Language, Mind And World

From 1980s to now, the intentionality theory has been being one of central thesis of philosophy of language. On the one hand, the intentionality theory of philosophy of language provides distinctive theory and way for researching human mind. On the other hand, it also provides a new theoretical basis for resolving important problems of philosophy of language. So the intentionality theory of philosophy of language occupies an important central position in the recasting study of scientific and philosophical theses. At present, one of central theses in current western philosophy is how to resole problems of philosophy by intentionality theory of philosophy of language. In China, by now, few scholars have interests in the intentionality theory of philosophy of language. Chinese circle doesn't pay close attention and universal study to intentionality theory of philosophy of language. This book has two objectives: 1.to discuss the basic contents of intentionality theory of philosophy of language, and it's resolving to reference problem, meaning problem, truth problem, knowledge problem, and those problems in philosophy of science; 2.to develop intentionality theory of philosophy of language by Contextualism and Contextual analysis method, furthermore, to resolve the problems of reference, meaning, truth and knowledge by a new Contextual-intentionality theory. In introduction, author briefly reviews the developing course of philosophy of language in 20th century, and the contents and methods of intentionality theory of philosophy of language. Chapter I discusses reference theory. Having remarked the descriptive theory of reference and causal theory of reference, it discusses intentionality theory of reference. Then, it argues the essence of reference problem by Contextual-intentionality theory. Chapter II discusses meaning theory of philosophy of language. Author first review the achievements and defects of traditional meaning theory and intentional meaning theory, then author gives a Contextual-intentionality theory model of language meaning problem. Chapter III first briefly reviews the process of three theories of truth, namely, correspondence theory of truth, coherence theory of truth and pragmatic theory of truth, are recast on the basis of philosophy of language in the first half of 20th century. Furthermore, it remarks the ways of to cohere the three theories of truth in the late half of the 20th century. On this basis, author argues Contextual-intentionality theory of truth. The theory of knowledge is not only one of important themes in western philosophy, but also logical entailment of truth problem. In chapter IV, author discusses the change of theory of knowledge in the 20th century and provides the explanation of Contextual-intentionality theory for human knowledge problem. Finally, this book has a conclusion that at present, Contextual-intentionality theory and Contextual-intentional analysis method are the theory and method which can be applied to resolve variant important problems of philosophy, especially, to resolve the problem of relation between language, mind and the world.