ABSTRACT

The papers in this collection discuss the central questions about the connections between language, reality and human understanding. The complex relations between accounts of meaning and facts about ordinary speakers’ understanding of their language are examined so as to illuminate the philosophical character of the connections between language and reality. The collection as a whole is a thematically unified treatment of some of the most central questions within contemporary philosophy of language.

chapter 1|18 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|22 pages

Truth and use

chapter 3|28 pages

Causal modalities and realism

chapter 4|14 pages

Moral reality and the end of desire

chapter 5|28 pages

Tarski's theory of truth

chapter 7|10 pages

Reality without reference

chapter 9|15 pages

Truth and singular terms

chapter 10|17 pages

Truth-theory for indexical languages

chapter 11|7 pages

Operators, predicates and truth-theory

chapter 12|32 pages

Quotation and saying that

chapter 13|17 pages

What metaphors mean