Language and Reality

Download Language and Reality PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 1999
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind :
Book Rating : 995/5 ( reviews)

Language and Reality - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Language and Reality write by Michael Devitt. This book was released on 1999. Language and Reality available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. What is language? How does it relate to the world? How does it relate to the mind? Should our view of language influence our view of the world? These are among the central issues covered in this spirited and unusually clear introduction to the philosophy of language. Making no pretense of neutrality, Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny take a definite theoretical stance. Central to that stance is naturalism--that is, they treat a philosophical theory of language as an empirical theory like any other and see people as nothing but complex parts of the physical world. This leads them, controversially, to a deflationary view of the significance of the study of language: they dismiss the idea that the philosophy of language should be preeminent in philosophy. This highly successful textbook has been extensively rewritten for the second edition to reflect recent developments in the field.

Language vs. Reality

Download Language vs. Reality PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2022-03-29
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind :
Book Rating : 773/5 ( reviews)

Language vs. Reality - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Language vs. Reality write by N.J. Enfield. This book was released on 2022-03-29. Language vs. Reality available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect. Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.

The Language and Reality of Time

Download The Language and Reality of Time PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2006-05-11
Genre : Philosophy
Kind :
Book Rating : 527/5 ( reviews)

The Language and Reality of Time - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Language and Reality of Time write by Thomas Sattig. This book was released on 2006-05-11. The Language and Reality of Time available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Thomas Sattig's book develops a comprehensive framework for doing philosophy of time. He brings together a variety of different perspectives, linking our ordinary conception of time with the physicist's conception, and linking questions about time addressed in metaphysics with questions addressed in the philosophy of language. Within this framework, Sattig explores the temporal dimension of the material world in relation to the temporal dimension of our ordinary discourse about theworld.The discussion is centred around the dispute between three-dimensionalists and four-dimensionalists about whether the temporal profile of ordinary objects mirrors their spatial profile. Are ordinary objects extended in time in the same way in which they are extended in space? Do they have temporal as well as spatial parts? Four-dimensionalists say 'yes', three-dimensionalists say 'no'. Sattig develops an original three-dimensionalist picture of the material world, and argues that this pictureis preferable to its four-dimensionalists rivals if ordinary thought and talk are taken seriously. Among the issues that Sattig discusses are the metaphysics of persistence, change, composition, location, coincidence, and relativity; the ontology of past, present, and future; and the semantics ofpredication, tense, temporal modifiers, and sortal terms.

Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective

Download Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2020-10-19
Genre : Philosophy
Kind :
Book Rating : 413/5 ( reviews)

Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective write by Andrea Bianchi. This book was released on 2020-10-19. Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book celebrates the many important contributions to philosophy by one of the leading philosophers in the analytic field, Michael Devitt. It collects seventeen original essays by renowned philosophers from all over the world. They all develop themes from Devitt’s work, thus discussing many fundamental issues in philosophy of linguistics, theory of reference, theory of meaning, methodology, and metaphysics. In a long final chapter, Devitt himself replies to the contributors. In so doing, he further elaborates his views on various of these issues, for example defending his claim (in opposition to Chomskyan orthodoxy) that languages are external rather than internal; his well-known causal theory of reference; his “shocking” idea that meanings can be causal, non-descriptive, modes of presentation; his methodological naturalism; his commitment to scientific realism; and his version of biological essentialism. The volume will appeal to all scholars and students interested in contemporary theoretical analytic philosophy, and will be a must-read for any serious researcher in philosophy of language. It provides a deep insight into the work of one of the most important living philosophers, and will help readers to better understand language and reality from a naturalistic perspective.

Reference, Truth and Reality

Download Reference, Truth and Reality PDF Online Free

Author :
Release : 2016-08-12
Genre : Philosophy
Kind :
Book Rating : 871/5 ( reviews)

Reference, Truth and Reality - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Reference, Truth and Reality write by Mark Platts. This book was released on 2016-08-12. Reference, Truth and Reality available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The papers in this collection discuss the central questions about the connections between language, reality and human understanding. The complex relations between accounts of meaning and facts about ordinary speakers’ understanding of their language are examined so as to illuminate the philosophical character of the connections between language and reality. The collection as a whole is a thematically unified treatment of some of the most central questions within contemporary philosophy of language.