This is the third edition of Chomsky's outstanding collection of essays on language and mind, first published in 2006. The first six chapters, originally published in the 1960s, made a groundbreaking contribution to linguistic theory. This edition complements them with an additional chapter and a new preface, bringing Chomsky's influential approach into the twenty-first century. Chapters 1-6 present Chomsky's early work on the nature and acquisition of language as a genetically endowed, biological system, through the rules and principles of which (...) we acquire an internalized knowledge. Over the past fifty years, this framework has sparked an explosion of inquiry into a wide range of languages, and has yielded some major theoretical questions. The final chapter revisits the key issues, reviewing the 'biolinguistic' approach that has guided Chomsky's work from its origins to the present day, and raising some novel and exciting challenges for the study of language and mind. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Language_ introduces the student to the main issues and theories in twentieth-century philosophy of language. Topics are structured in three parts in the book. Part I, Reference and Referring Expressions, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Desciptions, 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, includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force and surveys approaches to metaphor. Unique features of the text: * chapter overviews and summaries * clear supportive examples * study questions * annotated further reading * glossary. (shrink)

In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle argues that there are two kinds of facts--some that are independent of human observers, and some that require..

ACT, CONTENT, AND OBJECT THE TITLE I have chosen for this work is a mere label for a set of problems; the controversial views that have historically been ...

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Preface 1 Introduction: The Persistence of the Attitudes 2 Individualism and Supervenience 3 Meaning Holism 4 Meaning and the World Order Epilogue Creation Myth Appendix Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought Notes References Author Index.

John Searle began to discuss his recently published book `The Construction of Social Reality' with Anthony Freeman, and they ended up talking about God. The book itself and part of their conversation are introduced and briefly reflected upon by Anthony Freeman. Many familiar social facts -- like money and marriage and monarchy -- are only facts by human agreement. They exist only because we believe them to exist. That is the thesis, at once startling yet obvious, that philosopher John Searle (...) explores in The Construction of Social Reality. (shrink)

Classic work by one of the most brilliant figures in post-war analytic philosophy.

This book, first published in 1990, takes a critical look at the major assumptions which support critical thinking programs and discovers many unresolved questions which threaten their viability. John McPeck argues that some of these assumptions are incoherent or run counter to common sense, while others are unsupported by the available empirical evidence. This title will be of interest to students of the philosophy of education.

ACT, CONTENT, AND OBJECT THE TITLE I have chosen for this work is a mere label for a set of problems; the controversial views that have historically been ...

This volume provides a lucid and distinct introduction to multiculturalism and the philosophy of social science.

18 Probability and confirmation* The story of deductive logic is well known. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, deductive logic as a subject was ...

This paper attempts three things. It invites you to engage critically with me in the adjudication of a particular controversy. It attempts to argue for and exemplify important procedures which distinguish good and bad thinking in a critical mode. And it argues the case for the separate teaching of critical thinking (henceforth CT).

This paper attempts three things. It invites you to engage critically with me in the adjudication of a particular controversy. It attempts to argue for and exemplify important procedures which distinguish good and bad thinking in a critical mode. And it argues the case for the separate teaching of critical thinking (henceforth CT).

This text gives voice to the idea that the study of the philosophy of thought and language is more than a specialism, but rather lies at the very heart of the ...