PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Philosophy of Language 2

Question 1

Saul Kripke's concept of a 'rigid designator' refers to a term that:

Accepted Answer

Designates the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists

Answer

Changes its referent depending on the context of utterance

Answer

Refers only to abstract entities like numbers or properties

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Derives its meaning from a definite description

Question 2

Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment was designed to demonstrate that:

Accepted Answer

Linguistic meaning depends partly on factors external to the speaker's mind

Answer

Mental content is entirely determined by what is inside the speaker's head

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Language is an innate biological capacity

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Reference is always fixed by the descriptions speakers associate with a term

Question 3

The causal-historical theory of reference, developed by Kripke and Donnellan, holds that a name refers to its bearer by:

Accepted Answer

Being connected to the bearer through a causal chain tracing back to an initial dubbing

Answer

Matching a cluster of descriptions speakers associate with the bearer

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Expressing the speaker's mental image or concept of the referent

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Following grammatical rules governing the substitution of co-referential terms

Question 4

W.V.O. Quine's thesis of the 'indeterminacy of translation' claims that:

Accepted Answer

Multiple incompatible translation manuals can be equally consistent with all observable behavior

Answer

All languages can be translated into one another without any loss of meaning

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There is always a unique correct translation between any two languages

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Translation is impossible between cultures with radically different conceptual schemes

Question 5

Propositional attitudes (e.g., believing, desiring, fearing) are characterized by having:

Accepted Answer

A subject, an attitude type, and a propositional content

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Purely behavioral dispositions with no intentional content

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A necessary identity with specific brain states

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No cognitive or semantic significance

Question 6

The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic determinism) claims that:

Accepted Answer

The structure of a language determines or strongly constrains how its speakers think

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Language and thought are entirely independent processes

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Language merely reflects pre-existing thought structures

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All human languages share the same deep grammatical structure

Question 7

Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose reference shifts depending on context. Which of the following is an indexical?

Accepted Answer

'here'

Answer

'Aristotle'

Answer

'bachelor'

Answer

'triangle'