PL 342: Contemporary Analytic Philosophy
Final exam study guide
Essay possibilities (will be narrowed to six required essays):
1. What, exactly, is Carnap’s complaint against the legitimacy of metaphysics? What is the source of metaphysical concepts and beliefs, according to Carnap?
2. What is the meaning of a word, according to Carnap? Or, as he re-phrases, what “stipulations concerning a word must be made in order for it to be significant”? How, on this view, do certain metaphysical terms appear meaningless?
4. What does being able to follow a rule involve, according to Wittgenstein? Why does Wittgenstein reject accounts that refer to mental sensations? Why does he reject accounts that point only to behavior?
5. Explain Wittgenstein’s “beetle in the box” discussion. What conclusion does he draw in that discussion, and why?
6. What, according to Strawson, is wrong with Russell’s account of the sentence “The present king of France is wise”? What is Russell’s account; what is Strawson’s account? Strawson, unlike Russell, claims that the sentence implies—but does not assert—that a king of France exists: explain.
7. What is the meaning of a sentence, according to Strawson? How does his distinction between sentences, uses, and utterances help explain his account of meaning?
8. What does Grice mean by “non-natural” meaning? How does he distinguish “non-natural” meaning from “natural” meaning? Give examples of each.
9. How does Grice define “utterer’s meaning” (A meant something by X)? How is this different from “sentence meaning”? How is sentence meaning related to utterer’s meaning?
10. At one point in his paper, Grice criticizes what he calls a “causal type” of answer to the question “What is (non-natural) meaning?” What is the causal theory of meaning, and what (according to Grice) is wrong with it?
11. Explain Quine’s argument, in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” against the there being a difference between analytic and synthetic statements or judgments.
12. Why does Quine object to “reductionism”? Explain the view he is criticizing, and explain his criticism. Finally, what consequences follow from Quine’s view?
13. Quine argues, in “Ontological Relativity,” that even within a language translation is indeterminate. Explain that argument. How does that argument lead Quine to the claim that reference must be inscrutable? How, according to Quine, are we able to use words to refer to objects?
14. What is Tarski’s definition of truth? What restrictions does he place on his definition? What role does the concept of ‘satisfaction’ play? Why, according to Tarski, can the definition not apply to natural languages?
15. Explain Davidson’s use of Tarski’s definition of truth in the discussion of a theory of meaning. What conditions must a theory of meaning meet, according to Davidson?
16. It appears that in English the following is correct: “‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if grass is green” (inasmuch as the two are both true, and so are materially equivalent). According to Davidson, knowing the truth conditions of a sentence is, in a sense, knowing the meaning of that sentence. But certainly the meaning of ‘Snow is white’ is not ‘grass is green.’ How does Davidson deal with this apparent objection to his view?
17. How does Kripke argue that not all a posteriori truths are contingent? (Or, that not all necessary truths can be known a priori?) How does the notion of a “rigid designator” help Kripke’s argument?
18. Kripke argues that, contrary to the views of thinkers like Frege and Russell, ordinary names are not really disguised definite descriptions. Explain the “Frege-Russell” account of ordinary names, and explain Kripke’s reasons for rejecting that account.