Functional Explanation in the Philosophy of Language

Call for Abstracts for early-career researchers: See tinyurl.com/functiongap

The workshop takes place as a „Satellite Workshop“ right after GAP.12, the international congress of the Society for Analytic Philosophy, on September 12 at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany.

The workshop aims to bring together researchers in the philosophy of language and linguistics to focus on the role that the attribution of functions to linguistic entities such as concepts (e.g. concepts of race and  gender), linguistic systems (e.g. modal and moral language), or language as a whole can play in settling debates in the philosophy of language.

Rather than focusing on particular functional hypotheses, the goal of the workshop is to address general methodological questions on the use and usefulness of functional explanations in the philosophy of language (e.g. what grounds function attribution to a linguistic entity? What impact does the choice of concept of function have on our explanations? Which types of explananda are legitimate? How could functional explanations be more useful in theorizing about language than other types of explanation? How do paradigmatic functional explanations transfer to the study of language?).

Attendance is free of charge, but registration prior to September 10 via email ([email protected]) is required.

We thank GAP for generous funding of the workshop.