This edition includes new essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as Rorty's previously unpublished essay "The ...

Our ancestors believed in many things which did not exist—gods, witches, the luminiferous ether, phlogiston, reincarnated souls, sense-data, conceptual analysis, and the like. But they had no better ways of coping with the irradiations beating down upon their sense organs. So they were justified in making assertions which did not bear those desirable relations to things in the world—relations like naming and truth—which we like to think are sustained by our own assertions. This fact brings out the difference between the (...) results of rational, sincere and industrious inquiry on the one hand, and truth on the other. Our ancestors had all the former virtues, but somehow these did not suffice to get them in touch with reality. Since we can no longer dismiss them as blinded by prejudice, passion and superstition, we would like some philosophical way of explaining our superiority to them. (shrink)

This is Volume V in the series Midwest Studies in Philosophy In 1979 the University of Minnesota Press assumed publication of the annual Midwest Studies in ...

This second edition includes a new Afterword by the author.

Preface This volume contains essays written during the period 1972-1980. They are arranged roughly in order of composition. Except for the Introduction, ...

Definite descriptions, I shall argue, have two possible functions. 1] They are used to refer to what a speaker wishes to talk about, but they are also used quite differently. Moreover, a definite description occurring in one and the same sentence may, on different occasions of its use, function in either way. The failure to deal with this duality of function obscures the genuine referring use of definite descriptions. The best known theories of definite descriptions, those of Russell and Strawson, (...) I shall suggest, are both guilty of this. Before discussing this distinction in use, I will mention some features of these theories to which it is especially relevant. (shrink)

Devitt (1983) "Dummett's Anti-Realism".

Now in a new edition, this volume updates Davidson's exceptional Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1984), which set out his enormously influential philosophy of language. The original volume remains a central point of reference, and a focus of controversy, with its impact extending into linguistic theory, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. Addressing a central question--what it is for words to mean what they do--and featuring a previously uncollected, additional essay, this work will appeal to a wide audience of philosophers, linguists, (...) and psychologists. (shrink)

Completely revised and updated in its Second Edition, Language and Reality provides students, philosophers and cognitive scientists with a lucid and provocative introduction to the philosophy of language.

A history of modern ideas in knowledge, logic and metaphysics which is both stimulating to the specialist and intelligible to the general reader.

explores the interaction between psychology and epistemology and addresses empirical questions about how we should arrive at our beliefs, and whether the processes by which we arrive at our beliefs are the ones by which we ought to arrive at our beliefs.