Overview

In Terms and Truth Alan Berger further develops the new theory of reference - as formulated by Kripke and Putnam - applying it in novel ways to many philosophical problems concerning reference and existence. Berger argues that his notion of anaphoric background condition and anaphoric links within a linguistic community are crucial not only to a theory of reference, but to the analysis of these problems as well. The book is organized in three parts. In part I, Berger distinguishes between two styles of rigid designation. Based on this distinction, he develops a theory of reference change for rigid designator terms and shows how this distinction sheds light on identity statements. In part II, he offers an account of belief attribution containing vacuous names within the belief context, of intentional identity statements, and of true negative existential statements. In part III, he analyzes anaphoric expressions (i.e., expressions whose reference is determined in part by other clauses or sentences in a given discourse) and presents a formalization of anaphora and plural quantification.

Full Product Details

9780262025195

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Reviews

A major work. Berger offers an elegant examination of issues that have been in controversy for the last forty years and that have been and are being discussed by the best philosophers of language. But where others have tended to offer piecemeal solutions, Berger offers a unified account based on a small set of principles. --Gilbert Harman, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University

Author Information

Alan Berger is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University.

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