Austere Realism: Contextual Semantics Meets Minimal Ontology, by Terence Horgan and Matjaž Potrč
Author(s)
Khoo, Justin Donald
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In this interesting and wide-ranging book, Horgan and Potrč (hereafter, H&P) offer a case study of how to navigate the border between philosophy of language and metaphysics. On the metaphysics side, they argue for an austere ontology (blobjectivism) according to which all that exists is just a single concrete particular, namely, the whole universe (the blobject), which has no proper parts. On the language side, they argue for a semantic
theory (contextual semantics) according to which the truth of a statement or thought just is its being semantically correct under contextually operative semantic standards. Their semantic thesis allows H&P to avoid the following inconsistent duo:
(M) There are mountains in North America.
(¬M) There are no mountains.
Date issued
2015Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and PhilosophyJournal
Mind
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
Khoo, Justin. “Austere Realism: Contextual Semantics Meets Minimal Ontology, by Terence Horgan and Matjaž Potrč.” Mind, vol. 124, no. 496, Oct. 2015, pp. 1292–99.
Version: Original manuscript
ISSN
0026-4423
1460-2113