Gaskin is the author of many published articles and nine books, including: Language and World: A Defence of Linguistic Idealism (2020), Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: a Philosophical Perspective (2018), Language, Truth, and Literature: a Defence of Literary Humanism (2013), The Unity of the Proposition (2008), Experience and the World's Own Language: a Critique of John McDowell's Empiricism (2006), and The Sea Battle and the Master Argument: Aristotle and Diodorus Cronus on the metaphysics of the future (1995).[2]
Early life, education, and career
Gaskin was born in 1960 in Milngavie, Glasgow, and attended Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen, where his father, Maxwell Gaskin, held the Jaffrey Chair of Political Economy.[3] He studied literae humaniores (classics and philosophy) at University College, Oxford, and obtained his BA (first class) in 1982. While an undergraduate at Oxford he was secretary of the Oxford University Dramatic Society from 1981 to 82, and directed a production of Marlowe's Dr Faustus at the Oxford Playhouse in March 1981.[4] He took the BPhil exam in 1986, supervised by John McDowell. In 1987 he won the Gaisford Dissertation Prize in classical literature for his essay Tragedy and Subjectivity in Virgil’s 'Aeneid' .[5] He was awarded the DPhil in 1988 for a thesis supervised by Michael Dummett, David Wiggins, and Barry Stroud, entitled Experience, Agency, and the Self.[6] From 1988 to 1989 Gaskin spent a year as an Alexander von Humboldt visiting fellow at the University of Mainz, Germany, researching decision-making in classical literature under the Virgilian scholar Antonie Wlosok.[7] From 1991 to 2001, he was a Lecturer (from 1997 Reader) in Philosophy at the University of Sussex.[8] In 2001 he became Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool.[9]
Philosophical work
A central part of Gaskin's work focuses on the doctrine of linguisticidealism, the idea that the world is produced by, and depends on, language. Gaskin argues that the dependence of the world on language is a logical and constitutive one, rather than a temporal one: objects (such as tables and chairs) exist in virtue of, and are constituted as objects by, the existence of sentences about them; language 'makes the world', but not in the sense that there was a time at which it pre-existed the world. Although human language is a purely contingent product of evolution, there is a transcendental sense in which the existence of the world depends on the existence of language—more precisely, on the capacity of language to talk about the world. In Gaskin's view the world is constitutively composed of propositions, which are referents of sentences; these propositions contain the ordinary objects of our discourse. In Language and World (2020), Gaskin develops the theory of linguistic idealism and defends it against several objections. He addresses the problem that some mathematical entities, in particular uncomputable sets of real numbers, cannot be distinguished by language; he does this by developing a ‘split-level' version of linguistic idealism. In his approach all the basic entities of the world can be named in language, and all further entities, even if they cannot be named, can be derived from these basic entities by describable constructive operations. In Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: A Philosophical Perspective (2018), Gaskin argues that not even the tragic aspects of life (such as pain and suffering) are beyond language, an objection commonly raised against the idea that language is omnicompetent to talk about and describe reality.
In his writings on literature, Gaskin has defended a version of literary humanism, according to which works of imaginative literature have an objective meaning which is fixed at the time of their production and is the same for all readers.[10] In addition to his publications in philosophy of literature, he has written a study of the poetsHorace and Housman,[11] essays on Virgil (e.g. On being pessimistic about the end of the 'Aeneid'[12]), Homer (e.g. Do Homeric Heroes make real decisions?[13]), the classicist Richard Bentley,[14] and the essayist Charles Lamb.[15] Gaskin has translated selections from Apollonius of Rhodes's Greek poem Argonautica into English verse.[16] Gaskin has written on ancient and on medieval philosophy,[17][18] and on Wittgenstein.[19] He maintains a website on which he mounts recordings of English, German, and Latinpoetry.[20]
Othello and the Problem of Knowledge: Reading Shakespeare through Wittgenstein (Routledge 2023)
Language and world: a Defence of Linguistic Idealism (Routledge 2020).
Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: a Philosophical Perspective (Routledge 2018).
Horace and Housman (Palgrave Macmillan 2013).
Language, Truth, and Literature: a Defence of Literary Humanism (OUP 2013).
