Scott Soames

Take my rating with a grain of salt: this book just isn't suited for my purposes. It is focused very minutely on one tradition in p of l, to wit, the "let's get a theory of meaning from the application of formal logic to natural languages" tradition, which means none of those loose-talking Wittgensteinians, Austinians, Searlians, linguists, and so on.

It is further unsuited for my purposes in that, although I did some p of l at uni, and some logic, and have read most of the big names, I had nowhere near enough logic to deal with much of the text. A friend (a professional philosopher) suggests that this book is really designed for graduate students and professors in, e.g., phil of mind, who need some way to structure the p of l classes they're obliged to teach, and that seems about right. In other words: if you already know this stuff, you'll be glad to have Soames' book on hand so you can state it really, really, really precisely. If you don't already know it, though, he's not interested in teaching you.

So those are some problems specific to me. More generally, there's something very wrong when a book about language is so horrifically written. I don't just mean the reliance on unnecessary logical notation; I mean the fact that Soames' explanations of his own logical notation is often less clear than the notation itself. I mean that many of his sentences appear to be syntactically incomplete, and those that are complete are usually composed by him in the passive for no very good reason. It's a bit like reading a poorly put together statute, which aims for total clarity and precision and, for that precise reason, ends up incomprehensible.

Which fact is a lesson for p of l itself: *why* think that formal languages are the right road to a theory of meaning in natural languages? Natural languages *aren't* precise, or clear. And, to be fair, the logic people know that, and they are tweaking their systems to account for the fact that (most) language doesn't work as do the traditional "Socrates was a philosopher" philosophical statements (Soames' own work is in this area, and he describes it in the last chapter. At least, I think he describes it, it's hard to tell. Within the post-Tarski context he's set up, he seems right, but again, I can't really tell). Unfortunately, by the time you get to Soames' description of his own work, you just might have lost faith in the project, and be wishing that someone who actually used human languages in their work would take on the task of explaining how, exactly, language provides meanings to its users.… (altro)

This is a book written for professional philosophers. Unfortunately it has little value for anyone else. Naturally we are all curious about meaning. What is it that enables our thoughts to have meaning? That is an intriguing issue, but not one covered by this book. Instead this book asks another question. How can sentences (like these I am writing) have intrinsic meaning? Of course a few squiggles on a page or screen do not. Thus the author decides that we (the reader and writer) attribute meaning through our cognitive processes. Sentences are just a code which we learn to communicate between ourselves. Of course the book was written for the argument not this shallow conclusion.

In presenting the argument the book conspicuously fails to define terms. The author doesn’t even attempt to give an explanation of the word, meaning. Furthermore the meanings of words undoubtedly meander with changing context throughout the book. Thus I could not recommend this book for students.… (altro)