemporary Stanley-Szabó "saturation" view.

Soames's streamlined history is compelling and infuriating enough, and he is a prominent enough figure that it will probably become "the standard view" or the "received view" that everyone will have to criticize.

[Zo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Take my writing with a grain of salt because much of this book went over my head (pretty much all the formal logic parts). I read this hoping it would give me a better sense of what contemporary phil of lang is like, and why it has decisively moved away from natural language philosophy. I did get a feel for the first question, and there were parts of the book that jumped out to me as quite interesting (in particular discussions of different types of representationalism and the ending semantics/pragmatics and implicature stuff). The book also helped me feel like I have a better grasp of Tarski, Kripke, Davidson, and Lewis' importance, but I still felt far from complete understanding. But the book did almost nothing to answer my question about why more formalized logical models is the correct direction for phil of lang, and I don't understand what the answers Soames gave in the last 3 chapters as the future of phil of lang really do beyond confusing more natural language approaches. I recognize that I am criticizing without understanding so I don't trust my criticisms much, but there were many places where Soames arguments felt like they made assumptions about the rigidity of language and the relation between language/cognition that I think are completely wrong. I still need to think/learn/read more about this.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

In part one, Soames offers an insightful review of history of the philosophy of language beginning with Frege. Part two addresses a number of contemporary issues and concludes with an account of meaning as common denominator, or fundamental frame that undergirds speakers' common use of terms and phrases. Soames has a magisterial grasp of the history of analytic philosophy but this book is often terse and lacking substantial explanations of key concepts and debates. In this sense, it is not an introductory text but would be well suited for an introductory course on this topic.

[Valeriano Diviacchi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fails to consider any Wittgenstein, Baker, or Hacker perspective on philosophy of language. This is a big omission for a book that claims to summarize modern analytic philosophy of language. To fill in that gap, I suggest "Language, Sense, and Nonsense" by Baker and Hacker.

[Lulu]

Language

[saml · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utterly uninterested in being interesting

[David Nathans · Rating 4 out of 5]

The coverage is great given how short it is. Going from the basics with Frege to contemporary developments. I was quite surprised however, at its total neglect of Wittgenstein, a giant in philosophy of language regardless of your opinions of him. Soames writing style is also a bit stilted, and can be grating at times.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad. Soames' style of writing is difficult.

[Ben Holloway · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slightly complicated survey to philosophy of language concluding with an innovative account of the metaphysics of meaning. Soames assumes the reader is familiar with the primary texts and if you are, then this book will neatly condense the relevant teaching of Frege, Russell, Tarski, Ccarnap, Kripke, Kaplan, and Montague for you.

Soames' contribution the the philosophy of language is his attempt to provide a naturalistic metaphysic of meaning according to which propositions--those 'things' we express with sentences--are event types that include all the cognitive actions of thinkers predicating properties of objects.

This book will be of great use if one is already familiar with the literature and not much use as a basic introduction (try Colin McGinn or William Lacan for good introductions). On the constructive part of the book, I was impressed with the attempt to make propositions rely on mental acts of pulling together objects and properties. However, though I can understand a proposition as an act, it is more difficult to see it as a type of event. Presumably, the idea is that the proposition is the type of event that includes (as token events) cognitive agents confronted with objects either drawn up by the imagination or presented to a person in the world.

A good, but difficult read. Recommended to the hard worker.