Philosophy of Language

We shall study several central topics in contemporary philosophy of language. Each of these topics is central not only in focusing much discussion but also in influencing the discussion of other philosophical issues. Due to the variety of topics, none will be exhaustively discussed in the course, but the hope is that the main approaches to the problems, their motivation and presuppositions would be clearly delineated. The works discussed will be by Quine, Grice, Strawson, Austin, Kripke, Putnam, Donnellan, Stalnaker, Wittgenstein.