Thought and World An Austere Portrayal of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence

Thought and World presents a theory of the content of semantic notions.

There is an important family of semantic notions that we apply to thoughts and to the conceptual constituents of thoughts - as when we say that the thought that the Universe is expanding is true. Thought and World presents a theory of the content of such notions. The theory is largely deflationary in spirit, in the sense that it represents a broad range of semantic notions - including the concept of truth - as being entirely free from substantive metaphysical and empirical presuppositions. At the same time, however, it takes seriously and seeks to explain the intuition that there is a metaphysically or empirically 'deep' relation (a relation of mirroring or semantic correspondence) linking thoughts to reality. Thus, the theory represents a kind of compromise between deflationism and versions of the correspondence theory of truth. This book will appeal to students and professionals interested in the philosophy of logic and language.

1. Introduction; 2. Truth in the realm of thoughts; 3. The marriage of heaven and hell: reconciling deflationary semantics with correspondence intuitions; 4. Indexical representation and deflationary semantics; 5. Why meaning matters; 6. Into the wild blue yonder: non-designating concepts, vagueness, semantic paradox, and logical paradox.

This 2002 book presents a deflationary theory of the content of semantic notions. It represents a broad range of these notions as being free from substantive metaphysical and empirical presuppositions. It also seeks to explain the intuition that there is a relation of mirroring or semantic correspondence linking thoughts to reality.