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Philosophy of language Task force article · category · portal  · Join the Task Force  · Philosophy Project (talk)  · Linguistics Project (talk)  · Index (changes)  · List of philosophers  · Popular pages  · Requested articles  · Outline  · Template  · Worklist  · Statistics  · Log .mw-parser-output .hlist dl,.mw-parser-output .hlist ol,.mw-parser-output .hlist ul{margin:0;padding:0}.mw-parser-output .hlist dd,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt,.mw-parser-output .hlist li{margin:0;display:inline}.mw-parser-output .hlist.inline,.mw-parser-output .hlist.inline dl,.mw-parser-output .hlist.inline ol,.mw-parser-output .hlist.inline ul,.mw-parser-output .hlist dl dl,.mw-parser-output .hlist dl ol,.mw-parser-output .hlist dl ul,.mw-parser-output .hlist ol dl,.mw-parser-output .hlist ol ol,.mw-parser-output .hlist ol ul,.mw-parser-output .hlist ul dl,.mw-parser-output .hlist ul ol,.mw-parser-output .hlist ul ul{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .hlist .mw-empty-li{display:none}.mw-parser-output .hlist dt::after{content:": "}.mw-parser-output .hlist dd::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist li::after{content:" · ";font-weight:bold}.mw-parser-output .hlist dd:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist li:last-child::after{content:none}.mw-parser-output .hlist dd dd:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist dd dt:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist dd li:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt dd:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt dt:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt li:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist li dd:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist li dt:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist li li:first-child::before{content:" (";font-weight:normal}.mw-parser-output .hlist dd dd:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist dd dt:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist dd li:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt dd:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt dt:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt li:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist li dd:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist li dt:last-child::after,.mw-parser-output .hlist li li:last-child::after{content:")";font-weight:normal}.mw-parser-output .hlist ol{counter-reset:listitem}.mw-parser-output .hlist ol>li{counter-increment:listitem}.mw-parser-output .hlist ol>li::before{content:" "counter(listitem)"\a0 "}.mw-parser-output .hlist dd ol>li:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist dt ol>li:first-child::before,.mw-parser-output .hlist li ol>li:first-child::before{content:" ("counter(listitem)"\a0 "}.mw-parser-output .navbar{display:inline;font-size:88%;font-weight:normal}.mw-parser-output .navbar-collapse{float:left;text-align:left}.mw-parser-output .navbar-boxtext{word-spacing:0}.mw-parser-output .navbar ul{display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;line-height:inherit}.mw-parser-output .navbar-brackets::before{margin-right:-0.125em;content:"[ "}.mw-parser-output .navbar-brackets::after{margin-left:-0.125em;content:" ]"}.mw-parser-output .navbar li{word-spacing:-0.125em}.mw-parser-output .navbar a>span,.mw-parser-output .navbar a>abbr{text-decoration:inherit}.mw-parser-output .navbar-mini abbr{font-variant:small-caps;border-bottom:none;text-decoration:none;cursor:inherit}.mw-parser-output .navbar-ct-full{font-size:114%;margin:0 7em}.mw-parser-output .navbar-ct-mini{font-size:114%;margin:0 4em}vte

Welcome to the Philosophy of Language Task Force, a subproject of WikiProject Philosophy and WikiProject Linguistics.

Getting started

There are a few things you can do right now to get started helping the task force and the project.

Scope and Goals

The focus of the task force will be to work as diligently as is humanly possible to create professional-quality, thoroughly documented, and encyclopedic articles on the philosophy of language and to integrate them as much as possible with work from all branches of linguistics: psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, etc..

Philosophy of language is a particularly challenging field. Much of its most important and groundbreaking work lies at the subtle confine between philosophy and mathematical logic, and between the humanities and rigorous scientific research.

It attempts to bridge the gap between the so-called two cultures by creating a synthesizing third culture that includes and enhances the first two.

Categories

The task

The current main article of philosophy of language contains hardly any information on important theoretical concepts and what it does contain is extremely ill-organized and confused.

Philosophy of language is a large and complex field. Indeed, the analytic tradition of philosophy has traditionally, and continues to, place a tremendous amount of importance on the analysis of language as the vehicle of thought.

According to most analytic philosophers that which we want to explain is the nature of thoughts. What are they? What is their structure and constitution? What are their relations with one another in the processes of reasoning and of deliberation which ultimately result in the performance of actions.

Unlike the psychologist, we are not interested here, however, in the specific processes or activities of individual thought in and of themselves.

That which should concern the philosopher of language are the contents of thoughts: their comprehensibility, communicability and objectivity (or perhaps intersubjectivity).

As Michael Dummett has put it: that which distinguishes analytic philosophy, in all of it diverse manifestations, from other schools is the conviction that, in the first place, a philosophical explanation of thought can be achieved through a philosophical explanation of language, and secondly, that a comprehensive explanation is achievable only in this way.

The vast amount of information is too much for one or two people to handle. The coordinative effort of all those willing to assist is needed.

Since we are a derivative of WikiProject Philosophy, our goals are very similar and are as follows:

  1. To identify those areas of philosophy of language which lack sufficient coverage on Wikipedia;
  2. To improve those articles that need help;
  3. To create a general map of the philosophy of language articles and subjects on Wikipedia and link the articles together accordingly.
Philosophy of language task force assessment statistics

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Current goals


New or improved articles

Participants

Philosophy of language task force


Templates

Project page tag

Articles in the scope of the Philosophy of language task force should be tagged with the project templates for both WikiProject Philosophy and WikiProject Linguistics. Add the following at the top of the talk pages of all philosophy of language articles:

((WikiProject Philosophy|class=|importance=|language=yes))
((WikiProject Linguistics|class=|importance=|philosophy=yes))

It is especially important to tag:

Userbox

The template ((User WP Phil of language)) will add the following userbox to your user page, and add you to the Category:Philosophy of language task force participants and Category:WikiProject Philosophy participants

This user is a participant in the
Philosophy of language
task force
.