In this book, Scott Soames argues that the revolution in the study of language and mind that has taken place since the late nineteenth century must be rethought. The central insight in the reigning tradition is that propositions are representational. To know the meaning of a sentence or the content of a belief requires knowing which things it represents as being which ways, and therefore knowing what the world must be like if it is to conform to how the sentence or belief represents it. These are truth conditions of the sentence or belief. But meanings and representational contents are not truth conditions, and there is more to propositions than representational content. In addition to imposing conditions the world must satisfy if it is to be true, a proposition may also impose conditions on minds that entertain it. The study of mind and language cannot advance further without a conception of propositions that allows them to have contents of both of these sorts. Soames provides it. He does so by arguing that propositions are repeatable, purely representational cognitive acts or operations that represent the world as being a certain way, while requiring minds that perform them to satisfy certain cognitive conditions. Because they have these two types of content-one facing the world and one facing the mind-pairs of propositions can be representationally identical but cognitively distinct. Using this breakthrough, Soames offers new solutions to several of the most perplexing problems in the philosophy of language and mind.

A masterful overview of the philosophy of language from one of its most important thinkers In this book one of the world's foremost philosophers of language presents his unifying vision of the field-its principal achievements, its most pressing current questions, and its most promising future directions. In addition to explaining the progress philosophers have made toward creating a theoretical framework for the study of language, Scott Soames investigates foundational concepts-such as truth, reference, and meaning-that are central to the philosophy of language and important to philosophy as a whole. The first part of the book describes how philosophers from Frege, Russell, Tarski, and Carnap to Kripke, Kaplan, and Montague developed precise techniques for understanding the languages of logic and mathematics, and how these techniques have been refined and extended to the study of natural human languages. The book then builds on this account, exploring new thinking about propositions, possibility, and the relationship between meaning, assertion, and other aspects of language use. An invaluable overview of the philosophy of language by one of its most important practitioners, this book will be essential reading for all serious students of philosophy.

How philosophy transformed human knowledge and the world we live in Philosophical investigation is the root of all human knowledge. Developing new concepts, reinterpreting old truths, and reconceptualizing fundamental questions, philosophy has progressed-and driven human progress-for more than two millennia. In short, we live in a world philosophy made. In this concise history of philosophy's world-shaping impact, Scott Soames demonstrates that the modern world-including its science, technology, and politics-simply would not be possible without the accomplishments of philosophy. Firmly rebutting the misconception of philosophy as ivory-tower thinking, Soames traces its essential contributions to fields as diverse as law and logic, psychology and economics, relativity and rational decision theory. Beginning with the giants of ancient Greek philosophy, The World Philosophy Made chronicles the achievements of the great thinkers, from the medieval and early modern eras to the present. It explores how philosophy has shaped our language, science, mathematics, religion, culture, morality, education, and politics, as well as our understanding of ourselves. Philosophy's idea of rational inquiry as the key to theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom has transformed the world in which we live. From the laws that govern society to the digital technology that permeates modern life, philosophy has opened up new possibilities and set us on more productive paths. The World Philosophy Made explains and illuminates as never before the inexhaustible richness of philosophy and its influence on our individual and collective lives.

In this book, Scott Soames argues that the revolution in the study of language and mind that has taken place since the late nineteenth century must be rethought. The central insight in the reigning tradition is that propositions are representational. To know the meaning of a sentence or the content of a belief requires knowing which things it represents as being which ways, and therefore knowing what the world must be like if it is to conform to how the sentence or belief represents it. These are truth conditions of the sentence or belief. But meanings and representational contents are not truth conditions, and there is more to propositions than representational content. In addition to imposing conditions the world must satisfy if it is to be true, a proposition may also impose conditions on minds that entertain it. The study of mind and language cannot advance further without a conception of propositions that allows them to have contents of both of these sorts. Soames provides it. He does so by arguing that propositions are repeatable, purely representational cognitive acts or operations that represent the world as being a certain way, while requiring minds that perform them to satisfy certain cognitive conditions. Because they have these two types of content--one facing the world and one facing the mind--pairs of propositions can be representationally identical but cognitively distinct. Using this breakthrough, Soames offers new solutions to several of the most perplexing problems in the philosophy of language and mind.

