THE REFERENCE BOOK by John Hawthorne, David Manley ( 9780198703044 )

Item Details

Title:

THE REFERENCE BOOK

By:

John Hawthorne, David Manley

Format:

Paperback

List price:

£33.49

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£29.30

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12.5% off

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£4.19

ISBN 10:

019870304X

ISBN 13:

9780198703044

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Publisher:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

13 March, 2014

Pages:

280

Description:

How do language and thought connect to things in the world? John Hawthorne and David Manley offer an original and ambitious treatment of the semantic phenomenon of reference and the cognitive phenomenon of singular thought, leading to a new unified account of definite and indefinite descriptions, names, and demonstratives.

Synopsis:

John Hawthorne and David Manley present an original treatment of the semantic phenomenon of reference and the cognitive phenomenon of singular thought. In Part I, they argue against the idea that either is tied to a special relation of causal or epistemic acquaintance. Part II challenges the alleged semantic rift between definite and indefinite descriptions on the one hand, and names and demonstratives on the other-a division that has been motivated in part by appeals to considerations of acquaintance. Drawing on recent work in linguistics and philosophical semantics, Hawthorne and Manley explore a more unified account of all four types of expression according to which none of them paradigmatically fits the profile of a referential term. On the preferred framework put forward in The Reference Book, all four types of expression involve existential quantification but admit of uses that exhibit many of the traits associated with reference-a phenomenon that is due to the presence of what Hawthorne and Manley call a 'singular restriction' on the existentially quantified domain.The book concludes by drawing out some implications of the proposed semantic picture for the traditional categories of reference and singular thought.

Publication:

Imprint:

Oxford University Press

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Returnable

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