1. Context and Compositionality
2. The Theoreticity of Meaning
3. Reference and Ontology
4. Reference and Sense
5. Propositions
6. Truth, Falsity, and the World
7. Realism, Pragmatism, and Linguistic Idealism
8. Linguistic Idealism: Problems and Solutions
Biography
Richard Gaskin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. He has published extensively in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of literature, and literary criticism. His main book publications include Experience and the World’s Own Language: A Critique of John McDowell’s Empiricism (2006), The Unity of the Proposition (2008), Language, Truth, and Literature: A Defence of Linguistic Idealism (2013), Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature: A Philosophical Perspective (Routledge 2018).
"Gaskin has produced a highly provocative work, delivered with his usual erudition, elegance, and quiet humour. Although he swims against the current, he makes good head way against numerous orthodoxies and should give pause to all, no matter one’s assumptions about the connection of language to mind and world." – John Collins, University of East Anglia, UK
"This book is an impressive mix of scholarship, rigorous argument, and controversial philosophical doctrine that makes a novel contribution to contemporary work on the metaphysics of language." – Graham Stevens, University of Manchester, UK
