Meaning and truth

By Williams, Stephen G.

Analytic philosophy has seen a resurgent interest in the possibility of explaining linguistic meaning in terms of truth, which many philosophers have seen as considerably more tractable than ...

Language, philosophy of

By Crimmins, Mark

Philosophical interest in language, while ancient and enduring (see Language, ancient philosophy of; Language, medieval theories of; Language, Renaissance philosophy of; Language, early modern philosophy of), has blossomed ...

Cultural identity

By Loughney, John A.

If cultural identity means that a person achieves the fullest humanity within an accepted context of traditional symbols, judgments, values, behaviour and relationships with specific others who self-consciously ...

Strawson, Peter Frederick (1919–2006)

By Snowdon, Paul F.

Strawson taught at the University of Oxford from 1947, becoming Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in 1968, and retiring in 1987. A sequence of influential books and articles ...

Postmodern theology

By Westphal, Merold

The term ‘postmodernism’ is loosely used to designate a wide variety of cultural phenomena from architecture through literature and literary theory to philosophy. The immediate background of philosophical ...

Meaning and understanding

By Rumfitt, Ian

The existence of a close connection between the notions of meaning and understanding can hardly be denied. I may be said to understand you, on a given occasion ...

Pragmatics

By Recanati, Francois

Analytic philosophers have made lasting contributions to the scientific study of language. Semantics (the study of meaning) and pragmatics (the study of language in use) are two important ...

Hermeneutics, biblical

By Thiselton, Anthony C.

Hermeneutics has traditionally been defined as the theory of interpretation. Biblical hermeneutics concerns the interpretation of biblical texts. But ‘interpretation’ tends to reflect the nature of the discipline ...

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William (1872–1970)

By Griffin, Nicholas

Bertrand Russell divided his efforts between philosophy and political advocacy on behalf of a variety of radical causes. He did his most important philosophical work in logic and ...

Private states and language

By Craig, Edward

Something is ’private’ if it can be known to one person only. Many have held that perceptions and bodily sensations are in this sense private, being knowable only ...

Tarski’s definition of truth

By Gupta, Anil

Alfred Tarski’s definition of truth is unlike any that philosophers have given in their long struggle to understand the concept of truth. Tarski’s definition is more clear and ...

Intuitionistic logic and antirealism

By Pagin, Peter

The law of excluded middle (LEM) says that every sentence of the form A∨¬A (‘A or not A’) is logically true. This law is accepted in classical logic, ...

Truth, deflationary theories of

By Liggins, David

Deflationists aim to offer a lucid and metaphysically lightweight account of truth, stripped of obscure or redundant elements. They hold that the theory of truth should be simpler ...

Truth, coherence theory of

By Kirkham, Richard L.

The term ‘coherence’ in the phrase ‘coherence theory of truth’ has never been very precisely defined. The most we can say by way of a general definition is ...

Truth, pragmatic theory of

By Kirkham, Richard L.

Two distinctly different kinds of theories parade under the banner of the ‘pragmatic theory of truth’. First, there is the consensus theory of C.S. Peirce, according to which ...

Realism and antirealism

By Craig, Edward

The basic idea of realism is that the kinds of thing which exist, and what they are like, are independent of us and the way in which we ...

Semantics

By Crimmins, Mark

Semantics is the systematic study of meaning. Current work in this field builds on the work of logicians and linguists as well as of philosophers. Philosophers are interested ...

Semantics, conceptual role

By Block, Ned

According to conceptual role semantics (CRS), the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, for example, in perception, ...

Davidson, Donald (1917–2003)

Donald Davidson is a central figure in twentieth-century American philosophy. Of the five volumes that make up Davidson’s collected essays, the best known are the first two, ...

Davidson, Donald (1917–2003)

By Lepore, Ernie

Donald Davidson’s views about the relationship between our conceptions of ourselves as people and as complex physical objects have had significant impact on contemporary discussions of such topics ...

Dreaming

By Casati, Roberto

We naturally think of dreams as experiences very like perceptions or imaginings, except that they occur during sleep. In prescientific thought the interpretation of dreams played a role ...

Language, ancient philosophy of

By Shields, Christopher

The earliest interest in language during the ancient Greek period was largely instrumental: presumed facts about language and its features were pressed into service for the purpose of ...

McDowell, John Henry (1942–)

By Smith, Nicholas H.

McDowell taught philosophy at Oxford from 1967 to 1986, where he established himself as a key figure in analytic philosophy, mounting forceful arguments in favour of a realist ...

Meaning and verification

By Hart, W.D.

The verifiability theory of meaning says that meaning is evidence. It is anticipated in, for example, Hume’s empiricist doctrine of impressions and ideas, but it emerges into full ...

Communication and intention

By Blackburn, Simon

The classic attempt to understand communication in terms of the intentions of a person making an utterance was put forward by Paul Grice in 1957. Grice was concerned ...