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Philosophy 408: The Language Revolution Hamilton College Spring 2009 Russell Marcus Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30pm - 3:45pm [email protected] Article Prècises Assignments In preparing for most classes, you should write an article prècis. Article prècises are 100- to 150- word summaries of an assigned reading. I will collect all of your prècises at the end of the term, May 7, unless you display a need for me to collect them earlier. You will mainly be graded on the completion of twenty prècises, rather than their quality. I expect that the prècises will be useful to you in preparing both for classes and for the final exam. You need not complete a prècis for the three classes in which you are presenting a seminar paper. In lieu of up to five prècises, you can write a list of 6-8 detailed questions on the reading. The following is a list readings for which prècises are assigned; for readings which we will discuss in more than one class, you may be asked to write more than one prècis. John Locke, “Of Words” Gottlob Frege, “The Thought: A Logical Inquiry” Gottlob Frege, “On Sense and Nominatum” Bertrand Russell, “Descriptions” P.F. Strawson, “On Referring” Keith Donnellan, “Reference and Definite Descriptions” Saul Kripke, “Naming and Necessity” (twice) Hilary Putnam, “Meaning and Reference” Ayer, “The Principle of Verification” W.V. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (twice) W.V. Quine, “Ontological Relativity” H.P. Grice, “Meaning” Mark Johnston, “The End of the Theory of Meaning” Alfred Tarski, “The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics” Donald Davidson, “Truth and Meaning” Jerrold Katz, “Introduction” and “Sense” Wittgenstein, “On Private Language” (twice) Saul Kripke, “On Rules and Private Languages” Ruth Millikan, “Truth Rules, Hoverflies, and the Kripke-Wittgenstein Paradox” Noam Chomsky, “Language and Problems of Knowledge” Jerrold Katz, “The Unfinished Chomskyan Revolution” Michael Devitt, “Linguistics is Not Psychology”.

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