How philosophy transformed human knowledge and the world we live in Philosophical investigation is the root of all human knowledge. Developing new concepts, reinterpreting old truths, and reconceptualizing fundamental questions, philosophy has progressed-and driven human progress-for more than two millennia. In short, we live in a world philosophy made. In this concise history of philosophy's world-shaping impact, Scott Soames demonstrates that the modern world-including its science, technology, and politics-simply would not be possible without the accomplishments of philosophy. Firmly rebutting the misconception of philosophy as ivory-tower thinking, Soames traces its essential contributions to fields as diverse as law and logic, psychology and economics, relativity and rational decision theory. Beginning with the giants of ancient Greek philosophy, The World Philosophy Made chronicles the achievements of the great thinkers, from the medieval and early modern eras to the present. It explores how philosophy has shaped our language, science, mathematics, religion, culture, morality, education, and politics, as well as our understanding of ourselves. Philosophy's idea of rational inquiry as the key to theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom has transformed the world in which we live. From the laws that govern society to the digital technology that permeates modern life, philosophy has opened up new possibilities and set us on more productive paths. The World Philosophy Made explains and illuminates as never before the inexhaustible richness of philosophy and its influence on our individual and collective lives.

The two volumes of "Philosophical Essays" bring together the most important essays written by one of the world's foremost philosophers of language. Scott Soames has selected thirty-one essays spanning nearly three decades of thinking about linguistic meaning and the philosophical significance of language. A judicious collection of old and new, these volumes include sixteen essays published in the 1980s and 1990s, nine published since 2000, and six new essays.

The essays in Volume 1 investigate what linguistic meaning is; how the meaning of a sentence is related to the use we make of it; what we should expect from empirical theories of the meaning of the languages we speak; and how a sound theoretical grasp of the intricate relationship between meaning and use can improve the interpretation of legal texts.

The essays in Volume 2 illustrate the significance of linguistic concerns for a broad range of philosophical topics--including the relationship between language and thought; the objects of belief, assertion, and other propositional attitudes; the distinction between metaphysical and epistemic possibility; the nature of necessity, actuality, and possible worlds; the necessary a posteriori and the contingent a priori; truth, vagueness, and partial definition; and skepticism about meaning and mind.

The two volumes of "Philosophical Essays" are essential for anyone working on the philosophy of language.

An in-depth history of the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, from a leading philosopher of language This is the second of five volumes of a definitive history of analytic philosophy from the invention of modern logic in 1879 to the end of the twentieth century. Scott Soames, a leading philosopher of language and historian of analytic philosophy, provides the fullest and most detailed account of the analytic tradition yet published, one that is unmatched in its chronological range, topics covered, and depth of treatment. Focusing on the major milestones and distinguishing them from detours, Soames gives a seminal account of where the analytic tradition has been and where it appears to be heading. Volume 2 provides an intensive account of the new vision in analytical philosophy initiated by Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, its assimilation by the Vienna Circle of Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, and the subsequent flowering of logical empiricism. With this "linguistic turn," philosophical analysis became philosophy itself, and the discipline's stated aim was transformed from advancing philosophical theories to formalizing, systematizing, and unifying science. In addition to exploring the successes and failures of philosophers who pursued this vision, the book describes how the philosophically minded logicians Kurt Godel, Alfred Tarski, Alonzo Church, and Alan Turing discovered the scope and limits of logic and developed the mathematical theory of computation that ushered in the digital era. The book's account of this pivotal period closes with a searching examination of the struggle to preserve ethical normativity in a scientific age.

This is the first of five volumes of a definitive history of analytic philosophy from the invention of modern logic in 1879 to the end of the twentieth century. Scott Soames, a leading philosopher of language and historian of analytic philosophy, provides the fullest and most detailed account of the analytic tradition yet published, one that is unmatched in its chronological range, topics covered, and depth of treatment. Focusing on the major milestones and distinguishing them from the dead ends, Soames gives a seminal account of where the analytic tradition has been and where it appears to be heading.

