Document Type : Research

Authors

• homan mohammad ghorbanian ¹
• Sara Ghane ²

¹ Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Isfahan

² PhD student in Philosophy of Ethics, Qom University

Abstract

Dummett`s philosophy is influenced by two great philosophers : he follows Frege in his methodology and attempts to build metaphysics upon logic and theory of meaning, and he also follows Wittgenstein in his theory of meaning and accepts his use theory of meaning that says in most cases, the meaning of a word is its use. Nevertheless, Dummett tries to avoid the radical skepticism found in late Wittgenstein, since he believes if that is true then communication is in constant danger of simply breaking down. His solution against this radical skepticism is introducing the idea of implicit knowledge for our understanding of how language works. In this article, I tried to show how this idea causes Dummet`s theory to be different from Wittgenstein's concept of language. We cannot maintain at the same time both implicit knowledge of the language and think of the theory of meaning as a base for metaphysics.

Keywords

• Dummett
• Frege
• Wittgenstein
• theory of meaning
• full-blooded conventionalism
• implicit knowledge