"This book is valuable as expounding in full a theory of meaning that has its roots in the work of Frege and has been of the widest influence.... The chief virtue of the book is its systematic character. From Frege to Quine most philosophical logicians have restricted themselves by piecemeal and local assaults on the problems involved. The book is marked by a genial tolerance. Carnap sees himself as proposing conventions rather than asserting truths. However he provides plenty of matter (...) for argument."-Anthony Quinton, Hibbert Journal. (shrink)

When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is an inference process guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximations, metaphors and ironies? Is the ability to (...) understand speakers' meanings rooted in a more general human ability to understand other minds? How do these abilities interact in evolution and in cognitive development? MEANING AND RELEVANCE sets out to answer these and other questions, enriching and updating relevance theory and exploring its implications for linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and literary studies. (shrink)

It's an achievement of the last couple of decades that people who work in linguistic semantics and people who work in the philosophy of language have arrived at a friendly, de facto agreement as to their respective job descriptions. The terms of this agreement are that the semanticists do the work and the philosophers do the worrying. The semanticists try to construct actual theories of meaning (or truth theories, or model theories, or whatever) for one or another kind of expression (...) in one or another natural language; for example, they try to figure out how the temperature could be rising compatibly with the substitutivity of identicals. The philosophers, by contrast, keep an eye on the large, foundational issues, such as: what's the relation between sense and denotation; what's the relation between thought and language; whether translation is determinate; and whether life is like a fountain. Every now and then the philosophers and the semanticists are supposed to get together and compare notes on their respective progress. Or lack thereof. (shrink)

The phrase "the meaning of life" for many seems a quaint notion fit for satirical mauling by Monty Python or Douglas Adams. But in this spirited Very Short Introduction, famed critic Terry Eagleton takes a serious if often amusing look at the question and offers his own surprising answer. Eagleton first examines how centuries of thinkers and writers--from Marx and Schopenhauer to Shakespeare, Sartre, and Beckett--have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests, however, that it is only in (...) modern times that the question has become problematic. But instead of tackling it head-on, many of us cope with the feelings of meaninglessness in our lives by filling them with everything from football to sex, Kabbala, Scientology, "New Age softheadedness," or fundamentalism. On the other hand, Eagleton notes, many educated people believe that life is an evolutionary accident that has no intrinsic meaning. If our lives have meaning, it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready made. Eagleton probes this view of meaning as a kind of private enterprise, and concludes that it fails to holds up. He argues instead that the meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical but ethical. It is not something separate from life, but what makes it worth living--that is, a certain quality, depth, abundance and intensity of life. Here then is a brilliant discussion of the problem of meaning by a leading thinker, who writes with a light and often irreverent touch, but with a very serious end in mind. (shrink)

This is identical with the first edition (see 21: 2716) except for the addition of a Supplement containing 5 previously published articles and the bringing of the bibliography (now 73 items) up to date. The 5 added articles present clarifications or modifications of views expressed in the first edition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

A comprehensive introduction to the ways in which meaning is conveyed in language. Alan Cruse covers semantic matters, but also deals with topics that are usually considered to fall under pragmatics. A major aim is to highlight the richness and subtlety of meaning phenomena, rather than to expound any particular theory. Rich in examples and exercises, Meaning in Language provides an invaluable descriptive approach to this area of linguistics for undergraduates and postgraduates alike.

One of the most influential men of his time, philosopher, psychologist, educator, and author William James (1842-1910) helped lead the transition from a predominantly European-centered nineteenth-century philosophy to a new "pragmatic" American philosophy. Helping to pave the way was his seminal book Pragmatism (1907), in which he included a chapter on "Truth," an essay which provoked severe criticism. In response, he wrote the present work, an attempt to bring together all he had ever written on the theory of knowledge, including (...) an article on the function of cognition, later polemic and expository contributions, and some replies to previous criticism. The result was a full and definitive expression of the pragmatist "epistemology" from James' point of view. In the book, he urges the reader to "turn away from abstractions, verbal solutions, fixed principles, and pretended absolutes and look for concreteness and facts, action and power," arguing that "the ultimate test for us of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires." For students, scholars--anyone interested in William James or the history of American philosophical thought--this book offers an in-depth exposition of the influential ideas of one of the greatest American thinkers. Unabridged republication of the edition originally published by Longmans, Green and Co., New York and London, 1909. (shrink)

