Philosophical Essays. / Volume 2, : Philosophical Essays, Volume 2 ; The Philosophical Significance of Language / / Scott Soames.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter PUP eBook-Package 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Soames, Scott,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2009]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Series: Philosophical Essays ; Volume 2
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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

Frontmatter -- Contents -- The Origins of These Essays -- Introduction -- PART ONE. Reference, Propositions, and Propositional Attitudes -- ESSAY ONE. Direct Reference, Propositional Attitudes, and Semantic Content -- ESSAY TWO. Why Propositions Can't Be Sets of Truth-Supporting Circumstances -- ESSAY THREE. Belief and Mental Representation -- ESSAY FOUR. Attitudes and Anaphora -- PART TWO. Modality -- ESSAY FIVE. The Modal Argument: Wide Scope and Rigidified Descriptions -- ESSAY SIX. The Philosophical Significance of the Kripkean Necessary A Posteriori -- ESSAY SEVEN. Knowledge of Manifest Natural Kinds -- ESSAY EIGHT. Understanding Assertion -- ESSAY NINE. Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism -- ESSAY TEN. Actually -- PART THREE. Truth and Vagueness -- ESSAY ELEVEN. What Is a Theory of Truth? -- ESSAY TWELVE. Understanding Deflationism -- ESSAY THIRTEEN. Higher-Order Vagueness for Partially Defined Predicates -- ESSAY FOURTEEN. The Possibility of Partial Definition -- PART FOUR. Kripke, Wittgenstein, and Following a Rule -- ESSAY FIFTEEN. Skepticism about Meaning: Indeterminacy, Normativity, and the Rule-Following Paradox -- ESSAY SIXTEEN. Facts, Truth Conditions, and the Skeptical Solution to the Rule-Following Paradox -- Index