語言哲學課程 魏思齊 （Zbigniew Wesołowski SVD）副教授 輔仁大學語言學研究所

語言哲學課程

魏思齊 （Zbigniew Wesołowski SVD）副教授 輔仁大學語言學研究所

語言哲學課程內容：

一 語言哲學的概念

二 語言哲學是否為第一個哲學

三 哲學/語言哲學，符號學以及語言學 四 實在論中語意學的理論及其基本概念

五 1. 柏拉圖的《克拉梯樓斯》

六 2. (Plato’s Cratylus) 七 3.

八 4.

九 1. 亞里士多德的《解釋篇》

十 2. (Aristotle’s On Interpretation) 十一 3.

十二 4.

十三 1. 維根斯坦的《邏輯哲學論》

十四 2. (Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 十五 3. Logico-Philosophicus) 十六 4.

十七 5.

十八 學期考試 參考資料：

1.《哲學辭典》（譯自：The HarperCollins Dictionary of Philosophy），彼得˙A. 安傑利斯 著（Peter A. Angeles），台北市：貓頭鷹出版社，1999 年（民國 89 年）

2. 主編者：國立編譯管（頂退結編譯者：Thaddeus T.C. Hang），《西洋哲學辭典》（譯 自：Philosophisches Wörterbuch），台北市：華香園出版社，1988 年

3. 羅伯特˙奧迪（Robert Audi）英文主編；王思迅主編，《劍橋哲學辭典》（The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy），台北市：貓頭鷹出版社，2002 年（民國 91 年）

4. 戴維˙賈里（David Jary）和朱莉婭˙賈里（Julia Jary）著；周業謙 譯，《社會學辭典

（ 譯 自 ： The HarperCollins Dictionary of Sociology ） ， 台 北 市 ： 貓 頭 鷹 出 版 社 ，

1999 年

資料內容 目錄

1. 文字與字母 ………. 5

1.1 不同語言文字/字母的對比 ………. .5

1.2 拉丁字母 ………6

1.3 希臘字母 ………8

2. 本課程安排課程的第一個計畫書………9

3. 對語言哲學是否作為第一哲學的沈思錄………..13

4. 基本概念說明： 何謂語言？何謂語言哲學？………..15

4.1 LANGUAGE………..15

4.2 PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE………...18

4.3 Philosophy of Language 語言哲學………24

4.4 語 言 哲 學 （ Philosophy of Language; Linguistic Philosophy ） ……….28

4.5 語 言 的 普 遍 現 象 （ Language Universals ） ………...28

4.6 Language 語言………...28

4.7 Philosophy of Language 語言哲學………29

4.8 Language 語言………...30

4.9 Language 語言………...31

4.10 Formal Language 形式語言………31

4.11 Functions of Language 語言功能 ………..31

4.12 Object Language 對象語言……….32

4.13 Metalanguage 後設語言………..33

4.14 Philosophy of Language 語言哲學……….33

4.15 Ordinary Language Philosophy 日常語言哲學………..33

4.16 Ordinary Language Philosophy 日常語言哲學………..34

4.17 Conversation(al) Analysis 談話分析………...34

4.18 Analytical Philosophy 分析哲學……….34

4.19 Linguistic Analysis 語言分析………...34

4.20 Analytical Philosophy 分析哲學……….35

4.21 Sign 記號……….36

4.22 Semiology or Semiotics 符號學………..36

4.23 Bricolage 拼貼、湊成………...36

4.24 Semantics 語義學………37

4.25 Pragmatics 語用學………...37

4.26 Speech Act 言語行為………...37

4.27 Semantics 語義學………37

4.28 Semasiology 語義學………38

4.29 Semiosis 記號，指謂……… 38 4.30 Semiotics 記號學……….39

4.31 Syntactics 符號關係學………39

4.32 Syntax 句法………..39

5. 語言哲學課程/Philosophy of language………...39

5.1 導論：哲學與語言學/Preliminaries: Philosophy and Linguistics……….39

Comparative linguistics……….39

Comparative and Historical Linguistics………39

Development of structural linguistics………...40

Post-Structuralistic Philosophy of Language………41

Humboldt’s Critical Post-Kantian Philosophy of Language……….41

5.2 Philosophy of language………...42

6. 對「語言」三角式的思想………..44

一、語言的三種顯示方式（存在主義）………..44

二、符號學的立方體………..44

三、Saussurian Triangle（索緒爾，1857-1913）……… 44 四、Karl Bühler：語言的工具模型（das Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache）………… 45 五、 Pierce Charles Sanders (1839-1919) 皮爾土（裴爾斯）的符號三角………...45

六、The Semiotic Triangle 符號探究的三角………..46

七、語意三解：C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards’ ”Triangle of Meaning”……….47

7. 相關人物與概念/Relevant persons and concepts………...48

7.1 記號論（theory of signs）……… 48 7.2 符 號 探 究 （ semiosis ） ………..49

7.3 Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) ………....50

7.4 Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)………...53

7.5 Apperception 統覺………...56

7.6 Transcendental………..57

7.7 Mimēsis (Plato) 模仿………...58

7.8 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis 薩丕爾-沃夫假說……….58

7.9 language games 語言遊戲………...58

7.10 Jacques Derrida 德希達（1930-）………58

7.11 Structuralism 結構主義……….61

7.12 Postmodernism and Postmodernity 後現代主義和後現代狀態………...62

7.13 Incommensurability 不可通約性、不可公比性………63

7.14 Falsificationism 證偽主義……….63

7.15 Forms of Life 生活形式………64

7.16 Fusion of Horizons 視域融合………64

8. THEORIES OF MEANING （意義/語意理論）……… ….65 8.1 THEORIES OF MEANING（來自：Franz von Kutschera, Philosophy of Language [ 語 言 哲 學 ； 譯 自 ： Sprachphilosophie], Dordrecht [Holland]: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1975, pp. 19-33 ） ……….65

