1608 Pages
    by Routledge

    What do ‘meaning’ and ‘truth’ mean? And how are they situated in the concrete practices of linguistic communication? What is the relationship between words and the world? How—with words—can people do such varied things as marry, inaugurate a president, and declare a country’s independence? How is language able to express knowledge, belief, and other mental states? What are metaphors and how do they work? Is a mathematically rigorous account of language possible? Does language make women invisible and encode a male worldview?

    These are the kind of questions that have been addressed by philosophers of language since ancient times. Interest in the subject stretches back to the beginnings of western philosophy (for instance, in his Academy, Plato considered the question whether the names of things were deemed by convention or by nature). Interest in the philosophy of language has also been enduring—and has blossomed anew in the past century.

    This new title in the Routledge series, Critical Concepts in Philosophy, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by A. P. Martinich, one of the subdiscipline’s leading scholars, this collection brings together in four volumes the canonical and the very best cutting-edge scholarship in the field to provide a synoptic view of all the key issues, figures, concepts, and current debates.

    With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editor, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Philosophy of Language is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by philosophers and linguists—as well as psychologists and cognitive scientists working on language—as a vital research resource.

    Volume I: Foundational Articles

    1 Gottlob Frege, ‘The Thought: A Logical Inquiry’, trans. Anthony Quinton, Mind, 65, 1956, 289–311.

    2. Gottlob Frege, ‘On Sense and Meaning’, Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege (Basil Blackwell, 1952), pp. 157–77.

    3. Bertrand Russell, ‘Denoting’, Principles of Mathematics (Cambridge University Press, 1903), pp. 53–65.

    4. Bertrand Russell, ‘On Denoting’, Mind, 14, 1905, 479–93.

    5. Rudolf Carnap, ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language’, Logical Positivism, ed. A. J. Ayer (The Free Press, 1959), pp. 60–81.

    6. Rudolf Carnap, ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’, Meaning and Necessity, (University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 205–21.

    7. Alfred Tarski, ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4, 1944, 341–75.

    8. C. L. Stevenson, ‘The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms’, Mind, 46, 1937, 14–31.

    9. Carl G. Hempel, ‘Empiricist Criteria of Cognitive Significance: Problems and Changes’, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (The Free Press, 1965), pp. 101–19.

    10. J. L. Austin, ‘Performative Utterances’, in J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock (eds.), Philosophical Papers, 2nd edn. (Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 220–39.

    11. Paul Grice, ‘Meaning’, Philosophical Review, 66, 1957, 377–88.

    12. W. V. Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, Philosophical Review, 60, 1951, 20–43.

    13. W. V. Quine, ‘Translation and Meaning’, Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960), pp. 26–79.

    14. W. V. Quine, ‘On the Reasons for Indeterminacy of Translation’, Journal of Philosophy, 67, 1970, 178–83.

    15. P. F. Strawson, ‘On Referring’, Mind, 59, 1950, 320–44.

    16. P. F. Strawson, ‘Singular Terms and Predication’, Journal of Philosophy, 58, 1961, 393–412.

    Volume II: Semantics

    17. Paul Grice, ‘Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence-Meaning and Word-Meaning’, Foundations of Language, 4, 1968, 225–42.

    18. Paul Grice, ‘Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions’, Philosophical Review, 78, 1969, 147–77.

    19. Donald Davidson, ‘Truth and Meaning’, Synthese, 17, 1967, 304–23.

    20. W. V. Quine, ‘Comment on Donald Davidson’, Synthese, 17, 1967, 325–9.

    21. Donald Davidson, ‘Belief and the Basis of Meaning’, Synthese, 27, 1974, 309–23.

    22. Michael Dummett, ‘What is a Theory of Meaning? (I)’, Mind and Language (Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 97–138.

    23. Michael Dummett, ‘What Does the Appeal to Use Do for the Theory of Meaning?’, in Asa Margalit (ed.), Meaning and Use (Reidel, 1979), pp. 123–35.

    24. Crispin Wright, ‘Truth-Conditions and Criteria’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 50, 1976, 217–45.

    25. David Lewis, ‘Languages and Language’, in Keith Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge (University of Minneapolis Press, 1975), pp. 3–35.

    26. Hilary Putnam, ‘Is Semantics Possible’, Metaphilosophy, 1, 1970, 187–201.

    27. W. V. Quine, ‘Cognitive Meaning’, The Monist, 62, 1979, 129–42.

    28 Crispin Wright, ‘Theories of Meaning and Speakers’ Knowledge’, in S. G. Shanker (ed.), Philosophy in Britain Today (Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 267–307.

    29. Robert Stalnaker, ‘Assertion’, Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 9 (Academic Press, 1978), pp. 315–32.

