Meanings as species / Mark Richard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Richard, Mark, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Meaning (Philosophy).

Semantics.

Word (Linguistics).

Physical Description:

vi, 212 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Summary:

Mark Richard presents an original picture of meaning according to which a word's meaning is analogous to the biological lineages we call species. His primary thesis is that a word's meaning - in the sense of what one needs to track in order to be a competent speaker - is the collection of assumptions its users make in using it and expect their hearers to recognize as being made. Meaning is something that is spread across a population, inherited by each new generation of speakers from the last, and typically evolving in so far as what constitutes a meaning changes in virtue of the interactions of speakers with their (linguistic and social) environment. Meanings as Species develops and defends the analogy between the biological and the linguistic, and includes a discussion of the senses in which the processes of meaning change are and are not like evolution via natural selection. Richard argues that thinking of meanings as species supports Quine's insights about analyticity without rendering talk about meaning theoretically useless. He also discusses the relations between meaning as what the competent speaker knows about her language, meaning as the determinant of reference and truth conditions, and meaning qua what determines what sentence uses say. This book contains insightful discussions of a wide range of topics in the philosophy of language, including: relations between meaning and philosophical analysis, the project of 'conceptual engineering', the senses in which meaning is and is not compositional, the degree to which to which referential0meaning is indeterminate, and what such indeterminacy might tells us about propositional attitudes like belief and assertion.

Contents:

1 Quine and the Species Problem p. 8

1 Private Language, Public Language p. 9

2 Species and Meanings p. 10

3 Quine's Argument in 'Two Dogmas' p. 13

4 Of What Interest Is the Notion of Analyticity? p. 19

2 Internalism to the Rescue? p. 24

1 Inter-Speaker Synonymy p. 25

2 Synonymy in an Idiolect p. 27

3 Truth by Convention p. 29

4 Stipulating Meaning p. 30

5 What Constitutes What My Words Mean? p. 34

6 A Digression on Logical Truth p. 36

7 Grice, Strawson, and Varieties of Synonymy p. 38

8 Conditional Credence and Connotation p. 40

9 How Credence Relates to Meaning p. 42

10 The Rational Fixation of Belief p. 44

3 What Are Meanings, That We Might Share Them? p. 49

1 Intuitions p. 51

2 Conceptual Analysis p. 52

3 Linguistic Competence and Concepts p. 57

4 Interpretive Common Ground p. 65

5 Ways of Being a Competent Speaker p. 68

6 Illocution and Meaning p. 70

7 'What Is Said' and Literal Meaning p. 74

8 Epithets and Assertion p. 79

9 Compositionality p. 82

10 Competence and Abilities p. 86

11 Conceptual Analysis Again p. 87

12 The Role of Intuitions in Philosophy p. 91

4 Conceptual Evolution and Reference p. 96

1 The Linguistic and the Biological p. 97

2 Lexical Coordination p. 101

3 Changes In and Changes of Meaning p. 106

4 Referential Indeterminacy and Reported Speech p. 109

5 Paradox Lost p. 113

6 Referential Relativism? p. 116

7 Referentialism p. 118

8 Meaning (Sort of) Divorced from Reference p. 121

9 Referentialism and Indeterminacy p. 128

10 Conceptual Evolution p. 131

11 Deflationism about Reference p. 135

5 Meaning, Thought, and Thought Ascription p. 141

1 Attitudes and Their Ascription p. 141

2 Conventional Meaning, Belief, and Assertion p. 154

3 A Puzzle about Speech Reports p. 159

6 Sex and Conversation p. 166

1 A Simple Model of Meaning Change p. 167

2 Meaning Change and Evolution via Natural Selection p. 170

3 Semantic Ecology p. 173

4 Contested Meanings and Competition p. 177

5 Meanings, Memes, and Species p. 186

6 Conceptual Engineering p. 191.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-208) and index.

ISBN:

0198842813

9780198842811

OCLC:

1083928276