Abstract

This is a revised and expanded version of Dummett's 1976 William James Lectures at Harvard. Dummett aims to construct a "base camp," in the theory of linguistic meaning, for an "assault on metaphysical peaks." The book begins with a brief discussion of metaphysical disputes over realism, and ends, fifteen chapters later, with a brief treatment of realism and the theory of meaning. The intervening chapters take up such semantical/logical topics as the following: inference and truth; meaning, knowledge, and understanding; truth and meaning-theories; the justification of deduction; and semantical holism. Dummett frequently interacts with the relevant views of Frege, Tarski, Quine, and Donald Davidson. Several of the chapters are rather technical, focusing on topics in the philosophy of logic.