Words without Objects Semantics Ontology and Logic for Non Singularity 1st Edition by Henry Laycock 0199281718 9780199281718

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ISBN 10: 0199281718

ISBN 13: 9780199281718

Author: Henry Laycock

A picture of the world as chiefly one of discrete objects, distributed in space and time, has sometimes seemed compelling. It is however one of two main targets of Henry Laycock’s book; for it is seriously incomplete. The picture, he argues, leaves no space for stuff like air and water. With discrete objects, we may always ask ‘how many?’, but with stuff the question has to be ‘how much?’ Within philosophy, stuff of certain basic kinds is central to the ancient pre-Socratic world-view; but it also constitutes the field of modern chemistry and is a major factor in ecology. Philosophers these days, in general, are unlikely to deny that stuff exists. But they are very likely to deny that it is (‘ultimately’) to be contrasted with things, and it is on this account that logic and semantics figure largely in the framework of the book. Elementary logic is a logic which takes values for its variables; and these values are precisely distinct individuals or things. Existence is then symbolized in just such terms; and this, it is proposed, creates a pressure for ‘reducing’ stuff to things. Non-singular expressions, which include words for stuff, ‘mass’ nouns, and also plural nouns, are ‘explicated’ as semantically singular. Here then is the second target of the book. The posit that both mass and plural nouns name special categories of objects (set-theoretical ‘collections’ of objects in the one case, mereological ‘parcels’ or ‘portions’ of stuff in the other) represents, so Laycock urges, the imposition of an alien logic upon both the many and the much.

Words without Objects Semantics Ontology and Logic for Non Singularity 1st Table of contents:

1. A Proposed Semantical Solution to the So-called ‘Problem of Mass Nouns’

1.0 Metaphysics without bodies

1.1 Metaphysics without physical objects

1.2 Persistence, things, and stuff

1.3 Unity, identity, and the semantic turn

1.4 A proposed semantical solution to the so-called ‘problem of mass nouns’

1.5 Non-singular identities and definite non-count descriptions

1.6 Syntax, semantics, metaphysics: bridging the apparent gaps

1.7 Counting and measuring

1.8 Post mortem on ‘mass nouns’

2. In Thrall to the Idea of The One

2.0 The supposed exhaustiveness of singular reference

2.1 ‘The many’ bundled as ‘the one’

2.2 Plurality and two conceptions of group-talk

2.3 Two kinds of motivation for collections

2.4 Collective reference

2.5 Collective predication and ‘the class as many’

2.6 Platonism: ‘the class as many’ as an object

2.7 Nominalism: ‘the class as many’ as no object

2.8 The variable of many values

2.9 Collections born again

3. Non-count Descriptions and Non-singularity

3.0 ‘The much’ repackaged as ‘the one’

3.1 Conditions of uniqueness

3.2 The Theory of Descriptions (yet again) defended

3.3 The mechanics of non-count descriptions

3.4 Non-distributive predication

4. Quantification and its Discontents

4.0 The classical model

4.1 Roadblocks to non-singularity; meaning and truth-conditions

4.2 Non-singular quantification: the distinct semantic powers of ‘all’ and ‘some’

4.3 Generality and distribution en masse

4.4 The non-count cases

4.5 Variables, instances, and samples

5. The Ideal Language Project and the Non-discrete

5.0 Ideal languages

5.1 Conditions for transparency

5.2 Power versus clarity

5.3 Reference and material ‘non-entities’

5.4 The realms of multiplicity and unity

5.5 Two kinds of plural sentences

5.6 Concrete and generic non-count sentences and their material basis

5.7 The reality of substances

Appendices

I: Atomism

II: Substances and Physical Objects: Quine’s Labyrinth

III: Reductive Mereological Approaches to Non-singularity

IV: The Gradual Transition from Count Nouns to Pure Non-count Nouns

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Tags: Henry Laycock, Words, Objects, Semantics, Ontology