It's an achievement of the last couple of decades that people who work in linguistic semantics and people who work in the philosophy of language have arrived at a friendly, de facto agreement as to their respective job descriptions. The terms of this agreement are that the semanticists do the work and the philosophers do the worrying. The semanticists try to construct actual theories of meaning (or truth theories, or model theories, or whatever) for one or another kind of expression (...) in one or another natural language; for example, they try to figure out how the temperature could be rising compatibly with the substitutivity of identicals. The philosophers, by contrast, keep an eye on the large, foundational issues, such as: what's the relation between sense and denotation; what's the relation between thought and language; whether translation is determinate; and whether life is like a fountain. Every now and then the philosophers and the semanticists are supposed to get together and compare notes on their respective progress. Or lack thereof. (shrink)

This volume is a collective exploration of major themes in the work of Crispin Wright, one of today's leading philosophers. These newly commissioned papers are divided into four sections, preceded by a substantial Introduction, which places them in the context of the development of Wright's ideas. The distinguished contributors address issues such as the rule-following problem, knowledge of our meanings and minds, truth, realism, anti-realism and relativism, as well as the nature of perceptual justification, the cogency of arguments such as (...) G. E. Moore's celebrated proof of an external world, and skepticism about the material world. Some papers explore the relationship of Wright's ideas with those of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose influence has always been a prominent aspect of Wright's philosophy. The essays collectively testify to the enormous interest and relevance of Wright's seminal contributions for present-day debates in areas as diverse as the philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology, and significantly advance research in these areas. The volume also contains Wright's substantial responses to his critics, which offer the most up-to-date versions of his ideas and a vigorous defense of his philosophy. (shrink)

Within the philosophy of language, pragmatics has tended to be seen as an adjunct to, and a means of solving problems in, semantics. A cognitive-scientific conception of pragmatics as a mental processing system responsible for interpreting ostensive communicative stimuli (specifically, verbal utterances) has effected a transformation in the pragmatic issues pursued and the kinds of explanation offered. Taking this latter perspective, I compare two distinct proposals on the kinds of processes, and the architecture of the system(s), responsible for the recovery (...) of speaker meaning (both explicitly and implicitly communicated meaning). (shrink)

The ideal introduction for students of semantics, Lexical Meaning fills the gap left by more general semantics textbooks, providing the teacher and the student with insights into word meaning beyond the traditional overviews of lexical relations. The book explores the relationship between word meanings and syntax and semantics more generally. It provides a balanced overview of the main theoretical approaches, along with a lucid explanation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. After covering the main topics in lexical meaning, such as (...) polysemy and sense relations, the textbook surveys the types of meanings represented by different word classes. It explains abstract concepts in clear language, using a wide range of examples, and includes linguistic puzzles in each chapter to encourage the student to practise using the concepts. 'Adopt-a-Word' exercises give students the chance to research a particular word, building a portfolio of specialist work on a single word. (shrink)

In this book, linguists and philosophers combine to offer a unique insight not only into Grice's contribution to philosophy of language, but on his theories of natural and non-natural meaning, implicatures and the semantic-pragmatic distinction.

This study explores the experiences of nurses that provide ‘complex’, generalist healthcare in hospital settings. Complex care is described as care for patients experiencing acute issues additional to multimorbidity, ageing or psychosocial complexity. Nurses are the largest professional group of frontline healthcare workers and patients experiencing chronic conditions are overrepresented in acute care settings. Research exploring nurses’ experiences of hospital‐based complex care is limited, however. This study aims to add to what is known currently. Four ‘complex care’ nurses undertook in‐depth (...) semistructured interviews and their narratives were analysed using the conceptual framework of complex adaptive phenomenology. Two overarching themes constituting the ‘essence’ of complex care nursing were identified: Contextual factors and attribute/value‐based elements. Creating meaningful patient outcomes and feeling part of a team were experienced as fulfilling, whereas time constraints, institutional settings and systemic barriers to comprehensive caregiving diminished the experience of providing complex care. Overall, work meaning presented as a dynamic phenomenon, shaped by personal and professional values, local settings and systemic factors. It is recommended that more expansive research be undertaken to explore the experience of complex care for nurses. Such knowledge can contribute to initiatives that draw a skilled, effective and engaged hospital‐based complex care nursing workforce. (shrink)

The meaning of a symbol is determined by its use, but the canonical way of specifying meaning is in a statement of the form "S means...". To be able to provide such a specification is equivalent to being able to translate the symbol S into one's own terms. A change in usage of terms involves a change of meaning iff the correct translation between earlier usage and later usage takes a term into a different expression. Such translation is holistic, a (...) matter of finding the best mapping. Sameness of meaning is a similarity relation, as is sameness of concept. The meaning of a larger expression is derived from the meaning of its parts iff the translation of the whole is derived from the translation of its parts. (shrink)