I. REALISTIC SEMANTIC THEORIES………...66

1.1 Naturalism and Conventionalism in Realistic Semantics………...66

1.2 Basic Ideas of Realistic Semantics………..69

1.3 Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory of Language in the Tractatu………...77

8.2 Predicables 述詞式………..77

8.3 Universal concept 普遍概念，共相………78

8.4 Meaning 意義………..79

8.5 HISTORY OF SEMANTICS………86

ANTIQUITY………...87

The cosmologists……….87

The Sophists………88

Conventionalism and naturalism……….89

Plato………90

Aristotle………...95

The Stoics………97

The Epicureans………..100

Ludwig Wittgenstein ………102

1. 文字與字母

1.1 不同語言文字/字母的對比

不同語言字母的對比 埃及表形

文字 Ägyptisch

腓尼基 字母 Phönizisch

希伯來語 Herbräisch

希臘語 Griechisch

拉丁語 Lateinisch

א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט

‚ b g d h w z h t

aleph beth gimel daleth he waw zayin heth

teth

>

Rind

>

Haus

>

Kamel

>

Tür

>

Nagel

>

Waffe

Α / α Β / β Γ / γ Δ / δ Ε / ε

Ζ / ζ Η / η Θ / θ

a b g d e – z ā th

álpha bēta gámma

délta èpsilon

vaû zêta

thēta

A B C D E F (G)

H 100?

י כ ל מ נ ס

j k l m

n s

jod kaf lamed

mem nun samek

>

Hand

>

offene Hand

>

Wasser

>

Fisch

Ι / ι Κ / κ Λ / λ Μ / μ Ν / ν Ξ / ξ

i k l m

n x

jōta káppa lámbda

mŷ nŷ xî

I

K

L

M

N

–

ע פ צ

ֹֹ

p s

ayin pe sade

>

Schlange

>

Auge

>

Mund

Ο / ο Π / π

－ o p –

òmikrón pî

–

O P –

ק ר ש ת

q 6r

š t

qof reš šin taw

>

Kopf

>

Zahn

>

Zeichen

Ϙ / ϙ

Ρ / ρ Σ / σ Τ / τ Υ / υ Φ / φ Χ / χ Ψ / ψ Ω / ω

/

– r s t ü ph ch ps ō –

kóppa rhô sîgma

taî ŷpsilón

phî chî psî ōméga

sampî

Q R S T V 1000

X 50?

– –

ך ם ן ף ץ

-k -m -n -f -s

(kaf’) (mem)

(nun) (fe) (sade)

1.2 拉丁字母

Latin Alphabet

During the classical Latin period the Latin alphabet contained 23 letters:

Letter

A B C D E F G H I K L M

Latin Name

ā bē cē dē ē ef gē hā ī kā el em

Latin Pronunciation

(IPA)

/aː/ /beː/ /keː/ /deː/ /eː/ /ef/ /geː/ /haː/ /iː/ /kaː/ /el/ /em/

Letter

N O P Q R S T V X Y Z

Latin Name

en ō pē qū er es tē ū ex ī Graeca zēta

Latin Pronunciation

(IPA)

/en/ /oː/ /peː/ /kʷuː/ /er/ /es/ /teː/ /uː/ /eks/ /iː ˈgraika/ / ˈzeːta/

Letters of the English alphabet

As used in modern Eng lish, the Latin alphabet consists of the following characters:

Majuscule Forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Minuscule Forms (also called lowercase or small letters)

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

In addition the ligatures, Æ (ash) from AE (e.g. "encyclopædia"), Œ (oethel) from OE (e.g. cœlom) can be used for some words derived from Latin and Greek, and the diaeresis, is sometimes used for example on the letter ö (e.g. "coöperate") to indicate the pronunciation of "oo" as two separate vowels, rather than a single one. Outside professional papers on specific subjects that traditionally use

ligatures, ligatures and diaereses are little used in modern English apart from on loan words.

Basic Latin Numerals

I The easiest way to note down a number is to make that many marks - little I's. Thus I means 1, II means 2, III means 3. However, four strokes seemed like too many....

V

So the Romans moved on to the symbol for 5 - V. Placing I in front of the V — or placing any smaller number in front of any larger number — indicates subtraction. So IV means 4. After V comes a series of additions - VI means 6, VII means 7, VIII means 8.

X

X means 10. But wait — what about 9? Same deal. IX means to subtract I from X, leaving 9. Numbers in the teens, twenties and thirties follow the same form as the first set, only with X's indicating the number of tens. So XXXI is 31, and XXIV is 24.

L

L means 50. Based on what you've learned, I bet you can figure out what 40 is. If you guessed XL, you're right = 10 subtracted from 50. And thus 60, 70, and 80 are LX, LXX and LXXX.

C

C stands for centum, the Latin word for 100. A centurion led 100 men. We still use this in words like "century" and "cent." The subtraction rule means 90 is written as XC. Like the X's and L's, the C's are tacked on to the beginning of numbers to indicate how many hundreds there are: CCCLXIX is 369.

D D stands for 500. As you can probably guess by this time, CD means 400. So CDXLVIII is 448. (See why we switched systems?)

M M is 1,000. You see a lot of Ms because Roman numerals are used a lot to indicate dates.

