The Seas of Language [Paperback]

Michael Dummett (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0198236212 | ISBN-13: 978-0198236214 | Publication Date: June 27, 1996

Michael Dummett is a leading contemporary philosopher whose work on the logic and metaphysics of language has had a lasting influence on how these subjects are conceived and discussed. This volume contains some of the most provocative and widely discussed essays published in the last fifteen years, together with a number of unpublished or inaccessible writings. Essays included are: "What is a Theory of Meaning?," "What do I Know When I Know a Language?," "What Does the Appeal to Use Do for the Theory of Meaning?," "Language and Truth," "Truth and Meaning," "Language and Communication," "The Source of the Concept of Truth," "Mood, Force, and Convention," "Frege and Husserl on Reference," "Realism," "Existence," "Does Quantification Involve Identity?," "Could there be Unicorns?," "Causal Loops," "Common Sense and Physics," "Testimony and Memory," "What is Mathematics About?," "Wittgenstein on Necessity: Some Reflections," and "Realism and Anti-Realism." Serving well as a companion to Dummett's other collections, the essays in this volume are not forbiddingly technical or specialized, and have relevance to many areas of analytic philosophy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dummett maintains his characteristic mode of exposition of high ratio of insight per word count. And as usual, the required close attention and rereading is rewarded."--The Modern Schoolman

About the Author

Michael Dummett was, until his retirement in 1992, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford and a Fellow of New College. He has held visiting professorships at Stanford, Harvard, Minnesota, Princeton, Rockefeller, and Munster universities. He is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Nijmegen, an Honorary Docteur es Lettres at the University of Caen, and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A previous collection of his essays was published as Frege and Other Philosophers by OUP in 1991 and sold over 1200 copies.

Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198236212
• ISBN-13: 978-0198236214
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,584,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Important Collection, January 27, 2009

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This review is from: The Seas of Language (Paperback)

There is no doubt that Dummett's main claim to fame rests on his contributions to the realism/anti-realism debate, and in particular to the major idea that runs through his most famous works; that a theory of meaning must underlie metaphysics and that a speaker's knowledge of her own language will determine what metaphysical questions can be answered (and how). This book certainly has a main focus on these questions, containing his seminal essays `What is a Theory of Meaning', several other essays on related topics and two essays directly targeting the nature of the realism/anti-realism debate - and they also provide an important perspective on Dummett's own approach to the issues which it is easy to miss; not so much as arguing a positive case for anti-realism, but rather as providing outstanding challenges to anyone who wants to embark on the development of a realist theory. Yet this volume also presents other sides of Dummett's work and contributions to topics that perhaps have a tendency to be a little overlooked.

Of course, no one reading Dummett will come around those arguments (or what might legitimately be called the Argument, with a capital `A', to the effect that realism might (with some qualifications) be considered equivalent to acceptance of bivalence, and the challenges that, Dummett argues, emerges from such a position) - and what should be striking is that, even today, no definite response has emerged. Philosophy as a discipline might have moved on and the questions may seem less pressing than they once were. No doubt the objections to putting epistemic constraints on truth contributes to that. But the problems are not really solved, and if anything this book should be a reminder of that. What one might be a little unsatisfied with, though, is that this book to so little extent gives us Dummett's involvement with his critics - if one just read through the book with no knowledge of the debates his arguments have spurred, one would conceivably be left with the suspicion that his work is somewhat insulated from the general debate. This is a problem in particular because the route from denial of bivalence to anti-realism is less than perfectly clear, and indeed there are gaps in Dummett's arguments where one might wish for an explanation or further analysis.

Of course, this is not exactly helped by the fact that Dummett's writing style is not the most transparent - it is often very hard to keep track of arguments, and often one is left to wonder whether a claim is part of the argument, a digression or an objection, unless one pays very close attention. But one should. This is an important book and anyone dealing with philosophy of language ought to - no, needs to - be acquainted with at least the most important articles collected here. That said, some of them seem less strikingly important (and one has to admit that the latter group includes, mostly, exactly those articles that don't directly deal with the Argument), and many of the important ones are rather easily available elsewhere. Still, in one way or another, they require your attention.