The Unity of the Proposition (OUP 2008).
Experience and the World's Own Language: a Critique of John McDowell's Empiricism (Clarendon Press 2006).
The Sea Battle and the Master Argument: Aristotle and Diodorus Cronus on the Metaphysics of the Future (Walter de Gruyter 1995).
Selected articles
On being pessimistic about the end of the Aeneid, forthcoming in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology.[22]
A Defence of the Resemblance Meaning of “What it’s like”, Mind 128, 2019, 673–98. DOI 10.1093/mind/fzx023.
From the unity of the proposition to linguistic idealism, Synthese 196, 2019, 1325–42. DOI 10.1007/s11229-016-1081-5.
Identity and Reference in a Black Universe, in P. Stalmaszczyk ed., Philosophical and Linguistic Analyses of Reference (Frankfurt: Lang, 2016), 19–41. DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-05429-3.
Meaning, Normativity, and Naturalism, in B. Dainton and H. Robinson eds., The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 230–54. ISBN978-1-474-23648-5.
When Logical Atomism met the Theaetetus: Ryle on Naming and Saying, in M. Beaney ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 2013), 851–69. DOI 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238842.013.0037.
Reach's Puzzle and Mention (co-authored with Daniel J. Hill), Dialectica 67, 2013, 201–22. DOI 10.1111/1746-8361.12021.
Bentley's classicism, Paradise Lost, and the Schema Horatianum, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 17, 2010, 354–65. DOI .
Realism and the Picture Theory of Meaning, Philosophical Topics 37, 2009, 49–62. DOI 10.5840/philtopics200937115.
John Wyclif and the Theory of Complexly Signifiables, Vivarium 47, 2009, 74–96. DOI 10.1163/156853408X345927.
Complexe Significabilia and Aristotle's Categories, in J. Biard und I. Rosier-Catach eds., La Tradition Médiévale des Catégories (Louvain: Peeters, 2003), 187–205. ISBN90-429-1335-5.
Nonsense and Necessity in Wittgenstein's Mature Philosophy, in R. Gaskin ed., Grammar in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2001), 199–217. ISBN978-0-415-40845-5.
Ockham's Mental Language, Connotation, and the Inherence Regress, in D. Perler ed., Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 227–63. ISBN978-9-004-12295-6.
Do Homeric Heroes make Real Decisions? (revised version of 1990 CQ paper), in D. Cairns ed., Oxford Readings on Homer's Iliad (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 147–65. ISBN978-0-198-72182-6.
Fatalism, Middle Knowledge, and Comparative Similarity of Worlds, Religious Studies 34, 1998, 189–203. DOI 10.1017/S0034412598004338.
Simplicius on the Meaning of Sentences: a Commentary on In Cat. 396,30–397,28, Phronesis 43, 1998, 42–62. DOI 10.1163/15685289860517793.
Peter Damian on Divine Power and the Contingency of the Past, British Journal of the History of Philosophy 5, 1997, 229–47. DOI 10.1080/09608789708570965.
Russell and Richard Brinkley on the Unity of the Proposition, History and Philosophy of Logic 18, 1997, 139–50. DOI 10.1080/01445349708837284.
Peter of Ailly and other Fourteenth-Century Thinkers on Divine Power and the Necessity of the Past, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 79, 1997, 273–91. DOI 10.1515/agph.1997.79.3.273.
The Stoics on Cases, Predicates and the Unity of the Proposition, in Aristotle and After ed. R. Sorabji (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1997), 91–108. DOI 10.1111/j.2041-5370.1997.tb02264.x.
Fregean Sense and Russellian Propositions, Philosophical Studies 86, 1997, 131–54. DOI 10.1023/A:1017929320501
Conditionals of Freedom and Middle Knowledge Philosophical Quarterly 43, 1993, 412–30. (Winner of 1992 PQ essay competition.) DOI 10.2307/2219983. Reprinted with corrections in E. Dekker et al. eds., Middle Knowledge (Peter Lang, 2000), 137–56, ISBN978-3-631-36288-4.
