A subdiscipline of philosophy.
Two traditions §
- Logistical tradition
- Runs from Frege/Russell, through the Tractatus, Carnap, Tarski, Quine, David Lewis
- Operative paradigm: formal calculi suitable for proofs about artificial symbolic languages
- tarskian model theory as a paradigm of semantics
- more powerful successor: possible worlds semantics
- Anthropological tradition
- Focuses on natural languages over artificial ones
- Thinks of languages as a social practice characteristic of biological creatures like us
- Dewey, early Heidegger, late Wittgenstein, Rorty.