Media philosopher Vilém Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography.

By a `denoting phrase' I mean a phrase such as any one of the following: a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the center of mass of the solar system at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth. Thus a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form. We may distinguish (...) three cases: (1) A phrase may be denoting, and yet not denote anything; e.g., `the present King of France'. (2) A phrase may denote one definite object; e.g., `the present King of England' denotes a certain man. (3) A phrase may denote ambiguously; e.g. `a man' denotes not many men, but an ambiguous man. The interpretation of such phrases is a matter of considerably difficulty; indeed, it is very hard to frame any theory not susceptible of formal refutation. All the difficulties with which I am acquainted are met, so far as I can discover, by the theory which I am about to explain. (shrink)

The _Philosophical Investigations_ of Ludwig Wittgenstein present his own distillation of two decades of intense work on the philosophies of mind, language and meaning.

It is known that Wittgenstein enjoyed reading Plato; but the significance the philosopher had for him is quite underrated, and has never been properly understood. Utilizing insights by Ortega and E. Havelock, the paper argues that while the background of Plato's philosophy was the emergence of literacy, the genesis and the direction of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, by contrast, is not independent of the emergence of post-literacy (or "secondary orality", to use Walter J. Ong's term). A post-literal phenomenon clearly having specifc (...) impact on Wittgenstein was the film: it is striking that he regularly used the film metaphor to illustrate philosophical points. Analyzing these metaphors the paper reaches the conclusion that according to Wittgenstein the carrier of uncorrupted meaning is, actually, spoken language; if we leave the rein to written language, philosophical problems will arise. (shrink)