Volume 1 examines the initial phase of the analytic tradition through the major contributions of three of its four founding giants--Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore. Soames describes and analyzes their work in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and the philosophy of language. He explains how by about 1920 their efforts had made logic, language, and mathematics central to philosophy in an unprecedented way. But although logic, language, and mathematics were now seen as powerful tools to attain traditional ends, they did not yet define philosophy. As volume 1 comes to a close, that was all about to change with the advent of the fourth founding giant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the 1922 English publication of his "Tractatus," which ushered in a "linguistic turn" in philosophy that was to last for decades.

In this collection of recent and unpublished essays, leading analytic philosopher Scott Soames traces milestones in his field from its beginnings in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, through its subsequent growth in the United States, up to its present as the world's most vigorous philosophical tradition. The central essay chronicles how analytic philosophy developed in the United States out of American pragmatism, the impact of European visitors and immigrants, the midcentury transformation of the Harvard philosophy department, and the rapid spread of the analytic approach that followed. Another essay explains the methodology guiding analytic philosophy, from the logicism of Frege and Russell through Wittgenstein's linguistic turn and Carnap's vision of replacing metaphysics with philosophy of science. Further essays review advances in logic and the philosophy of mathematics that laid the foundation for a rigorous, scientific study of language, meaning, and information. Other essays discuss W.V.O. Quine, David K. Lewis, Saul Kripke, the Frege-Russell analysis of quantification, Russell's attempt to eliminate sets with his "no class theory," and the Quine-Carnap dispute over meaning and ontology. The collection then turns to topics at the frontier of philosophy of language. The final essays, combining philosophy of language and law, advance a sophisticated originalist theory of interpretation and apply it to U.S. constitutional rulings about due process.

The two volumes of "Philosophical Essays" bring together the most important essays written by one of the world's foremost philosophers of language. Scott Soames has selected thirty-one essays spanning nearly three decades of thinking about linguistic meaning and the philosophical significance of language. A judicious collection of old and new, these volumes include sixteen essays published in the 1980s and 1990s, nine published since 2000, and six new essays.

The essays in Volume 1 investigate what linguistic meaning is; how the meaning of a sentence is related to the use we make of it; what we should expect from empirical theories of the meaning of the languages we speak; and how a sound theoretical grasp of the intricate relationship between meaning and use can improve the interpretation of legal texts.

The essays in Volume 2 illustrate the significance of linguistic concerns for a broad range of philosophical topics--including the relationship between language and thought; the objects of belief, assertion, and other propositional attitudes; the distinction between metaphysical and epistemic possibility; the nature of necessity, actuality, and possible worlds; the necessary a posteriori and the contingent a priori; truth, vagueness, and partial definition; and skepticism about meaning and mind.

The two volumes of "Philosophical Essays" are essential for anyone working on the philosophy of language.

In this book one of the world's foremost philosophers of language presents his unifying vision of the field--its principal achievements, its most pressing current questions, and its most promising future directions. In addition to explaining the progress philosophers have made toward creating a theoretical framework for the study of language, Scott Soames investigates foundational concepts--such as truth, reference, and meaning--that are central to the philosophy of language and important to philosophy as a whole. The first part of the book describes how philosophers from Frege, Russell, Tarski, and Carnap to Kripke, Kaplan, and Montague developed precise techniques for understanding the languages of logic and mathematics, and how these techniques have been refined and extended to the study of natural human languages. The book then builds on this account, exploring new thinking about propositions, possibility, and the relationship between meaning, assertion, and other aspects of language use.

An invaluable overview of the philosophy of language by one of its most important practitioners, this book will be essential reading for all serious students of philosophy.

In this book, Scott Soames defends the revolution in philosophy led by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan against attack from those wishing to revive descriptivism in the philosophy of language, internalism in the philosophy of mind, and conceptualism in the foundations of modality. Soames explains how, in the last twenty-five years, this attack on the anti-descriptivist revolution has coalesced around a technical development called two-dimensional modal logic that seeks to reinterpret the Kripkean categories of the necessary aposteriori and the contingent apriori in ways that drain them of their far-reaching philosophical significance.

