Philosophy of Language

Introduction Philosophy of language is an experimental sphere of philosophy that reveals the main significance of language and speech in comprehension and textures of reason and cognition.  The philosophy of language adjoins the history of language and linguistics;  it includes biology, logic, psychology, sociology of language.  Abstract reflections on the language, its appearance, formation and significance were earlier in the Indian and Greek philosophers (including among the Sophists and Plato).  The naturalistic philosophy of language considers language - as well as the ability formed in a natural way, the idealistic philosophy of language - as well as the creation of the spirit.  The present position of studies in the field of language philosophy is characterized by two complementary directions: the return to the external and internal reality of the actual position of the language, and also the desire to clarify the categorical principles of the human language, to the general grammar.  In this regard, they return to previous language studies related to the names of Herder, Humboldt and Grimm.  This happens because the above studies pass according to the path chosen by the new ontology.  X. Lipps studies the essence of language from the standpoint of existentialism, considering the real movement of the speech process.  Thinking is a dynamic process of mapping objective society in theories, concepts, judgments, etc., related to the solution of various issues, with generalization and methods of mediated knowledge of reality.  Thus, being united, with conceptual aspects, thinking is responsible for understanding, processing and modification of the linguistic sign in what it means - into a concept.  Idealism constantly strives to divide thought from matter, and if it allowed such a connection, then in that case it sought to imagine thinking as something derived from certain spiritual principles that stand above matter and the consciousness of individual people.  The present bourgeois philosophy in the person of neo-positivism has taken up positions of denial of thinking as well as something actually existing.  Adhering to behaviorism, combining all the human experience only with directly observable facts, neopositivism declares thinking, along with matter (in contrast to the language, which is constantly depicted as a sensible fact), a fiction.  Neo-positivism neglects the fact that language is a way of expression, a model of the existence of thoughts.  In fact, by analyzing the language, those features of the brain that are characterized as thinking are examined.  Language as a sign system Language and thinking are inextricably linked, this is not in anyone's doubt.  Language is a necessary condition for the emergence of thinking, the form of its existence and the way it functions.  In the process of development of the human community and its culture, thinking and language form a single rechemyslitelny complex, which serves as the basis for the majority of cultural entities and communicative reality.  Thinking mainly deals with concepts as logical meanings of linguistic signs.  Strictly speaking, the problem of the meaning of a word is connected not only with thinking, but also with consciousness.  In addition to the logical meanings of linguistic signs, there are also emotional and aesthetic.  A sign is an external expression of the internal content of objects and phenomena-their significance.  Man - the only creature that models the outside world with the help of sign systems.  Signs are symbols of Mendeleyev's table, musical notes, drawings, names, etc.  In any human community, people react to certain signs in accordance with cultural traditions, for the formation of a landmark picture of the world and the perception of the world in a sign system are always mediated by culture.  Signs expressing the meanings of phenomena can have either conditional or real character (for example, local clothing features).  Conditional signs, in turn, are divided into special and non-special.  The role of a non-special sign can be played, say, by a tree used as a landmark;  special signs are gestures, signs of traffic, insignia, rituals, etc.The most important conventional signs of human culture are words.  The subjects and phenomena of the surrounding reality are rarely completely subject to man, and the words - the signs by which we designate them, obey our will, joining together in the meaning chains - phrases.  With signs, with the values ​​that are given to them, it is easier to operate than with the phenomena themselves.  Language - the main of the sign systems of man, the most important means of human communication.  K. Marx, for example, called the language "the immediate reality of thought."  With the help of words, you can interpret other sign systems (for example, you can describe a picture).  Language - a universal material that is used by people in explaining the world and the formation of a particular model.  Although the artist can do this with the help of visual images, and the musician - with the help of sounds, but all of them are armed, first of all, with signs of a universal code - language.  Any language consists of different words, that is, conditional sonic signs denoting various objects and processes, and also from rules that allow you to construct sentences from these words.  It is suggestions that are the means of expressing thoughts.  With the help of interrogative sentences, people ask, express their bewilderment or ignorance, with the help of imperatives - give orders, narrative proposals serve to describe the world around, to convey and express knowledge about it.  The totality of the words of a particular language forms its vocabulary.  Dictionaries of the most developed modern languages ​​have tens of thousands of words.  With their help, thanks to the rules of combining and combining words into sentences, you can write and pronounce an unlimited number of meaningful phrases, filling them with hundreds of millions of articles, books and files.  Because of this language allows you to express a variety of thoughts, describe the feelings and experiences of people, formulate mathematical theorems, etc.  Language functions Language can be spoken and written, it arises in the human community, performing the most important functions: expression of thought or consciousness;  - storage and transmission of information;  - Means of communication or communication.  Higher animals have rudiments of sound signaling.  Chickens publish several dozen sounds, expressing a sense of danger, summoning chickens, signaling the presence or absence of food.  At such highly developed mammals as dolphins, there are already hundreds of sound signals, which gives scientists reason to believe the presence of language in their communication, and if so, it will be necessary to recognize that there is a special "dolphin civilization".  In the opinion of physiologist IPPavlov, animal signaling is based on sensations and elementary representations, which he named the first signal system.  It is limited in the amount of information transmitted, any animal signaling can express as many pieces of information as there are signals in it.  Any human language can convey and express an unlimited amount of information and diverse knowledge.  Language and discursive thinking Thanks to the language, a person can penetrate the depth of things, go beyond the immediate impression, organize his purposeful behavior, discover complex connections and relationships that are inaccessible to immediate perception, transmit information to another person, which is a powerful stimulus for mental development by transmitting information accumulated  for many generations.  However, language has another very important role, which goes beyond the organization of perception and communication.  The presence of language and its complex logical and grammatical structures allows a person to draw conclusions based on logical reasoning, without addressing, each time to his immediate sensory experience.  The presence of language allows a person to perform an operation of withdrawal, not relying on immediate impressions and confining himself to only those means that the language itself has.  This property of language creates the possibility of the most complex forms of discursive (inductive and deductive) thinking, which are the main forms of man's productive intellectual activity.This feature distinguishes decisively the conscious activity of man from the psychic processes of the animal.  An animal can form its experience only on the basis of directly perceived impressions or, at best, on the basis of a visual "extrapolation" of those events that arrive to it in the form of a direct impression.  It is known that the development of the psyche in the animal world is either limited to inherited complex behavior programs, or, along with unconditional connections, it is based on conditioned reflex connections, starting from the most elementary and ending with the most complex forms that lead to the possibility of extrapolating immediate impressions.  Absolutely different possibilities are opened by a person through language.  Having a speech, a person is able to draw conclusions not only from immediate impressions, but also from the universal experience of generations.  It is the ability to make logical conclusions without referring to the data of direct, sensual experience every time, characterized by a productive thinking of the person, arising due to language.  The means of language are aimed at providing a person with the opportunity not only to name and generalize objects, not only to formulate word combinations, but also to provide a new process of productive logical inference that proceeds on a verbal-logical level and allows a person to deduce effects without referring directly to external impressions  .  Formed for many thousands of years of public history, the apparatus of the logical combination of several utterances forms the basic system of means underlying the logical thinking of man.  A model of logical thinking, realized with the help of speech, can be a syllogism.  Logical thinking of a person has a variety of codes or logical matrices that are devices for logical inference and allow you to obtain new knowledge, not empirically, but in a rational way.  It