Michael Devitt on Experimental Semantics

Philosophy Bites

Nigel Warburton

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2016

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Does the word 'Gödel' straightforwardly refer to the person who came up with the incompleteness theory of arithmetic? Some think the best way to find out to ask people about their intuitions on the topic? This creates all kinds of problems, as Michael Devitt explains in conversation with Nigel Warburton.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is philosophy bites.
0:04.0	This is philosophy bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.
0:09.1	Philosophy bites is unfunded.
0:10.8	Please help us keep it going by subscribing or donating at
0:13.8	W.w. philosophy bites.com or you can become a patron at patreon.
0:19.8	Who is Nigel Warburton? How would you describe him?
0:23.4	Well, he's the main interviewer for philosophy bites.
0:26.7	But what if, actually, I'm the main interviewer and cunningly disguise my voice to confuse you.
0:33.0	Would the name Nigel Warburton then refer to the person currently known as David Edmonds?
0:38.0	Confused? Here's the person known as Michael Devitt, on names, reference and experiments.
0:45.0	Michael Devitt, welcome to Philosophy Bides.
0:48.0	Thank you for having me.
0:49.0	The topic we're going to focus on is experimental semantics. What is experimental semantics?
0:56.2	Well experimental semantics is concerned with the experimental testing of theories of reference.
1:03.2	So it's not really about semantics, which I understand to be all about meaning,
1:08.2	it's about what words refer to.
1:10.8	Well at least it's about reference, It's about the theory of reference.
1:14.0	So if I use the word Shakespeare, it refers to a particular person who lived and wrote the plays that we say by Shakespeare.
1:22.0	Right. And if you use the word rabbit, it refers to all those rabbits, and if you think of the word
1:27.7	chair, it refers to all those chairs and so on.
1:30.6	So the theory of reference is concerned with theories of in virtue of what?
1:35.6	Shakespeare refers to that famous playwright, in virtue of what rabbit refers to all those animals
	...

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