Click on the blue word above to follow us
--Write only the highest quality Jepp content
preface:
If you do not look at Western philosophy in the "system of thought" that solves Western philosophy, you will inevitably fall into the philosophical view constructed by the premise of its philosopher's arbitrariness.
Therefore, after publishing some articles, we decided to first publish the overall idea of the "General Theory of The Evolution of Things" that can solve various problems in previous philosophies, so that readers have a philosophical background based on the contemporary as the ideological background, and only by looking at the philosophers of the past West on this premise can they easily fall into their arbitrary premises.
Modern Western philosophy, which does not operate in the underlying logic of ontology and epistemology, has no intention of continuing to write, because it lacks the deep thoughts of ontology and epistemology, and all the philosophical doctrines established are like clouds floating in the sky, without any stability of reality to speak of, it is really difficult to swallow, even if a certain thought is worthy of merit to some extent, it is also a scattered and arbitrary idea, which is not enough to be a universal principle on a large scale.
However, because Eastern philosophy has not yet completely disseminated branches, and people trapped in Western modern philosophy are in urgent need of salvage, this series of articles attempts to critique the entire modern philosophy one by one, so that philosophy returns to ontology and epistemology, rather than placing philosophy in the various schools of modern philosophy that think that they can bypass ontology and epistemology, because philosophy that does not operate ontology and epistemology has only one result, that is, the degeneration of philosophy.
This article focuses on the philosophy of semantics, also known as analytic philosophy, because this philosophical system does not operate on the basic categories of ontology and epistemology at all, and even for semantic philosophers, it is thought that the object of language is the objective world, and even thinks that language can be separated from the spirit to touch objective existence, but in the end, no matter how it is expounded, semantics always operates in the category of spiritual existence, and it is impossible to get rid of the shackles of "spirit" itself.
As to why this conclusion was obtained, see below
The origin of the philosophy of semantics
The origin of semantic philosophy is for two reasons:
The first is the rapid development of natural science and psychology. The development of these two disciplines has made the discussion of modern philosophy on nature and what man is fall on the natural sciences and psychology, that is, the discussion of the objective world in ancient Greek philosophy, the discussion of human cognition in classical philosophy, etc., which do not need to be investigated in the philosophical category, and these ontological and epistemological problems can be clearly explained directly through natural science and psychology.
Thus modern Western philosophers believe that the subject matter of traditional philosophy does not need to be further explored or cannot be explored, and philosophy has since become a tool for clarifying concepts in the analytical philosophers.
Based on this thought, we can see the degeneration and negativity of Modern Western philosophy.
From this, it can be seen that the analytic philosophy at this moment is no longer formulating "philosophical propositions", nor is it exploring the nature of reality, establishing a complete system of thought such as Aristotle, Hegel and other universals that can clarify the universe, let alone constructing a moral philosophy of behavior, ethical philosophy, etc., telling human beings how to act.
In the view of the analytic philosopher, "philosophy" has become a tool for inquiring into the use and meaning of language, in order to eliminate the contradictions of language, to proofread the words of scientists, to check the clarity of the literature, and the ultimate purpose of philosophy has become to analyze and state propositions in order to discover the basis of the meaning of language and the causes of ambiguity (see Stonepf's Russell edition of the History of Western Philosophy).
Vickers also believes that philosophy does not provide new information, but is more like an activity, so it is impossible to produce any new propositions, but only to clarify many concepts such as natural science and psychology, that is, philosophers do not need to deeply investigate the natural world and human cognition and nature itself, these things have all become the natural science and psychology of the matter, philosophy originally investigated the origin of the world, and the problem of human cognition has since ceased to analyze the scope of philosophical discussion.
For this we can see Wittgenstein's point of view:
Vickers argues that the operation of logic has a reliable starting point only from the empirical "atomic facts" (or "atomic propositions"),from which it is impossible to lead to purely speculative metaphysical problems," and asserts that only the natural sciences are true propositions (see Philosophical Treatise on Logic 4. 11）”
It can be seen that Wittgenstein is only concerned with everything in the "phenomenon", and other non-phenomena are completely out of his philosophical discussion category, but it should be known that the so-called "experiential" is only based on the existence of human beings, but whether it is perceptual intuition or rational logic, the objects are subjective, and human beings cannot seek truth and refer to objects, so the basis of Vickers's doctrine is based on huge problems.
