Internalist Explorations of Meaning

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Monday, September 24th
Introduction: some philosophy of language
Bernhard's handout

Tuesday, October 2nd
Externalism about meaning: Putnam 1975


Thursday, October 4th
Hilary Putnam (Harvard)
Externalism: Its motivation and its critics
6pm, Fong Auditorium

See a video of this talk online!

Monday, October 8th
Chomsky's internalism I: Chomsky 1975, ch. 2
Dennis's pseudo-handout

Monday, October 15th
Chomsky's internalism II: Chomsky 1995

Monday, October 22nd
Chomsky's internalism III: Chomsky 2000
Another pseudo-handout

Monday, October 29th
Chomsky's internalism IV: Fodor 2007, Pietroski 2003
Paul's handout


Tuesday, October 30th
Noam Chomsky (MIT)
'On referring' revisited
6pm, Fong Auditorium

See a video of this talk online!

Monday, November 5th
Concepts and reference I: Hinzen 2006a

Monday, November 12th
Concepts and reference II: Jackendoff 1996
(recommended additional reading: Jackendoff 2002, ch. 9-12)


Tuesday, November 13th
Ray Jackendoff (Tufts)
Conceptual semantics
6pm, Fong Auditorium

See a video of this talk online!

Monday, November 19th
The syntax of meaning: Uriagereka forthcoming, ch. 7 and 8


Tuesday, November 20th
Juan Uriagereka (Maryland)
How much meaning can syntax carve out?
6pm, Fong Auditorium

See a video of this talk online!


Monday, November 26th
Internalism and truth I: Hinzen 2006b

Monday, December 3rd
No meeting

Thursday, December 6th
Semantics without truth values I: Pietroski forthcoming, "Overture"
(Paul Pietroski)

Monday, December 10th
Semantics without truth values II: reading TBA
(Paul Pietroski)


Thursday, December 13th
Richard Lewontin (Harvard)
Internal and external in biology
6:30pm, Fong Auditorium

Video coming soon...


Readings
Chomsky, N. 1975. Reflections on language. New York: Pantheon.
Chomsky, N. 1995. Language and nature. Mind 104(413), 1-61.
Chomsky, N. 2000. New horizons in the study of language and mind. Cambridge: CUP.
Fodor, J. 2007. Semantics: an interview with Jerry Fodor. Revista Virtual de Estudos da Linguagem - ReVEL 5(8).
Hinzen, W. 2006a. Spencerism and the causal theory of reference. Biology & Philosophy 21(1): 71-94.
Hinzen, W. 2006b. Internalism about truth. Mind and Society 5(2): 139-166.
Jackendoff, R. 1996. Semantics and cognition. In S. Lappin (ed.). The handbook of contemporary semantic theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
Jackendoff, R. 2002. Foundations of language. Oxford: OUP.
McGilvray, J. 2002. MOPs: the science of concepts. In W. Hinzen and H. Rott (eds.). Belief and meaning - essays at the interface. Frankfurt: Ontos.
Pietroski, P. 2003. The character of natural-language semantics. In A. Barber (ed.). Epistemology of language. Oxford: OUP.
Pietroski, P. Forthcoming. Semantics without truth-values.
Putnam, H. 1975. The meaning of 'meaning'. In Mind, language and reality. Philosophical papers vol. 2. Cambridge: CUP.
Uriagereka, J. Forthcoming. Syntactic anchors. Cambridge: CUP.

See the mailing-list website for some additional readings and weblinks.


Please contact Dennis if you have any further questions.


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