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Thought and World: An Austere Portrayal of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

Thought and World: An Austere Portrayal of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

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Christopher S. Hill
Cambridge University Press, 7/11/2002
EAN 9780521814843, ISBN10: 0521814847

Hardcover, 168 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

There is an important family of semantic notions that we apply to thoughts and to the conceptual constituents of thoughts - as when we say that the thought that the Universe is expanding is true. Thought and World presents a theory of the content of such notions. The theory is largely deflationary in spirit, in the sense that it represents a broad range of semantic notions - including the concept of truth - as being entirely free from substantive metaphysical and empirical presuppositions. At the same time, however, it takes seriously and seeks to explain the intuition that there is a metaphysically or empirically 'deep' relation (a relation of mirroring or semantic correspondence) linking thoughts to reality. Thus, the theory represents a kind of compromise between deflationism and versions of the correspondence theory of truth. This book will appeal to students and professionals interested in the philosophy of logic and language.

1. Introduction
2. Truth in the realm of thoughts
3. The marriage of heaven and hell
reconciling deflationary semantics with correspondence intuitions
4. Indexical representation and deflationary semantics
5. Why meaning matters
6. Into the wild blue yonder
non-designating concepts, vagueness, semantic paradox, and logical paradox.

'Hill's excellent Thought and World is a highly readable and important defence of a form of deflationism ... it deserves, and will no dout receive, careful study.' The Philosophical Quarterly