0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Browse All Departments
  • All Departments
Price
  • R2,500 - R5,000 (1)
  • -
Status
Brand

Showing 1 - 1 of 1 matches in All Departments

Words without Objects - Semantics, Ontology, and Logic for Non-Singularity (Hardcover, New): Henry Laycock Words without Objects - Semantics, Ontology, and Logic for Non-Singularity (Hardcover, New)
Henry Laycock
R3,266 Discovery Miles 32 660 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

A picture of the world as chiefly one of discrete objects, distributed in space and time, has sometimes seemed compelling. It is however one of two main targets of Henry Laycock's book; for it is seriously incomplete. The picture, he argues, leaves no space for stuff like air and water. With discrete objects, we may always ask 'how many?', but with stuff the question has to be 'how much?' Within philosophy, stuff of certain basic kinds is central to the ancient pre-Socratic world-view; but it also constitutes the field of modern chemistry and is a major factor in ecology. Philosophers these days, in general, are unlikely to deny that stuff exists. But they are very likely to deny that it is ('ultimately') to be contrasted with things, and it is on this account that logic and semantics figure largely in the framework of the book. Elementary logic is a logic which takes values for its variables; and these values are precisely distinct individuals or things. Existence is then symbolized in just such terms; and this, it is proposed, creates a pressure for 'reducing' stuff to things. Non-singular expressions, which include words for stuff, 'mass' nouns, and also plural nouns, are 'explicated' as semantically singular. Here then is the second target of the book. The posit that both mass and plural nouns name special categories of objects (set-theoretical 'collections' of objects in the one case, mereological 'parcels' or 'portions' of stuff in the other) represents, so Laycock urges, the imposition of an alien logic upon both the many and the much.

Free Delivery
Pinterest Twitter Facebook Google+
You may like...
The Shires Good Years
The Shires CD R114 Discovery Miles 1 140
A Nightmare On Elm Street 1-7
Robert Englund, Tom Arnold, … DVD  (2)
R850 Discovery Miles 8 500
Comprehensive Geographic Information…
Bo Huang Hardcover R20,868 Discovery Miles 208 680
Gold Rush Kid
George Ezra CD R219 Discovery Miles 2 190
Mineral Deposits at the Beginning of the…
A. Piestrzynski Hardcover R9,353 R8,852 Discovery Miles 88 520
Guardians Of The Galaxy - Awesome Mix…
Various Artists CD  (5)
R372 Discovery Miles 3 720
Saving Mr. Banks
Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson DVD  (3)
R361 R227 Discovery Miles 2 270
The Umbrella That Changed the World
Bern Clay Paperback R206 R193 Discovery Miles 1 930
The Santa Clause Collection - The Santa…
Tim Allen, Martin Short DVD R556 R423 Discovery Miles 4 230
On the Ancient British, Roman and Saxon…
Jabez Allies Paperback R675 Discovery Miles 6 750

 

Partners