Philosophy of language

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Philosophy of language, philosophical investigation of the nature of language; the relations between language, language users, and the world; and the concepts with which language is described and analyzed, both in everyday speech and in scientific linguistic studies. Because its investigations are conceptual rather than empirical, the philosophy of language is distinct from linguistics, though of course it must pay attention to the facts that linguistics and related disciplines reveal. Scope and background Thought, communication, and understanding

Language use is a remarkable fact about human beings. The role of language as a vehicle of thought enables human thinking to be as complex and varied as it is. With language one can describe the past or speculate about the future and so deliberate and plan in the light of one’s beliefs about how things stand. Language enables one to imagine counterfactual objects, events, and states of affairs; in this connection it is intimately related to intentionality, the feature of all human thoughts whereby they are essentially about, or directed toward, things outside themselves. Language allows one to share information and to communicate beliefs and speculations, attitudes and emotions. Indeed, it creates the human social world, cementing people into a common history and a common life-experience. Language is equally an instrument of understanding and knowledge; the specialized languages of mathematics and science, for example, enable human beings to construct theories and to make predictions about matters they would otherwise be completely unable to grasp. Language, in short, makes it possible for individual human beings to escape cognitive imprisonment in the here and now.

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