Aboutness / Stephen Yablo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yablo, Stephen, author.

Series:

Carl G. Hempel lecture series.

Carl G. Hempel Lecture Series ; 3

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Semantics (Philosophy).

Definition (Philosophy).

Meaning (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (237 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness-features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. But it has played no real role in philosophical semantics. This is surprising; sentences have aboutness-properties if anything does. Aboutness is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth-conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection--about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. Stephen Yablo maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results--directed content--is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. Written by one of today's leading philosophers, Aboutness represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

How to Read This Book

Introduction

1. I Wasn't Talking about That

2. Varieties of Aboutness

3. Inclusion in Metaphysics and Semantics

4. A Semantic Conception of Truthmaking

5. The Truth and Something But the Truth

6. Confirmation and Verisimilitude

7. Knowing That and Knowing About

8. Extrapolation and Its Limits

9. Going On in the Same Way

10. Pretense and Presupposition

11. The Missing Premise

12. What Is Said

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780691173658

0691173656

9781400845989

140084598X

OCLC:

876343068