For instance, this page was written in the year of Nova Roma's founding, 1998 CE

(Common Era; Christians use AD for Anno Domini, "year of our Lord"). That year is

written as MCMXCVIII. But wait! Nova Roma counts years from the founding of Rome,

ab urbe condita. By that reckoning Nova Roma was founded in 2751 a.u.c. or

MMDCCLI.

1.3 希臘字母

Greek Alphabet

letter Α / α Β / β Γ / γ Δ / δ Ε / ε Ζ / ζ Η / η

name

alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta

(AL-fuh) (BAY-tuh) (GAM-uh) (DEL-tuh) (EP-sil-on) (ZAY-tuh) (AY-tuh)

letter Θ / θ Ι / ι Κ / κ Λ / λ Μ / μ Ν / ν Ξ / ξ

name

theta iota kappa lambda mu nu xi

pronunciation

(THAY-tuh) (eye-OH-tuh) (KAP-uh) (LAM-duh) (MYOO) (NOO) (KS-EYE)

letter Ο / ο Π / π Ρ / ρ Σ / σ Τ / τ Υ / υ Φ / φ

name

omicron pi rho sigma tau upsilon phi

pronunciation

(OM-i-KRON) (PIE) (ROW) (SIG-muh) (TAU) (OOP-si-LON) (FEE)

letter Χ / χ Ψ / ψ Ω / ω

name

chi psi omega

pronunciation

(K-EYE) (SIGH) (oh-MAY-guh)

2. 本課程安排課程的第一個計畫書

Course in the philosophy of language for post-graduate students of the Fu Jen University (in the College of Foreign Languages, Graduate Institute of Linguistics,

September 1999)

Almost every reflective person in general, among them especially many philosophers of the present century, has been interested in language for a long time and for various reasons. There are also some specialists in the area of professional interest in human language. They are called linguists, and their scientific study of language is linguistics. The term “linguistics” was first used in the middle of the ninetieth century, and the subject itself–in its scientific, that is in its empirical respect–seems to be not much older than the term “linguistics”. However, there have always been some philosophical reflections on language. It seems that some philosophical problems arise from false beliefs about the structure of language, so that the understanding of it may help solve these problems or avoid them altogether. Many philosophers have held that language is a reflection of reality, so if one could understand the structure of language, one could understand the structure of reality. It is not odd to think that the structure of language is the same or similar to the structure of reality. This view of language is very old, and it lies at the beginning of European philosophical tradition, so at least as old as Plato, who has Socrates explain that this very belief is the strategy behind his own philosophizing (cf. Phaedo 99E). This very idea of language as a reflection of reality continues through the middle ages, and through modern philosophy into the twentieth century. One of the most forceful statements of this view of language is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published in 1921.

A Kantian version of this view of human language is that language is actually not a reflection of reality, which is inaccessible to human intelligence, but as reflection of our thought about reality.

Though the philosophy of language might reasonably be thought of as comprising anything that philosophers do when they think as philosophers about language, we will, however, not attempt this kind of that heterogeneous field of philosophical activity. They very phrase “philosophy of language”

covers–as already anticipated–a variety of activities:

1. The belief that philosophical questions may be approached by asking questions about the use

of words underlies what is sometimes called linguistic philosophy. This approach is also

called a “linguistic turn” in philosophy. Those who practice linguistic philosophy are

sometimes said to be practising the philosophy of language. However, there are many others

who propose to distinguish strictly between the philosophy of language and linguistic

problems by analysing the meaning of words, and by analysing logical relations in natural

languages. The philosophy of language, however, consists in the attempt to analyse certain

語意、意義 ) , reference ( 指涉 ) , truth ( 真理 ) ,

verification ( 驗證 ) , speech acts ( 言語行為 ) , and logical necessity ( 邏輯必然性 ) . Apart from

it, “the philosophy of language” is the name of a subject matter within philosophy;

“linguistic philosophy” is primarily the name of philosophical method. But the two, method and subject, are intimately connected.

2. The procedure of linguistic philosophy as investigating philosophical problems by reflecting on the uses of words (語言用法、語用) involves another two paramount questions: a) How to justify the approach of dealing with philosophical questions via a study of how words are used (cf. J. L. Austin, L. Wittgenstein), and b) these philosophers studying the use of words employ such key terms as “meaning”, “reference”, “truth”, and “use”. So it is possible to use these terms as objects of study, and name it “philosophy of language” (or analytical

3. Apart from this kind of study, philosophers become interested in a study of the nature and workings of language as a subject in its own right, rather than as a means to the solution of further philosophical problems. Thus, “philosophy of language” becomes the search for an understanding of the nature and functioning of language. Most of the influential philosophers of this century, for example, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951), Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), Willard van Orman Quine (*1908), John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960), and Peter Frederick Strawson (*1919), have been in such a way and in varying degrees philosophers of language. In this kind of philosophy of language we can detect a difference: between those who like Austin and Wittgenstein studied the actual workings if natural languages (ordinary language philosophy: 日常語言哲學); and those who like Alfred Tarski (1902-1983) believes that the workings of language are best explored through the construction of more precise artificial languages.

4. The term “philosophy of language” can also be used to describe the discussion of theoretical problems that arise when linguistic scientists attempt to describe the syntax (grammar) and semantics (meaning) of a language. Such discussions, sometimes called “philosophical linguistics” (哲學語言學：對句法、語意、語用等所做的理論描寫), is often viewed as a justified branch of philosophy of language.

