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Truth and Words
Gary Ebbs
354 pages
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234x156mm
978-0-19-969226-2
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Paperback
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14 April 2011
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- Ground-breaking work in philosophy of language
- Presents a unified, systematic theory of truth, contrary to philosophical consensus
- Radical implications for the study of meaning and understanding
To clarify and facilitate our inquiries we need to define a disquotational truth predicate that we are directly licensed to apply not only to our own sentences as we use them now, but also to other speakers' sentences and our own sentences as we used them in the past. The conventional wisdom is that there can be no such truth predicate. For it appears that the only instances of the disquotational pattern that we are directly licensed to accept are those that define 'is true' for our own sentences as we use them now. Gary Ebbs shows that this appearance is illusory. He constructs an account of words that licenses us to rely not only on formal
(spelling-based) identifications of our own words, but also on our non-deliberative practical identifications of other speakers' words and of our own words as we used them in the past. To overturn the conventional wisdom about disquotational truth, Ebbs argues, we need only combine this account of words with our disquotational definitions of truth for sentences as we use them now. The result radically transforms our understanding of truth and related topics, including anti-individualism, self-knowledge, and the intersubjectivity of logic.Readership: Advanced students and scholars of philosophy; linguists working on semantics
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Gary Ebbs, Indiana University, Bloomington Gary Ebbs is Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington, and has previously held faculty positions at University of Illinois, Urbana, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. He is the author of Rule-Following and Realism (Harvard Press, 1997), and has published a number of articles on such topics as sameness of reference between speakers and across time, learning from others by trusting what they say, the compatibility of anti-individualism with self-knowledge, Hilary Putnam's views of truth and reference, and W. V. Quine's and Rudolf Carnap's debate about analyticity and truth by convention.
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"[I]t would be hard to imagine a mode of presentation more careful and lucid than Ebbs's... [T]he richness and imaginativeness of his effort will likely prove highly fruitful... His critique of token-and-ex-use-based conceptions of words and his bringing of PJSS's [practical judgments of sameness of satisfaction] to centre stage alone make the book important and worthy of careful and widespread consideration." - Michael Kac, Analysis "a first-rate philosophical work... Ebbs's view of words and their extensions is highly original and very thoroughly and clearly argued, and may require a dramatic gestalt shift in our understanding of words and meaning. It engages with much of the best contemporary work on the philosophy of
language and meaning, giving arguments against widely held views that will surely "enhance and clarify" our philosophical inquiries about words, truth, and meaning." - Cory Juhl, Philosophical Books
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Introduction
1: Regimentation
2: The Tarski-Quine thesis
3: The intersubjectivity constraint
4: How to think about words
5: Learning from others, interpretation, and charity
6: A puzzle about sameness of satisfaction across time
7: Sense and partial extension
8: The puzzle diagnosed and dissolved
9: Applications and consequences
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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