Philosophical language
A philosophical language is an engineered language which attempts to implement some kind of philosophical idea.
Often, the term is understood to refer to an a priori conlang with a vocabulary based on a general taxonomy of ideas. Words are derived from more general words. For example, 'cat' would be a derivative of 'mammal' (perhaps with a few levels in between) which would be a derivative of 'animal', etc. While this works well with some fields of discourse where a natural taxonomy exists (as in the 'cat' example above), it fails in most others where any taxonomy remains arbitrary. Philosophical languages also suffer from the problem that words with similar meaning are also very similar in form, which can lead to misunderstandings.
An interesting variation of this approach is the arithmographic language, as first envisioned by Leibniz.
Philosophical languages were popular in the 17th century, but some were designed later - until the present day.
Some philosophical languages
17th century
- Ars signorum (1661) by George Dalgarno
- An Essay towards a Real Character (1668) by John Wilkins
- Characteristica universalis by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
