Class 7: Words

When I first conceived the goal of the Hempel Lectures, on which the book Interpretive Objects is based, my primary goal was to compare my developing interpretive view of persons to interpretive accounts of meaning and content (from the philosophy of language and mind) and to interpretive accounts of legality (from the philosophy of law). In this week’s class we won’t get to meaning, in particular - that will come eight weeks from now, near the end of the semester. But this week’s topic is what I was led to, by trying to apply the theory of interpretive objects to the philosophy of language. So this week we apply the theory of interpretive objects to the ontology of words. It turns out that the ontology of words is vexed, and that the theory of interpretive objects gives us a promising treatment of it.

The main assigned reading for today’s class is chapter 3 of Interpretive Objects.

As always, I have suggested background readings and some also recommended readings for thinking more about related things. This week’s recommended reading is David Kaplan’s classic article, “Words”, which is the seminal discussion of some of the difficulties surrounding the ontology of words, and is my main foil in chapter 3 of Interpretive Objects.

I also offer “also recommended” readings for each week. This week my “also recommended” readings are a followup exchange between Kaplan and Hawthorne and Lepore. The nesting of the titles is the instruction about which order to read them in.