| This dissertation examines the nature and role of linguistic analysis as it has been practiced within contemporary analytic philosophy. Its major theme centers on an examination of the clash between empirical or naturalist approaches to the study of language, and non-empirical, "conceptual," or philosophical ones. There are three conflicts of this sort that I examine. The first is the debate between Strawson and Russell over the nature of definite descriptions. The second is the debate between Quine and Carnap regarding the concept of analyticity, and the third is the position staked out by a leading member of The New Philosophy of Language concerning the viability of Frege's context principle. The burden of this dissertation is to give clear diagnosis of how these conflicting views were generated, what they ultimately concern, and how, in the end, they might be resolved. In the course of doing this, I mount a sustained defense of the legitimacy of non-empirical linguistic methodologies as they appear in the work of Frege. Russell, and Carnap.;Key words: philosophy of language, analytic philosophy, reconstruction, analysis, linguistic analysis, naturalism, linguistic naturalism... |
