Rule-Following and Realism - Hardcover

Ebbs, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674780310 ISBN 13: 9780674780316

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Through detailed and trenchant criticism of standard interpretations of some of the key arguments in analytical philosophy over the last sixty years, this book arrives at a new conception of the proper starting point and task of the philosophy of language.

To understand central topics in the philosophy of language and mind, Gary Ebbs contends, we must investigate them from our perspective as participants in shared linguistic practices; but our efforts at adopting this participant perspective are limited by our lingering loyalties to metaphysical realism (the view that we can make objective assertions only if we can grasp metaphysically independent truth conditions) and scientific naturalism (the view that it is only within science that reality can be identified and described). In Rule-Following and Realism, Ebbs works to loosen the hold of these views by exposing their roots and developing a different way of looking at our linguistic practices.

Reexamining and extending influential arguments by Saul Kripke, W. V. Quine, Rudolf Carnap, Hilary Putnam, and Tyler Burge, Ebbs presents systematic redescriptions of our linguistic practices that transform our understanding of such central topics as rule-following, the analytic-synthetic distinction, realism, anti-individualism, the division of linguistic labor, self-knowledge, and skepticism.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Ebbs is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Reviews

Following the (later) Wittgenstein's injunction to look at how our words are actually and ordinarily used, Ebbs (philosophy, Univ. of Pennsylvania) bases his investigation of central issues in epistemology and metaphysics on the "participant perspective" of our shared linguistic practices. His analysis of how we actually ascribe meanings, evaluate assertions, and resolve disputes leads him to challenge much that is currently accepted in linguistic analysis. His main foils are Saul Kripke, W.V.O. Quine, Hilary Putnam, and Tyler Burge, whose arguments he reconstructs and then counters point by point. Judging from his own position, he concludes that skepticism is unwarranted and that metaphysical realism and scientific naturalism are unfounded. While tightly argued, this will be largely inaccessible to nonphilosophers.?Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674780310
• ISBN 13: 9780674780316
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 388