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Sto caricando le informazioni... Philosophy of Language (Princeton Foundations of Contemporary Philosophy) (edizione 2010)di Scott Soames (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaPhilosophy of Language di Scott Soames
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In this book one of the world's foremost philosophers of language presents his unifying vision of the field--its principal achievements, its most pressing current questions, and its most promising future directions. In addition to explaining the progress philosophers have made toward creating a theoretical framework for the study of language, Scott Soames investigates foundational concepts--such as truth, reference, and meaning--that are central to the philosophy of language and important to philosophy as a whole. The first part of the book describes how philosophers from Frege, Russell, Tarski, and Carnap to Kripke, Kaplan, and Montague developed precise techniques for understanding the languages of logic and mathematics, and how these techniques have been refined and extended to the study of natural human languages. The book then builds on this account, exploring new thinking about propositions, possibility, and the relationship between meaning, assertion, and other aspects of language use. An invaluable overview of the philosophy of language by one of its most important practitioners, this book will be essential reading for all serious students of philosophy. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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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. ( )