Metaphysics and Grammar
eBook - PDF

Metaphysics and Grammar

  1. 244 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Metaphysics and Grammar

About this book

Metaphysics deals with truth, existence and goodness; it also considers change, time and causation, which characterise the physical world, and thought and language. We are familiar with all these things, but when we try to say what they are we become tongue-tied. William Charlton draws a line between lexicography, which lists words, and grammar, which specifies constructions for various forms of speech. Both words and constructions have meaning, but in different ways, and he argues that the topics of metaphysics are expressed primarily by constructions. He surveys the history of philosophy from classical Greece to the present day, he shows how metaphysics and grammar grew up in tandem, and he connects the difficulties philosophers have encountered, especially since the Enlightenment, with a failure to grasp the significance for metaphysics of grammar as distinct from lexicography. Metaphysics and Grammar presents metaphysics as an art, not a science. It takes the traditional topics in turn; it brings out the relation between each of them and a form of speech; and it argues that these forms of speech provide us with our only reliable access to our nature as conscious beings acting in a physical world.

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Yes, you can access Metaphysics and Grammar by William Charlton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Philosophical Metaphysics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. FC
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. Foreword
  7. 1. Introduction
  8. 2. How Metaphysics Arose
  9. 3. Grammar and Lexicography
  10. 4. Wittgenstein and Chomsky on Grammar
  11. 5. Truth and Predication
  12. 6. Existence and Quantification
  13. 7. Goodness, Counsels and Commands
  14. 8. Change and Tense
  15. 9. Time and Aspect
  16. 10. Causation
  17. 11. Materiality
  18. 12. Thinking
  19. 13. Saying
  20. 14. Conclusion
  21. Notes
  22. Bibliography
  23. Index