Wednesday, June 1, 2016
In Reflection [Drew Owens]
Regardless of my final interpretations of how our use of language connects with the world, Russell's "On Denoting" marked a pivotal point in my understanding. Up to this introduction of descriptive definitions, I was having a hard time grasping the nebulous connections between the world and our spoken models of it. Russell's logic allowed me grasp a more tangible base of understanding, which theories we studied later questioned and refined. Exploding names into a multitude of possible definitions allowed me to process the concepts of entailment and validity (with regards to language) in a more measured fashion. While I recognize that Russell was overreaching in his position, it seems the wealth of concepts and theories derived from picking at Russell's ideas demonstrate his contribution to the field. In all, I think that when reined in by a more causal approach and refined to the cluster theory, Russell's base concepts still speak to my intuition.
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Drew, Russell's theories speak to my intuitions as well. There is something about meaning coming from the clean-cut truth value of an utterance that makes Russell's theory so attractive. Even as we progressed through the course and began seeing different ways to poke holes in his claims, analyzing material through a Russellian lens still proved useful in many cases.
ReplyDeleteI can also relate to this experience. I felt that Russell's conception of names was the first theory that I could fully grasp. I believe this is because of how Russel fits names and descriptions nicely within the field of formal logic, which is something that feels more concrete than the either Mill's or Frege's conceptions. I also agree that Russell's perspective fails to define names in many critical ways, however, the idea of being able to represent language in terms of neat rules presented within formal logic seems very appealing.
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