Garth L. Hallett is Dean of the College of Philosophy and Letters at St. Louis University and the author of many books, including Essentialism: A Wittgensteinian Critique, also published by SUNY Press.

Preface

1. The Issue of Language's Authority

2. The Question's Centrality

3. Plato's Recourse to Nonlinguistic Forms

4. Aquinas and the Primacy of Mental Truth

5. The Tractatus: Precise Thought versus Imprecise Language

6. Carnap's Limited Linguistic Turn

7. Tarski, Truth, and Claims of Linguistic Incoherence

8. Wittgenstein's Acceptance of the Authority of Language

9. Wittgenstein versus Theoretical "Intuitions"

10. Flew and Paradigm-Case Arguments

11. Russell's Critique of "Common Sense"

12. Malcolm and the "Ordinary-Language" Debate

13. Austin, Statements, and Their Truth

14. A Lead Overlooked: From Meaning to Truth

15. Kripke, Putnam, and Rigid Designation

16. Quine, Linguistic Truths, and Holistic Theory

17. Quine, Indeterminacy, and the Opacity of Language

18. Rorty, Stich, and Pragmatic Assertability

19. Habermas, Communicative Speech, and Validity

20. Past, Present, and Future: An Overview

Notes
Bibliography
Index