Philosophy of Meaning and Representation

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From the Jacket

Surveying all the landmark developments in the recent philosophy of language, the book focuses on meaning and linguistic representations in its thematic effort to propose a representational theory of meaning.

Meaning is the autonomous component of language: its semantic content and its essence as well. The book thus tries to link meaning with linguistic representations which in themselves, not only are logico grammatical structures, but also represent the world around us. Also attempting to reconcile the conflicting claims of the realists and the anti-realists, the author demonstrates how we have no choice between meaning as truth conditions and meaning as justification conditions, since both are equally rooted in the semantic space of language use involving linguistic representations. Dr. Pradhan's analyses have, at their base, his indepth, critical study of the theory of linguistic representation in Frege, Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Dummett.

In sum, the book lends a forceful support to semantics and more specially to the autonomy of meaning. And the theory of representation, argues for here, promises to fulfill the twin these of representationality and autonomy of meaning.

It is an insightfully analytical work of immense usefulness to the scholars of philosophy concerned with linguistic representation, semantics and meaning.

About the Author

R.C. Pradhan, is a Banaras Hindu University's PhD and reputed scholar of modern philosophy, with Wittgenstein as his specialization, in 1990-91, he was awarded the Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship for post-doctoral research at Oxford which afforded him the distinction to work with Professor Dummett on the Philosophy of Language and Meaning.

Currently Reader in Philosophy at the Central university of Hyderabad, Dr. Pradhan has published extensively in philosophical journals: both Indian and Western. And additionally is credited, with the authorship of two books, entitled: Language and Experience: An Interpretation of the Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein, and Truth, Meaning and Understanding. Also he has been appointed by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi to write a university level book on analytic Philosophy.