Philosophical Semantics: Reintegrating Theoretical Philosophy
This book offers an innovative systematic approach to the problems of meaning, reference and related issues, unifying in promising ways some of the best insights, not only of exponential philosophers like Wittgenstein and Frege, but also of some influential later theorists like Michael Dummett, Ernst Tugendhat, John Searle and Donald Williams. Moreover, it exposes some main errors popularized by clever formalist-oriented philosophers, from Willard Van Orman Quine to Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam. In this way, it shows how some older major approaches could regain their central importance and how the cartography of philosophy of language could be once more redrawn. The book is clearly written, and will be of interest to anyone with basic training in analytic philosophy.
Claudio Costa received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Konstanz, Germany. He is currently Full Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, keeping in touch with the international philosophical community by means of numerous sabbaticals at the University of California, Berkeley, Oxford, München, Göteborg, and the École Normale Supérieure, among others. His main publications in English are the books The Philosophical Inquiry (2002) and Lines of Thought (2014).
“Claudio Costa’s Philosophical Semantics is important and challenging. It is motivated and guided by the conviction that it is time for a more comprehensive type of the philosophy of language which is more strongly interested in the communication and social role of language and linked together with the most fundamental questions about our understanding of the world. The book contains lots of interesting and original insights.”
Professor Peter Stemmer
University of Konstanz, Germany
“Claudio Costa rightly complains about the decline of attempts at comprehensiveness in current philosophy, due to a loss of a suitable cultural soil for such philosophy. In his book, he forcefully withstands those negative tendencies by laying out a comprehensive philosophy of meaning and reference, which respects common-sense truisms, denies scientistic reductionism, and integrates 150 years of philosophy of language from Frege and Husserl over Russell, Wittgenstein and Tugendhat to Searle, Kripke, and other contemporary authors. A most praiseworthy task! And a very stimulating and insightful reading! I do highly recommend it.”
Professor Wolfgang Spohn
University of Konstanz, Germany
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