This dissertation may be divided into two parts. The first part is about the Extended Gricean Model of information transmission. This model, introduced here, is meant to better explain how humans communicate and understand each other. It has been developed to apply to cases that were left unexplained by the two main models of communication found in contemporary philosophy and linguistics, i.e. the Gricean (pragmatic) model and the code (semantic) model. In particular, I show that these latter two models cannot (...) apply to cases where one communicate through spontaneous emotional expressions and how the Extended Gricean Model of information transmission does. The second part of the dissertation is about what emotional signs mean, in various senses of the term ‘mean'. I review existing theories of meaning and see how they apply to emotional signs, i.e. signs which give us information about the affective state of the sign producer. (shrink)

This book is intended to fill a gap between popular 'wonders of mathematics' books and the technical writings of the philosophers of mathematics.

Meaning and Argument shifts introductory logic from the traditional emphasis on proofs to the symbolization of arguments. It is an ideal introduction to formal logic, philosophical logic, and philosophy of language. Distinctive approach in that this text is a philosophical, rather than mathematical introduction to logic Concentrates on symbolization and does all the technical logic simply with truth tables and no derivations at all Contains numerous exercises and a corresponding answer key Extensive Appendix which allows the reader to explore subjects (...) that go beyond what is usually covered in an introductory logic course. (shrink)

While the Prophet's articulation of the message of tawhid resulted in the clustering of his followers around him, it also led to reactions from the majority of his interlocutors. At first, he was tried to be discouraged by not taking his message seriously or by humiliating him, and when it was seen that his followers increased over time, he was tried to be prevented by harsher methods. The polytheists claimed that the Prophet was a magician who spoke incantations from his (...) mouth, a liar who reported news he had learned from others as if it had been revealed to him, and a person who made statements contrary to the religion of ancestors because he had lost his sanity and needed to be treated. In this context, this article deals with the slander of the polytheists that the Prophet was a "majnun" and tries to understand what they meant by this claim. When the translations of the Qur'anic verses that remind us of the allegations of the polytheists are taken into consideration, it is seen that most of the translations give the word "majnun" the meaning of "madness". When we examine the meaning attributed to the expression by the Jahiliyyah Arabs, the word takes on a completely different meaning, and it is understood that the polytheists meant that the word revealed to the Prophet was taught to him not by Allah but by the jinn whom he had befriended. (shrink)

The Meaning Circuit Hypothesis (MCH) is a synthesis of ideas providing John Wheeler’s outline of ultimate physics, which he fine-tuned over several decades from the 1970s onward. It is a ‘working hypothesis’ in which ‘existence is a ‘meaning circuit”’ that portrays the world as a “system self-synthesized by quantum networking.” It was strongly advocated by him for roughly two decades and since then has had an increasingly strong impact on the approach of many investigators of quantum theory; in particular, elements (...) such as the quantum participator and ‘it from bit’ are now considered by others as candidate components of a foundation for quantum theory in which information is involved essentially. Therefore, it is worthy of review and critique. (shrink)

This is a critical notice of José Zalabardo's recent book 'Pragmatist Semantics: A Use-Based Approach to Linguistic Representation' (2023). I raise problems about specific steps of Zalabardo’s arguments and I criticize important aspects of his positive account.

Generalized empirical method -- Knowledge and our limits: Lonergan and Williamson -- Aesthetics: insights from Eldridge, Aquinas and Lonergan -- Cartwright, critical realism, and the laws of science -- Scott Soames on meaning: a critical realist response -- Lonergan on meaning.

Dignity plays a central role in current thinking about law and human rights, but there is sharp disagreement about its meaning. Combining conceptual precision with a broad historical background, Michael Rosen puts these controversies in context and offers a novel, constructive proposal. “Penetrating and sprightly...Rosen rightly emphasizes the centrality of Catholicism in the modern history of human dignity. His command of the history is impressive...Rosen is a wonderful guide to the recent German constitutional thinking about human dignity...[Rosen] is in general (...) an urbane and witty companion, achieving his aim of accessibly written philosophy.” —Samuel Moyn, The Nation “[An] elegant, interesting and lucid exploration of the concept of dignity...Drawing on classical, liberal and Catholic traditions, Rosen hopes to rehabilitate dignity to its rightful place near the centre of moral thought...Rosen's admirable book deserves wide attention from political theorists, jurisprudes and political philosophers.” —Simon Blackburn, Times Higher Education “Dignity deserves to be widely read, not only for its intrinsic interest, but also as a corrective to the habit of discussing such topics in abstraction from their social context. Whether or not one agrees with Rosen's arguments, there can be no doubt he has widened our horizons.” —Rae Langton, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

