The philosophical significance of language
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Bibliographic Information
The philosophical significance of language
（Philosophical essays, v. 2）
Princeton University Press, c2009
- : pbk
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Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
Table of Contents
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
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