Abstract
We have now toured the camps of both armies locked in Strawson’s ‘Homeric struggle’ between truth theorists of meaning and communication-intention theorists. The issue between them does not seem an easily decidable one. Their conflict, in fact, like many another bitterly fought battle in philosophy, has all the distinguishing marks of a Kantian antinomy. Each side disposes of arguments which are, to say the least, very damaging to the other side. Neither side possesses the means of conclusively establishing, once and for all, the correctness of its own position. Worse still, each side displays internal conflicts — between Grice and Searle, for example, or between Montague’s possible-world semantics for natural languages and a Quinean semantics which excludes quantification into modal contexts — which exhibit the same disquieting characteristic of intractable and irresoluble mutual opposition as the larger debate.
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© 1979 Bernard Harrison
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Harrison, B. (1979). Interlude: Stalemate and Revision. In: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language. Modern Introductions to Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16227-7_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16227-7_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-12044-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-16227-7
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