Nondescriptive Meaning and Reference: An Ideational Semantics - Hardcover

Davis, Wayne A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199261652 ISBN 13: 9780199261659

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2005

Synopsis

Nondescriptive Meaning and Reference extends Wayne Davis's groundbreaking work on the foundations of semantics. Davis revives the classical doctrine that meaning consists in the expression of ideas, and advances the expression theory by showing how it can account for standard proper names, and the distinctive way their meaning determines their reference. He also shows how the theory can handle interjections, syncategorematic terms, conventional implicatures, and other cases long seen as difficult for both ideational and referential theories. The expression theory is founded on the fact that thoughts are event types with a constituent structure, and that thinking is a fundamental propositional attitude, distinct from belief and desire. Thought parts ('ideas' or 'concepts') are distinguished from both sensory images and conceptions. Word meaning is defined recursively: sentences and other complex expressions mean what they do in virtue of what thought parts their component words express and what thought structure the linguistic structure expresses; and unstructured words mean what they do in living languages in virtue of evolving conventions to use them to express ideas. The difficulties of descriptivism show that the ideas expressed by names are atomic or basic. The reference of a name is the extension of the idea it expresses, which is determined not by causal relations, but by its identity or content together with the nature of objects in the world. Hence a name's reference is dependent on, but not identical to, its meaning. A name is directly and rigidly referential because the extension of the idea it expresses is not determined by the extensions of component ideas. The expression theory thus has the strength of Fregeanism without its descriptivist bias, and of Millianism without its referentialist or causalist shortcomings. The referential properties of ideas can be set out recursively by providing a generative theory of ideas, assigning extensions to atomic id

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Review

The focus of attention here is on some special structures of meaning commonly regarded as presenting special problems for expressionist theories of language but essential for any comprehensive treatment of the subject. Particularly impressive is Davis' account of the connection between reference and predication, and the distinctive way in which the meaning of names determines their reference. In light of that account, special treatment is given to interrogatives, imperatives, interjections, syncategorematic terms, and pejorative terms. (Choice)

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0199261652
• ISBN 13: 9780199261659
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 466