Language and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language

"Language and Reality" is an intermediate-level textbook for students in the philosophy of language both at beginning and advanced levels. It is unique in presenting a large range of work--the theory of meaning, the standard theory of transformational grammar, problems of linguistic competence and innateness, verificationism, structuralism, rational psychology, and many other concepts and issues--within a comprehensive framework. The authors' clear, lively, and argumentative approach and their method of structuring the material make this a useful text for students and professionals in literature, linguistics, anthropology, and cognitive science as well as in other branches of philosophy.

Although competing theories are given detailed discussion, the authors stake out a definite theoretical ground. Their perspective is naturalistic. This leads them, controversially, to a deflationary view of the significance of the study of language, a view that is opposed to a dominant trend in twentieth-century thought, represented in the work of such different thinkers as Rudolf Carnap, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Dummett. They also favor the functionalist approach to the study of mind as represented in the work of Jerry Fodor, Daniel Dennett, William Lycan, and other creators of the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. And they accept and apply the insights of transformational generative grammar, while "remaining skeptical of its claims about psychological reality."

After studying philosophy at Sydney University, Kim Sterelny taught philosophy in Australia at Sydney, ANU (where he was Research Fellow, and then Senior Research Fellow, in Philosophy at RSSS from 1983 until 1987), and La Trobe Universities, before taking up a position at Victoria University in Wellington, where he is currently Reader in Philosophy. For five years from 1999 he will spend half of each year at Victoria University and the other half of each year with the Philosophy Program at RSSS.