From this, we can also see how much modern Western philosophy deviates from the original connotation of philosophy.
The second is that since Hegel's philosophy, the western classical traditional philosophy has gradually degenerated.
Modern philosophers believe that metaphysical problems are either completed or cannot be discussed, so a series of so-called "new philosophies" such as irrationalism, existentialism, and semantic philosophy have emerged in the West to continue philosophical discussions;
It is mainly two aspects: on the one hand, it is mainly based on human will, prescriptiveness, and the meaning of existence, and on the other hand, it is the logical analysis of language, that is, through the combination of modern mathematical logic and language, both of which are aimed at transcending or avoiding problems that traditional philosophy cannot solve through these ways.
This article focuses on writing about the relevant core of the philosophy of semantics, because in the view of semantic philosophers, the world we know is expressed through "language", and in their view, how can we express the world without speaking clearly?
Wittgenstein even argued that a series of problems in traditional philosophy were caused by the logical flaws of everyday language and the existence of metaphysics expressed through everyday language, and that without sorting out language, we would not be able to recognize a more objective world.
So this article is to let the reader understand from the development of the entire philosophical sequence what problems semantic philosophy is exploring, what problems are being solved, what its own shortcomings and limitations are, and then how we should correctly understand "semantic philosophy".
And once it comes to the philosophy of semantics
First of all, we must know that its core does not point to "object" or "content", but to "language" itself, that is, to the form of language, including the logical form of the relationship between compound propositions and simple propositions, simple propositions and single words, and is more concerned with the form and logic of language, semantic philosophers try to understand the "object" or "objective world" more deeply by clarifying the form of language or logic itself, which is completely different from the ontology and epistemology of traditional philosophy.
Because in the traditional philosophical view, language is only a tool or carrier for expounding "objects", and does not directly refer to "objects" or "contents", so it does not particularly care about the expression and logical structure of language, but cares about the objective object itself, which is completely different from semantic philosophy.
With regard to the philosophy of semantics, it is mainly Russell and Wittgenstein, and in fact, with regard to language itself, it is necessary to add one more person, that is, Frege, because it is Freger, as a mathematician and logician, who was the first to inject mathematical logic into language for inquiry and analysis.
But it is Russell and Wittgenstein who pay more attention to linking philosophy and language, and the core of the entire semantic philosophy is Wittgenstein, and this article also uses Wittgenstein as the core to elaborate, so that the reader understands what analytic philosophy or semantic philosophy is discussing.
So, before we get into Wittgenstein in detail, we need to talk briefly about Frege and Russell.
Analytic philosophy can be roughly divided into the early artificial language phases (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein), and the later stages of everyday language, which refer only to Wittgenstein. Why is there a difference between artificial language and everyday language?
This is because in the early thoughts of analytic philosophy, for analytic philosophers, everyday language is very vague, can not be accurately expressed, that is, the form of language may contradict logic, that is, in the sentence may be smooth, but does not conform to the actual situation, and the emergence of artificial language is to avoid the contradiction of everyday language, analyze the logical relationship between words and words, words and sentences, and then use mathematical logic to solve the confusion and ambiguity of everyday language. Russell and Wittgenstein's early general model of trying to solve a series of problems caused by everyday language through artificial language.
Finally, this article only focuses on the core of the philosophical doctrines of Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, and will not dwell on the relevant life and experience.
Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottrop Frege
He was a mathematician whose purpose was primarily to find a stable basis for mathematics and logic, but since classical philosophy explored the problems of "knowing" and "at" opposites, it began to prevail at that time that all existence was "spiritual existence", which made it necessary to understand the world in three ways:
The first is the natural sciences, which carry out the study of "external objects"; the second is psychology, which carries out the study of "man himself"; the third is logic or mathematics, that is, the study of logical relations between objects."
However, because of the rapid development of psychologicalism, it was later popular to classify logic and mathematics into the category of psychology, believing that logic and mathematics are both processes of human psychology.
