Words without Meaning (Contemporary Philosophical Monographs) - Softcover

"Chris Gauker's articles over the last decade have been challenging dominant views of meaning and interpretation and working toward a new approach. Words without Meaning widens the compass of his critique on many fronts and advances an alternative conception of language centered around conversation and its goals. Gauker also demonstrates the illuminating consequences of eschewing platitudes once thought to be obligatory. The result is a deeply original approach to action, language, and mind." Mitchell Green, University of Virginia "Chris Gauker's articles over the last decade have been challenging dominant views of meaning and interpretation and working toward a new approach. *Words Without Meaning* widens the compass of his critique on many fronts, and advances an alternative conception of language centered around conversation and its goals. Gauker also demonstrates the illuminating consequences of eschewing platitudes once thought to be obligatory. The result is a deeply original approach to action, language and mind."--Mitchell Green, University of Virginia

According to the received view of linguistic communication, the primary function of language is to enable speakers to reveal the propositional contents of their thoughts to hearers. Speakers are able to do this because they share with their hearers an understanding of the meanings of words. Christopher Gauker rejects this conception of language, arguing that it rests on an untenable conception of mental representation and yields a wrong account of the norms of discourse. Gauker's alternative starts with the observation that conversations have goals and that the best way to achieve the goal of a conversation depends on the circumstances under which the conversation takes place. These goals and circumstances determine a context of utterance quite apart from the attitudes of the interlocutors. The fundamental norms of discourse are formulated in terms of the conditions under which sentences are assertible in such contexts. Words without Meaning contains original solutions to a wide array of outstanding problems in the philosophy of language, including the logic of quantification, the logic of conditionals, the semantic paradoxes, the nature of presupposition and implicature, and the nature and attribution of beliefs.