Semantics, Tense & Time – An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language (Bradford Books) - Hardcover

Ludlow, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262122197 ISBN 13: 9780262122191

Publisher: MIT Press, 1999

Synopsis

According to Peter Ludlow, there is a very close relation between the structure of natural language and that of reality, and one can gain insights into long-standing metaphysical questions by studying the semantics of natural language. In this book Ludlow uses the metaphysics of time as a case study and focuses on the dispute between A-theorists and B-theorists about the nature of time. According to B-theorists, there is no genuine change, but a permanent sequence of events ordered by an earlier-than/later-than relation. According to the version of the A-theory adopted by Ludlow (a position sometimes called presentism), there are not past or future events or times; what makes something past or future is how the world stands right now.

About this title

Review

" A notable work in many respects, with an extremely interesting discussion of the prospects for giving the semantics of tense in a tensed metalanguage. "Semantics, Tense, and Time" exemplifies the recent, very productive, evolution of the philosophy of language, with its characteristic amalgam of linguistics, metaphysics, and logic." -- James Higginbotham, Professor of General Linguistics, University of Oxford

& quot; A notable work in many respects, with an extremely interesting discussion of the prospects for giving the semantics of tense in a tensed metalanguage. Semantics, Tense, and Time exemplifies the recent, very productive, evolution of the philosophy of language, with its characteristic amalgam of linguistics, metaphysics, and logic.& quot; -- James Higginbotham, Professor of General Linguistics, University of Oxford

"A notable work in many respects, with an extremely interesting discussion of the prospects for giving the semantics of tense in a tensed metalanguage. "Semantics, Tense, and Time" exemplifies the recent, very productive, evolution of the philosophy of language, with its characteristic amalgam of linguistics, metaphysics, and logic."--James Higginbotham, Professor of General Linguistics, University of Oxford

About the Author

Peter Ludlow, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, is the author of Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language (MIT Press, 1999), among other books, and the editor of Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias (MIT Press, 2001) and High Noon on the Electronic Frontier (MIT Press, 1996).

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262122197
• ISBN 13: 9780262122191
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 268