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Logo Revista Latinoamericana de Investigación en Matemática Educativa

Special Article

Vol. 9 No. 4 (2006): Número Especial

EVERYDAY AND MATHEMATICAL LANGUAGE 100 YEARS AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF "ON DENOTING" BY BERTRAND RUSELL.

Submitted
October 28, 2024
Published
2006-12-30

Abstract

The article “On denoting” by B. Russell, published in 1905, is a milestone in philosophical reflection on language. In the present paper, we examine pupils’ reactions both to a sentence inspired by a celebrated example introduced by Russell and to a statement expressed in mathematical language. We move away from an interpretation of experimental data confined to the classical concepts of truth and rationality and propose instead some reflections that shift “the standard of epistemic objectivity from the private certainty of an experiencing subject to the public practice of justification within a communicative community” (J. Habermas). We conclude that language is a very important moment in which the meaning of an expression is fixed, but we keep in mind that “language, like any other semiotic system, functions inside a cultural network of significations” (L. Radford).

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