Abstract

What do words have to do with the world? Do our concepts make the world the way it is for us? If concepts do make the world what it is for us, is this making complete, without residue of a natural world, and how does this making occur? Is there a real world to which word and concepts refer that anchors their meaning? What is the role of the imagination in making words have meaning? Is understanding embodied, conceptual, or both? A Modest Realism explores these questions through its examination of the foundations of articulatable experience. It joins language and experience in a non-essentialist realism, while avoiding the non sequiturs and practical impossibilities of most twentieth century postmodern philosophers