Natural Language: What It Means and How We Use It
Buch, Englisch, 440 Seiten, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 233 mm, Gewicht: 613 g
ISBN: 978-0-691-13681-3
Verlag: Princeton University Press
The two volumes of Philosophical Essays bring together the most important essays written by one of the world's foremost philosophers of language. Scott Soames has selected thirty-one essays spanning nearly three decades of thinking about linguistic meaning and the philosophical significance of language. A judicious collection of old and new, these volumes include sixteen essays published in the 1980s and 1990s, nine published since 2000, and six new essays. The essays in Volume 1 investigate what linguistic meaning is; how the meaning of a sentence is related to the use we make of it; what we should expect from empirical theories of the meaning of the languages we speak; and how a sound theoretical grasp of the intricate relationship between meaning and use can improve the interpretation of legal texts. The essays in Volume 2 illustrate the significance of linguistic concerns for a broad range of philosophical topics--including the relationship between language and thought; the objects of belief, assertion, and other propositional attitudes; the distinction between metaphysical and epistemic possibility; the nature of necessity, actuality, and possible worlds; the necessary a posteriori and the contingent a priori; truth, vagueness, and partial definition; and skepticism about meaning and mind. The two volumes of Philosophical Essays are essential for anyone working on the philosophy of language.
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Weitere Infos & Material
The Origins of These Essays ix
Introduction 1
Part One: Presupposition 21
Essay One: A Projection Problem for Speaker Presuppositions 23
Essay Two: Presupposition 73
Part Two: Language and Linguistic Competence 131
Essay Three: Linguistics and Psychology 133
Essay Four: Semantics and Psychology 159
Essay Five: Semantics and Semantic Competence 182
Essay Six: The Necessity Argument 202
Essay Seven: Truth, Meaning, and Understanding 208
Essay Eight: Truth and Meaning--in Perspective 225
Part Three: Semantics and Pragmatics 249
Essay Nine: Naming and Asserting 251
Essay Ten: The Gap between Meaning and Assertion: Why What We Literally Say Often Differs from What Our Words Literally Mean 278
Essay Eleven: Drawing the Line between Meaning and Implicature--and Relating Both to Assertion 298
Part Four: Descriptions 327
Essay Twelve: Incomplete Definite Descriptions 329
Essay Thirteen: Donnellan?s Referential/Attributive Distinction 360
Essay Fourteen: Why Incomplete Definite Descriptions Do Not Defeat Russell?s Theory of Descriptions 377
Part Five: Meaning and Use: Lessons for Legal Interpretation 401
Essay Fifteen: Interpreting Legal Texts: What Is, and What Is Not, Special about the Law 403
Index 425