    30. Robert Stalnaker, ‘Semantics for Belief’, Philosophical Topics, 15, 1987, 177–90.

    31. Scott Soames, ‘Semantics and Semantic Competence’, Philosophical Perspectives, 3 (Ridgeview, 1989), 575–96.

    32. Ruth Millikan, ‘Local Natural Signs and Information’, Varieties of Meaning (MIT Press, 2004), pp. 31–45.

    33. Ruth Millikan, ‘Productivity and Embedding in Natural Signs’, Varieties of Meaning (MIT Press, 2004), pp. 47–61.

    34. Ruth Millikan, ‘Teleosemantic Theories’, Varieties of Meaning (MIT Press, 2004), pp. 63–70.

    Volume III: Singular Terms, Propositional Attitudes, and Modality

    35. W. V. Quine, ‘Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes’, Journal of Philosophy, 53, 1956, 177–87.

    36. Ruth Barcan Marcus, ‘Modalities and Intensional Languages’, Synthese, 13, 1961, 303–22.

    37. Ruth Barcan Marcus et al., ‘Discussion’, Synthese, 14, 1962, 132–43.

    38. Keith Donnellan, ‘Reference and Definite Descriptions’, Philosophical Review, 75, 1967, 281–304.

    39. Saul Kripke, ‘Identity and Necessity’, in Milton Munitz (ed.), Identity and Individuation (1971), pp. 135–64.

    40. Saul Kripke, ‘Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2, 1977, 255–76.

    41. Hilary Putnam, ‘Meaning and Reference’, Journal of Philosophy, 70, 1973, 699–711.

    42. Gareth Evans, ‘The Causal Theory of Names’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 47, 1973, 187–208.

    43. A. P. Martinich, ‘Referring’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1979, 157–72.

    44. John Searle, ‘Proper Names and Intentionality’, Intentionality (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 231–61.

    45. John Perry, ‘Frege on Demonstratives’, Philosophical Review, 86, 1977, 474–97.

    46. John Perry, ‘The Problem of the Essential Indexical’, Noûs, 13, 1979, 3–21.

    47. David Kaplan, ‘Dthat’, in Peter Cole (ed.), Pragmatics (Academic Press, 1978), pp. 221–43.

    48. David Kaplan, ‘On the Logic of Demonstratives’, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 8, 1979, 81–98.

    49. David Kaplan, ‘Words’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 64, 1990, 93–119.

    50. Gareth Evans, ‘Understanding Demonstratives’, in H. Parret and Jacques Bouvresse (eds.), Meaning and Understanding (Walter de Gruyter, 1981), pp. 280–303.

    51. John McDowell, ‘De Re Senses’, Philosophical Quarterly, 34, 1984, 283–94.

    52. Donald Davidson, ‘On Saying That’, Synthese, 19, 1968–9, 130–46.

    53. Saul Kripke, ‘A Puzzle About Belief’, in Asa Margalit (ed.), Meaning and Use (Reidel, 1979), 239–83.

    54. Mark Crimmins and John Perry, ‘The Prince and the Phone Booth: Reporting Puzzling Beliefs’, Journal of Philosophy, 86, 1989, 685–711.

    55. Scott Soames, ‘Direct Reference, Propositional Attitudes, and Semantic Content’, Philosophical Topics, 15, 1987, 47–87.

    56. David Sosa, ‘Rigidity in the Scope of Russell’s Theory’, Nous, 35, 2001, 1–38.

    Volume IV: Pragmatics, Thought, and Some Contemporary Issues

    57. John Searle, ‘The Structure of Illocutionary Acts’, Speech Acts (Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 54–71.

    58. Paul Grice, ‘Logic and Conversation’, Syntax and Semantics (Academic Press, 1975), pp. 41–58.

    59. David Lewis, ‘Score Keeping in a Language Game’, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 8, 1979, 339–59.

    60. Kent Bach, ‘Conversational Impliciture’, Mind and Language, 9, 1994, 124–62.

    61. Kent Bach, ‘The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction: What it is and Why it Matters’, in Ken Turner (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface From Different Points of View (Elsevier, 1999), pp. 66–84.

    62. Robyn Carston, ‘Implicature, Explicature, and Truth-Theoretic Semantics’, in Ruth Kempson (ed.), Mental Representations (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 155–81.

    63. Christopher Potts, ‘Into the Conventional-Implicature Dimension’, Philosophy Compass (www.philosophy-compass.com).

    64. Ernie Lepore and Herman Capellen, ‘Shared Content’, in E. Lepore and B. Smith (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 1020–55.

    65. David Braun, ‘Empty Names, Fictional Names, Mythical Names’, Nous, 39, 2005, 596–631.

    66. Francois Recanati, ‘Deixis and Anaphora’, in Zoltan Gendler-Szabo (ed.), Semantics vs. Pragmatics (Clarendon Press, 2005), pp. 286–316.

    67. Delia Graff (Fara), ‘Shifting Sands: An Interest-Relative Theory of Vagueness’, Philosophical Topics, 28, 2000, 45–81.

    68. Wilfrid Sellars, ‘Language as Thought and as Communication’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 29, 1969, 506–27.

    69. Jerry A. Fodor, ‘Language, Thought and Compositionality’, Mind and Language, 16, 2001, 1–15.

    70. Noam Chomsky, ‘Language and Interpretation: Philosophical Reflections and Empirical Inquiry’, in John Earman (ed.), Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science (University of California Press, 1992), pp. 99–128.

    71. Noam Chomsky, ‘Language and Nature’, Mind, 104, 1995, 27–61.

    72. Tyler Burge, ‘Philosophy of Language and Mind: 1950–1990’, Philosophical Review, 101, 1992, 3–51.

    Biography

    A. P. Martinich is Roy Allison Vaughan Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Professor of History and Government at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He is the series editor of Fundamental Issues in Philosophy (Blackwell) and the author or editor of more than thirteen books which include Hobbes: A Biography (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), The Philosophy of Language, 4th edn. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), A Companion to Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 2001), and our Hobbes (Routledge Philosophers).