The second volume in the _Blackwell Brown Lectures in Philosophy_, this volume offers an original and provocative take on the nature and methodology of philosophy. Based on public lectures at Brown University, given by the pre-eminent philosopher, Timothy Williamson Rejects the ideology of the 'linguistic turn', the most distinctive trend of 20th century philosophy Explains the method of philosophy as a development from non-philosophical ways of thinking Suggests new ways of understanding what contemporary and past philosophers are doing.

This chapter aims to provide materials with which to substantiate the claim that, under the appropriate circumstances, the notion of analyticity can help explain how one might have a priori knowledge even in the strong sense. It argues that Implicit Definition, properly understood, is completely independent of any form of irrealism about logic. The chapter defends the thesis of Implicit Definition against Quine's criticisms, and examines the sort of account of the apriority of logic that this doctrine is able to (...) provide. The chapter shows that, against the background of a rejection of indeterminacy, its insolubility cannot be conceded. It also argues that neither a non‐factualism about Frege‐analyticity, nor an error thesis about it, can plausibly fall short of an outright rejection of meaning itself. The chapter shows how the doctrine that appears to offer the most promising account of how we grasp the meanings of the logical constants. (shrink)

Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truth which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as (...) we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism. (shrink)

_Naming and Necessity_ has had a great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of naming, and of identity. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here reissued in a newly corrected form with a new preface by the author. If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics, or in philosophy of language, this is (...) it. (shrink)

‘A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.’ This paper is an attempt to follow Russell’s advice by using a puzzle about the contingent a priori to test and explore certain theories of reference and modality. No one could claim that (...) the puzzle is of any great philosophical importance by itself, but to understand it, one has to get clear about certain aspects of the theory of reference; and to solve it, one has to think a little more deeply than one is perhaps accustomed about what it means to say that a statement is contingent or necessary. (shrink)

"This book is valuable as expounding in full a theory of meaning that has its roots in the work of Frege and has been of the widest influence.

Modal logic is one of philosophy’s many children. As a mature adult it has moved out of the parental home and is nowadays straying far from its parent. But the ties are still there: philosophy is important to modal logic, modal logic is important for philosophy. Or, at least, this is a thesis we try to defend in this chapter. Limitations of space have ruled out any attempt at writing a survey of all the work going on in our field—a (...) book would be needed for that. Instead, we have tried to select material that is of interest in its own right or exemplifies noteworthy features in interesting ways. Here are some themes that have guided us throughout the writing: • The back-and-forth between philosophy and modal logic. There has been a good deal of give-and-take in the past. Carnap tried to use his modal logic to throw light on old philosophical questions, thereby inspiring others to continue his work and still others to criticise it. He certainly provoked Quine, who in his turn provided—and continues to provide—a healthy challenge to modal logicians. And Kripke’s and David Lewis’s philosophies are connected, in interesting ways, with their modal logic. Analytic philosophy would have been a lot different without modal logic! • The interpretation problem. The problem of providing a certain modal logic with an intuitive interpretation should not be conflated with the problem of providing a formal system with a model-theoretic semantics. An intuitively appealing model-theoretic semantics may be an important step towards solving the interpretation problem, but only a step. One may compare this situation with that in probability theory, where definitions of concepts like ‘outcome space’ and ‘random variable’ are orthogonal to questions about “interpretations” of the concept of probability. • The value of formalisation. Modal logic sets standards of precision, which are a challenge to—and sometimes a model for—philosophy. Classical philosophical questions can be sharpened and seen from a new perspective when formulated in a framework of modal logic. On the other hand, representing old questions in a formal garb has its dangers, such as simplification and distortion. • Why modal logic rather than classical (first or higher order) logic? The idioms of modal logic—today there are many!—seem better to correspond to human ways of thinking than ordinary extensional logic. (Cf. Chomsky’s conjecture that the NP + VP pattern is wired into the human brain.) In his An Essay in Modal Logic (1951) von Wright distinguished between four kinds of modalities: alethic (modes of truth: necessity, possibility and impossibility), epistemic (modes of being known: known to be true, known to be false, undecided), deontic (modes of obligation: obligatory, permitted, forbidden) and existential (modes of existence: universality, existence, emptiness). The existential modalities are not usually counted as modalities, but the other three categories are exemplified in three sections into which this chapter is divided. Section 1 is devoted to alethic modal logic and reviews some main themes at the heart of philosophical modal logic. Sections 2 and 3 deal with topics in epistemic logic and deontic logic, respectively, and are meant to illustrate two different uses that modal logic or indeed any logic can have: it may be applied to already existing (non-logical) theory, or it can be used to develop new theory. (shrink)