In view of the Fuda post-graduate students in linguistics, I would like to propose to investigate in what follows the functional role of language. Thus we would like first to pick out three main areas of philosophy of language which could be viewed as a sound compromise between traditional division of semantics (into syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) and “philosophical linguistics”. It would be a basic and general introduction into one of many possible philosophies of language:

O. Preliminaries: Philosophy of Language and Linguistics 1. Theory (and Philosophy) of Signs:

1.1 The World of Signs and a Linguistic Sign 1.2 Meaning and the Semantic Conception of Truth 1.3 Indeterminacy of Translation

1.4 Theory of Language Game

1.5 Elementary and Innate Ideas 2. Theories of Grammar 2.1 Traditional Grammar 2.2 Logical Grammar 2.3 Generative Grammar 3. Language and Reality

3.1 Thesis of the Role Language Plays in Experience 3.2 Role of Vocabulary

3.3 Role of Grammar

3.4 Question of the Relativity of Language and Life-Forms 3.5 Epistemological Problematic of the Relativity Thesis

In this main three branches of philosophy of language I would like to follow Franz von Kutschera (Philosophy of language, Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1075). In his book he writes: “These three problem areas are also basic problems of the linguistic sciences, particularly of general linguistics as the fundamental linguistic discipline. Consequently we find a great deal of overlap between philosophical and scientific linguistic investigation. No sharp boundary can be drawn between the two. For that reason, the philosophy of language must inform itself of the results in linguistics that are relevant for its questions and must take account of them, and the opportunity arises to lend support to theses in the philosophy of language with agruments drawn from linguistics.

Philosophy is not operating in a realm independent of experience, then” (p. 3)

Apart from it, there are many other topics which could be worth could be worth considering, for example pragmatic philosophy of language (pragmatic turn of the philosophy of language, pragmatic transformation of the transcendental philosophy), poetic language (metaphor, originality of language use), language and scientific worldview, language and the concept of man (existential theory of language), language and religion. Most of these topics are well presented in a German book by Josef Simon (Sprachphilosophie [philosophy of language], Feriburg/ München: Verlag Karl Alber 1981, which I have in from a copy). If there were still some more time, it could be possible to deal with some modern philosophers of language (like Donald Davidson, Walker Percy, and others).

At Fuda I have five books with title “philosophy of language”:

1) Alston, William P., Philosophy of Language, Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall 1964 2) Katz, Jerrold J., The Philosophy of Language, New York: Harper 1966

3) Searle, John R. (ed.), The Philosophy of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1971 4) Kutschera, Franz von, Philosophy of Language, Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company 1975 5) Martinich, A. P. (ed.), The Philosophy of Language, New York, Oxford: Oxford University

Press 1990

Even with this limited (but easily accessible) material, it is possible to conduct a course with

possibility of writing some papers on the topics of philosophy of language (there are surely some more

materials at ours and other university libraries in form of either books or journal articles).

In my private collection I have following titles concerning the philosophy of language:

1) John Lyons (ed.), New Horizons in Linguistics, New York: Penguin Books 1970.

2) Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T.

Press 1965.

3) Geoffrey Leech, Semantics, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1974.

4) F. Grant Johnson, Referenz and Intersubjektivität (reference and intersubjectivity), Frankfurt and Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1976.

5) Dimitros Markis, Quine und das Problem der Übersetzung (Quine and the problem of translation), Freiburg/ München: Verlag Karl Alber 1979.

6) Helmut Schnelle, Sprachphilosophie und Linguistik (philosophy of language and linguistics), Hamburg: Rowohlt 1973.

7) Eike von Savigny, Die Philosophy der normalen Sprache (Ordinary-language-Philosophy), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1969.

8) Umberto Eco, Semiotik und Philosophie der Sprache (semiotics and philosophy of language), München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1985.

9) Adam Schaff, Sprache und Erkenntnis und Essays über die Philosophie der Sprache (Language and knowledge, and essays on the philosophy of language), Hamburg: Rowohlt 1974.

10) Helmut Pape, Erfahrung und Wirklichkeit als Zeichenprozeβ. Cjarles S. Peirces Entwurf

S. Perice’s outline of a speculative grammar of being), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1989.

Z. Wesolowski SVD

Fuda, June 7, 1999

3. 對語言哲學是否作為第一哲學的沈思錄

自從亞里士多德在《形而上學》中把研究「存有物」作為「存有物」的根據作為「第一哲學」

以來，西方哲學家們大多都把形而上學研究看作是哲學中的主要部分。

以存有物之為「存有物」及其（認識上/有意義的）本質關係為對象之非直觀的認識方式 稱為「思想」。思想先碰到存有物，之後才也會省思（反思、反省、反映）自己。

形而上學與邏輯之間的差別：

我人講論普遍概念時，可以著眼於其內容，也可以著眼於對其範圍所及的事物之陳述 的性質與方式。例如「房屋」與「機器」兩個概念內容不同，但其指稱事物的方式則同，

因為都是以共類（genus: 類）的資格適用於各該事物共類下面有若干殊種（species: 次 類）以內容觀點把概念歸類時，最後勢必引向範疇；按陳述方式把概念加以綜合，則 形成五個總目，稱為述詞式，及共類、殊種、種差（specific difference: 類差）、固有性

（property: 差異性）、偶然性（logical accident: 偶有性）。（Predicables 謂項 也寫作

「praedicabilia」，有時也被稱作「the quinque voces」（五個字〔five words〕）在中世紀哲 學中指:類、次類、類差、差異性、偶然性，這五個能夠用來謂述事物的主要謂項。）

Meditation on the philosophy of language as philosophia prima

Philosophy expresses itself necessarily linguistically, that’s in language. In that respect, all the philosophical investigations in all the disciplines are confronted with the question: How does historical language influence an attempt to formulate the general, time-less (beyond the limits of time) knowledge (cognition) or just to tell the truth? There exists especially a problem: How is human thinking related to its linguistic communicability?

