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Fact Proposition Event (Hardcover, 1997 ed.)
Loot Price: R4,491
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Fact Proposition Event (Hardcover, 1997 ed.)
Series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 66
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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`Peterson is an authority of a philosophical and linguistic
industry that began in the 1960s with Vendler's work on
nominalization. Natural languages distinguish syntactically and
semantically between various sorts of what might be called
`gerundive entities' - events, processes, states of affairs,
propositions, facts, ... all referred to by sentence nominals of
various kinds. Philosophers have worried for millennia over the
ontology of such things or `things', but until twenty years ago
they ignored all the useful linguistic evidence. Vendler not only
began to straighten out the distinctions, but pursued more specific
and more interesting questions such as that of what entities the
causality relation relates (events? facts?). And that of the
objects of knowledge and belief. But Vendler's work was only a
start and Peterson has continued the task from then until now, both
philosophically and linguistically. Fact Proposition Event
constitutes the state of the art regarding gerundive entities,
defended in meticulous detail. Peterson's ontology features just
facts, proposition, and events, carefully distinguished from each
other. Among his more specific achievements are: a nice treatment
of the linguist's distinction between `factive' and nonfactive
constructions; a detailed theory of the subjects and objects of
causation, which impinges nicely on action theory; an interesting
argument that fact, proposition, events are innate ideas in humans;
a theory of complex events (with implications for law and
philosophy of law); and an overall picture of syntax and semantics
of causal sentences and action sentences. Though Peterson does not
pursue them here, there are clear and significant implications for
the philosophy of science, in particular for our understanding of
scientific causation, causal explanation and law likeness.'
Professor William Lycan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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