This essay distinguishes between metaphysical and epistemological conceptions of analyticity. The former is the idea of a sentence that is ‘true purely in virtue of its meaning’ while the latter is the idea of a sentence that ‘can be justifiably believed merely on the basis of understanding its meaning’. It further argues that, while Quine may have been right to reject the metaphysical notion, the epistemological notion can be defended from his critique and put to work explaining a priori justification. (...) Along the way, a number of further distinctions relevant to the theory of analyticity and the theory of apriority are made and their significance is explained. (shrink)

This paper concerns the applications of two-dimensional modal semantics to the explanation of the contents of speech and thought. Different interpretations and applications of the apparatus are contrasted. First, it is argued that David Kaplan's two-dimensional semantics for indexical expressions is different from the use that I made of a formally similar framework to represent the role of contingent information in the determination of what is said. But the two applications are complementary rather than conflicting. Second, my interpretation of the (...) apparatus is contrasted with that of David Chalmers, Frank Jackson, and David Lewis. It is argued that this difference reflects a contrast between internalist and externalist approaches to the problem of intentionality. (shrink)

This paper concerns the applications of two-dimensional modal semantics to the explanation of the contents of speech and thought. Different interpretations and applications of the apparatus are contrasted. First, it is argued that David Kaplan's two-dimensional semantics for indexical expressions is different from the use that I made of a formally similar framework to represent the role of contingent information in the determination of what is said. But the two applications are complementary rather than conflicting. Second, my interpretation of the (...) apparatus is contrasted with that of David Chalmers, Frank Jackson, and David Lewis. It is argued that this difference reflects a contrast between internalist and externalist approaches to the problem of intentionality. (shrink)

Two-dimensional approaches to semantics, broadly understood, recognize two "dimensions" of the meaning or content of linguistic items. On these approaches, expressions and their utterances are associated with two different sorts of semantic values, which play different explanatory roles. Typically, one semantic value is associated with reference and ordinary truth-conditions, while the other is associated with the way that reference and truth-conditions depend on the external world. The second sort of semantic value is often held to play a distinctive role in (...) analyzing matters of cognitive significance and/or context-dependence. (shrink)

In this book, Scott Soames defends the revolution in philosophy led by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan against attack from those wishing to revive ..

QUINE'S PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS are for the most part contained in two collections of essays, From a Logical Point of View and recently The Ways of Paradox, and in an important book, Word and Object. The present survey will be restricted to views expressed in these three volumes, although Quine's work in logic is continuous with his work in philosophy. The present Part One describes and defends Quine's views about meaning. The following Part Two does the same for his views on (...) other subjects, especially ontology and epistemology. The two parts are related in a way to be explained in Part Two. (shrink)

In his recent paper ‘Analyticity: An Unfinished Business in Possible-World Semantics’ (Rabinowicz 2006), Wlodek Rabinowicz takes on the task of providing a satisfactory definition of analyticity in the framework of possible-worlds semantics. As usual, what Wlodek proposes is technically well-motivated and very elegant. Moreover, his proposal does deliver an interesting analytic/synthetic distinction when applied to sentences with natural kind terms. However, the longer we thought and talked about it, the more questions we had, questions of both philosophical and technical nature. (...) Hence the idea of this little paper – for how better to honor a philosopher than by trying very hard to criticize him? After quickly running over some background in possible worlds semantics and setting out Wlodek's proposal against that background, we shall bring up and discuss our questions in sections 3 – 5. In the final section, we shall also make a stab at a different solution to the problem, making use of our own earlier idea of relational modality. (shrink)