Special Guest Lecture: Michael Devitt (CUNY)

"The role of intuitions in the philosophy of language"

How should we find the truth about language? The received view is that we should proceed by consulting our intuitive judgments about language. How could this be acceptable? We should not go along with the common philosophical view that these intuitions are a priori. Philosophers might follow linguists in thinking that linguistic intuitions are “the voice” of our linguistic competence. But this view is false. We should see the intuitions as ordinary empirical judgments. As such, they are often good, albeit indirect, evidence. However, we can find more direct evidence by looking to the linguistic reality that these intuitions are about. This evidence is to be found in linguistic usage. http://devitt.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

All are welcome!

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