In this new book, the author of the classic Truth presents an original theory of meaning, demonstrates its richness, and defends it against all contenders. He surveys the diversity of twentieth-century philosophical insights into meaning and shows that his theory can reconcile these with a common-sense view of meaning as derived from use. Meaning and its companion volume Truth (now published in a revised edition) together demystify two central issues in philosophy and offer a controversial but compelling view of the (...) relations between language, thought, and reality. (shrink)

What is it for marks or sounds to have meaning, and what is it for someone to mean something in producing them? Answering these and related questions, Schiffer explores communication, speech acts, convention, and the meaning of linguistic items in this reissue of a seminal work on the foundations of meaning. A new introduction takes account of recent developments and places his theory in a broader context.

This paper explores three important interrelated themes in Putnam’s philosophy: language, meaning, and the context-sensitivity of “truth-evaluable content.” It shows how Putnam’s own version of semantic externalism is able to steer a middle course between an internalism about meaning that requires a “language of thought” (or “mentalese”) and a mind-independent realism about meaning that requires Platonic objects (or other such “abstract entities”), while doing justice to how ascriptions of meaning are causally related to the objective world. The following account is (...) able to allow for the primacy of language over thought while ensuring that the content of thought is partially fixed by the external world. The emphasis in Putnam’s later writings on the “context sensitivity” of meaning are often construed as marking a major departure from his earlier thought. It is here argued that such an interpretation involves a misunderstanding both of the commitments of Putnam’s original form of semantic externalism and of the implications of the version of context sensitivity he embraces. (shrink)

Volume 47, Issue 3, November 2018, Page 403-427.

BÄCKSTRÖM B, ASPLUND K and SUNDIN K.Nursing Inquiry2010;17: 257–268 The meaning of middle‐aged female spouses’ lived experience of the relationship with a partner who has suffered a stroke, during the first year postdischargeStroke consequences present a great long‐term challenge to the spouses of the stroke sufferer. A longitudinal study with a phenomenological hermeneutic approach was used to illuminate the meanings of middle‐aged female spouses’ lived experience of their relationship with a partner who has suffered a stroke, during the first year (...) postdischarge. Four middle‐aged female spouses of stroke sufferers participated in the study. Narrative interviews were conducted 1, 6 and 12 month postdischarge (total of 12 interviews), audio‐taped and transcribed verbatim to a text and interpreted by a phenomenological hermeneutic method inspired by Ricoeur. The findings showed a process over time during which spouses come to know, recognize and acknowledge the residual changes in their partners’ cognitive and emotional conditions and the impact on their relationship. Spouses showed grief due to the loss of the marital relationship they once had and anxiety that they would not be able to continue in an undesired relationship in the future. Even if the partner is still alive, there is a loss to grieve and to be understood, an important meaning of the transition process in the relationship during the first year after the partner's discharge. (shrink)

The concepts of meaning and mental content resist naturalistic analysis. This is because they are normative: they depend on ideas of how things ought to be. Allan Gibbard offers an expressivist explanation of these 'oughts': he borrows devices from metaethics to illuminate deep problems at the heart of the philosophy of language and thought.

On old age that steals on us fast -- Spiritual development -- The search for happiness -- Meaningful living according to logotherapy -- Guiding principles of logotherapy -- The courage to be authentic : philosophical sources of logotherapy -- The concept of meaning in religion and literature -- Life as a task -- On fate and meaningful living -- Despair as mortal illness in aging -- The gifts of the Gods : sources for discovering meaning in life -- The importance (...) of humor and laughter in old age -- Dealing with guilt and remorse -- Coping with loneliness -- A logotherapeutic perspective on death. (shrink)

Prologue -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Overview about MIL -- Definition of MIL -- Development and nature of MIL -- Sources of MIL -- Therapeutic applications for working with MIL -- Existing theories on MIL and psychotherapy -- A model for working with MIL -- MIL work with specific client problems -- Case examples of clients with MIL concerns -- Multicultural and ethical considerations in working with MIL in psychotherapy -- Finding meaning in life: a self-help guide -- Research on (...) MIL -- Research on MIL -- Measurement of MIL -- Conclusions -- Conclusions and future directions -- References -- Index -- About the author. (shrink)

