The linguistic turn is over, what next?
It seems that the linguistic turn is now over. Aren't you too tired of it?
I see no surprise to that statement after reading Rorty's The Linguistic Turn.
Now, I don't see much to claim in produced anything which is further tiresome. Philosophers still talk the same, and so does the public. It seems worrisome that analytic philosophy seeks refuge in science, while science claims there's nothing to do about the field of philosophy.
It might seem pathetic to ask, but what comes after the linguistic turn?
Now what?
I see no surprise to that statement after reading Rorty's The Linguistic Turn.
Now, I don't see much to claim in produced anything which is further tiresome. Philosophers still talk the same, and so does the public. It seems worrisome that analytic philosophy seeks refuge in science, while science claims there's nothing to do about the field of philosophy.
It might seem pathetic to ask, but what comes after the linguistic turn?
Now what?
Comments (76)
The "linguistic turn" is basically meaningless. It's a historical construct. Ditto "existentialism," "continental philosophy," "analytic philosophy," and so on. No one really agrees on what these terms mean, and we shouldn't get hung up on them any more than "postmodern" or "post-World War II."
Thinking is what's called for these days -- and that doesn't end. What we need is a different kind of thinking, which is defined by the questions being asked. The questions being asked these days should be in response to our current place in time, our historical situation. To ask "what next?" is a good question, but it could have been asked in any period in history, even during what's now labeled the "linguistic turn."
Only we can determine how history talks about our lifetimes.
But perhaps I exaggerate.
Nicely put.
This website seems to be one of the better platforms for free thought.
The linguistic turn isn't over to my knowledge. Perhaps a transformation it underwent in recent years makes you think that way - it may have changed so much that it has become unrecognizable. The importance of language can't be overstated for the simple reason that it constitutes the very thing philosophy deals with - thoughts. My hunch is language has its own structure, rules, idiosyncracies. limits and these will, if I'm anywhere near the ballpark, turn out to be of utmost significance wherever, whenever, we employ language and that's literally everywhere and every time. In short, language has its own thing going on and that will, in all likelihood, matter to philosophy. Think of it, a certain tool has its own peculiarities that make it perfect for a certain task and hopeless for another. It takes great ingenuity, as many great thinkers have amply demonstrated, to use a tool for a task it isn't designed for.
:rofl:
But, but, we're all using the internets, and the computer positivists are smiling in their graves with all this formalism in language with Grammarly!
They gave to the world everything including primitives in your latest logical space Operating System.
I posted this in another thread about logical positivism/atomism/monism being, quite possibly, a precursor to formal languages like programming languages and such?
It's a stretch, and to get back on topic, I suppose that there's some truth to the notion that philosophy in some sense needs innovation rather than criticisms of past philosophers all the time.
What do you think?
I think the OP trite, and hence thoughtless.
As well as this comment, huh?
A term invented after the fact for an approach to philosophy that began with critiques of the obscure language of the Hegelian thinking of the 19th Century and the discursive narratives that it produced, seeking a return to analysis. The critics held that philosophy should focus on being clear and coherent. There were two threads to the linguistic turn. One was formal, seeking to use the newly developed logic of propositional calculus to set philosophical issues out clearly. The other used natural languages such as English, seeking to clarify issues of ambiguity by an analysis of the complexity of words.
It's roughly congruent with analytic philosophy.
:ok:
There seems to be something going on between language and logic. As far as I can tell each is a system in its own right and how can I tell that's the case? Well, I can easily come up with an illogical sentence e.g. C = "I'm a man and I'm not a man" - there's nothing linguistically incorrect about sentence C but logically, it's a cardinal sin. But, what is correct about sentence C and what is incorrect about sentence C? Well, C is syntactically and semantically correct but logically, because sentence C's a contradiction, it's a big no-no. In fact it can be said that language is wholly about syntax and semantics and logic is about semantic relationships. I suppose an entirely new set of conditions apply when language is employed in logic as logic deals with semantic relationships, an entirely different ballgame, instead of plain old syntax and semantics.
Philosophy then with its intimate ties to logic must perforce demand clarity, coherence, avoidance of ambiguity, etc. for these invariably cause problems in working out semantic relationships which is just a fancy way of saying how propositions relate to each other, the crux of arguments, the lifeblood of philosophy.
Early formal linguistic philosophy sort to render the vagaries of English into propositional form. This is the project of Principia Mathematica and Tractatus logico-philosophicus. It proved to be impossible, but along the way some extraordinary thigns were discovered.
Later formal linguistic philosophy accepted the place of natural languages, but sort to clarify the grammar buy presenting coherent and consistent translations in formal language. T-sentences and possible world semantics are examples of this.
The rough idea is that formal grammars can help us to recognise confusions in our common natural language - like your "I'm a man and I'm not a man".
