Truth and Meaning is a classic collection of original essays on fundamental questions in the philosophy of language.

This volume, an expanded edition of the philosophy of language issue of the journal Midwest Studies in Philosophy (1977), includes essays by some of the ...

I ON THE PRIMITIVE TERM OF LOGISTICf IN this article I propose to establish a theorem belonging to logistic concerning some connexions, not widely known, ...

The purpose of this brief introduction is to describe the origin of the papers here presented and to acknowledge the help of some of the many individuals who were involved in the preparation of this volume. Of the eighteen papers, nine stem from the annual fall colloquium of the Depart ment of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario held in London, Ontario from November 10 to November 12, 1967. The colloquium was entitled 'Philosophical Logic'. After some discussion, the editors (...) decided to retain that title for this volume. Von Wright's paper 'On the Logic and Ontology of Norms' is printed here after some revision. A. R. Anderson commented on the paper at the colloquium, but his comments here are based upon the revised version of the von Wright paper. The chairman of the session at which von Wright's paper was read and discussed was T. A. Goudge. Aqvist's paper 'Scattered Topics in Interrogative Logic', and Belnap's comments, 'Aqvist's Cor rections-Accumulating Question-Sequences', are printed as delivered. The chairman of the Aqvist-Belnap session was R. E. Butts. Wilfrid Sellars' paper 'Some Problems about Belief' is printed as delivered at the col loquium, but 'Quantifiers, Beliefs, and Sellars' by Ernest Sosa is a revision of his comments at the colloquium. That session was chaired by G. D. W. Berry. Ackermann's paper 'Some Problems oflnductive Logic', as well as Skyrms' comments, are printed as delivered. (shrink)

A respected Harvard logician and philosopher gathers together twenty-nine writings dealing with the foundations of mathematics, Rudolf Carnap, lin-guistics, ...

A formal theory of truth, alternative to tarski's 'orthodox' theory, based on truth-value gaps, is presented. the theory is proposed as a fairly plausible model for natural language and as one which allows rigorous definitions to be given for various intuitive concepts, such as those of 'grounded' and 'paradoxical' sentences.

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 contains a collection of papers presented at the Second Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter and is dedicated to the late Yehoshua Bar-Hillel.

Provability, Computability and Reflection.

Formulating my comments I have had difficulties of three kinds. First, I am not at all sure that I have understood Davidson correctly at every point. Secondly, not being aware of how far I may take for granted that Davidson and I share what may be called the same background ...

I discuss in this paper a criticism of modal logic due to Donald Davidson and John Wallace. They have claimed that, to quote Wallace, “modal predicate calculus does not provide a reasonable standpoint from which to interpret a language” (1970, p. 147). The aim of this paper is to present and evaluate their argument for this claim.

Selected Logic Papers, long out of print and now reissued with eight additional essays, includes much of the author's important work on mathematical logic and ...

Donald Davidson did it. He did it slowly, deliberately, in more than a half dozen widely noted essays. What he did was to elaborate a program for the study of empirical semantics. Nor did he stop there. He went on to apply his program to some of the problems that have long bedeviled semantics: action sentences, indirect discourse and propositional attitudes. My goal in this paper is to assess Davidson's achievement. The first step is to assemble the program from the (...) sketches and hints scattered among Davidson's papers. This is the project of my first section where my aim is sympathetic exposition. Since Davidson sometimes seems to be playing a game of hide and seek with his reader, my reconstruction of his program and arguments is of necessity occasionally speculative. In the second section my stance turns critical. There are anomalies in the program; the sort of theory Davidson advocates is not the sort delivered. When the problems are pushed, I think the program loses whatever initial plausibility it may have had. It is my contention that Davidson has provided no serious framework for the empirical study of natural language. (shrink)