Words without Meaning

✍ Scribed by Christopher Gauker

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 312
• Series: Contemporary Philosophical Monographs
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

According to the received view of linguistic communication, the primary function of language is to enable speakers to reveal the propositional contents of their thoughts to hearers. Speakers are able to do this because they share with their hearers an understanding of the meanings of words. Christopher Gauker rejects this conception of language, arguing that it rests on an untenable conception of mental representation and yields a wrong account of the norms of discourse.Gauker's alternative starts with the observation that conversations have goals and that the best way to achieve the goal of a conversation depends on the circumstances under which the conversation takes place. These goals and circumstances determine a context of utterance quite apart from the attitudes of the interlocutors. The fundamental norms of discourse are formulated in terms of the conditions under which sentences are assertible in such contexts.Words without Meaning contains original solutions to a wide array of outstanding problems in the philosophy of language, including the logic of quantification, the logic of conditionals, the semantic paradoxes, the nature of presupposition and implicature, and the nature and attribution of beliefs.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
The Issue......Page 14
1.
The Received View......Page 16
2.
Mental Representation......Page 40
3. Elements of an
Alternative......Page 62
Pragmatics......Page 84
4.
Domain of Discourse......Page 86
5.
Presupposition......Page 110
6.
Implicature......Page 134
Semantics......Page 156
7.
Quantification......Page 158
8.
Conditionals......Page 180
9.
Truth......Page 204
Beliefs......Page 226
10.
The Communicative Conception......Page 228
11.
Explanation and Prediction......Page 250
12.
Semantics and Ontology......Page 272
Afterword......Page 294
References......Page 300
Index......Page 308