Arguing against this reinterpretation, Soames shows how the descriptivist revival has been aided by puzzles and problems ushered in by the anti-descriptivist revolution, as well as by certain errors and missteps in the anti-descriptivist classics themselves. "Reference and Description" sorts through all this, assesses and consolidates the genuine legacy of Kripke and Kaplan, and launches a thorough and devastating critique of the two-dimensionalist revival of descriptivism. Through it all, Soames attempts to provide the outlines of a lasting, nondescriptivist perspective on meaning, and a nonconceptualist understanding of modality.

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.

In this collection of recent and unpublished essays, leading analytic philosopher Scott Soames traces milestones in his field from its beginnings in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, through its subsequent growth in the United States, up to its present as the world's most vigorous philosophical tradition. The central essay chronicles how analytic philosophy developed in the United States out of American pragmatism, the impact of European visitors and immigrants, the midcentury transformation of the Harvard philosophy department, and the rapid spread of the analytic approach that followed. Another essay explains the methodology guiding analytic philosophy, from the logicism of Frege and Russell through Wittgenstein's linguistic turn and Carnap's vision of replacing metaphysics with philosophy of science. Further essays review advances in logic and the philosophy of mathematics that laid the foundation for a rigorous, scientific study of language, meaning, and information. Other essays discuss W.V.O. Quine, David K. Lewis, Saul Kripke, the Frege-Russell analysis of quantification, Russell's attempt to eliminate sets with his "no class theory," and the Quine-Carnap dispute over meaning and ontology. The collection then turns to topics at the frontier of philosophy of language. The final essays, combining philosophy of language and law, advance a sophisticated originalist theory of interpretation and apply it to U.S. constitutional rulings about due process.

"A history of analytic philosophy and an excellent piece of analytic philosophy in its own right. We can all benefit from Soames's discussion of the central issues that have shaped the subject and his assessment of what we have achieved and where we might have gone wrong."--Kit Fine, New York University

"This monumental study is a careful assessment of the successes and the failures of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Soames displays unfailingly sound judgment throughout. The work is invaluable to those of us who have contributed to this period of very recent history of thought, and more importantly, to our students who will build upon the triumphs and will profit from the defeats of ourselves and our predecessors, carrying philosophy forward into the new millennium. The work is also a comprehensive reality check in the face of persistent accusations (coming not only from those who do not understand analytic philosophy, but also from those who remain stuck in its recent failures) that analytic philosophy is a disease or a futile exercise in wheel spinning. Analytic philosophy is, and has always been, a rational quest for knowledge and understanding. Its tools are clarification, argument, and tutored intuition. Soames provides perspective concerning the best of recent philosophical thought, articulating its most important developments, dead ends, and discoveries."--Nathan Salmon, University of California, Santa Barbara

""Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century" is a critical examination of key texts and trends in analytic philosophy by one of its leading contemporary practitioners. Soames has applied his formidable forensic talents to highlight the insights andexpose the errors of the major figures from Moore to Kripke. These two volumes are an essential resource for any serious student of analytic philosophy."--Alex Byrne, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Together these two volumes constitute an outstanding contribution to the field. They present the views and arguments of the major philosophers of the period with unmatched clarity and subject them to deep and critical scrutiny. In my view there is no other work on the history of twentieth-century century analytic philosophy that matches it in its scope, depth, and elegance."--Ali Kazmi, University of Calgary

"This is an extraordinarily impressive piece of work. It will be very valuable to capable, advanced undergraduates, and I expect it to be used widely in graduate courses and discussed frequently by scholars. It provides a substantive vision of how and where real progress has been made by philosophers in the analytic tradition, as well as how and why analytic philosophy sometimes took a step backward. Soames himself is doing cutting-edge work in core areas of analytic philosophy and is thus able to bring a level of philosophical sophistication to his treatment that few have available to them."--John Hawthorne, Rutgers University