Since the first philosophical witnesses handed down to us there has been a great awareness of this

problem. Especially, Parmenides of Elea (B. C. 515), who was probably the most important Pre-

socratics, touched upon this problem in his poem “On Nature”. This was a search what now is called

Parmenidian One (There are some, whether they be mentalists or materialists or something else, who

may argue that the Parmenidean One is incomplete, as there are things conceivable apart from what

can logically and rationally be described; but this is a kind of mysticism that is hard to answer ). This

was a result of a profound consciousness of the conflict between reason and experience, and the

potentiality of illusory nature of the latter. With Plato we have the problem whether human thinking is

something esoteric, that’s something only for few “chosen ones” (of course, philosophers!), or

something which consists in a universal faculty of reason. Another question was whether it could be

communicated through our available language only in a distorted and superficial way. So it was a kind

of philosophy of language with some special result when Plato (427-347 B. C.) defines philosopher as

a free man (Sophistes) who differs from others because he exercises “science” as special entertainment, as theoria in opposition to the way of life of the rest of people who remain kept in the daily business of their lives.

Nowadays language as such enjoys a great interest. It is also so because this “Platonic” self- understanding of philosophy and the concept of science which came out of it is under revision. The very human capacity of human thinking questions its relationship to language in double sense, and thus as a “theoretical thinking” about itself! It is a question whether it can be stripped off or liberates itself from the time conditioning with which it is connected through historically available language (so-called ordinary or normal or everyday language).

A negative answer means to give up any claim to or demand for time-less unconditionally abso- lutely valid results and the corresponding self-understanding of philosophy with its claim to time-less truths!

A positive answer immediately leads to another question: How should language look like, if human thinking could aspire to the goals, which are expressed in its (philosophical/ theoretical) self- understanding. Because only through the construction of its own language, thinking could “express”,

“depict” itself as itself. In this context a new problem arises–the problem of relationship of a constructed, artificial language (“ideal language”) of thinking to ordinary language.

If a constructed language is taken as a medium of truth, so ordinary language is not so, inasmuch as it deviates from it. It emerges a kind of critique of language, which at the same time could be a critique of thinking which can’t liberate itself from errors of (ordinary) language. The language which human thinking was to construct for the sake of truth should be seen as pure language of truth as mathesis universalis (Leibniz [1646-1716] saw in it–as previously Descartes (1596-1650) did–an universal language). This project of construction of an ideal language would be simultaneously striving after truth, that’s philosophy! So it would be necessarily philosophia prima (the first philosophy for Aristotle [384-322 B. C.] was Metaphysics!). In this project human thinking would be by itself productive in view of truth, whereas it is receptive in its reliance upon language historically handed down. In its receptiveness, that’s in ordinary/ everyday way human thinking would be without a possibility to be a faculty of truth (or a faculty towards truth).

This insight into the inevitability of reliance upon historical language radically restricts the

claim of thinking as faculty of truth and probably even dismisses into relativism and skepticism. All

effort would be to try again and again to construct this pure language of human thinking. Is it possible

to get success in this enterprise that philosophically means: to establish such a linguistically perfect

of general faculty of thinking, but also the first science/knowledge, which incorporates truthful

thinking at all. Upon this basis of this first science, other special sciences could be possible. An

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4. 基本概念說明 ： 何謂語言？何謂語言哲 學？

4.1

LANGUAGE.

“What is language?”

In attempting to answer this question we can start with relatively obvious features of language. (1) A language is made up of units interrelated in some sort of systematic way. On a common-sense analysis the units are such things as words and syllables; on the more sophisticated analysis of contemporary structural linguistics, they are such things as morphemes. For present purposes the common-sense units will do. (2) Units at the word level have meaning by “convention.” (3) This system (language) is used for communication. This job of getting clear about the nature of language is largely the job of getting clear as to the nature of the units, the respects in which they form a system, the nature of communication, and what is involved in the system being used for communication.

Language as made up of symbols. Language is sometimes characterized as a system of “symbols”, where a “symbol” is something which has meaning by “convention”. There are symbols which do not fit into any language, for example, fire sirens, such gestures as a shrug of the shoulders, a red light as a traffic signal, and a deliberately produced cough which means “It’s time to go.” Where symbols are organized into a system of considerable extent, we have a language. There is a certain amount of truth in this point of view, but it is misleading in two

respects.

First, we naturally think of words as the sorts of symbols that are organized into a system when we have a language. But the linguistic analogues of symbols which exist outside language are sentences, not words. This is because an isolated symbol has to be serviceable for performing a complete act of communication all by itself, and within language it is the sentence which has this role. (There are, of course, some one-word sentences, like “Yes”,

“Now!” and “Fire!”) Thus, when the baseball umpire gives the gesture appropriate for calling the base runner safe, he is doing something which, if done linguistically, would have to be done by the sentence

“You’re safe” or the still shorter sentence “Safe!”

rather than by a single word, such as “in”, “baseball”, or even the word “safe”, which lacks the intonation contour of the one-word sentence “Safe!” But the basic units of language are words and phonemes, rather than sentences. (This is shown by the fact that there is an indefinite number of sentences in a language, whereas there is a finite number of words and a much smaller number of phonemes.) A sentence is something which can be constructed for the given purpose at hand out of the elements which make up the linguistic system. Thus, a language is not a system of items which are symbols in the way that nonlinguistic symbols are symbols. It would be better to say that a language as a system which provides the opportunity for constructing an indefinite number of “symbols”.

