What is Meaning? Fundamentals of Formal Semantics is a concise introduction to the field of semantics as it is actually practiced. Through simple examples, pictures, and metaphors, Paul Portner presents the field’s key ideas about how language works. - explains the fundamental ideas and some of the most significant results of modern semantic theory - combines foundational discussion with simplified analyses of complex phenomena to provide readers with a sense of the fascination to be found in the details of the human language - includes exercises and thought-provoking questions to facilitate learning
Rule-Following and Meaning addresses issues of central importance to contemporary work in analytic philosophy of mind, language, and metaphysics, and there is no other anthology on these issues that takes account of Kripke's work and the ensuing literature.
Philosophy: A Text with Readings, 11th Edition (2010)
Engaging and compelling on every page, Velasquez's text helps you explore and understand philosophy while it helps you appreciate how philosophy is relevant to your day-to-day life and the larger social world. This trusted text combines clear prose and primary source readings to take you on a meaningful exploration of a range of philosophical topics, such as human nature, reality, truth, ethics, the meaning of life, diversity, and social/political philosophy. Carefully crafted built-in learning aids help you quickly master the material and succeed in your course.
Semantics, as the study of meaning, is centrally concerned with man's understanding of himself as a species that lives by communication. Philosophy, psychology and anthropology have all had a stake in it; but Geoffrey Leech sees semantics as belonging primarily to the newer discipline of linguistics, since meaning is inextricably a part of the language through which it is expressed. Taking a broad, linguist's-eye view of the subject, he stresses in the opening chapters the contribution of semantics to the understanding of practical problems of communication and concept-manipulation in modern society.
From the bestselling author of Communion comes the mysterious true story of how an unknown visitor barged into Streiber's hotel room late one night--and imparted extraordinary lessons in personal development and man's fate that challenge us to rethink every assumption about the meaning of life. At two-thirty in the morning of June 6, 1998, Whitley Streiber was awakened by somebody knocking on his hotel room door. A man came in, and everything he said was life-altering.