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Title: Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language by Peter Ludlow ISBN: 0-262-12219-7 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 29 October, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $47.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good on language, not so good on metaphysics
Comment: In this book, Ludlow develops a semantic argument for presentism, the austere version of the A-theory according to which nothing but the present exists. He claims that neither physical theory nor a priori metaphysics can settle the question of whether pastness, presentness, and futurity are objective features of the world, and so turns to the semantics of tense to settle the issue. Ludlow's thesis is that, since natural language is irreducibly tensed, time must be tensed, too.
Ludlow argues that only presentism can handle the indexical character of temporal discourse. He offers versions Smith's, Craig's, and Prior's arguments against the token-reflexive semantics, which was defended by most B-theorists until the 1980's. He also defends presentism against the objection that it cannot account for reference to past and future, by developing a theory of E-type temporal anaphora. He treats past statements as evidentials and future statements as modals, thus committing himself only to presently existing things.
Ludlow's theory is highly original and his book is worth reading for anyone interested in tense and time. However, it has several major shortcomings. The most glaring problem is that he never bothers to argue for the crucial premise that the world tracks semantics, nor even specify how semantics can provide information unavailable from other domains. Second, he engages in vague hand-waving at many crucial points, for instance, in the section arguing against the new theory of time. Third, his linguistic evidence is often dubious. Finally, the book is full of stylistic infelicities and typographical and factual errors. For instance, he assumes that presentism is the same thing as the A-theory, when in fact it is only one version of the A-theory. The book's many errors make it unnecessarily confusing.
Despite these criticisms, the book is a valuable contribution to the philosophy of language and the metaphysics of time. In particular, Ludlow's theory of E-type temporal anaphora and his unique version of presentism deserve serious consideration.
Rating: 5
Summary: thorough, insightful and agreeable
Comment: For a reader with philosophical interests, Ludlow's _Semantics, Tense, and Time_ should be one of the most interesting works in natural language semantics to have come out in recent years. It develops a semantics of tense, temporal anaphora and a few other things within the framework of a Davidsonian "absolute" truth theory, with an eye toward the nature of time. (Quite frankly, I didn't know exactly what McTaggart's "A" and "B series" were before I read this book.) It incorporates many acute observations along the way, not related to tense or time -- remarks about proper names, for example, that I found agreeable and wished had been pursued further. Perhaps in another book. The formal theory of the book is familiar from Larson and Segal's formidable texbook _Knowledge of Meaning_. The syntax is generative grammar.
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Title: Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2 : The Age of Meaning by Scott Soames ISBN: 0691115745 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 03 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality by Alvin Plantinga, Matthew Davidson ISBN: 0195103777 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals by Jonathan Francis Bennett ISBN: 0199258872 Publisher: Clarendon Pr Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings (Linguistics (Malden, Mass.);, 2.) by Paul Portner, Barbara H. Partee ISBN: 0631215425 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
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Title: Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : The Dawn of Analysis by Scott Soames ISBN: 0691115737 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 02 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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