内容

目次

Part 1 The elements of meaning: truth - conditions, predicates anddefinitions - theories of truth, Ramsey's theory of truth, simpletruth-definitions, predicates and satisfaction, sequences as satisfiers, theworkings of satisfaction, realism and correspondence, truth-bearers, somerefinements; theories of truth and theories of meaning - novelty andboundlessness in language use, some possible constraints on theories ofmeaning - holism and monism, the elimination of "... means that ...", meaningand truth-conditions, the role of the theory of meaning, a definition ofsentence-meaning; shades of meaning - traditional analysis, refiningtraditional analysis - conversational implicatures, the role of intentions inthe theory of language use. Part 2 Some structures of meaning: the logicalform of quantified sentences - standard truth-theories for the universal andexistential quantifiers, the problem of non-standard quantifiers, thebeginnings of a solution, logical form and inference; reported speech - theproblems of intentionality - reported speech - the problems, Quine'sproposal, the Fregean proposal, Davidson's proposal, the varieties ofreported speech; names and objects - the object theory of proper names -objections, the object theory - some responses, names as austere predicates,names as ambiguous predicates; adjectival constructions - thepredicative-attributive distinction, implicit and explicit attributes -semantical attachment, why attributives are not one-place predicates,positive, comparative, superlative, Wheeler's proposal, some otherpossibilities; actions and causes - events - understanding action-sentences -Davidson's proposal, understanding action-sentences - some problems, somelogical form of singular causal sentences, singular causal statements -logical form and epistemology, some epistemological worries. Part 3 Languageand reality: understanding and reality - understanding and paradox, vaguenessand rules, rules and observationality, understanding and knowledge, language,reality and verification; moral reality - the nature of ethical realism,relativism and reason, morality and action; talk of a kind - words and kinds,explanatory kinds, the orders of things, knowing subjects and known objects,natural-kind words - Putnam's proposal, kind words and understanding, amoralizing postscript.