Synopses & Reviews
Presenting a selection of thirteen essays on various topics at the foundations of philosophy -one previously unpublished and eight accompanied by substantial new postscripts-this book offers outstanding insight on truth, meaning, and propositional attitudes; semantic indeterminacy and other kinds of "factual defectiveness;" and issues concerning objectivity, especially in mathematics and in epistemology. It will reward the attention of any philosopher interested in language, epistemology, or mathematics.
Synopsis
Presenting a selection of thirteen essays on various topics at the foundations of philosophy -one previously unpublished and eight accompanied by substantial new postscripts-this book offers outstanding insight on truth, meaning, and propositional attitudes; semantic indeterminacy and other kinds of "factual defectiveness;" and issues concerning objectivity, especially in mathematics and in epistemology. It will reward the attention of any philosopher interested in language, epistemology, or mathematics.
About the Author
Hartry Field is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is author of
Science Without Numbers (198?), which won the Lakatos/Matchette Prize, and
Realism, Mathematics, and Modality (199?).
Table of Contents
Preface
I. Truth, Meaning and Propositional Attitudes
1. Tarski's Theory of Truth
Postscript
2. Mental Representation
Postscript
3. Stalnaker on Intentionality
4. Deflationist Theories of Meaning and Content
Postscript
5. Attributions of Meaning and Content
II. Indeterminacy and Factual Defectiveness
6. Theory Change and the Indeterminacy of Reference
Postscript
7. Quine and the Correspondence Theory
Postscript
8. Disquotational Truth and Factually Defective Discourse
9. Some Thoughts on Radical Indeterminacy
Postscript
10. Indeterminacy, Degree of Belief, and Excluded Middle
Postscript
III. Objectivity
11. Mathematical Objectivity and Mathematical Objects
12. Which Undecidable Sentences Have Determinate Truth Values?
13. Apriority as an Evaluative Notion
Bibliography, Index