Thought and World : An Austere Portrayal of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence

This book presents a deflationary theory of the content of semantic notions. It represents a broad range of these notions as being free from substantive metaphysical and empirical presuppositions. It also seeks to explain the intuition that there is a relation of mirroring or semantic correspondence linking thoughts to reality.

There is an important family of semantic notions that we apply to thoughts and to the conceptual constituents of thoughts - as when we say that the thought that the Universe is expanding is true. Thought and World presents a theory of the content of such notions. The theory is largely deflationary in spirit, in the sense that it represents a broad range of semantic notions - including the concept of truth - as being entirely free from substantive metaphysical and empirical presuppositions. At the same time, however, it takes seriously and seeks to explain the intuition that there is a metaphysically or empirically 'deep' relation (a relation of mirroring or semantic correspondence) linking thoughts to reality. Thus, the theory represents a kind of compromise between deflationism and versions of the correspondence theory of truth. This book will appeal to students and professionals interested in the philosophy of logic and language.