At this time, Frege stepped forward, and Frege proposed anti-psychologicalism.
He believes that mathematics and logic must be objective and precise, and cannot be affected by any subjective psychology, that is, logic is the study of the structure of reasoning, the relationship between concepts, and the study of judging truth and falsity, that is, the logical relationship between objective objects and the judgment of truth and falsehood, rather than pointing to the subjective thinking process and psychological process of "objects", because everyone's subjective thinking process and psychological process are different.
Thus, in Frege's view, logic and mathematics are objective, pointing to the objective objects themselves or their interconnections in the natural sciences.
Frege's main contribution was
At the logical analysis level of language, Frege mainly proposed meaning and denotation, or meaning and meaning, that is, dividing language into symbols, denotations, and meanings.
For example, we use a Chinese "apple" Chinese character or "apple" English symbol to represent a specific apple, and this Chinese "apple" Chinese character or English "apple" points to a specific apple, which is called "denotation", that is, the symbol corresponds to a specific object;
The so-called meaning, that is, when we see the Chinese "apple" Chinese character or the English "apple" can understand that its meaning refers to the specific apple, not banana, pineapple, this is what everyone agrees with is Frege's so-called objective, public, can be understood is the "meaning" or "meaning".
Symbols and denouncies are easier to understand, so what is the essence of the meaning?
In fact, we can understand that, first of all, because the five senses and bodies of human beings are the same, then our "knowing" is connected, and the pictures we see the same objects presented in our brains are the same.
For example, the apples seen by humans are all presented as apples, and pineapples are presented as pineapples, but for prokaryotic microorganisms, coelenterate animals, and bats perceived by ultrasound, then the understanding of the same apple and pineapple is completely different from that of humans;
The second is the conventional public meaning.
For example, in China and the West, the use of the same object must be different, but in China with the Chinese character "apple", then we all know what this symbol means, but Westerners do not necessarily know what it means when they see this symbol, and this is the acquired cognition achieved by culture.
In short, in Frege's view, whether it is innate or acquired meaning, it ultimately points to objective, shareable, and understandable.
This thought of his made the question of the meaning of language separately raised, which Russell and Wittgenstein continued to discuss, and the ultimate purpose of analytic philosophy was to find what was common in language, and to explore this common thing was to explore the meaning or meaning of language, and finally this common meaning was identified by Russell and Wittgenstein as corresponding to the objective world, and in this way tried to solve or avoid the problem of spiritual closure.
And we need to know that Frege's original intention was not to solve philosophical problems, but to find a rigorous logical basis for mathematics, and in the process to open up a path for analytic philosophy.
And in Frege's linguistic logic system, the meaning and the denotation are not exactly corresponding, there may be meaning but no referent, such as mermaid and other fabricated words, may have a similar understanding, but there is no specific referent object, which makes Frege's language logic system imperfect, not to mention the dense language system and premise of Russell and Wittgenstein, which must be continued to be explored by future generations.
bibliography:
"General Theory of The Evolution of Things" by Wang Dongyue
On Meaning and Designation, by Frege
On Concepts and Objects by Frege
A History of Western Philosophy by Russell / translated by Liu Changzhou
Analysis of the Heart by Russell / Jia Kechun
Treatise on the Philosophy of Logic by Wittgenstein/ translated by Zhang Shenfu
Philosophical Studies by Wittgenstein/Translated by Li Bulou
The History of Western Philosophy : From Socrates to Sartre and Beyond , by S.E. Stumpf , by J. Fieser / translated by Kuang Hong Deng Xiaomang
It's hard to create good content, and it's even harder to create the best quality articles
I hope that all the spectators and friends have money to hold a money field, and some people will hold a personal field
Ideas can be taken away, retweeted, or shared; likes and appreciations can also be left behind
Your support is the biggest motivation for us to do the best quality content
More highlights can be found in Dongyue Philosophy of New Chinese Philosophy and Commentary on the General Theory of The Evolution of Things.
In addition, if you think the philosophy of those philosophers is difficult, you can leave a message, the philosopher who leaves the most comments, and our next article is the core exposition of this philosopher.