ENGLISH

Words without Meaning (Contemporary Philosophical Monographs)

By Christopher Gauker

Book information

Publisher
The MIT Press
Year
2003
ISBN
9780262072427, 0262072424, 0262571625
LCC
P325 .G364 2003
Open Library ID
OL3568014M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (1606142 bytes)
Series
Contemporary Philosophical Monographs
Pages
312\312
Time added
2010-08-30 15:18:36

Description

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.

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