The various tools of linguistic philosophy now fill the tool bag of most philosophers; at least the good ones. The OP is misguided to say that the linguistic turn is now over; it would be better to say that the linguistic turn is now so ubiquitous that it goes unnoticed.
Quoting Franz Liszt
There are a bunch of errors in the formulation fo the issue within this one paragraph. Not errors of fact, but errors of grammar.
Can you see them? Look at the way it deals with "truth".
Not really, as nothing profound has actually changed in the field of philosophy. Go ahead and read the afternotes of Rorty's The Linguistic Turn.
Metaphysical questions still take place as often as they used to.
What's next? Perhaps a return to pragmatics?
What does that mean?
Congruent? It's a travesty that logical positivism got shat on and Cambridge wanted to go for common sense philosophy, whilst America steadfast followed the post-war logical positivist boon of philosophers from Europe, invested in or by pragmatisms influence or better stated congruence.
In my humble opinion, we should maintain a distinction between language and logic. Language is, at the end of the day, just a collection of words and a set of rules (grammar) on how to use those words all so that we can think in the broadest sense of that word.
Logic, on the other hand, is about how to think and comes with its own set of rules to be followed in order that we may craft arguments with the express purpose of arriving at truths implied by relationships between thoughts.
That said, it can't be denied that logic has its own language consisting of symbols with very precise meanings and instructions on how to use them correctly to cut through all the logically extraneous linguistic elements of discourse and zero in on an argument if there is one. However I still have misgivings about treating logic as just another language - there's more to it than mere words and rules on how to manipulate those words.
Logic takes care of itself. The other issue is that language does (not) have a universal grammar.
...which is exactly what logic is, also.
And mathematics too, for that matter.
I suppose you're right but if I may say so unpacking "words" and "set of rules" for both language and logic suggests there's a difference between logic and language. In the case of language, "words" and "set of rules" are those linguistic features everyone is more than familiar with but in logic, "words" are entire propositions and the "set of rules" are those that have a bearing on how propositions are related to each other with the emphasis on how the truth/falsity of one or more propositions impact the truth/falsity of another proposition.
That said, it would be very interesting if there's a logical aspect to natural language by which I mean to put forth the possibility that language evolved for logic but not in the sense of a necessity for animals lacking symbolic language are fully capable of logic but in the sense that natural language augments logic. Does natural language bring to the table additional capabilities that enhance logic, make it more powerful?
By way of an answer to the question posed above, take a close look at logically problematic words, words that are vague and ambiguous, plus discourses, spoken, written, that contain inconsistencies. Don't these give you the impression that they were designed to, well, break us out of the oppressive confinement of logic?
Such an interpretation is probably me holding the wrong end of the stick but I remember this one time when I had to put this wooden block into a slot cut out for it and it just wouldn't fit. I almost gave up until I had an idea - I turned the block upside down, lo and behold, the block slid effortlessly into its slot - it was a perfect fit! :joke:
...that's propositional logic, which is the first step. Then logicians break propositions into predicates and individuals, and add "all" and "some"; this development initiated the linguistic turn, since now logicians could access the contents of propositions. Modal logic added "possibly" and "necessarily" to the mix.
Now the field is far broader than even this.
One way of thinking of it is that logic sets out the consequences of what we say. Your "I'm a man and I'm not a man" might be represented in propositional logic as "p & ~p" or in predicate logic as "f(a) & ~f(a)". The consequence is be that any proposition would follow: "(p & ~p)?q". It's seeing how this consequence flows from the contradiction that is the beauty of logic.
The suggestion of laws of thought is somewhat misguided. our use of language is not distinct from our thoughts. Logic sets out what happens when we use language in a consistent fashion - which is, after all, what we must do with language; not just any order of words will do for some given purpose.
As side note... we often think of logic as tracing the way truth and falsity moves from one proposition to another; so we talk about how if p is true and if p?q is true then q must also be true. This is a very useful way of thinking about logic, but keep in the back of your mind that there are other, less widely applicable, logics that do not assume propositions to be either true or false.
SO I'd suggest that rather than language following from logic, logic follows from language, in that logic sets out what it is to be consistent in one's use of language by setting out the consequences of what one might say.
Hence the broader use of the notion of grammar. A child might say "My are going to shop", and be corrected to "I am going to the shop"; logic performs a similar task, but for grownups: "I'm a man and I'm not a man" becomes, perhaps, "I am a transexual", hence avoiding the explosive consequences.
And that is what philosophical analysis does: it shows us how to spot misguided language, and perhaps to put what we said in a more useable way.
Just as you needed to turn the block in a certain way in order for it to do what was needed, philosophy consists in articulating words with an eye towards the consequences.
