A01=John MacFarlane
Author_John MacFarlane
Category=CFA
Category=QDTK
Category=QDTM
Category=QDTQ
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9780198776819
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 157 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 14 Apr 2016
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
John MacFarlane debates how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative, and how we might use this idea to give satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis. Although there is a substantial philosophical literature on relativism about truth, going back to Plato's Theaetetus, this literature (both pro and con) has tended to focus on refutations of the doctrine, or refutations of these refutations, at the expense of saying clearly what the doctrine is. In contrast, Assessment Sensitivity begins with a clear account of what it is to be a relativist about truth, and uses this view to give satisfying accounts of what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do. The book seeks to provide a richer framework for the description of linguistic practices than standard truth-conditional semantics affords: one that allows not just standard contextual sensitivity (sensitivity to features of the context in which an expression is used), but assessment sensitivity (sensitivity to features of the context from which a use of an expression is assessed).
The Context and Content series is a forum for outstanding original research at the intersection of philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. The general editor is François Recanati (Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris).
John MacFarlane received his B.A. in Philosophy from Harvard College, in addition to an MA in Classics and a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2000 he took up a position at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and a member of the Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science. His work has ranged widely over a number of philosophical topics, including the history of philosophy, the philosophy of logic and mathematics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language.
