Andy's Philosophy of Language experience

Greeting oh fellow students and sufferers,


This is to tell you a wee bit about my experiences with a Philosophy of Language evening class I’m taking.

It’s a 10 week course on Tuesday evenings 6.30-8.30 at the Edinburgh Uni Office of Lifelong Learning. Back in December I saw a programme and the Philosophy of Language course sounded interesting, and the time fitted my busy lifestyle! So, I got some more info from the internet, and thought Yup, let’s do it…I plan to study Linguistics and then course should be relevant and challenging! I paid my £50, and took the course book out the library…MISTAKE…it is a well heavy academic tone and I’ve managed about 5 pages of the intro!

I decided the book might make more sense after the first class, and cheerily trundled along. We started fine, with background to language but then quickly got into heavy issues about Analytic philosophy; Plato wrote on the conventions of naming objects, but then you knew that, right?

I came away blinking in a confused rabbit like way, but determined to keep at it. I emailed the lecturer, and he sent me the powerpoint notes and some links to some sites. I read a bit, but still found the whole philosophy business to be a bit, well philosophical! Is there an answer? What does answer mean anyway?

So, the next Tuesday I persuaded Sara (you know, the Mexican lass!) to join me, and we puzzled through Frege’s theories on sense & reference. Again, fascinating but so difficult to get my head around, and I reckon Sara felt the same.

I decided part of the problem is the depth of the material…it’s just too deep! I went to the college library and took out a basic introduction to Philosophy, which provides good background to the whole subject, and a book that is about Philosophy & Language…it’s still not exactly straightforward, but through perseveration we shall overcome!

Plan is to do some revision on Tuesday afternoon, then meet with Sara to go over it with her…

Sláinte and enjoyer yer haggis!