Nelson looks at how language relates to the world and more particularly at the referring power of names. The first half of the book details the history of the subject from Locke onwards and is followed by Nelson's own reference theory.

Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is a social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when." As Patricia Smith Churchland notes in her foreword to this new edition, with Word and Object Quine challenged the tradition of conceptual analysis as a way of advancing knowledge...(展开全部)

Language consists of dispositions, socially instilled, to respond observably to socially observable stimuli. Such is the point of view from which a noted philosopher and logician examines, in this book, the notion of meaning and the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference. In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, ...(展开全部)

In this encounter between one of the 20th century’s greatest minds and an artist fundamental to the development of modern art, French philosopher Michel Foucault explores Edouard Manet’s importance in the overthrow of traditional values in painting. . Originally delivered in Tunis in 1971 as part of a conference on Manet and here translated into English for the first time, this...(展开全部)

If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics or in philosophy of language, this is it. Ever since the publication of its original version, Naming and Necessity has had great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of referenc...(展开全部)

'Naming and Necessity' has had a great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of naming, and of identity. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here reissued in a newly corrected form...(展开全部)

"Our only channel of information about the world is the impact of external forces on our sensory surfaces. So says science itself. There is no clairvoyance. How, then, can we have parlayed this meager sensory input into a full-blown scientific theory of the world? This is itself a scientific question. The pursuit of it, with free use of scientific theory, is what I call natural...(展开全部)

Gareth Evans, one of the most brilliant philosophers of his generation, died in 1980 at the age of thirty-four. He had been working for many years on a book about reference, but did not complete it before his death. The work was edited for publication by John McDowell, who contributes a Preface.

Throughout the history of science and technology, objects have been understood in many ways but rarely have they been understood to play an active role in the production of knowledge. This has led to largely anthropocentric theories and histories of science, which treat nature as passive objects viewed by independent observers. Thomas Nail approaches the theory of objects histo...(展开全部)