Editing Philosophy Of Language (section)

== <span style="color: #FFFFFF;">Understanding</span> ==
Philosophy of language has been shaped by four transformative intellectual moments:

'''Frege's semantic revolution''': Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) transformed logic and philosophy of language by distinguishing sense from reference. The planet Venus can be referred to as "the morning star" or "the evening star" — same reference, different sense. His key insight: the sense of an expression is its "mode of presentation" of its referent; this explains why "Hesperus is Phosphorus" is informative even though both names refer to Venus. Frege also introduced the notion of a function from objects to truth-values, enabling predicate logic and compositional semantics.

'''Kripke's naming revolution''': Saul Kripke (''Naming and Necessity'', 1980) overturned the Russell-Frege description theory of names. Names are not disguised descriptions; they are rigid designators that refer directly to their objects through a historical causal chain. "Water" rigidly designates H₂O in all possible worlds — even worlds where no one knows this. This enabled "necessary a posteriori" truths: "water is H₂O" is necessarily true but knowable only empirically. It also means that names don't mean the same as any description — Aristotle would still be Aristotle even if he had never taught Alexander.

'''The later Wittgenstein and meaning as use''': In ''Philosophical Investigations'', Wittgenstein abandoned his earlier picture theory of meaning (from the ''Tractatus''). He argued there is no essence of language, no private language (meaning requires public criteria), and meaning is use in a practice — a "form of life." The rule-following considerations: no fact about past practice determines future correct use; understanding is a kind of competence, not a mental state.

'''Grice and the pragmatics revolution''': H.P. Grice distinguished what is said (the literal, truth-conditional content) from what is implicated (what is communicated beyond the literal). Implicatures arise from the assumption that speakers are cooperative. "Can you pass the salt?" literally asks about ability; it implicates a request. The four maxims — quantity, quality, relation, manner — generate implicatures when apparently violated. Grice's framework is the foundation of modern pragmatics and is deeply relevant to understanding natural language AI.
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