By
Randeep Wadehra
Thinking about the world by Manidipa Sen
IIAS, Shimla. Pages: x+108. Price: Rs. 290/-
Analytic and linguistic philosophy came to the fore as a distinct discipline during the 20th-century. It aims to elucidate language and analyze the concepts expressed in it. This, arguably, helps settle philosophical disputes and problems, which, it is contended, originate in linguistic confusion. Some analytic and linguistic philosophers are primarily concerned with clarifying the meaning of specific words or phrases as an essential step in making philosophical assertions clear and unambiguous. Others are more concerned with establishing a criterion that will distinguish between meaningful and nonsensical sentences. Still others are interested in creating formal, symbolic languages that are mathematical in nature. Many philosophers associated with this stream of philosophy also focus on the analysis of ordinary, or natural, language as the key to resolving philosophical conundrums.
Sen takes a look at recent trends in analytic philosophy that indicate a shift from questions of language to questions of mind, leading to the argumentation that “a mentalist turn has emanated from what has been called the linguistic turn”. This slim volume, comprising three chapters, explores the nature of de re thoughts and its impact on the debates centering on externalist versus internalist accounts of the mind. Taking cognizance of the intrinsic relationship between questions of language and questions of mind it “tries to develop a notion of de re thoughts from the different accounts of reference”. Sen argues that de re thoughts are constitutively tied with their objects and are essentially individuated in terms of their objects. She attempts to displace the internalist understanding of the mind in favor of an externalist notion of it where the mind can be seen in continuation with the world and as having no context-free essence. A welcome addition to the analytic philosophy corpus.
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