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• Preface
• 1: Semantic Analysis and Metaphysical Inquiry
• 2: The Metaphysical Modesty of Narrowly Linguistic Semantics
• 3: The Way of Ideas and the Way of Reference
• 4: Some Considerations against the Way of Ideas
• 5: Modesty as Incompleteness: Feature or Bug?
• 6: Against the Metaphysical Transparency of Semantic Adicity
• 7: Metaphysical Embarrassment, Indefinite Modifiability and Rules of Use
• 8: Conclusion: A Way Forward in Semantics and Metaphysics.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Meaning Diminished examines the complex relationship between semantic analysis and metaphysical inquiry. Kenneth A. Taylor argues that we should expect linguistic and conceptual analysis of natural language to yield far less metaphysical insight into what there is - and the nature of what there is - than many philosophers have imagined. Taking a strong stand against the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy, Taylor contends that philosophers as diverse as Kant, with his Transcendental Idealism, Frege, with his aspirational Platonism, Carnap with his distinction between internal and external questions, and Strawson, with his descriptive metaphysics, have placed too much confidence in the ability of linguistic and conceptual analysis to achieve deep insight into matters of ultimate metaphysics. He urges philosophers who seek such insight to turn away from the interrogation of language and concepts and back to the more direct interrogation of reality itself. In doing so, he maps out the way forward toward a metaphysically modest semantics, in which semantics carries less weighty metaphysical burdens, and toward a revisionary and naturalistic metaphysics, untethered to the a priori analysis of ordinary language.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• What 's in a name?
• Lexical syntax vs lexical semantics
• An anaphoric treatment of Frege's puzzle
• Names contrasted with deictics
• On the type-individuation of names
• An anaphoric treatment of Kripke's puzzle
• Empty names and the anaphoric thesis
• Names and principle
• On the pragmatics of substitution
• Conclusions
• The psychology of direct reference
• Preliminaries
• Concepts vs conceptions : a referentialist approach
• What that clauses do not specify
• Recanati's accommodationist neo-russellianism
• Meaning, reference, and cognitive significance.

Referentialism has underappreciated consequences for our misunderstanding of the ways in which mind, language and world relate to one another. In exploring these consequences, this book defends a version of referentialism about names, demonstratives and indexicals, in a manner appropriate for scholars and students in philosophy or the cognitive sciences. To demonstrate his view, Kenneth A. Taylor offers original and provocative accounts of a wide variety of semantic, pragmatic and psychological phenomena, such as empty names, proportional attitude contexts, the nature of concepts, and the ultimate source and nature of normativity.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. Fregean Beginnings.
• 2. Definite Descriptions and Other Objects of Wonder.
• 3. Truth and Meaning: the Tarskian Paradigm.
• 4. Foundations of Intentional Semantics.
• 5. Language and Context.
• 6. Language in Action.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This lucid and wide-ranging volume constitutes a self-contained introduction to the elements and key issues of the philosophy of language. In particular, it focuses on the philosophical foundations of semantics, including the main challenges to and prospects for a truth conditional semantics.Since the book is neither single-mindedly philosophical, nor single-mindedly technical, it is an accessible introduction to the philosophical foundations of semantics, and will provide the ideal basis for a first course in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)