John McDowell has often emphasized the fact that the use of langauge is a rational enterprise. In this paper, I explore the sense in which this is so, arguing that our use of language depends upon our consciously knowing what our words mean. I call this a 'cognitive conception of semantic competence'. The paper also contains a close analysis of the phenomenon of implicature and some suggestions about how it should and should not be understood.

Many philosophers nowadays believe Frege was right about belief, but wrong about language: The contents of beliefs need to be individuated more finely than in terms of Russellian propositions, but the contents of utterances do not. I argue that this 'hybrid view' cannot offer no reasonable account of how communication transfers knowledge from one speaker to another and that, to do so, we must insist that understanding depends upon more than just getting the references of terms right.

This is the first single-volume edition and translation of Frege's philosophical writings to include his seminal papers as well as substantial selections from ...

The paper addresses itself to the "Homeric struggle" in the theory of meaning between those (e.g., Grice) who try to analyze declarative meaning in terms of an intention to induce a belief and those (e.g., Davidson) for who declarative meaning consists in truth conditions. (The point of departure is Strawson's celebrated discussion of this issue, in his Inaugural Lecture.) I argue that neither style of analysis is satisfactory, and develop a "hybrid" that may be-although what I take from the Gricean (...) side in the struggle is not the notion of an intention, but that of somebody's reason for speaking as he does. The paper applies the hybrid analysis to resolve certain problems connected with the rationale for compositional, truth-theoretic semantics. (shrink)

A theory of radical interpretation gives the meanings of all sentences of a language, and can be verified by evidence available to someone who does not understand the language. Such evidence cannot include detailed information concerning the beliefs and intentions of speakers, and therefore the theory must simultaneously interpret the utterances of speakers and specify (some of) his beliefs. Analogies and connections with decision theory suggest the kind of theory that will serve for radical interpretation, and how permissible evidence can (...) support it. (shrink)

This book is a translation of some of the more important parts of the Grundgesetze of Frege: the introduction, the first part of the first volume which gives an exposition of the construction, rules, axioms of Frege's formal system, and two appendices, one of which is from the second volume and gives Frege's analysis of the paradox found by Russell in his system. The editor has provided a long introduction "for those not familiar with Frege," although it will benefit those (...) who have something more than acquaintance with his name as well. Frege's original two-dimensional symbolism has been preserved, but the editor has provided enough discussion in his introduction so as to make the going easier. Next to a complete translation of the Grundgesetze, this work is the most useful introduction to the magnum opus of the nineteenth century's greatest logician.—P. J. M. (shrink)