Words without Meaning
Christopher Gauker
MIT Press
According to the received view of linguistic communication, the primary                  function of language is to enable speakers to reveal the propositional contents of                  their thoughts to hearers. Speakers are able to do this because they share with                  their hearers an understanding of the meanings of words. Christopher Gauker rejects                  this conception of language, arguing that it rests on an untenable conception of                  mental representation and yields a wrong account of the norms of discourse.Gauker's                  alternative starts with the observation that conversations have goals and that the                  best way to achieve the goal of a conversation depends on the circumstances under                  which the conversation takes place. These goals and circumstances determine a                  context of utterance quite apart from the attitudes of the interlocutors. The                  fundamental norms of discourse are formulated in terms of the conditions under which                  sentences are assertible in such contexts.Words without Meaning contains original                  solutions to a wide array of outstanding problems in the philosophy of language,                  including the logic of quantification, the logic of conditionals, the semantic                  paradoxes, the nature of presupposition and implicature, and the nature and                  attribution of beliefs.