Obviously, the screenwriter of this film has studied language philosophy seriously, and hopes to reflect some of the essence of language philosophy through dramatic plots. For that, I give it four stars. I think the movie basically achieves this goal, at least in my opinion, the plot is tight, and the ideas of language philosophy melt into the plot. Most importantly, the philosophy of language, like other philosophies, is not essentially playing with concepts, but hoping to approach the truth and reveal the nature of the world. Although this film cannot be compared with professional philosophy papers, it does show this feature of philosophy. The core of the philosophy of language is the truth value of propositions, and truth also means truth. I can almost conclude that this was the starting point of screenwriting inspiration. How to define the truth-value judgment of a proposition is not a problem for the purely formal philosophers of language, as long as the real world is consistent with the propositional description, it is true.
But the point is, how do we judge this "consistency". This involves the definition of language meaning. Zhang San is very beautiful. This proposition is true on the premise that Zhang San is really beautiful. But how is the meaning of the word "beauty" defined? If we can't define the meaning of the word, how can we judge the truth value?
Another difficulty is related to human psychology. I think it is also one of the core of the film. If Zhang San is punched in the arm, then say, "My arm hurts." How to judge this true value? We can only rely on Zhang San's psychology: if Zhang San really feels pain, then this proposition is true. Human beings largely use such criteria to judge the truth value of the propositions they say. However, some propositions are not based on personal feelings, especially when it comes to the occurrence of events. Does the speaker have natural confidence in the existence of the event he participated in (ie, judge the truth value with the same mentality as "arm pain"), but what if the memory is biased? At this time, how should "I" judge the truth of the incident I participated in? Normal people tend to be paranoid about self-confidence, but someone like the protagonist of a movie, who clearly knows that his memory is biased and confused, will have a huge confusion about the truth of the world in which he lives. So in the final analysis, it still explains the goal of the philosophy of language: to clear the obstacles for the search for truth, and to understand the clear path to the truth. However, in the real world, humans are not capable of doing this comprehensively. The protagonist is just an extreme example, and all of us have this characteristic to some extent. Philosophy, in addition to the idealized pursuit of truth, also clearly points out the internal reasons for our predicament. So don't jump to the conclusion that philosophers are just playing word games like "The king of France is bald" without knowing the philosophy of language.
ps. The screenwriter reveals that he is not an expert in language philosophy: the protagonist says he is a philosopher of language and a linguist. Philosophy of language and linguistics have much in common, but their research goals are quite different. Few professors of philosophy of language would call themselves a linguist. Anyway, the screenwriter is not a professional scholar, I don't think it's a big problem.
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