At Birmingham we have a number of academic staff interested in the philosophy of language, including metaphysics of meaning and epistemology of meaning. That’s why, amongst health and happiness, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion, and ethics, this forms one of the department’s four research clusters, exposing postgraduates to a wide range of philosophical theory and feedback when presenting their work.
Some research topics that are of particular interest to the cluster include:
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Rule-following and meaning (especially Kripke’s Wittgenstein)
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Theories of truth
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The epistemology of meaning and intention
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Tacit knowledge
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Naturalistic theories of content determination
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Internalist and externalist theories of content
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Semantic realism and semantic anti-realism
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The normativity of meaning and content
People
The core member of staff who works in the philosophy of language is:
Dr Darragh Byrne‘s main interests are in philosophy of mind, and language, where he tends to defend broadly empiricist views.
Postgraduate study
For postgraduates interested in studying programmes or modules in this area we offer the following taught MAs:
Our combined research and taught Philosophy MRes programme also includes modules in language, and those wishing to conduct pure research in the field may register for our PhD or MA by Research in Philosophy.
We have a number of postgraduate researchers interested in the philosophy of language, mind and action at Birmingham, with current theses including:
All of our postgraduate students benefit from the academic strengths of our research clusters and are often co-supervised by members of staff from associated clusters across the College of Arts and Law, so that they have access to different perspectives on their research topic. If you are interested in doing postgraduate research in the philosophy of language at Birmingham please feel free to contact the member of staff in the cluster that you think will be best suited to supervising your work here.
Selected publications
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Darragh Byrne and Max Kölbel (eds.) (2009): Arguing about Language. London: Routledge.
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Darragh Byrne (2005): “Compositionality and the Manifestation Challenge”. Synthese 144: 101-136.
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Darragh Byrne (2004): “The “Compositional Rigidity” of Recognitionality”. Philosophical Papers 33: 147-169.