Category: Language, Philosophy of
-
People, Guns, and Reference
I had the pleasure of Dale Tuggy's presence here for a couple of days. He got off a neat comparison that hadn't occurred to me, but one I fully endorse: Just as guns don't kill people, but people kill people using guns, so too words don't refer to things, but people refer to things using…
-
Peter Geach on Worshipping the Right God
Having just read Peter Geach's "On Worshipping the Right God" (in God and the Soul, Thoemmes Press, 1994, pp. 100-116, orig. publ. 1969) I was pleased to discover that I had arrived by my own reasoning at some of his conclusions. On Christmas Eve I quoted Michael Rea: Christians and Muslims have very different beliefs…
-
Do Christians and Jews Worship the Same God?
Yale's Miroslav Volf has a 17 December 2015 piece entitled Wheaton professor’s suspension is about anti-Muslim bigotry, not theology. It is a sloppy piece of mere journalism but it does raise an important question: What is theologically wrong with asserting that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, according to Hawkins’s opponents — and mine?…
-
Dale Tuggy’s Round-Up of the Wheaton Dust-Up
This thing has really 'gone viral' as they say. A tip of the holiday hat to Dale for his excellent compilation of hyperlinks and commentary. Everybody and his uncle seems eager to jump into the fray, one that is at once bitterly political and deeply philosophical. A moment ago I headed over to The Catholic Thing…
-
Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?
Francis Beckwith and Dale Tuggy, two philosophers I respect, answer in the affirmative in recent articles. While neither are obviously wrong, neither are obviously right either, and neither seem to appreciate the depth and difficulty of the question. In all fairness, though, the two articles in question were written for popular consumption. Beckwith begins with…
-
Personal and Impersonal Uses of the First-Person Singular Pronoun
Panayot Butchvarov in his latest book claims that the first-person singular pronoun as it functions in such typical philosophical contexts as the Cartesian cogito is "a dangling pronoun, a pronoun without an antecedent noun." (Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism, Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 40) In this entry I will try to understand and…
-
A Tautology at John 19:22?
"What I have written, I have written." (Pilate) Another example of a tautological formulation the meaning of which is non-tautological: What I have written I will not change. Sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart. I explore this phenomenon in detail in the following posts: When is a Tautology not a Tautology? Seldom Seen Slim…
-
The God of Christianity and the God of Islam: Same God? (2015)
For Dave Bagwill, who posed some questions in the near vicinity of the ones I will be addressing. This is a heavily revised version of a 2011 post. The MavPhil doctrine of abrogation is in effect. This is a hairy topic; expect a hard slog. If you prefer a 'leiter' read, a certain gossip site…
-
Acronyms, Initialisms, and Truncations: Another Look
I suggested earlier that we think of abbreviations as a genus that splits into three coordinate species: acronyms, initialisms, and truncations with the specific differences as follows: An acronym is a pronounceable word formed from either the initial letters of two or more words, or from contiguous letters of two or more words. For example,…
-
Nothing is Written in Stone
The curiosity to the left, sent to me without commentary by the inscrutable and seldom seen Seldom Seen Slim, raises a number of deep and fascinating questions. The sentence to the left can be read either literally or metaphorically. My analysis in this entry is concerned with a literal reading only. 1. If nothing is…
-
General Terms, Singular Terms, and Direct Reference
London Ed sends another batch of 'philolang' ruminations. My responses are in blue. Bill's comment that the general/singular distinction should not be confused with the indirect/direct distinction brings us back to my original question about how we could get from one to the other. I think I have finally cracked it. Define a general term…
-
Language and Reality
London Ed sends his thoughts on language and reality. My comments are in blue. Still mulling over the relation between language and reality. Train of thought below. I tried to convert it to an aporetic polyad, but failed. The tension is between the idea that propositions are (1) mind-dependent and (2) have parts and so…
-
Direct and Indirect Reference
London Ed asks: Exactly what does ‘refer’ mean? And when we talk about ‘direct reference’ and ‘indirect reference’, are we really talking about exactly the same relation, or only the same in name? The second question got me thinking. The paradigms of direct reference are the indexicals and the demonstratives. The letter 'I' is not…
-
Islam is not Islam!
Jeff Hodges just now apprised me of a post of his featuring the following bumpersticker: My take is as follows. Just as tautological sentences can be used to express non-tautological propositions, contradictory sentences can be used to express non-contradictory propositions. Consider 'It is what it is.' What the words mean is not what the speaker…
-
Is it a Contradiction?
London Ed writes, I am interested in your logical or linguistic intuitions here. Consider (*) There is someone called ‘Peter’, and Peter is a musician. There is another person called ‘Peter’, and Peter is not a musician. Is this a contradiction? Bear in mind that the whole conjunction contains the sentences “Peter is a musician”…