Read more
Semantics aims to describe the significance of linguistic expressions in a systematic way. Metasemantics, or foundational semantics, asks how expressions gain their significance in the first place. Ori Simchen presents the first book-length treatment of metasemantics and its relation to the thriving research program of truth-conditional semantics.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Metasemantics and Semantic Ascent
- Appendix I: Lewisian Metasemantics
- 2: The Case of Singular Reference
- Appendix II: Scrambled Truth
- Appendix III: Reference to Numbers
- 3: Aboutness and Semantic Value
- 4: Case Study I: Productivism and Self-Reference
- 5: Case Study II: Metasemantics and Interpretation
- 6: Conclusion: Semantic Determinacy
About the author
Ori Simchen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He earned his MA in philosophy of science from Tel Aviv University and his PhD in philosophy from Harvard University. He is the author of
Necessary Intentionality: A Study in the Metaphysics of Aboutness (Oxford University Press, 2012) and of various articles in journals such as
Noûs,
The Journal of Philosophy,
Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic,
Legal Theory, and the
Philosophical Quarterly.
Summary
Semantics aims to describe the significance of linguistic expressions in a systematic way. Metasemantics, or foundational semantics, asks how expressions gain their significance in the first place. Ori Simchen presents the first book-length treatment of metasemantics and its relation to the thriving research program of truth-conditional semantics.
Additional text
There is much of interest in the book, and I hope that the discussion of the seeming explanatory circularity of metasemantic appeals to sentential truth, the scrambled truth argument, the discussion of the relation between semantic value and less technical semantic notions, and the attempt to link metasemantics with issues in law -- among much else -- will be read and discussed.
