The tradition descending from Frege and Russell has typically
treated theories of meaning either as theories of meanings
(propositions expressed), or as theories of truth conditions.
However, propositions of the classical sort don't exist, and truth
conditions can't provide all the information required by a theory
of meaning. In this book, one of the world's leading philosophers
of language offers a way out of this dilemma.
Traditionally conceived, propositions are denizens of a "third
realm" beyond mind and matter, "grasped" by mysterious Platonic
intuition. As conceived here, they are cognitive-event types in
which agents predicate properties and relations of things--in using
language, in perception, and in nonlinguistic thought. Because of
this, one's acquaintance with, and knowledge of, propositions is
acquaintance with, and knowledge of, events of one's cognitive
life. This view also solves the problem of "the unity of the
proposition" by explaining how propositions can be genuinely
representational, and therefore bearers of truth. The problem, in
the traditional conception, is that sentences, utterances, and
mental states are representational because of the relations they
bear to inherently representational Platonic complexes of
universals and particulars. Since we have no way of understanding
how such structures can be representational, independent of
interpretations placed on them by agents, the problem is unsolvable
when so conceived. However, when propositions are taken to be
cognitive-event types, the order of explanation is reversed and a
natural solution emerges. Propositions are representational because
they are constitutively related to inherently representational
cognitive acts.
Strikingly original, "What Is Meaning?" is a major advance.
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