Second, it would be a mistake to suppose that the elements of language, such as words, exists as such apart from the language and that it is just a contingent fact that these “ symbols” happen to have been organized into the kind of system which constitutes a language, while other “symbols” have not. To see this, let us consider what a word is. It is clear initially

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that a word is a relatively abstract entity. The word

“in”, for example, cannot be identified with any particular sound or visible mark produced at a certain time, for this (same) word can be uttered and written on many different occasions; it must be construed as something repeatable or exemplifiable. We might try to conceive of it as a certain pattern of sounds or visible marks to which particular sounds and marks approximate, more or less. But having selected a paradigm, how do we tell which deviations from the paradigm count as instances of the word and which do not? Consider the word “house”. In different dialects this may come out “haus”, “house”, or

“hoss”. Now why should we count “haus” and

“hoose” as variants of the same word but “haus” and

“laus” as not, even thought “laus” sounds as least as much like “haus” as does “hoose”? This question can be answered only by taking into account the distribution of these forms in the language as a whole. We proceed as we do because the Virginian’s

“hoose” is distributed in his utterances pretty much in the way the midwesterner’s “haus” is in his, whereas the Californian’s does not have the same distribution as the midwestwener’s “haus”. This shows that we cannot give an adequate account of what makes up a particular word without bringing in the way that word figures in the language. Hence, it is a superficial view to suppose that the word “house” could have still existed as that word if the English language had never existed.

Language as a system. Let us try to get some idea of how the elements of a language constitute a system. The preceding discussion should have made it explicit that the kind of system involved is something much more complicated than what we have if we simply took a number of already functioning, isolated signals and interrelated them by, for example, specifying rules according to which the

significance of a given signal depended on what other signals preceded it. To get anything like a language we would have to analyze the signals into more elementary constituents which did not themselves have the status of signals. Still following a common- sense analysis of language, we can briefly set out the major respects in which language is systematic. (If we used the more sophisticated kind of analysis which is typical of contemporary linguistics, a much richer system would be revealed.) Words can be grouped into wider and narrower “from classes”. The most general form classes are the familiar “parts of speech”–noun, verb, adjective, etc. Each of these can be further subdivided, for example, noun into mass noun (“sugar”) and count noun (“table”). It is then possible to discover various restrictions on the number of possible combinations. For example, it is possible to have a sentence constituted as follows:

Article + Noun + Copula + Adjective (“The box is heavy”); but we cannot have a sentence constituted as follows: Verb + Article + Preposition (“Lift the in”).

Moreover, each word has one or more meanings, and quite often the surrounding linguistic context will make clear which of these is being employed. Thus, in “Did you hear that sound?” the context “Did you hear that _____?” “selects” one item from the range of meanings of the word “sound”; the context “That is a _____ investment ” selects another. Furthermore, there are rules according to which the meaning of a whole sentence can be “computed” from the meaning of the constituent words and the order in which they are combined into the sentence. It is important to realize that the meaning of the sentence is not simply a function of the meanings of the constituent words taken as an unordered aggregate; the mode of composition is also important. “The boy hit the girl”

has a different meaning from “The girl hit the boy”, even though the two sentences are made up of the

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same semantic constituents. On a more subtle level we may consider the difference in the way the meanings of “copper” and “mine” combine to form the meaning of “copper mine” and the way in which the meanings of “copper” and “kettle” combine to form the meaning of “copper kettle”.

Language and communication. So far we have said nothing about the third feature of language, that the system involved in a language is usable in communication. If we look deeply into the matter, we shall see that this feature is not independent of the aspects of the system we have been considering. For to say that a sentence, for example, “Did you hear that sound?” has a certain meaning is to say that it is usable, in accordance with the rules of the language, in a certain act of communication, asking a certain question. In general, for a sentence to have a certain meaning is for it to be usable in expressing a certain attitude, making a certain request, promise, or suggestion, giving a certain piece of advice, blaming someone for something, etc. And digging more deeply, to say that a word has a certain meaning is, in the last analysis, to say that when it is put into a certain slot in a sentence it will partly determine the kind of act of communication for which that sentence is fitted. Thus, depending on whether we insert

“song” or “scream” into “Did you hear that _____?”, the resulting sentence will be suited to the asking of one or another question. (For a development of this approach to linguistic meaning, see MEANING).

To be sure, we must remember that language is also used outside the context of interpersonal communication, in thought, in soliloquy, and in the spontaneous expression of feelings without regard to the audience, if any. Thus, we must either regard these activities as limiting cases of communication (with oneself), or we must make it explicit that what is essential for language is that it can be used for

communication, not that it only be actually so used.

Even if we adopt the latter, weaker formulation, it would seem to follow that abstract systems created by logicians and mathematicians, for example, the

“language” of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, are not languages in a strict or primary sense, for it is doubtful that they can be used at all for communication. Perhaps it is best to say that for central or “paradigmatic” cases of languages, interpersonal communication is the central use and that other uses are derivative from this. If one had not first learned to communicate with others verbally, he would not be able to talk to himself. (It is contro- versial whether this is a logical necessity or a psycho- logical necessity.) Then, abstract systems of logic are best viewed not as languages in any full-blooded sense but rather as logical skeletons of actual or envisaged languages. In any event, there is no suggestion in any of this that language is the only basis of communication. Communication can also be carried on by “isolated” symbols of the sort men- tioned earlier, as well as by pictorial representations and in other ways.

