Quine's theory of meaning can be studied through several aspects. This article concentrates on one of the most important ones, i.e. ''Indeterminacy of translation''. In the thesis, several sides of Quine's philosophy are combined, so that studying and interpreting it seem to be a difficult task. ''Indeterminacy ...
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Quine's theory of meaning can be studied through several aspects. This article concentrates on one of the most important ones, i.e. ''Indeterminacy of translation''. In the thesis, several sides of Quine's philosophy are combined, so that studying and interpreting it seem to be a difficult task. ''Indeterminacy of translation'' says that there is no fact of the matter to choose between two or more inconsistent translation manuals that each of them conforms to all of the native's behavioral criteria. After illustrating the asymmetry between ''indeterminacy of translation'' and ''under-determination of theory of nature'', we can conclude that the certain content of ''Indeterminacy of translation'' is an ontological claim about meaning. Therefore, at first, Quine's understanding of meaning, his preferred ontology, and the relation between these two, must be explained and described, and then the asymmetry between these two theses can be discussed. An attitude toward these subjects from this point of view, not only is perceived an original apprehension of theory of meaning, but also can originate a new method in order to study abstract objects, propositional attitudes and mental states.
Volume 1, Issue 2 , September 2010, , Pages 79-102
Abstract
Franz Brentano was one of the most influential philosophers of the second half of nineteenth and early twentieth century. His major role in the history of philosophy can be shown through two aspects. One is that in virtue of his philosophy, we can make a link between the analytic and continental philosophies, ...
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Franz Brentano was one of the most influential philosophers of the second half of nineteenth and early twentieth century. His major role in the history of philosophy can be shown through two aspects. One is that in virtue of his philosophy, we can make a link between the analytic and continental philosophies, and the other is that his doctrines and analyses can still be an origin for most of the philosophical investigations, as it was one century ago; although, because of the glorious personality of his direct and indirect students, his thoughts and insights have been not achieved immediately. Recent efforts in order to re-find and re-understand his philosophy show that Brentano has many valuable ideas in many different areas of philosophical investigations. These efforts show, more precisely, that his thoughts can still be a significant starting point for philosophical inquiry. Brentano’s works, like other influential philosophers’, covers a wide range of philosophical subjects including philosophical psychology, ontology, epistemology, syllogistic logic, ethics, philosophical theology, history of philosophy and many others. This article only focuses on the Brentano’s impact on syllogistic logic. His revision of formal logic has been done around the axis of a fundamental thesis according which all of the subject-predicate judgments should be reduced to existential judgments. We will explore, in this article, the procedure of this thesis development in Brentano’s thought and also its consequences for syllogistic logic. To have a complete understanding of Brentano’s revision of Aristotelian logic, it is required to have some acquaintances with several subjects not directly related to formal logic; e.g. ontology and epistemology.
