Reference and Description

The Case against Two-Dimensionalism

By: Scott Soames

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Paperback | 2 April 2007

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384 Pages

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In this book, Scott Soames defends the revolution in philosophy led by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan against attack from those wishing to revive descriptivism in the philosophy of language, internalism in the philosophy of mind, and conceptualism in the foundations of modality. Soames explains how, in the last twenty-five years, this attack on the anti-descriptivist revolution has coalesced around a technical development called two-dimensional modal logic that seeks to reinterpret the Kripkean categories of the necessary aposteriori and the contingent apriori in ways that drain them of their far-reaching philosophical significance.

Arguing against this reinterpretation, Soames shows how the descriptivist revival has been aided by puzzles and problems ushered in by the anti-descriptivist revolution, as well as by certain errors and missteps in the anti-descriptivist classics themselves. Reference and Description sorts through all this, assesses and consolidates the genuine legacy of Kripke and Kaplan, and launches a thorough and devastating critique of the two-dimensionalist revival of descriptivism. Through it all, Soames attempts to provide the outlines of a lasting, nondescriptivist perspective on meaning, and a nonconceptualist understanding of modality.

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"A text of this scope and care is a must for any program supporting philosophy of language and mind."--Choice

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Philosophy Epistemology & The Theory of Knowledge Philosophy of The Mind Popular Philosophy

A Word about Notation	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The Revolt Against Descriptivism	p. 5
The Traditional Descriptivist Picture	p. 7
Attack on the Traditional Picture: Proper Names, Non-Descriptionality, and Rigid Designation	p. 14
Descriptivist Resistance: The Origins of Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism	p. 33
Reasons for Resistance and the Strategy for Descriptivist Revival	p. 35
Roots of Two-Dimensionalism in Kaplan and Kripke	p. 43
Stalnaker's Two-Dimensionalist Model of Discourse	p. 84
The Early Two-Dimensionalist Semantics of Davies and Humberstone	p. 106
Ambitious Two Dimensionalism	p. 131
Strong and Weak Two-Dimensionalism	p. 133
Jackson's Strong Two-Dimensionalist Program	p. 149
Chalmers's Two-Dimensionalist Defense of Zombies	p. 194
Critique of Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism	p. 267
The Way Forward	p. 327
Positive Nondescriptivism	p. 329
Index	p. 355
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Reference and Description

The Case against Two-Dimensionalism

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

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How to return your order

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You Can Find This Book In

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