How do people understand questions about cause and prevent? Some theories propose that people affirm that A causes B if A's occurrence makes a difference to B's occurrence in one way or another. Other theories propose that A causes B if some quantity or symbol gets passed in some way from A to B. The aim of our studies is to compare these theories' ability to explain judgements of causation and prevention. We describe six experiments that compare judgements for causal (...) paths that involve a mechanism, i.e. a continuous process of transmission or exchange from cause to effect, against paths that involve no mechanism yet a change in the cause nevertheless brings about a change in the effect. Our results show that people prefer to attribute cause when a mechanism links cause to effect. In contrast, prevention is sensitive both to the presence of an interruption to a causal mechanism and to a change in the outcome in the absence of a mechanism. In this sense, ‘prevent’ means something different than ‘cause not'. We discuss the implications of our results for existing theories of causation. (shrink)

In _The Meaning of the Body_, Mark Johnson continues his pioneering work on the exciting connections between cognitive science, language, and meaning first begun in the classic _Metaphors We Live By_. Johnson uses recent research into infant psychology to show how the body generates meaning even before self-consciousness has fully developed. From there he turns to cognitive neuroscience to further explore the bodily origins of meaning, thought, and language and examines the many dimensions of meaning—including images, qualities, emotions, and metaphors—that (...) are all rooted in the body’s physical encounters with the world. Drawing on the psychology of art and pragmatist philosophy, Johnson argues that all of these aspects of meaning-making are fundamentally aesthetic. He concludes that the arts are the culmination of human attempts to find meaning and that studying the aesthetic dimensions of our experience is crucial to unlocking meaning's bodily sources. Throughout, Johnson puts forth a bold new conception of the mind rooted in the understanding that philosophy will matter to nonphilosophers only if it is built on a visceral connection to the world. “Mark Johnson demonstrates that the aesthetic and emotional aspects of meaning are fundamental—central to conceptual meaning and reason, and that the arts show meaning-making in its fullest realization. If you were raised with the idea that art and emotion were external to ideas and reason, you must read this book. It grounds philosophy in our most visceral experience.”—George Lakoff, author of _Moral Politics_. (shrink)

The great Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) believed that the dawn of the twentieth century would bring an end to the old atheistic and positivistic worldview and the beginning of a new era of the spirit. His philosophy goes beyond mere rational conceptualization and tries to attain authentic life itself: the profound layers of existence in contact with the divine world. He directed all his efforts-philosophical as well as in his personal and public life-at replacing the kingdom of this world (...) with the kingdom of God. According to him, we can all attempt this by tapping the divine creative powers that constitute our true nature. Our mission is to be collaborators with God in His continuing creation of the world. In The Meaning of History, Nikolai Berdyaev examines the fundamental problems of the philosophy of history. For him, the philosophy of history is a science of the spirit bringing us into communion with the mysteries of spiritual life. The real philosophy of history is that of the triumph of authentic life over death, of man's participation in another reality much deeper and richer than the external reality in which he is immersed. The history of man and the world is rooted in "celestial history," in the deepest interior spiritual life, which can be equated with heavenly life, the life of eternity, the life of God. The source of history lies in the experience of the human spirit in direct communion with the divine spirit.  "Nikolai Berdyaev's writings are always insightful, penetrating, passionate, committed-expressions of the whole person. They are as intensely alive now as when they were first written."-Richard Pevear, translator of War and Peaceand The Brothers Karamazov "Nikolai Berdyaev's writings retain their freshness as vehicles for thinking not just about the future of Russia, but about the spiritual challenges facing the modern world."-Paul Vallier, author of Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov "Nikolai Berdyaev is one of the few who have found the Christian answer, and yet do not cease to question with those whose lives are still torn asunder by disbelief, doubt, and sufferings; one of the few who dare to be, as thinkers, Christians and, as Christians, thinkers."-Evgeny Lampert, author of The Apocalypse of History Boris Jakim has translated and edited many books in the field of Russian religious thought. His translations include S. L. Frank's The Unknowable, Pavel Florensky's The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Vladimir Solovyov's Lectures on Divine Humanity, and Sergius Bulgakov's The Bride of the Lamb. (shrink)

Most people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we rightly perceive as worthy of love--and it is these (...) actions that give meaning to our lives. Wolf makes a compelling case that, along with happiness and morality, this kind of meaningfulness constitutes a distinctive dimension of a good life. Written in a lively and engaging style, and full of provocative examples, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters is a profound and original reflection on a subject of permanent human concern. (shrink)