So:
This just does not follow. Perhaps Franz might be able to provide some additional propositions to make it consistent. But then there is the problem of what Franz takes to be "wrong" here.
A rhetorical question, but what do we make of it? If the premise of a "logical thought" is true, then so will be the consequent.
Well, yes, we can, since if the premises are true so will the consequences be true.
Again, this does not follow; adn indeed, if your logic leads you to rejecting logic, you are doing it wrong.
No, we don't. Using language badly leads to apparent paradoxes. Cleaning it up will dissipate the paradox.
We dissipated the apparent paradox of "I'm a man and I'm not a man" by rephrasing it as 'I'm a transexual". Can we do the same thing for Franz? Perhaps he wants to argue that evolution cannot explain the origins of logic? Or perhaps he is just pointing out that abiogenesis remains an area for study? In either case, what he has written does not support his conclusion.
That's a basic philosophical analysis, intended to bring out that structure, or lack thereof, in Franz's claim. Socrates performed similar analyses. The linguistic turn was a return, a rejection of a distorted form of philosophy that instead of analysis, encouraged discursive rumination. It was a move from making shit up to making shit consistent.
So propositional logic is always formulated in terms of some natural language. Formal logic is the formalization of a natural language, an explication of the logic that underlies the language, using a set of symbols that represent logical concepts.
...which is to understand that "intelligibility" as exactly "translated into some natural language"...
Logicians get paid to deal with the untranslated stuff. And hence:Quoting Janus...is not quite right. Hence it doesn't follow that propositional logic is Quoting Janus.
Logic does not underlie natural language. Indeed, effort and education is required in order to understand logic, and hence natural languages are presupposed by logic, in a performative sense. One needs to have a natural language in order to develop logic.
This bit gets left behind.
So, what are those caveats? To my eye it would be the explication of the distinction between saying and showing.
I've been reading Badiou's Wittgenstein's Antiphilosophy; Badiou wants to show that Wittgenstein was undermining philosophy; but he sees this as a bad thing, while I see it as glorious.
It shows up in other ways too.
That what one sees depends on how one looks crops up in all kind of places. The distinction doesn't need to be drawn in terms of language either, surely. It isn't just a linguistic issue that an interface between two ontological regimes - like language and world, representation and reality, framework and what's studied - can be a distortion as well as a connection.
Acknowledging that there are such interfaces and distorting connections without undermining the access they grant seems the new realist space of problems. "Thank you critical tradition, yes there are access problems, and..."
...and what comes next might best be silence. Unless you have something else in mind?
If you stop hoping for big answers, you start asking smaller questions.
... if you start asking smaller questions, you will perhaps get better answers.
"Because God says" will answer any "Why...?". Is it a good answer?
Another offering: failure to resolve big questions is inevitable but still worthwhile to try.
Yes. And perhaps by attempting as big answers as you can, you will find how the questions inter relate.
Answering small questions - that's were you have to do the work. And it is where the consistency and coherence of logic comes into its own.
It's as if one wanted to complete the jigsaw without putting each individual piece in its place.
Well, I can't make sense of that. Language is made-up stuff, shared sounds with which we do things.
It follows that anything that was inherent - built-in, intrinsic, essential - to language would also be made up.
It makes sense that we introduced strictures on what sounds did what job. That's what grammar is, the way we choose to put sounds and symbols together. Logic is a form of grammar, a further set of strictures on what we do with words.
So I'll stand by my supposition that language precedes logic.
But then, I'm following a constructivist approach; perhaps you are thinking more in Platonic terms?
It's an interesting topic.
:up: :ok:
It was move from making shit up to making shit consistent
Is constructivism also inconsistent made-up shit?
Also, what was the grand overarching goal of linguistic philosophy, and did it achieve it?
The linguistic turn was a change in method. If it had a goal at all, it was to elucidate philosophical problems by taking care with the language involved.
You're artificially limiting the scope of big questions. Eg. "How does perception work?" Trivialising the attempt at generality.
You say it like it was a bad thing.
This gives me a mental-cramp and creates a ill feeling. Namely, reading this as if it were definitional based, one can claim that this is closer to pragmatism by how you talk about treating it as a method instead of a 'turn' in philosophy.
... and this doesn't even sound wrong on face value!
None of this is helpful, and all of it is why the linguistic turn is not another name for pragmatism.
I disagree, most of what pragmatists wanted to accomplish has been already accomplished by linguistic philosophers, or it was some sort of natural tendency for the linguistic philosophers to somehow agree tacitly with the pragmatists(?)
Anyhow, seeing as this is going nowhere, I think, it makes sense to look into some sort of idea about what comes next? What's your take?
I think that's true for the most part. I don't see any use of mentioning pragmatism again.
What do you think comes after the linguistic turn?
