Reference & Reflexivity (Lecture Notes) - Hardcover

Perry, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157586309X ISBN 13: 9781575863092

Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 2001

Synopsis

In this volume, author John Perry develops a "reflexive-referential" account of indexicals, demonstratives and proper names. On these issues the philosophy of language in the 20th century was shaped by two competing traditions, descriptivist and referentialist. Referentialist tradition is portrayed as holding that indexicals contribute content that involves individuals without identifying conditions on them. Descriptivist tradition is portrayed as holding that referential content does not explain all of the identifying conditions conveyed by names and indexicals. This text reveals a coherent and structured family of contents - from reflexive contents that place conditions on their actual utterance to the fully incremental contents that place conditions only on the objects of reference - reconciling the insights of both traditions.

About this title

About the Author

John Perry is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, where he taught from 1974 to 2008, and from the University of California, Riverside, where he taught from 2008 to 2014. He has written books and articles on semantics (including pioneering work on situation semantics, with Jon Barwise), personal identity, the philosophy of language consciousness and other philosophical topics. He is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research, including honorary degrees from Doane College, the University of the Basque Country, and Bochum University. He is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI).

Edition details

• Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 157586309X
• ISBN 13: 9781575863092
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 350