Abstract

Shrek! focuses on an issue in the philosophy of language, a relatively new area of philosophical investigation that first emerged during the twentieth century. Some philosophers disagree with the claim that you cannot separate the descriptive and evaluative elements of linguistic statements. This is because they take descriptive statements to be the basic elements of language, to which our subjective attitudes get attached later in a contingent manner. At its most basic level language presents a symbolic picture of facts in the world. Shrek! presents what philosophers call a thought experiment that purports to show that the descriptive and evaluative contents of sentences are really distinct. The chapter ends by suggesting how to discuss the philosophy of language with children.