William G. Lycan offers a fresh original approach to the long-running debate among philosophers and logicians about the best way to analyse and understand conditional sentences. Lycan attends not just to the semantics of such sentences, but equally to their syntax, making use of insights from linguistic theory. Real Conditionals is the definitive presentation of Lycan's view, written in his characteristically lively style.

Philosophers and logicians have long debated how best to understand conditional or hypothetical sentences. William G. Lycan has a distinctive approach to this debate, attending not just to the semantics of such sentences, but equally to their syntax. He shows how insights from linguistic theory help to illuminate problems about the meaning and function of conditionals. For instance, philosophers and logicians have had problems analysing the locutions 'only if', 'unless', and 'even if'. Lycan sets out a general semantic theory of conditionals which works for all such sentences; he assigns meanings to them in a way that explains how and why those meanings depend upon features of utterance context. According to Lycan's theory the 'if'-clauses refer to items called 'events', 'circumstances', or 'conditions'. Real Conditionals gives at last the definitive presentation of this original approach to a topic at the intersection of philosophy, logic, and linguistics. Lycan's characteristically lively and witty expository style ensures that it can be enjoyed by readers from all three disciplines.

Now in its third edition, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction introduces students to the main issues and theories in twenty-first-century philosophy of language, focusing specifically on linguistic phenomena. Author William G. Lycan structures the book into four general parts. Part I, Reference and Referring, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Descriptions (and its objections), Donnellan's distinction, problems of anaphora, the Description Theory of proper names, Searle's Cluster Theory, and the Causal-Historical Theory. Part II, Theories of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic meaning and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, Pragmatics and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics and includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force. Part IV, The Expressive and the Figurative, examines various forms of expressive language and what "metaphorical meaning" is and how most listeners readily grasp it. Features of Philosophy of Language include: chapter overviews and summaries; clear supportive examples; study questions; annotated lists of further reading; a glossary. Updates to the third edition include: an entirely new chapter, "Expressive Language" (Chapter 14), covering verbal irony, sarcasm, and pejorative language (particularly slurs); the addition in several chapters of short sections on pretense theories, addressing (1) puzzles about reference, (2) irony, and (3) metaphor; a much expanded discussion of Relevance Theory, particularly its notion of ad hoc concept construction or "loosening and tightening," and the application of that to metaphor; new discussion of Cappelen and Lepore's skepticism about content-dependence; up-to-date coverage of new literature, further reading lists, and the bibliography, as well as an improved glossary.

Now in itsthird edition,Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction introduces students to the main issues and theories in twenty-first-century philosophy of language, focusing specifically on linguistic phenomena. Author William G. Lycan structures the book into four general parts. Part I, Reference and Referring, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Descriptions (and its objections), Donnellan's distinction, problems of anaphora, the Description Theory of proper names, Searle's Cluster Theory, and the Causal-Historical Theory. Part II, Theories of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic meaning and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, Pragmatics and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics and includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force. Part IV, The Expressive and the Figurative, examines various forms of expressive language and what "metaphorical meaning" is and how most listeners readily grasp it.

Features of Philosophy of Language include:

chapter overviews and summaries;

clear supportive examples;

study questions;

annotated lists of further reading;

a glossary.

Updates to the third edition include:

an entirely new chapter, "Expressive Language" (Chapter 14), covering verbal irony, sarcasm, and pejorative language (particularly slurs);

the addition in several chapters of short sections on pretense theories, addressing (1) puzzles about reference, (2) irony, and (3) metaphor;

a much expanded discussion of Relevance Theory, particularly its notion of ad hoc concept construction or "loosening and tightening," and the application of that to metaphor;

new discussion of Cappelen and Lepore's skepticism about content-dependence;

up-to-date coverage of new literature, further reading lists, and the bibliography, as well as an improved glossary.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Meaning and Reference Part 1: Reference and Referring 2. Definite Descriptions 3. Proper Names: The Description Theory 4. Proper Names: Direct Reference and the Causal–Historical Theory Part II: Theories of Meaning 5. Traditional Theories of Meaning 6. "Use" Theories 7. Psychological Theories: Grice's Program 8. Verificationism 9. Truth-Condition Theories: Davidson's Program 10. Truth-Condition Theories: Possible Worlds and Intensional Semantics Part III: Pragmatics and Speech Acts 11. Semantic Pragmatics 12. Speech Acts and Illocutionary Force 13. Implicative Relations Part IV: The Expressive and the Figurative 14. Expressive Language 15. Metaphor Glossary Bibliography Index

In this book William G. Lycan offers an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. The epistemology features three ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief. First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term-the sorts of contingent propositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics. Second, the deliverances of well confirmed science. Third and more fundamentally, intuitions about cases in a carefully specified sense of that term. The first half of On Evidence in Philosophy expounds a version of Moore's method and applies it to each of several issues. This version is shown to resist all the standard objections to Moore; most of them do not even apply. It is argued, in Chapters 5 and 6, that philosophical method is far less powerful than most have taken it to be. In particular, deductive argument can accomplish very little, and hardly ever is an opposing position refuted except by common sense or by science. The final two chapters defend the evidential status of intuitions and the Goodmanian method of reflective equilibrium; it is argued that philosophy always and everywhere depends on them. The method is then set within a more general explanatory-coherentist epistemology, which is shown to resist standard forms of skepticism. In sum, William G. Lycan advocates a picture of philosophy as a very wide explanatory reflective equilibrium incorporating common sense, science, and our firmest intuitions on any topic-and nothing more, not ever.

In this book, William Lycan defends an original theory of mind that he calls "homuncular functionalism." What is consciousness? The answer to this question has been pondered upon, grappled with, and argued about since time immemorial. There has never been an answer that achieved consensus; certainly philosophers have never agreed.In this book, William Lycan defends an original theory of mind that he calls "homuncular functionalism." He argues that human beings are "functionally organized information-processing systems" who have no non-physical parts or properties. However, Lycan also recognizes the subjective phenomenal qualities of mental states and events, and an important sense in which mind is "over and above" mere chemical matter. Along the way, Lycan reviews some diverse philosophical accounts of consciousness-including those of Kripke, Block, Campbell, Sellars, and Castaneda, among others-and demonstrates how what is valuable in each opposing view can be accommodated within his own theory. Consciousness is Lycan's most ambitious book, one that has engaged his attention for years. He handles a fascinating subject in a unique and undoubtedly controversial manner that will make this book a mainstay in the field of philosophy of mind. Consciousness, with these earlier works, is a Bradford Book.