Soames Philosophical Essays, Volume 2

The Philosophical Significance of Language
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3318-4
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 480 Seiten

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Soames, Scott

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

The Origins of These Essays ix

Introduction 1

Part One: Reference, Propositions, and Propositional Attitudes 31

Essay One: Direct Reference, Propositional Attitudes, and Semantic Content 33

Essay Two: Why Propositions Can't Be Sets of Truth-Supporting Circumstances 72

Essay Three: Belief and Mental Representation 81

Essay Four: Attitudes and Anaphora 111

Part Two: Modality 137

Essay Five: The Modal Argument: Wide Scope and Rigidified Descriptions 139

Essay Six: The Philosophical Significance of the Kripkean Necessary A Posteriori 165

Essay Seven: Knowledge of Manifest Natural Kinds 189

Essay Eight: Understanding Assertion 211

Essay Nine: Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism 243

Essay Ten: Actually 277

Part Three: Truth and Vagueness 301

Essay Eleven: What Is a Theory of Truth? 303

Essay Twelve: Understanding Deflationism 323

Essay Thirteen: Higher-Order Vagueness for Partially Defined Predicates 340

Essay Fourteen: The Possibility of Partial Definition 362

Part Four: Kripke, Wittgenstein, and Following a Rule 383

Essay Fifteen: Skepticism about Meaning: Indeterminacy, Normativity, and the Rule-Following Paradox 385

Essay Sixteen: Facts, Truth Conditions, and the Skeptical Solution to the Rule-Following Paradox 416

Index 457

Über Autor(innen)

Scott Soames is director of the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. His books include Reference and Description (Princeton), Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volumes 1 and 2 (Princeton), Beyond Rigidity, and Understanding Truth.