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 | | A Companion to the Philosophy of Language (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) by Bob Hale (Editor), Crispin Wright (Editor) ISBN-10: 9780631167570 ISBN-10: 0-631-16757-9 ISBN-13: 9780631167570 ISBN-13: 978-0-631-16757-0 Hardcover 1997-09 Blackwell Publishers Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Book Description Written by an international assembly of leading philosophers, this volume provides a survey of contemporary philosophy of language. As well as providing a synoptic view of the key issues, figures, concepts and debates, each essay makes new and original contributions to ongoing debate. Topics covered include: rule following, modality, realism, indeterminacy of translation, inscrutability of reference, names and rigid destination, Davidson's program, meaning and verification, intention and convention, radical interpretation, tacit knowledge, metaphor, causal theories of semantics, objects and criteria of identity, theories of truth, force and pragmatics, essentialism, demonstratives, reference and necessity, identity, meaning and privacy of language, vagueness and the sorites paradox, holisms, propositional attitudes, analyticity. | ||
Reviews | ||
Some dead wood I've spent this summer reading various philosophy of language compilations cover-to-cover. This one is only okay; the best, and I suppose this should probably be obvious in retrospect, compilations are the ones that contain classic papers, not "written-for" papers. Some contain a mixture. If you are buying lots of these, a problem is that you get N copies of some of the more classic articles, where N starts to become large. That's an advantage of a collection like this one; only one of its 25 papers is in a different one of my compilations. Another advantage is that the papers are all current and so have up-to-date bibliographies. I've also been reading a lot of books, many of which I was pointed to by articles in this volume. On the other hand, when it comes to interesting original philosophical content, its hard to catch lightning in a bottle, so what you get here is a mixed bag from that perspective. Most of the articles in this compilation look at some position some philosopher of language held and proceed to give a survey of the ensuing discussion as it unfolded in the literature. This is useful for an education, and it serves that purpose well for the most part. However, some of the topics are rather arcane. For example, you get one article on the "Sorites paradox"...you know, if zero hairs makes for baldness, and if the addition of a single hair can't make a bald man unbald, blah blah blah.... I assume these are there for completeness and were begrudgingly churned out by good-citizenly philosophers with better things to think about normally (this is what you call a "charitable reading"). But then some of the other articles are very good; although even the good ones are more or less surveys. The authors certainly may and do reject certain perspectives in favor of other ones, but for the most part they are explicating perspectives, not developing them, here. Probably that is completely fitting for a "Companion", though, and Companions just aren't my thing. | ||
A good, serious companion, not an introduction The editors state in their Preface that this Companion is 'intended as a guide for a more ambitious and determined explorer', and we can believe them. This book is not encyclopaedic; it does not provide dictionary-like entries that are short and sweet on the various topics and terms one might come across in the study of language. Rather, it provides 25 serious, yet readable articles on various topics in the Phil. of Language. These chapters are divided up into 3 sections: Meaning and Theories of Meaning; Language, Truth and Reality; and Reference, Identity and Necessity. The contributors are all scholars in the field, but mainly British (I believe 9 out of the 23 come from American universities; 4 out of the 23 come from Oxford alone). What is good is that they do not intend introductory essays into the various fields (pragmatics, intention, meaning, verification, etc) but take up their respective positions and argue them. For this reason, the book is of value to those students interested in the study of this subject and willing to immerse themselves, but who are not yet 'experts' in the field. For those who are just starting out, it is not an appropriate introductory work. | ||