Notes exam Philosophy of the Humanities

Aantekeningen lecture 1

What is philosophy?
philo - love, sophia - wisdom Greek etymology, from ‘φιλοσοφία’

Definitions
“The word ‘philosophy’ means the study [philo - love] of wisdom, and by ‘wisdom’ is meant
not only prudence in our everyday affairs but also a perfect knowledge of all things that
mankind is capable of knowing, both for the conduct of life and for the preservation of
health and the discovery of all manner of skills.”
 René Descartes (1647)
 Too vague and too broad of a definition

“Philosophy ... is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology,
it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been
unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to
human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation.
 Bertrand Russell (1946)

“The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest
possible sense of the term hang together in the
broadest possible sense of the term.”
 Wilfred Sellars (1963)
 probably the closest we can get to a definition

“An embarrassment for professional philosophers is that they cannot produce any succinct,
or even agreed, definition of their profession. ‘What is
philosophy?’ is itself a philosophical question.”
 The Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy

What are the humanities?
 philosophy
 linguistics
 philology
 literary
 studies
 history
 art theory
 musicology
 ...

A traditional distinction?
Two Cultures

Humanities vs. Sciences

,A traditional distinction
(A division of methods?)

Humanities Social Sciences Sciences

Different methodologies
(Humanities vs Sciences?)

interpretative (art or theatre) formal (mathematics) empirical

Humanities are typically defined as
“disciplines that investigate the expression of the human mind”
 Wilhelm Dilthey, 1883

“...expressions of the human mind”
(as opposite to the study of nature)
 Music, art, history, literature, theatre, media, language, etc, are expressions of the
human mind.
 Consequently: musicology, art history, philology, literary studies, theatre studies,
media studies, linguistics, etc., are humanities. But:
o mathematics can also be considered as an expression of the human mind
while language as a natural phenomenon.
o in some countries theology and philosophy are taught in humanities faculties,
but not in others.
 Expressions of the mind have been studied not only by means of interpretation, but
also with formal and experimental methods.

What this course is about:

Philosophy of the humanities
(why this course is not exactly what its title says)
 Philosophy of the humanities is a philosophical reflection on the character, methods,
and practice of the disciplines classified as the humanities.
 But humanities come in different forms: a philosophical reflection on, say, theatre or
literary studies might not be relevant for a student of linguistics or cognitive science
at all!
 At the same time, philosophical debates on the justification of scientific theories
based on empirical evidence (general philosophy of science) are directly relevant for
many subdisciplines of linguistics!

What this course is about (weeks 2-4)
1. Philosophy of language (not a part of philosophy of the humanities)
i. theories of meaning and reference
ii. ordinary language philosophy

,What this course is about (weeks 5-6)
1. Philosophy of language
2. Philosophy of linguistics
i. structuralism and behaviorism
ii. rationalism vs. empiricism

What this course is about (week 7)
1. Philosophy of language
2. Philosophy of linguistics
3. Philosophy of science
i. science vs. pseudo-science
ii. the problem of induction
iii. justification of scientific theories

What this course is about
1. Philosophy of language
2. Philosophy of linguistics
3. Philosophy of science

Basic linguistic facts:
Some squiggles, noises, or motions have meanings




Basic linguistic facts:
Some squiggles, noises, or motions have meanings:

, 1. as;jf dd gsdafq safs% gooog fsa #yd
2. Off in sly been the in a the ain’t the whenever greenish why.
3. Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
4. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
5. You wouldn’t believe that I met Noam Chomsky 60 years ago when he was a taxi
driver in my hometown.
 A philosophers of languages task is to explain why those 5 sentences differ, and why
some are kind of meaningful whereas others aren’t.

Basic linguistic facts
What a theory of meaning needs to explain:
 Some marks, sounds, gestures have meanings.
 Some strings of marks, sounds, or gestures make meaningful sentences.
 Each meaningful sentence has meaningful parts.
 Each meaningful sentence has a particular meaning.
 Competent speakers of language can easily understand and produce sentences they
have never encountered.

The cat sits on the mat.
The cat sits on the mat.
 a relation of sitting

Different words for ‘cat’
Kulka - a proper name.
 cat
 kot
 Katze
 кошка
 kat
 chat
 No proper names
Proper name: anything that refers to people, countries, object, etc. (e.g. Amsterdam, the
Netherlands, Rijksmuseum, UvA)

The Referential Theory
(the simplest theory of meaning)
 Linguistic expressions have the meanings they do because they stand for things.
 Sentences mirror states of affairs they describe.
 Usually, the association between words and objects is arbitrary.
o “cat” could have meant something else
o “Barack Obama” could have been named “John Obama”
 Significance of all expressions could be explained in terms of their conventional
associations with the world.


 A human being can understand a sentence because they know what the components
of that sentence refer to.