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How is it that words come to stand for the things they stand for? Is the thing that a word stands for - its reference - fully identified or described by conventions known to the users of the word? Or is there a more roundabout relation between the reference of a word and the conventions that determine or fix it? Do words like 'water', 'three', and 'red' refer to appropriate things, just as the word 'Aristotle' refers to Aristotle? If so, which things are these, and how do they come to be referred to by those words? In Roads to Reference, Mario Gómez-Torrente provides novel answers to these and other questions that have been of traditional interest in the theory of reference. The book introd...
This is a collection of papers by leading scholars in the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics on how semantics and pragmatics embed into a larger theory of interpretation and also on the disputed territories between these disciplines.
Mouton Series in Pragmatics (MSP) is a timely response to the growing demand for innovative and authoritative monographs and edited volumes from all angles of pragmatics. Recent theoretical work on the semantics/pragmatics interface, applications of evolutionary biology to the study of language, and empirical work within cognitive and developmental psychology and intercultural communication has directed attention to issues that warrant reexamination, as well as revision of some of the central tenets and claims of the field of pragmatics. The series welcomes proposals that reflect this endeavour and exploration within the discipline and neighboring fields such as language philosophy, communication, information science, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition and cognitive science. MSP will provide a forum for authors who represent different subfields of pragmatics including the linguistic, cognitive, social, and intercultural paradigms, and have important and intriguing ideas and research findings to share with scholars who are interested in linguistics in general and pragmatics in particular.
The author of this text explores the notion of truth and its role in our ordinary thought, as well as in logical philosophical and scientific theories.
This collection of new essays presents cutting-edge research on the semantic conception of logic, the invariance criteria of logicality, grammaticality, and logical truth. Contributors explore the history of the semantic tradition, starting with Tarski, and its historical applications, while central criticisms of the tradition, and especially the use of invariance criteria to explain logicality, are revisited by the original participants in that debate. Other essays discuss more recent criticism of the approach, and researchers from mathematics and linguistics weigh in on the role of the semantic tradition in their disciplines. This book will be invaluable to philosophers and logicians alike.
This collection of essays on Saul Kripke and his philosophy is the first and only collection of essays to examine both published and unpublished writings by Kripke. Its essays, written by distinguished philosophers in the field, present a broader picture of Kripke's life and work than has previously been available to scholars of his thought. New topics covered in these essays include vacuous names and names in fiction, Kripke on logicism and de re attitude toward numbers, Kripke on the incoherency of adopting a logic, Kripke on colour words and his criticism of the primary versus secondary quality distinction, and Kripke's critique of functionalism. These essays not only present Kripke's basic arguments but also engage with the arguments and controversies engendered by his work, providing the most comprehensive analysis of his philosophy and writings available. This collection will become a classic in contemporary analytic philosophy.
With chapters written by leading international scholars in the field, this is an authoritative reference guide for researchers working in the Philosophy of Language today.
Andrea Bottani Massimiliano Carrara Pierdaniele Giaretta What do we do when we do metaphysics? The aim of this introduction is to give a provisional answer to this question, and then to explain the subtitle of the volume. It is easy to observe that when we do meta physics we engage in a linguistic activity, mainly consisting of uttering declarative sentences that are not very clear to most people. That is true, but, of course, it is not very informative. What do we speak of when we do metaphysics? A traditional answer could be: we speak of what things really are, so suggesting that things can appear in a way that is different from the way they really are. So understood, meta physics is about...
This volume covers a wide range of topics that fall under the 'philosophy of quantifiers', a philosophy that spans across multiple areas such as logic, metaphysics, epistemology and even the history of philosophy. It discusses the import of quantifier variance in the model theory of mathematics. It advances an argument for the uniqueness of quantifier meaning in terms of Evert Beth’s notion of implicit definition and clarifies the oldest explicit formulation of quantifier variance: the one proposed by Rudolf Carnap. The volume further examines what it means that a quantifier can have multiple meanings and addresses how existential vagueness can induce vagueness in our modal notions. Finally, the book explores the role played by quantifiers with respect to various kinds of semantic paradoxes, the logicality issue, ontological commitment, and the behavior of quantifiers in intensional contexts.
Mereology is the metaphysical theory of parts and wholes, including their conditions of identity and persistence through change. Hylomorphism is the metaphysical doctrine according to which all natural substances, including living organisms, consist of matter and form as their essential parts, where the substantial form of living organisms is identified as their soul. The theories date to Plato and Aristotle and figure prominently in the history of philosophy up until the seventeenth century, where their influence wanes relative to a reductive materialism that culminates with deflationary accounts of objects and persons, where mere conglomerates constitute things and we are left to account for mental phenomena in terms of the powers of physical materials. In view of such difficulties, there is a renewed interest in hylomorphism, as its forms structure matter and can account for natural kinds, with their various capacities and powers. This volume presents medieval theories of hylomorphism and mereology, articulating the conceptual framework in which they developed and with an eye on their relevance today.