Reference and description : the case against two-dimensionalism / Scott Soames.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Soames, Scott.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Description (Philosophy).

Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (373 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2007, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this book, Scott Soames defends the revolution in philosophy led by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan against attack from those wishing to revive descriptivism in the philosophy of language, internalism in the philosophy of mind, and conceptualism in the foundations of modality. Soames explains how, in the last twenty-five years, this attack on the anti-descriptivist revolution has coalesced around a technical development called two-dimensional modal logic that seeks to reinterpret the Kripkean categories of the necessary aposteriori and the contingent apriori in ways that drain them of their far-reaching philosophical significance. Arguing against this reinterpretation, Soames shows how the descriptivist revival has been aided by puzzles and problems ushered in by the anti-descriptivist revolution, as well as by certain errors and missteps in the anti-descriptivist classics themselves. Reference and Description sorts through all this, assesses and consolidates the genuine legacy of Kripke and Kaplan, and launches a thorough and devastating critique of the two-dimensionalist revival of descriptivism. Through it all, Soames attempts to provide the outlines of a lasting, nondescriptivist perspective on meaning, and a nonconceptualist understanding of modality.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

A Word about Notation

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One. The Revolt Against Descriptivism

Chapter 1. The Traditional Descriptivist Picture

Chapter 2. Attack on the Traditional Picture

Part Two. Descriptivist Resistance: The Origins of Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism

Chapter 3. Reasons for Resistance and the Strategy for Descriptivist Revival

Chapter 4. Roots of Two-Dimensionalism in Kaplan and Kripke

Chapter 5. Stalnaker's Two-Dimensionalist Model of Discourse

Chapter 6. The Early Two-Dimensionalist Semantics of Davies and Humberstone

Part Three. Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism

Chapter 7. Strong and Weak Two-Dimensionalism

Chapter 8. Jackson's Strong Two-Dimensionalist Program

Chapter 9. Chalmers's Two-Dimensionalist Defense of Zombies

Chapter 10. Critique Of Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism

Part Four. The Way Forward

Chapter 11. Positive Nondescriptivism

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612086656

9781282086654

1282086650

9781400826452

1400826454

OCLC:

336901793