Language and speech. It follows from the pre- ceding discussion that a language is an entity of a more abstract order than would appear from many accounts. Language is not a kind of activity, process, or social interaction; still less is it an aggregate of actions, sounds, or other concrete phenomena. It is, rather, a system of abstract elements. It is of the first importance to distinguish between speech, the totality of verbal activity in a community, and language, the abstract system of sound types and the rules of their combination, which is exemplified an verbal activity and which is discoverable through an analysis of this activity. Every time I speak I add to the sum total of verbal behavior which has gone on in English- speaking communities, but I do not add to or change

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the English language. The language would change through a general change in some of the linguistic habits of speakers of English. A language is an abstraction from particular activities in something like the way in which a game is. If no one ever hit balls back and forth across a net with rackets in accordance with certain rules, there would be no such thing as the game of tennis. Nevertheless, we cannot identify the game of tennis with such activities, either individually or in the aggregate. Each instance of playing tennis is datable in a way that the game of tennis is not; and the sum total of such activities is constantly increasing, whereas the game of tennis is not. Many philosophers think that if they can get away from talking about propositions, thoughts, and talk instead about words and sentences, they will have substituted the concrete and observable for mysterious and dubious abstract entities. Such philosophers do not fully appreciate the extent to which a language and its constituents are themselves abstract.

Primacy of oral language. Linguists customarily restrict the term “language”, in its primary em- ployment, to systems of orally produced sounds, and they consider it to apply only derivatively to systems of devices for representing such sound systems, like the system of writing for English or Arabic, and only derivatively again to systems which are introduced via speech or via a derivative of the first sort, such as the notations of various branches of mathematics, the elements and rules of which are initially explained in a natural language. Philosophers find it difficult to understand this restriction. Why could there not be a system of written marks, gestures, or smoke signals, which developed autonomously rather than a representation of or substitute for oral language? The differing perspectives of linguists and philosophers on this point seem to stem from their respective

concentration on the actual and on the logically possible. It is noteworthy that every clear case of an actually existing language is either a system of speech sounds or a derivative of such a system. But this seems to be a result of the contingent fact that as human beings, human society, and human technology have been constituted, vocally produced sounds have been the most readily available, the most efficient, and the most flexible means of communication. The logical remains that there should be a system of elements which have some different sort of physical embodiment, which should not be a derivative of a system of vocal sounds and yet should perform all the functions and have all the distinctive features of what we now recognize as natural languages.

Bibliography

Different philosophers yield different perspectives on language. For a Neo-Kantian point of view, see Volume I of Emst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic forms, translated by Ralph Manheim (New Haven, Conn., 1953) ; W. M. Urban, Language and Reality (London, 1939); and Susanne K.

Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge, Mass., 1942).

For the standpoint of logical positivism, see Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language (New York, 1937); and N. L.

Wilson, The concept of Language (Toronto, 1959).

Ways of viewing language characteristic of contemporary structural linguistics can be gleaned from Leonard Bloomfield.

Language (New York, 1993); Edward Sapir, Language (New York, 1921); A. A. Hill, Introduction to Linguistic Structures (New York, 1958); J. B. Carroll, The Study of Language (Cambridge, Mass., 1955); H. A. Gleason, An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics (New York, 1961); Noam Chomsky, syntactic Structures (The Hague, 1957) and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); and J. A. Fodor and J. J. Katz, The Structures of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1964).

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4.2.

LANGUAGE, PHILOSOPHY OF.

SURVEY OF LINGUISTIC QUESTIONS Metaphysics. Metaphysics may be briefly chara- cterized as an attempt to discover the most general and pervasive facts about the world. Many phi- losophers have supposed that one could discover such facts through a consideration of fundamental features of the language we use to talk about the world.

Plato. In Book X of Plato’s Republic we find the following: “Whenever a number of individuals have a common name, we assume them to have also a corresponding idea or from” (596). Here Plato was calling attention to a pervasive feature of language, that a word such as “dog” or “heavy” can be truly asserted of a number of different individual things.

Plato assigned a metaphysical significance to such a fact because he thought that this world be possible only if there were some entity named by the general term in question – dogness, heaviness – an entity of which each of the individual dogs or heavy things

“partakes”.

Aristotle. Aristotle argued in his Metaphysics as follows:

And so one might even raise the question whether the words “to walk”, “to be healthy”,

“to sit”, imply that each of these things is existent, and similarly in other cases of this sort; foe none of them is either self-subsistent

or capable of being separated from substance, but rather, if anything, it is that which walks or sits or is healthy that is an existent thing. Now these are seen to be more real because there is something definite which underlies them (i.e., the substance or individual) which is implied in such a predicate; for we never use the word

“good” or “sitting” without implying this.

(Book Z, Ch. 1)

Here Aristotle began with the linguistic fact that we do not use verbs except in conjunction with nominative subjects, that we do not go around saying

“Sits” or “Walks”, but rather “He is sitting” or “She is walking”. From this he reached the metaphysical conclusion the substances have an independent existence in a way in which actions do not, that substances are more fundamental ontologically than actions.

Logical atomism. Metaphysical argumentation of the sort that Aristotle engaged in was explicitly proclaimed as a program by the twentieth-century movement known as “logical atomism”, the chief exponents of which were Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The fundamental principle was spelled out by Russell in “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (in Logic and Knowledge):

…in a logically correct symbolism there will always be a certain fundamental identity of structure between a fact and the symbol for it;

and …the complexity of the symbol corre- sponds very closely with the complexity of the facts symbolized by it.

