Language Games

About Me:

Let’s see, general stuff first I suppose: I’m a 23 year old graduate student studying to get my M.S. in information technology with a specialization in e-business.  I’m a part-time freelance writer and web developer, although amateur in these respects.

My stint with philosophy

I studied philosophy and graduated cum laude and with honors from Goucher College with a B.A. back in May 2007.  Some of my areas of interest included: epistemology, logic (including modal logics and possible-world semantics), feminist epistemology, philosophy of science (in particular, Kuhnian philosophy of science), feminist philosophy of science, philosophy of language (particularly 20^th century analytic and post-analytic philosophy of language), and philosophy of mind (particularly 20^th century analytic and post-analytic philosophy of language).

Then there’s Wittgenstein.  I started reading Wittgenstein’s middle to later works (i.e. post 1929) during my senior year at Goucher College.  I was put under that Wittgenstein trance; the one that’s so easy to fall into.  I noticed myself kind of emulating him when writing papers.  That probably wasn’t a good thing.

In any event, my “faith” in the systematic approach to philosophizing was shaken somewhat by realizations I had experienced while reading Wittgenstein’s The Blue and Brown Books and Philosophical Grammar.  These realizations motivated in me an opposition to 20^th century Anglo-American accounts of language and meaning, in particular some of the same topics I had, only a few years prior, so happily embraced.  Soon it made no sense to talk about propositions and meaning as a function of some mapping from intensions to extensions (Chalmers).

My senior thesis quickly found use for Wittgenstein’s playful attempt at dissolving our philosophical confusions; by the end, it turned into an epic 70+ page presentation and subsequent critique of 20^th century efforts to come to grips with the issues Brentano is credited with motivating in his notion of intentionality.  I’ve got many posts on this topic, as you can see from the list of categories here.

Current life developments

After a brief stint in a graduate program for psychology (my minor in undergraduate was cognitive psychology) I switched fields and am now studying information technology.  I had seriously considered graduate school but found the competition and the somewhat career options for a PhD in philosophy somewhat restricting.

To my surprise, I never stopped the kind of thinking that was developed during my four years as an undergraduate.  I still assess arguments deductively.  I still use Wittgensteinian-like exclamations in response to something I find ridiculous in whatever it is I’m reading.  Such instances are usually motivated by a certain playful sarcasm that my time with Wittgenstein’s philosophy could not fail but instill in me.

Looking back at my old papers and older posts on this blog, I can’t say that I agree with everything I wrote.  But I look at these things developmentally and so I don’t think of such departures as instances of inconsistency.  We can change our minds, you know, and I think philosophers, in particular those clinging to some bizarre conception of philosophy as a science, or as a foundation for science, are apt to forget that.

If you want to know more about me, feel free to shoot me an email at dprice218@gmail.com