In the last century, philosophers turned their attention to language. One place they have looked for clues about its nature is Plato’s Cratylus, which considers whether names are naturally or conventionally correct. The dialogue is a source of annoyance to many commentators because it does not take a clear position on the central question. At times, it argues that language is conventional, and, at other times, defends the view that language is natural. This lack of commitment has led to a (...) longstanding dispute over the outcome of the dialogue. I argue that the Cratylus provides no clear resolution to this problem because it presupposes certain unexamined metaphysical commitments about the nature of reality, which are in need of thorough investigation. (shrink)

Inspired by my reading of the conclusions of Plato’s Cratylus, in which I suggest that Socrates endorses the claim that speaker’s intentions determine meaning of their utterances, this thesis investigates a modern parallel. Drawing on observations that people who produce an utterances that do not accord with the conventions of their linguistic community can often nevertheless communicate successfully, Donald Davidson concludes that it is the legitimate intentions of speakers to be interpreted in a particular way that determine the meanings of (...) their utterances. This thesis investigates how we might interpret the non-standard utterances of another from the perspective of Davidson’s anticonventionalist picture of language. It proceeds by investigating the possible roles for radical interpretation and triangulation in explaining successful day-to-day communication, where non-standard language use abounds, and argues that - even from a Davidsonian perspective - a full account of the linguistic skills and knowledge that a language user requires to interpret utterances must ultimately appeal at least to regularities word use and expressions, if not full-blown conventions. (shrink)

La intención del siguiente artículo es comparar las doctrinas del lenguaje como una pintura en Platón y Wittgenstein, concentrándose en el Cratilo y en el Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. A pesar de que el Cratilo trata sobre la corrección de los nombres mientras que el Tractatus atiende la naturaleza y estructura de las proposiciones, el estudio demuestra, centrado en Cratilo 421c-427e y Tractatus 4.01-4.12, que las doctrinas del lenguaje-como-pintura en estos textos se parecen en términos de sus propiedades básicas y su estructura. (...) La comparación consta de cuatro aspectos: la estructura de elementos y su forma; la correspondencia entre lenguaje y realidad; la posibilidad de la falsedad; y el método de verificación. (shrink)