Overview

From Naming to Saying examines the classical question of the unity of the proposition: how the parts of the sentence which separately name an object and a property combine to say some single thing or express a proposition. The volume presents and discusses three great historical theories: Frege's doctrine of concept and object, Russell's analysis of the sentence, and Wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning. It explores whether the semantic distinction between subject and predicate can be explained, as P. F. Strawson maintained, by the metaphysical distinction between the things named, particulars and universals. And it offers a novel solution, arguing that the utterance of a sentence expresses a unitary proposition because of the interlocking causal explanations of the constituent utterances that comprise the act of uttering a sentence. This important work will be of interest to students of linguistics and semantics as well as philosophers.

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9780631226550

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A deep and philosophically satisfying answer to the question of how we manage to say something by stringing words together. Gibson's historically sensitive treatment will rekindle interest in this classic problem. Fred Dretske, Duke University

Author Information

Martha I. Gibson teaches philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and history of modern philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published articles on Kant's theory of judgment, freedom of will, predication, and causal and information-based theories of meaning.

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