Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Language: An Enquiry into the Contemporary Views on Universals (Synthese Library (13))

Kung, Guido; Kung, G.

ISBN 10: 9027700281 / ISBN 13: 9789027700285

Published by D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1967

About this Item

[From the library of noted scholar Richard A. Macksey.] Bound in publisher's blue cloth. Hardcover. No dust jacket. Good binding and cover. Minor shelf wear. Edge bumped. Pages unmarked. 210 p., fold out chart, 23 cm. "It is the aim of the present study to introduce the reader to the ways of thinking of those contemporary philosophers who apply the tools of symbolic logic to classical philosophical problems." "Richard A. Macksey was a celebrated Johns Hopkins University professor whose affiliation with the university spanned six and a half decades. A legendary figure not only in his own fields of critical theory, comparative literature, and film studies but across all the humanities, Macksey possessed enormous intellectual capacity and a deeply insightful human nature. He was a man who read and wrote in six languages, was instrumental in launching a new era in structuralist thought in America, maintained a personal library containing a staggering collection of books and manuscripts, inspired generations of students to follow him to the thorniest heights of the human intellect, and penned or edited dozens of volumes of scholarly works, fiction, poetry, and translation." - Johns Hopkins University.

Seller Inventory # 2008280025

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Language: An Enquiry into the Contemporary Views on Universals (Synthese Library (13))
• Publisher: D. Reidel Publishing Co.
• Publication Date: 1967
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027700281
• ISBN 13: 9789027700285
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Weight: 8 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
  • Philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

It is the aim of the present study to introduce the reader to the ways of thinking of those contemporary philosophers who apply the tools of symbolic logic to classical philosophical problems. Unlike the "conti­ nental" reader for whom this work was originally written, the English­ speaking reader will be more familiar with most of the philosophers dis­ cussed in this book, and he will in general not be tempted to dismiss them indiscriminately as "positivists" and "nominalists". But the English version of this study may help to redress the balance in another respect. In view of the present emphasis on ordinary language and the wide­ spread tendency to leave the mathematical logicians alone with their technicalities, it seems not without merit to revive the interest in formal ontology and the construction of formal systems. A closer look at the historical account which will be given here, may convince the reader that there are several points in the historical develop­ ment whose consequences have not yet been fully assessed: I mention, e. g. , the shift from the traditional three-level semantics of sense and deno­ tation to the contemporary two-level semantics of representation; the relation of extensional structure and intensional content in the extensional systems of Wittgenstein and Carnap; the confusing changes in labelling the different kinds of analytic and apriori true sentences; etc. Among the philosophically interesting tools of symbolic logic Lesniewski's calculus of names deserves special attention.