Overview

In this book, Brice Halimi revives the connection between philosophy of language and philosophy of mathematics which founded analytic philosophy. Russell's logical analysis in The Principles of Mathematics aimed to identify the 'logical constants' of language with the 'indefinables' of mathematics. However context-sensitivity, which covers all the cases in natural language where the semantic content of an expression depends on the context of its utterance, is thought to hinder that program. In contrast, Halimi argues that context-sensitivity, approached as a radically dynamic process based on context-shift, is amenable to a mathematical counterpart, but that new mathematical concepts are needed. His approach leads to a renewed conception of semantic content, linguistic meaning, and their interaction, while also reconsidering the divide between semantics and pragmatics. The book will interest philosophers of language and philosophers of mathematics, and also has numerous applications to philosophy of mind, epistemology, logic, and linguistics.

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9781009636896

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Using mathematical tools to analyze aspects of ordinary language has been a central task for analytic philosophers since Russell's theory of descriptions, from the early twentieth century on. For the last 100 years the phenomenon of context sensitivity has, however, resisted repeated attempts at such an analysis. In this book, Brice Halimi goes through the main attempts and reveals their limitations. Then he shows that the key to obtaining a more satisfactory solution lies in extending the mathematical toolbox at one's disposal, beyond classical mathematical logic. By using the notion of fibration from category theory, among others, he succeeds in providing not only an analysis of context sensitivity, but a more general perspective on linguistic meaning that is innovative and productive, including for rethinking the semantics-pragmatics distinction.' Erich Reck, University of California, Riverside 'Linguists and philosophers have known for many years that context-dependence pervades language. But just how to analyze context-dependence has been a highly contentious issue. In this fascinating, ground-breaking, and provocative book, Halimi takes a new look at this old problem. He makes use of some very sophisticated mathematics to provide a novel and powerful analysis. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the phenomenon of context-dependence, or interested in how mathematics can be applied to the study of language.' Michael Glanzberg, Rutgers University

Author Information

Brice Halimi is Professor of Philosophy of Mathematics in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Université Paris Cité, and a member of the SPHERE laboratory. He is the author of Le Nécessaire et l'universel (2013), which was awarded the Cavaillès Prize in 2015.

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