Semantic Relationism

by Fine, Kit

• ISBN13: 9781405196697
• ISBN10: 1405196696
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-17
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Kit Fine argues for a fundamentally new approach to the study of representation in language and thought. His key idea is that there may be representational relationships between expressions or elements of thought that are not grounded in the intrinsic representational features of the expressions or elements themselves. Based upon the first Brown/Blackwell lecture series and the John Locke lectures, this ground-breaking work is essential reading for anyone interested in the general nature of representation.

Author Biography

Kit Fine is Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University, and specializes in metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of language. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies and is a former editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic. He is the author of Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects (Blackwell, 1985), The Limits of Abstraction (2002) and Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers (2005) and the co-author of Worlds, Times and Selves (1977). He has also written papers in ancient philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and economic theory, in addition to the papers in his central fields of interest.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Coordination among Variables

The Desiderata

The Problem

The Contextualist Response

The Dismissive Response

The Instantial Approach

The Algebraic Approach

Relational Semantics for First-order Logic

Coordination within Language

Frege's Puzzle

Rejecting Compositionality

Semantic Fact

Closure

Referentialism Reconsidered

A Relational Semantics for Names

Transparency

Coordination within Thought

Intentional Coordination

Strict Co-representation

The Content of Thought

The Cognitive Puzzle

Coordination between Speakers

Kripke's Puzzle

Some Related Puzzles

A Response

A Solution

A Deeper Puzzle

A Deeper Solution

The Role of Variables in Belief Reports

Some Semantical Morals

Postscript: Further Work

Index

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