This book is in a certain way a return to the kind of work made in Germany by philosophers like Tugendhat and Habermas in the seventies.
Philosophy is today too much fragmented in sub-theories of questionable relevance. It privileges empty or implausible ideas because they are skillfully developed, not because there is truth in them.
The strategy applied in this book was a different one. I considered the most plausible ideas of theoretical philosophy, show why they must be plausible, develop them, and, assuming a principle of consilience – of a structured reality – try to show how they fit together. The result is a non-expected as much constructive as critical overview of the main problems of theoretical philosophy from the linguistic-analytic perspective.
Table of Contents
Preface...................................................................................................................... xi
Acknowledgments............................................................................................. xviii
Chapter I................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction
1. Ernst Tugendhat’s analysis of singular predicative statements
2. The virtue of comprehensiveness
Appendix to Chapter I........................................................................................... 8
How Do Proper Names Really Work? (Cutting the Gordian Knot)
1. A meta-descriptivist rule for proper names
2. Identification rules at work
3. Objection of vagueness
4. Signification
5. Ignorance and error
6. Rigidity
7. Rules changeability
8. Names versus descriptions
9. Autonomous definite descriptions
10. Kripke’s counterexamples
11. Donnellan’s counterexamples
12. Explanatory failure of the causal-historical view
Chapter II................................................................................................................ 42
The Most Suitable Methodology for Conceptual Analysis
1. Common sense and meaning
2. Ambitious versus modest common sense
3. Resisting changes in worldviews
4. Primacy of established knowledge
5. Philosophizing by examples
6. Tacit knowledge of meaning: traditional explanation
7. A very simple model of semantic-cognitive rule
8. Criteria versus symptoms
9. Challenges to the traditional explanation (i): John McDowell
10. Challenges to the traditional explanation (ii): Gareth Evans
11. Unreflected semantic cognitions
12. Conclusion
Appendix to Chapter II........................................................................................ 79
Modal Illusions: Against Supra-Epistemic Metaphysical Identities
Addendum: disposing of externalism
Chapter III............................................................................................................. 117
Wittgensteinian Semantics
1. Semantic-cognitive link
2. Why cannot reference be meaning?
3. Failure of Russell’s atomistic referentialism
4. Meaning as a function of use
5. Meaning as a kind of rule
6. Meaning as associations of rules
7. Meaning and language-games
8. Meaning and form of life
9. Tying the threads together
10. Criteria and symptoms revisited
11. Transgressions of the internal limits of language
12. The form of semantic-cognitive rules
13. What is wrong with the private language argument?
14. Concluding remarks
Appendix to Chapter III..................................................................................... 157
Trope Theory and the Unsustainable Lightness of Being
1. Introducing tropes
2. Tropes and universals
3. Tropes and concrete particulars
4. Formal tropes
5. Conclusion
Chapter IV............................................................................................................. 182
An Extravagant Reading of Fregean Semantics
1. Reference of a singular term
2. Sense of a singular term
3. Reference of a predicative expression
4. Ontological level
5. Referring to particularized properties (tropes)
6. Difficulties with the concept of unsaturation
7. Unsaturation as ontological dependence
8. Sense of a predicative term
9. The dependence of the predicative sense
10. The concept of horse paradox
11. Existence as a property of concepts
12. Existence as a property of conceptual rules
13. Two naïve objections
14. Attributing existence to objects
15. The existence of objects and its identification rules
16. Existence of spatiotemporal locations: indexicals
17. Advantages of the higher-order view of existence
18. Ubiquity of existence
19. Answering some final objections
20. Reference again: a metaphysical excurse (Mill)
21. The reference of a sentence as its truth-value
22. Logical structure of facts
23. Ontological nature of facts
24. Church’s slingshot argument
25. Sub-facts and grounding facts
26. Taking seriously the sentence’s reference as a fact
27. The riddle of identity in difference
28. Contexts of interest: no need for a necessary a posteriori
29. Sense of sentences: the thought
30. The thought as the truth-bearer
31. Facts as true thoughts?
32. The thought as a verifiability rule
33. Frege’s Platonism
34. Avoiding Frege’s Platonism
35. Further ontological consequences
36. A short digression on contingent futures
37. Conclusion
Appendix to Chapter IV..................................................................................... 288
Frege, Russell, and the Puzzles of Reference
1. Russell’s solutions to the puzzles of reference
2. Fregean solutions to the same puzzles
3. Reviewing Fregean assumptions
4. Reviewing Russell’s assumptions
5. Building a bridge between both views
6. Conclusion
Chapter V.............................................................................................................. 313
Verificationism Redeemed
1. Origins of semantic verificationism
2. Wittgensteinian verificationism
3. Verifiability rule as a criterial rule
4. Objection 1: the principle is self-refuting
5. Objection 2: a formalist illusion
6. Objection 3: verificational holism
7. Objection 4: existential-universal asymmetry
8. Objection 5: arbitrary indirectness
9. Objection 6: empirical counterexamples
10. Objection 7: formal counterexamples
11. Objection 8: skepticism about rules
12. Defending analyticity
13. Conclusion
Appendix to Chapter V...................................................................................... 359
The Only Key to Solving the Humean Problem of Induction
1. Formulating the Humean argument
2. The basic idea
3. Reformulating PF
Chapter VI............................................................................................................. 371
Sketch of a Unified Theory of Truth
1. The deceptive simplicity of correspondence
2. Analysis of correspondence (1): structural isomorphism
3. Analysis of correspondence (2): categorial match
4. Analysis of correspondence (3): intentionality and causality
5. Exemplifying correspondence
6. Compatibility between verificationism and correspondence
7. Formal definitions of truth
8. Negative truths
9. Self-referentiality
10. Pragmatics of the correspondence relation
11. Retrograde procedures
12. A more complex case
13. General statements
14. Some funny facts
15. Expansion to formal sciences
16. Why can analytic truth be called true?
17. The insufficiency of coherence
18. Coherence as a mediator
19. Roles of empirical coherence
20. Reverend David’s case
21. What about the truth of the truth-maker?
22. Objection of the linguistic-cognitive circle
23. Answering the objection of the linguistic-cognitive circle
24. The argument of illusion
25. Answering the argument of illusion
26. The argument of science and its answer
27. Question: How do we warrant the perception of external content?
28. Answer: A definitional criterion of external reality
29. Proving the existence of the external world
30. Skeptical scenarios
31. Verification and intentionality: Husserl
32. Solving two Husserlian problems
33. Truth and factual existence again
34. The rule’s structural mirroring of the world
35. Conclusion
Appendix to Chapter VI..................................................................................... 463
Discovery of Wine
References............................................................................................................ 465
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