Thus, the program is as follow: First we are to devise a “logically perfect language”, or as least to find out what such a language would be like. Then we will be in a position to say what different types of fact- stating sentences there are in that language (for

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example, simple subject-predicate sentences like

“This shirt is striped” or existential sentences like

“There is a telephone in that room”), how each sentence is composed of certain types of constituents related in certain ways, and what the logical relations are between sentences of different types. This will enable us to find out what sort of facts reality consists of, how these facts are constituted, and hoe they are interrelated.

Logic. Concern with language assumes even greater prominence in logic than in metaphysics.

Logic is the study of inference or reasoning. Since reasoning is carried on in language, in order to analyze various kinds of inference it is necessary to analyze the statements which figure in it. Moreover, it soon becomes clear that the validity or invalidity of an argument largely depends on the forms of the statements in which the argument is formulated. This appears most dramatically in pairs of arguments, one of which is valid, the other invalid, although super- ficially they look very much alike. Consider the following pair:

(1) The president of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Mr. Y is the president of the United States. Therefore, Mr. Y is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

(2) The president of the United States is elected every four years. Mr. Y is president of the United States. Therefore, Mr. Y is elected every four years.

The fact that (1) is clearly a valid argument and (2) is clearly an invalid argument shows that there must, despite appearances, be some crucial difference in logical form between the first premises of the two arguments. If one aims to construct a complete (or even very extensive) list of forms of valid inference, he will have to explore fully the conditions under

which two statements are or are not of the same logical form. This will entail considerable attention to the varieties of constituents of sentences and the varieties of their interrelation. (In the above example one needs to distinguish different kinds of force which a phrase of the form “the x of y” has).

Theory of knowledge. The branch of the phi- losophy known as epistemology or theory of knowledge becomes concerned with language at a number of points, the most prominent of which is the problem of a priori knowledge. We have “a priori”

knowledge when we know something to be the case on some basis other than our experience. It seems that we have knowledge of this sort in mathematics, and perhaps in other areas as well. The existence of such knowledge has always been a problem for empiricists. It seems that our knowledge that 8 + 7 = 15 is quite independent of sense experience. The statement is not proved by appeal to observation or experiment. It is true that we teach numbers to children by putting objects in piles and counting them, and we might get the idea of addition across to a child by physically adding one pile to another. But our confidence un the arithmetical proposition cited does not depend on the observed result of such manipulations, as is shown by the fact that it is impossible to specify a set of observations which would constitute empirical disconfirmation of the proposition. It seems that whenever the observed result of combining a pile of eight objects with a pile of seven objects was a pile of fourteen objects, we could explain the result in some other way – for instance, in terms of a process by which two of a process by which two of the original items combined to form one – rather than take it as disproving the proposition that 8 plus 7 always equals 15. But then that leaves us with the question of what the basis of our assurance is. A popular answer to this question is

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that in such cases what we are asserting is true by definition, or true by virtue of the meanings of the terms involved (the linguistic theory of the a priori).

According to this view, it is part of what we mean by

“8”, “7”, “15”, “+”, and “=” (plus the syntactical form in which they are combined) that 8 + 7 = 15, and to deny this seriously would involve changing the meaning of one or more of these terms. If we take this answer seriously we are led into questions concerning what it is for a term to have a certain meaning.

Reform of language. Language is the chief tool of the philosopher. Philosophy is a much more purely verbal activity than any of the sciences: verbal discussion is the laboratory in which the philosopher puts his ideas to the test. Hence it is not surprising that the philosopher should be particularly sensitive to defects of language and particularly prone to proposing schemes for its improvement.

Philosophical complaints about language have taken many forms. Advocates of mystical intuition, notably Plotinus and Bergson, have considered language as such to be unsuited to the formulation of truth.

According to these thinkers, the only way to get at real truth is to enjoy a felt immediate union with reality; linguistic formulation can at best give us only more or less distorted perspectives. But most philosophers have been unwilling to abjure discourse, even in theory. Complaints have more often been leveled against some current condition of language, the implications being that steps could be taken to remedy this.

Ordinary language. Philosophers who deal with the reform of language can be divided into two groups. First, there are those who hold that the language of everyday discourse is perfectly suitable for philosophical purposes and that the mischief lies in deviating from ordinary language without

providing any way to make sense of the deviation.

We find scattered examples of this position prior to this century – for example, in Locke’s complaints about scholastic jargon – but it is in our time that it has become the basis of a philosophical movement,

“ordinary language philosophy”. We find it strongest form in the later works of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein seems to have held that all or most of the problems of philosophy arise from the fact that philosophers have misused certain key terms such as “know”, “see”,

“free”, and “reason”. It is because philosophers have departed from the ordinary uses of these terms without putting anything intelligible in their place that they have become entangled in insoluble puzzles over whether we can know what other people are thinking and feeling, whether we ever really see physical objects, whether anyone ever does anything freely, and whether we ever have any reason for supposing that one thing rather than another will happen in the future. The proper role of the philosopher is that of a therapist. He must help us, the perplexed, to see the steps by which we have unwittingly slipped from sense into nonsense; he must lead us back to the ordinary use of these words, on which their intelligibility depends, thus relieving the conceptual cramps into which we have fallen.

Philosophical reconstruction of language. In con- trast to the ordinary language philosophers are those who hold that the difficulty lies in the fact that ordinary language inadequate for philosophical purposes, by reason of its vagueness, ambiguity, context, dependence, and inexplicitness. This group numbers among its members Leibniz, Russell, and Carnap. Such philosophers see as their task the construction, or at least the adumbration, of a language in which these defects do not appear.

Sometimes as with Russell, this is combined with the conviction that the chief metaphysical features of