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Formal philosophy; selected papers of Richard Montague
Good Yale University Press, 1974. As is due to light damp-staining at the board/pastedowns/interior dustjacket; dustjacket very lightly rubbed/bumped, lightly soiled, faintly sunned, price-clipped at the top corner of the front interior flap, dustjacket interior lightly soiled/damp-stained, few chips/tears at the corners/edges/spine ends, one large chip/tear at the bottom corner of the rear flap; cover lightly soiled/damp-stained, faintly rubbed/bumped, corners/edges/spine ends very lightly rubbed/bumped; edges faintly rubbed/bumped, very lightly soiled, lightly sunned, top edge very lightly rubbed/bumped; interior very lightly age-toned throughout, pastedowns/endpapers quite soiled, pastedowns/endpapers faintly damp-stained, very light pencil erasures along the top edge of the ffep; binding tight; dustjacket, cover, edges and interior intact and clean, except where noted; due to the size/weight of this item, additional shipping charges may apply.. hardcover. Good/Good.
370 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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March 5, 2013
I haven't read the whole thing yet. But I've been reading a number of the papers collected in this volume.
I'm skeptical of a number of RM's basic operating assumptions. For example, the notion that intension = function = meaning (Fregean inheritance). The use of intensions to model entities like properties (or even the claim that properties are intensions? I'm not sure). What appears to be his underlying motivation: that philosophical problems can be reduced to logical and semantic problems solvable by technical means (though I ardently hope that's true). The fact that he almost completely ignores lexical decomposition as a means to validate apparently good inferences that do not follow by virtue of the sentences' overt forms (what Dowty's big book is about). The widespread employment of a "generalize to the worst case" approach in natural language semantics (e.g., the semantic type of extensional VPs) using meaning-postulates to guarantee that we get the right entailments in simpler cases (versus type-shifting, for example).
Most of these doubts are long reported by others in the literature starting in the '70s, but for me it's been productive to reinvent that wheel a bit.
All that being said, I still find these papers some of the most inspiring and hopeful attempts at serious philosophy in the 20th C. The fact that it all revolves around certain technical innovations of the 50s and 60s does not surprise me. Empirical sciences tend to advance (or at least change) when new methodological, mathematical, etc. approaches are getting exposure. Hopefully the same can happen for certain branches of philosophy. Though it's already stimulated a lot of good work, I think we're still waiting on the other shoe to drop, for the philosophical aftershock of the techniques and ideas presented here.
I'm skeptical of a number of RM's basic operating assumptions. For example, the notion that intension = function = meaning (Fregean inheritance). The use of intensions to model entities like properties (or even the claim that properties are intensions? I'm not sure). What appears to be his underlying motivation: that philosophical problems can be reduced to logical and semantic problems solvable by technical means (though I ardently hope that's true). The fact that he almost completely ignores lexical decomposition as a means to validate apparently good inferences that do not follow by virtue of the sentences' overt forms (what Dowty's big book is about). The widespread employment of a "generalize to the worst case" approach in natural language semantics (e.g., the semantic type of extensional VPs) using meaning-postulates to guarantee that we get the right entailments in simpler cases (versus type-shifting, for example).
Most of these doubts are long reported by others in the literature starting in the '70s, but for me it's been productive to reinvent that wheel a bit.
All that being said, I still find these papers some of the most inspiring and hopeful attempts at serious philosophy in the 20th C. The fact that it all revolves around certain technical innovations of the 50s and 60s does not surprise me. Empirical sciences tend to advance (or at least change) when new methodological, mathematical, etc. approaches are getting exposure. Hopefully the same can happen for certain branches of philosophy. Though it's already stimulated a lot of good work, I think we're still waiting on the other shoe to drop, for the philosophical aftershock of the techniques and ideas presented here.
Displaying 1 of 1 review