Semantic Relationism - (Blackwell / Brown Lectures in Philosophy) by Kit Fine (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Introducing a new and ambitious position in the field, Kit Fine's Semantic Relationism is a major contribution to the philosophy of language.

• A major contribution to the philosophy of language, now available in paperback
• Written by one of today's most respected philosophers
• Argues for a fundamentally new approach to the study of representation in language and thought
• Proposes that there may be representational relationships between expressions or elements of thought that are not grounded in the intrinsic representational features of the expressions or elements themselves
• Forms part of the prestigious new Blackwell/Brown Lectures in Philosophy series, based on an ongoing series of lectures by today's leading philosophers

From the Back Cover

Kit Fine argues for a fundamentally new approach to the study of representation in language and thought. His key idea is that there may be representational relationships between expressions or elements of thought that are not grounded in the intrinsic representational features of the expressions or elements themselves. This idea is shown to lead to solutions to many of the standard puzzles in the area - Frege's identity puzzle, Kripke's puzzle about belief, and Moore's paradox of analysis. It is also shown to lead to a more defensible form of direct reference theory - one that is immune to many of the objections that the Fregeans have leveled against it. Based upon the first Brown/Blackwell lecture series and the John Locke lectures, this ground-breaking work is essential reading for anyone interested in the general nature of representation.

About the Author

Kit Fine is Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University, and specializes in metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of language. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies and is a former editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic. He is the author of Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects (Blackwell, 1985), The Limits of Abstraction (2002) and Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers (2005) and the co-author of Worlds, Times and Selves (1977). He has also written papers in ancient philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and economic theory, in addition to the papers in his central fields of interest.