John Holloway (2) (1920–1999)
Författare till The Victorian Sage: Studies in Argument
För andra författare vid namn John Holloway, se särskiljningssidan.
Verk av John Holloway
Poems of the Mid-Century 4 exemplar
The Slumber of Apollo: Reflections on Recent Art, Literature, Language and the Individual Consciousness (2005) 2 exemplar
The minute, and longer poems 2 exemplar
Widening Horizons in English Verse 1 exemplar
Associerade verk
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Födelsedag
- 1920-08-01
- Avled
- 1999-08-29
- Kön
- male
- Nationalitet
- UK
- Födelseort
- South London, England, UK
- Utbildning
- Oxford University (New College)
Medlemmar
Recensioner
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Associerade författare
Statistik
- Verk
- 17
- Även av
- 4
- Medlemmar
- 96
- Popularitet
- #196,089
- Betyg
- 4.0
- Recensioner
- 3
- ISBN
- 116
- Språk
- 6
Holloway's book is an exploration of the use of language in philosophical concepts. He spends much ink in arriving at a conclusion that the ambiguity in the use of language makes it extremely difficult to arrive at a point where everyone can agree on a concept that has been put forward. He starts with a chapter on the problem of the meaning of words and how philosophers have tried to define what gives verbal and written words meaning for people who hear or see them. He starts by looking at the ideas of John Hume who claimed that
"the meaning of words is determined exclusively by the series of ideas which hearing and seeing the word brings to mind"
This leads Holloway to ask whether we see images in our mind of words seen or heard and then whether we see phrases as symbols or universals. He uses the word red as an example. How does the mention of the word red come into our mind and how is its arrival related to the awareness of a universal. Do we all understand red in the same way? obviously not, because there are different shades of red and when the word is used with adjectives or with other nouns then the attempts to bring a clearer definition lead to all sorts of other ambiguities.
There are chapters on Signs and Symbols, Does intelligence exist?, Habit and Intelligence, Proliferations of the Verbal language, Ambiguity in Language and finally Language as a system. During this final chapter Holloway expresses some thoughts on the nature of philosophical discussion:
Each participant in the discussion develops his own model and the easiest way to increase its attractiveness is to expose the weakness of its rivals - a process always guaranteed of some success.
Philosophers do not discover in ordinary language a hierarchy of linguistic strata completely formed, but an immense variety and a complete absence of system.
I struggled a little to follow all of the arguments and found some of the examples to seem to go on for ever, but along the way there were some interesting ideas. Not a complete waste of time then, but for me a 3 star rating.… (mer)