I'd agree that in a certain way language is "made up stuff". We might think that in the genesis of language the sounds chosen to signify things are arbitrary and in that sense made up. But the meanings of non ostensive words such as 'and', 'the', 'that', 'this', 'then', 'but', 'although', etc., etc., reflect the logic of action and identification; the logic of cognition itself. So, I would say it is the grammar being common (although not identical) across different languages which demonstrates a common structure of experience and thought.
I don't identify as a Platonist, but I think constructivism, while it gives us a part of the picture, is certainly not the whole story. I don't see it being a matter of "either/ or". I agree it's an interesting topic.
Here's the referential theory of meaning again. Seems to be a key point of disagreement. I don't think that the meaning of a sentence is given by the things it signifies. Firstly, so few sentences signify anything. Secondly, we can get more of an idea of what is going on if we look at what is being done with the sentence rather than making up things it might stand for.
You made the claim Quoting Janus
If this were so there would be no need for modal logic, nor for a seperate explanation of metaphor. But propositional logic is insufficient for these tasks.
Quoting Janus Well, yes, language is that structure. This doesn't support your contention so much as mine: that logic is a development of language.
Or implicit in your idea might be a private language of thought? Do you wish to argue for that?
This is somewhat iffy. Because if one states the above, the implicit assumption is that somewhere meaning arises, as if through the conversation with an interlocutor.
Don't quite understand, what do you mean?
It may be that what Hacking calls the death of meaning at the hands of Quine, Wittgenstein, Davidson and Feyerabend brings with it the death of philosophy as a discipline with a method of its own.
--The fifty year (now 81!) history of linguistic philosophy, a history which is now behind us, suggests that such questions are likely to prove unprofitable.
Well, yes.
Is this some intuitionalist version of meaning arising with what we do with words?
If so, we might as well and say that it's all in the brain and leave the rest to science?
But, within the realm of philosophy, the linguistic turn ended in the 1990's.
Nowadays we have some stuff like possible worlds semantics with modal logic? So, did it end as Rorty said or what's on the roadmap for the next paradigm shift in philosophical endeavors?
As I see it some words signify things like trees, cars, people and son on, and other words signify cognitively basic ideas, for example and signifies addition, the, that and this signify identification, there and here signify location, then and now signify time, and so on. There are many examples. Some words signify actions or attitudes. The inherent logic in language consists in the ideas those kinds of words signifiy, which structure language and its grammar. All, or at least most, languages have equivalents of those kinds of words, as far as I know.
Quoting Banno
Sure the logic inherent in language may also be formalized in modal logic or other kinds of logic. Give me any example of any formal language and I will be able to translate it into English. I think formal logics are just explicitations of what is implicit in natural languages, and nothing you have said so far gives me any reason to think otherwise. Metaphor is a different associative phenomenon, and is not relevant to what I've been arguing.
Quoting Banno
Why do you quote a partial sentence out of context to respond to? I said there is a common structure of human experience and thought which is reflected in the commonalities across different languages; are you denying that is so?
I don't have " a private language of thought" in mind. What makes you say that? What I am saying indicates a common implicit logic of thought (and experience) that mediates the meanings of the non-ostensive words in languages. You haven't presented anything so far at all that contraindicates what I have been saying.
I would wish that more philosophers stop hiding behind language, and seek and defend truth against all the lies.
Quoting Shawn
That's BS of course, meaning never died. You listed five guys who mistook their confusion for philosophy, that's all. Pretenders. We need to forget those clowns and go back to serious, intellectually honest philosophy.
Well, I'll agree to disagree. Too many nouns for my taste.
Oh absolutely it is. If you grant that the most important thing philosophy does is reveal instances of mere philosophy ("language running idle"), the philosophical question of what mere philosophy is becomes the most important one you can ask - a kind of demarcation problem. Absent general principles that will inform on a case by case basis whether something is mere philosophy or not; which the approach rightly rejects as overly high minded and acontextual; the appropriate response is to go and look.
Not to stop looking.
Not at all. It's not either or: if you attempt to tackle a big question, you discover a lot of little ones. If you attempt to tackle a little one, you find a lot of big questions in the background. The terrain of every problemscape has mountains, grounds, horizons, and from another's perspective the ground one stands on can be a plateau on a mountain. It's a big world of conceptual problems, and it's easy to get lost.
In some respects you get lost as soon as you started. But there's no exterior to declare that from, it's always a declaration from within - getting lost is still finding a new path, or carving one by walking. You play the game of joyfully finding your way, or you refuse to.
Sometimes there is no mountain. Sometimes there is. Sometimes it's a molehill.
Sir, this is a stretched metaphor, not A Thousand Plateaus.
Nope, still the same with nothing new in the field of philosophy to the best of my knowledge. Pretty dull and lame.