From Descartes and Cartesian mind-body dualism in the 17th century though to 21st-century concerns about artificial intelligence programming, The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Consciousness presents a compelling history and up-to-date overview of this burgeoning subject area. Acknowledging that many of the original concepts of consciousness studies are found in writings of past thinkers, it begins with introductory overviews to the thought of Descartes through to Kant, covering Brentano's restoration of empiricism to philosophical psychology and the major figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Russell, Wittgenstein, Ryle and James. These opening chapters on the forces in the history of consciousness lay the groundwork needed to understand how influential contemporary thinkers in the philosophy of mind interpret the concept of consciousness. Featuring leading figures in the field, Part II discusses current issues in a range of topics progressing from the so-called hard problem of understanding the nature of consciousness, to the methodology of invoking the possibility of philosophical zombies and the prospects of reductivism in philosophy of mind. Part III is dedicated to new research directions in the philosophy of consciousness, including chapters on experiment objections to functionalism and the scope and limits of artificial intelligence. Equipped with practical research resources including an annotated bibliography, a research guide and a glossary, The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Consciousness is an authoritative guide for studying the past, present and future of consciousness.

"A history of analytic philosophy and an excellent piece of analytic philosophy in its own right. We can all benefit from Soames's discussion of the central issues that have shaped the subject and his assessment of what we have achieved and where we might have gone wrong."--Kit Fine, New York University

"This monumental study is a careful assessment of the successes and the failures of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Soames displays unfailingly sound judgment throughout. The work is invaluable to those of us who have contributed to this period of very recent history of thought, and more importantly, to our students who will build upon the triumphs and will profit from the defeats of ourselves and our predecessors, carrying philosophy forward into the new millennium. The work is also a comprehensive reality check in the face of persistent accusations (coming not only from those who do not understand analytic philosophy, but also from those who remain stuck in its recent failures) that analytic philosophy is a disease or a futile exercise in wheel spinning. Analytic philosophy is, and has always been, a rational quest for knowledge and understanding. Its tools are clarification, argument, and tutored intuition. Soames provides perspective concerning the best of recent philosophical thought, articulating its most important developments, dead ends, and discoveries."--Nathan Salmon, University of California, Santa Barbara

""Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century" is a critical examination of key texts and trends in analytic philosophy by one of its leading contemporary practitioners. Soames has applied his formidable forensic talents to highlight the insights andexpose the errors of the major figures from Moore to Kripke. These two volumes are an essential resource for any serious student of analytic philosophy."--Alex Byrne, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Together these two volumes constitute an outstanding contribution to the field. They present the views and arguments of the major philosophers of the period with unmatched clarity and subject them to deep and critical scrutiny. In my view there is no other work on the history of twentieth-century century analytic philosophy that matches it in its scope, depth, and elegance."--Ali Kazmi, University of Calgary

"This is an extraordinarily impressive piece of work. It will be very valuable to capable, advanced undergraduates, and I expect it to be used widely in graduate courses and discussed frequently by scholars. It provides a substantive vision of how and where real progress has been made by philosophers in the analytic tradition, as well as how and why analytic philosophy sometimes took a step backward. Soames himself is doing cutting-edge work in core areas of analytic philosophy and is thus able to bring a level of philosophical sophistication to his treatment that few have available to them."--John Hawthorne, Rutgers University

Syntactic Argumentation and the Structure of English (SASE) presents the major theoretical developments in generative syntax and the empirical arguments motivating them. Beautifully and lucidly written, it is an invaluable resource for working linguists as well as a pedagogical tool of unequaled depth and breadth. The chief focus of the book is syntactic argumentation. Beginning with the fundamentals of generative syntax, it proceeds by a series of gradually unfolding arguments to analyses of some of the most sophisticated proposals. It includes a wide variety of problems that guide the reader in constructing arguments deciding between alternative analyses of syntactic constructions and alternative theoretical formulations. Someone who has worked through the problems and arguments in this book will be able to apply the skills in argumentation it develops to novel issues in syntax. While teaching syntactic argumentation, SASE covers the major empirical results of generative syntax. Its contents include: Transformations in single-clause sentences; Complementation and multi-clause transformations; Universal principles governing rule interaction: the cycle and strict cyclicity; Movement rules; Ross' constraints; Pronominal reference and anaphora. SASE is an important book for several different audiences: for students, it is an introduction to syntax that teaches argumentation as well as a wide range of empirical results in the field; for linguists, it is a sourcebook of classical analyses and arguments, with some new arguments bearing on classical issues; and, for scholars, teachers, and students in related fields, it is a comprehensive guide to the major empirical and theoretical developments in generative syntax. SASE contains enough material for a two-semester or three-quarler sequence in syntax. Because it assumes no previous background, it can be used as the main text in an introduction to syntax. Since it covers a wide range of material not available in other texts, it is also suitable for intermediate and advanced syntax courses and as a supplementary source in more specialized courses and courses in other disciplines. A storehouse of classical and original arguments, SASE will prove to be of lasting value to the teacher, the student, and researchers in both linguistics and related fields.

