A Study On Russell's Theory Of Meaning

During the 20th century, the change occurred in philosophy. People started to analyze the language which is called philosophy of language. In the questions of philosophy of language, what was most discussed is the question of meaning of language. Theory of meaning is at the core position in the philosophy of language.Russell is an important representative character of philosophy of language, and also analyzes the meaning of language. There were many writings in Russell's life, and the thoughts unceasingly were also changing. It mainly had four periods. The first was the Objective Idealism period. He believed platonic idea world, proposed famous theory of denotation and proved his theory rationality. He had carried on the brief elaboration to denoting phrase. It manifested the ontological and epistemological characteristics fully. In Neo-Realism period, Russell elaborated theory of description systematically, carried on the discrimination to proper names and descriptions so that he caused the analysis of language more formalized. He also proposed famous principle of acquaintance that enabled description to be based on the theory of knowledge. Because of implementing principle of acquaintance further, he only then developed logical atomism. He thought that the world was composed by logical atom which was acquainted and only"this"and"that"is the true proper names. Description is also not self-sufficient. To neutral monism period, Russell started to research the daily language and attempted to analyze the daily questions with logical analysis so that he cancelled proper names and the boundary between the material and spirit.Russell always absorbed and criticized others'points of view, but he inevitably was influenced by other scholars. The method of analytic philosophy that he used and theory of description had the profound influence on the later generation.