Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism
Steven Gross, Nicholas Tebben, and Michael Williams
Abstract
Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. The chapters in this volume explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti-representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the role of language in expressing mental states, and the normative and the natural as they relate to issu ... More
Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. The chapters in this volume explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti-representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the role of language in expressing mental states, and the normative and the natural as they relate to issues of representation. The chapters further various fundamental debates in metaphysics—for example, concerning the question of finding a place for moral properties in a naturalistic world view—and illuminate the relation of the recent neo-pragmatist revival to the expressivist stream in analytic philosophy of language.
Keywords:
representation,
expressivism,
pragmatism,
truth,
naturalism,
normativity,
reference,
rule-following,
metaphysics,
deflationism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198722199 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722199.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Steven Gross, editor
Johns Hopkins University
Nicholas Tebben, editor
Towson University
Michael Williams, editor
Johns Hopkins University
More
Less