This collection brings together the best contemporary philosophical work in the area of intersection between philosophy of language and the law. Some of the contributors are philosophers of language who are interested in applying advances in philosophy of language to legal issues, and some of the participants are philosophers of law who are interested in applying insights and theories from philosophy of language to their work on the nature of law and legal interpretation. By making this body of recent work available in a single volume, readers will gain both a general overview of the various interactions between language and law, and also detailed analyses of particular areas in which this interaction is manifest.
The contributions to this volume are grouped under three main general areas: The first area concerns a critical assessment, in light of recent advances in philosophy of language, of the foundational role of language in understanding the nature of law itself. The second main area concerns a number of ways in which an understanding of language can resolve some of the issues prevalent in legal interpretation, such as the various ways in which semantic content can differ from law's assertive content; the contribution of presuppositions and pragmatic implicatures in understanding what the law conveys; the role of vagueness in legal language, for example. The third general topic concerns the role of language in the context of particular legal doctrines and legal solutions to practical problems, such as the legal definitions of inchoate crimes, the legal definition of torture, or the contractual doctrines concerning default rules.
Together, these three key issues cover a wide range of philosophical interests in law that can be elucidated by a better understanding of language and linguistic communication.

In Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke undermined descriptive analyses of names by showing that they are rigid designators. He thereby told us what their meanings are not, but not what they are. In Beyond Rigidity, Scott Soames fills this gap. Using a new conception of how the meaning of a sentence relates to the information asserted and conveyed by utterances, Soames argues that the meaning of a linguistically simple name is its referent and that a meaning of a (linguistically complex) partially descriptive name is a compound that includes a referent and partial description.

In Beyond Rigidity, Soames introduces a new conception of the relationship between linguistic meaning and assertion made by utterances. He looks at the meanings of proper names and natural-kind predicates, explains their use in attitude ascriptions, and demonstrates the limitation of rigid designation. Beyond Rigidity distils, modifies and develops some of the most important ideas in the philosophy of language in the last thirty years. This book is a major contribution to the field, with an impact that will be far reaching and deeply influential.

In this book, Scott Soames illuminates the notion of truth and the role it plays in our ordinary thought, as well as in our logical, philosophical, and scientific theories. The main questions investigated include "Why do we need a truth predicate at all?", "What theoretical tasks does it allow us to accomplish?", and "How must we understand the content of any predicate capable of accomplishing these tasks?". The main aim of the book is to integrate and extend the most important insight on truth from a variety of sources.

In this book, Scott Soames illuminates the notion of truth and the role it plays in our ordinary thought, as well as in our logical, philosophical and scientific theories. Part I addresses crucial background issues, including the identification of the bearers of truth, the basis for distinguishing truth from other notions (like certainty, with which it is often confused), and the formulation of positive responses to well-known forms of philosophical skepticism about truth. Part II explicates the formal theories of Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke, including their treatments of the Liar paradox, and evaluates the philosophical significance of their work. Part III extends important Lessons drawn from Tarski and Kripke into new domains: vague predicates, the Sorites paradox, and the development of a larger, deflationary perspective on truth.

Soames aims to integrate and deepen the most significant insights on truth from a variety of sources. He powerfully brings together the best technical work and the most important philosophical reflection on truth and shows how each can illuminate the other.