Philosophical Essays. / Volume 1, : Philosophical Essays, Volume 1 ; Natural Language: What It Means and How We Use It / / 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, , [2008]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Series: Philosophical Essays ; Volume 1
• 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. Presupposition -- ESSAY ONE. A Projection Problem for Speaker Presuppositions -- ESSAY TWO. Presupposition -- PART TWO. Language and Linguistic Competence -- ESSAY THREE. Linguistics and Psychology -- ESSAY FOUR. Semantics and Psychology -- ESSAY FIVE. Semantics and Semantic Competence -- ESSAY SIX. The Necessity Argument -- ESSAY SEVEN. Truth, Meaning, and Understanding -- PART THREE. Semantics and Pragmatics -- ESSAY NINE. Naming and Asserting -- ESSAY TEN. The Gap between Meaning and Assertion: Why What We Literally Say Often Differs from What Our Words Literally Mean -- ESSAY ELEVEN. Drawing the Line between Meaning and Implicature - and Relating Both to Assertion -- Part Four. Descriptions -- ESSAY TWELVE. Incomplete Definite Descriptions -- ESSAY THIRTEEN. Donnellan's Referential/Attributive Distinction -- ESSAY FOURTEEN. Why Incomplete Definite Descriptions Do Not Defeat Russell's Theory of Descriptions -- PART FIVE. Meaning and Use: Lessons for Legal Interpretation -- ESSAY FIFTEEN. Interpreting Legal Texts: What Is, and What Is Not, Special about the Law -- Index