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 ...

Informational semantics

see Semantics, informational.

Situational semantics

see Semantics, situation.

Semantics, informational

By McLaughlin, Brian P.; Rey, Georges

Information-theoretic semantics (ITS) attempts to provide a naturalistic account of the conditions under which a psychological state such as a belief or desire has a particular mental content: ...

Semantics, situation

By Perry, John R.

Situation semantics attempts to provide systematic and philosophically coherent accounts of the meanings of various constructions that philosophers and linguists find important. It is based on the old ...

Conceptual role semantics

see Semantics, conceptual role.

Semantic view of theories

see Models. Theories, scientific.

Teleological semantics

see Semantics, teleological.

Discourse semantics

By Asher, Nicholas

Discourse and its interpretation have interested philosophers since ancient times, and have been studied in different areas of philosophy such as rhetoric, the philosophy of language and the ...

Fiction, semantics of

By Howell, Robert

Taken at face value, ‘Anna Karenina is a woman’ seems true. By using Tolstoi’s name ‘Anna Karenina’ and the predicate ‘is a woman’ we appear to refer to ...

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, ...

Semantics, possible worlds

By Perry, John R.

Possible worlds semantics (PWS) is a family of ideas and methods that have been used to analyse concepts of philosophical interest. PWS was originally focused on the important ...

Holism: mental and semantic

By Block, Ned

Mental (or semantic) holism is the doctrine that the identity of a belief content (or the meaning of a sentence that expresses it) is determined by its place ...

Type-logical semantics

By Muskens, Reinhard

Type-logical semantics studies linguistic meaning with the help of the theory of types. The latter originated with Russell as an answer to the paradoxes, but has the additional ...

Game-theoretic semantics

see Semantics, game-theoretic.

Truth-conditional semantics

see Meaning and truth.

Semantic paradoxes and theories of truth

By McGee, Vann

The Cretan philosopher Epimenides said that Cretans always lie. Assuming, for the sake of argument, the mendacity of all other statements by Cretans, we get a paradox: if ...

Semantics, game-theoretic

By Hand, Michael

Game-theoretic semantics (GTS) uses concepts from game theory to study how the truth and falsity of the sentences of a language depend upon the truth and falsity of ...

Semantics, teleological (teleosemantics)

By Godfrey-Smith, Peter

Teleological/biological theories of meaning use a biological concept of function to explain how the internal states of organisms like ourselves can represent conditions in the world. These theories ...

Logic, philosophy of

By Forbes, Graeme

Philosophy of logic can be roughly characterized as those philosophical topics which have emerged either from the technical development of symbolic (mathematical) logic, or from the motivations that ...

Metaethics

By Finlay, Stephen

A tripartite distinction is often drawn in moral philosophy between (i) applied ethics, (ii) normative ethical theory, and (iii) metaethics. Applied ethics seeks answers to moral questions about ...

Bivalence

Focus

By Glanzberg, Michael

Focus is the name of the phenomenon we typically see marked in English by putting stress on a word or phrase, as in: ...

Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz (1890–1963)

By Wolenski, Jan

Ajdukiewicz, like other typical members of the Lwów–Warsaw School, the main Polish analytic movement, was basically interested in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, and philosophy of science. In ...

Events

By Goswick, Dana

Events are happenings, occurrences and changes objects undergo, e.g. Kate’s singing, Jane’s pouring the milk, John’s walking. Events are typically understood in contrast to objects – where events ...