Category: Meaning

Literature Life needs direction and purpose, or at the very least, a code of morals or ideals to lead a satisfactory life. Faced with the human experiences of death, sickness and poverty some higher meaning needs to be in place in order to lead a fulfilling life. The defining experiences of being human are the…

Humans have always pondered the significance of our existence  the meaning of life. This relentless pursuit for meaning has produced a great deal of metaphysical, theological, scientific, and philosophical speculation. Prominent philosophers throughout history have attempted to provide a meaning to life, with many believing in order to understand the true meaning of life…

According to the social-norm approach, certain standards of behaviour exist in every society and in every age and on the basis of these defined norms, an utterance or behaviour of a particular kind is judged to be polite or impolite. In this regard, Fraser is of the opinion that these standards of behaviour are usually…

Man, first of all, is the being who hurls himself towards a future and who is conscious of imagining himself as being the future (Sartre in Cooper & McLeod, 2011, p19) In these modern times, there is little appreciation of the value of Philosophy, a discipline that is two and a half thousand years old.…

The informativeness of Hesperus=Phosphorus, commonly referred to as the identity problem, is an issue for the referential approach to meaning, which both Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell subscribe to. This essay will outline what the identity problem is, and why it is a problem for the referential approach to meaning. Generally speaking, a theory of…

We’re thinking about the particular word that Derrida uses to destabilize the very meaning of words, the very meaning of life, the very meaning of everything. The term ‘Deconstruction’ was coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida because it is a useful practice in preserving hidden meaning and perception in text. It is an interpretation style that…

Explain why the informativeness of Hesperus = Phosphorus is a problem for the referential approach to meaning. Critically compare Freges response to this problem with Russells. The referential approach to meaning is the idea that the meaning of every expression is its referent. A referent is an object referred to by the utterance of a…