Turnus, Mezentius, and the Complexity of Virgil's Aeneid, Latomus, Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History VI, 1992, 295–316, ISBN978-2-870-31157-8.
Do Homeric Heroes make Real Decisions?, Classical Quarterly 40, 1990, 1–15. DOI 10.1017/S0009838800026768.
Can Aesthetic Value Be Explained?, British Journal of Aesthetics 29, 1989, 329–40. DOI 10.1093/bjaesthetics/29.4.329.
Related Research Articles
Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality. This includes the first principles of: being or existence, identity, change, space and time, cause and effect, necessity, actuality, and possibility.
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that was published during his lifetime. The project had a broad goal: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science. Wittgenstein wrote the notes for the Tractatus while he was a soldier during World War I and completed it during a military leave in the summer of 1918. It was originally published in German in 1921 as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. In 1922 it was published together with an English translation and a Latin title, which was suggested by G. E. Moore as homage to Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670).
Saul Aaron Kripke was an American analytic philosopher and logician. He was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and emeritus professor at Princeton University. Kripke is considered one of the most important philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century. Since the 1960s, he has been a central figure in a number of fields related to mathematical and modal logic, philosophy of language and mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, and recursion theory.
Classical logic is the intensively studied and most widely used class of deductive logic. Classical logic has had much influence on analytic philosophy.
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia, and continues today. Analytic philosophy is often contrasted with continental philosophy, coined as a catch-all term for other methods, prominent in Europe.
John Henry McDowell, FBA is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, nature, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work has been in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. McDowell was one of three recipients of the 2010 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award, and is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the British Academy.
Pluralism is a term used in philosophy, meaning "doctrine of multiplicity", often used in opposition to monism and dualism. The term has different meanings in metaphysics, ontology, epistemology and logic. In metaphysics, pluralism is the doctrine that contradicts the assertions of monism and dualism, and claims that there are in fact many different substances in nature that constitute reality. In ontology, pluralism refers to different ways, kinds, or modes of being. For example, a topic in ontological pluralism is the comparison of the modes of existence of things like 'humans' and 'cars' with things like 'numbers' and some other concepts as they are used in science.
In metaphysics and philosophy of language, the correspondence theory of truth states that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes that world.
Ordinary language philosophy (OLP) is a philosophical methodology that sees traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting how words are ordinarily used to convey meaning in non-philosophical contexts. "Such 'philosophical' uses of language, on this view, create the very philosophical problems they are employed to solve."
Logical atomism is a philosophical view that originated in the early 20th century with the development of analytic philosophy. It holds that the world consists of ultimate logical "facts" that cannot be broken down any further, each of which can be understood independently of other facts.
Philosophical realism – usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters – is the view that a certain kind of thing has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it exists even in the absence of any mind perceiving it or that its existence is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder. This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding. This can apply to items such as the physical world, the past and future, other minds, and the self, though may also apply less directly to things such as universals, mathematical truths, moral truths, and thought itself. However, realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality entirely.
The linguistic turn was a major development in Western philosophy during the early 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the focusing of philosophy primarily on the relations between language, language users, and the world.
Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.
Diodorus Cronus was a Greek philosopher and dialectician connected to the Megarian school. He was most notable for logic innovations, including his master argument formulated in response to Aristotle's discussion of future contingents.
Future contingent propositions are statements about states of affairs in the future that are contingent: neither necessarily true nor necessarily false.
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought.
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word philosophy itself originated from the Ancient Greek philosophía (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" Ancient Greek: φιλεῖν phileîn, "to love" and σοφία sophía, "wisdom").
This is an index of Wikipedia articles in philosophy of language
Richard Charles Murray Janko is an Anglo-American classical scholar and the Gerald F. Else Distinguished University Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan.
References
↑ The Sea Battle and the Master Argument: Aristotle and Diodorus Cronus on the Metaphysics of the Future (Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), page VII
↑ Gaskin, Richard (January 2013). "Lamb and Horace". Charles Lamb Bulletin– via www.academia.edu.
↑ Apollonius of Rhodes: the voyage of Argo: passages from the first three books translated into English verse, with a brief linking narrative. Leerie Books. 3 May 1995. OCLC35137372.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
