Reference and Beyond
Essays in Philosophy of Language
- Publisher's listprice GBP 143.00
-
72 372 Ft (68 926 Ft + 5% VAT)
The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.
- Discount 10% (cc. 7 237 Ft off)
- Discounted price 65 135 Ft (62 033 Ft + 5% VAT)
Subcribe now and take benefit of a favourable price.
Subscribe
72 372 Ft
Availability
Not yet published.
Why don't you give exact delivery time?
Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.
Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 17 July 2025
- ISBN 9780199280810
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages480 pages
- Size 234x156 mm
- Language English 700
Categories
Short description:
This book is a selection of papers by Michael Devitt in philosophy of language, accompanied by many new footnotes and postscripts. A dominant theme is the semantics of proper names, definite descriptions, and demonstratives. The book argues that these terms have conventional "referential" uses to express "singular" thoughts.
MoreLong description:
In Reference and Beyond, Michael Devitt explores philosophy of language from a naturalistic approach. A dominant theme of this book is the semantics of proper names, definite descriptions, and demonstratives. It shows that these terms have conventional "referential" uses to express "singular" thoughts. Those uses are explained by a unified "causal" theory: a term's reference is largely fixed in an object by a causal link between the person and the object when it is, or was, the focus of that person's perception. Furthermore, Devitt argues that a term's meaning is its largely causal mode of reference. So, a related theme is the rejection of the "direct reference" view that the meaning of a name is its bearer.
Another theme in Reference and Beyond concerns thoughts and their ascriptions, including "de se" thoughts and Kripke's Paderewski puzzle. Devitt approaches the semantics of ascriptions from a perspective on thoughts, thus according with the slogan, "Put Metaphysics First," that governs the author's approach to all philosophical problems. A further framework is naturalism. Languages are parts of the spatio-temporal world playing causal roles in virtue of certain properties, "meanings." The task of a theory of language is then to explain the nature of those causally significant properties. The book takes a very dim view of the popular idea that "propositions" have a place in explanations of meanings. The naturalism leads to a rejection of the received view that theories of language must rest on an evidential base of speakers' intuitions and to a search for a respectable empirical base.
