In this book, a set of problems which overlap philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence are examined from the point of view of Chomsky's linguistics. The author uses linguistic analysis to shed new light on the philosophical and logical problems of meaning,ambiguity, truth, falsity, negation and existence. He shows that visual and verbal symbols have ways of meaning in common.
Ellsberg elaborates on "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms" and mounts a powerful challenge to the dominant theory of rational decision in this book.
From the groundbreaking author of The Second Sex comes a radical argument for ethical responsibility and freedom. In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities. De Beauvoir outlines a series of “ways of being” (the adventurer, the passionate person, the lover, the artist, and the intellectual), each of which overcomes the former’s deficiencies, and therefore can live up to the responsibilities of freedom. Ultimately, de Beauvoir argues that in order to achieve true freedom, one must battle against the choices and activities of those who suppress it. The Ethics of Ambiguity is the book that launched Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist and existential philosophy. It remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.
Being and Ambiguity is a brilliant work of philosophy, filled with insights, jokes, and topical examples. Professor Ziporyn draws on the works of such Western thinkers as Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, and Hegel, but develops his main argument from Tiantai school of Chinese Buddhism. This important work introduces Tiantai Buddhism to the reader and demonstrates its relevance to profound philosophical issues. Ziporyn argues that we can make both of the claims below simultaneously: This book is about everything. It contains the answers to all philosophical problems which ever shall exist. This book is all claptrap. It is completely devoid of objective validity of any kind. These claims are not contradictory. Rather, they state the same thing in two different ways. To be objective truth is to be subjective claptrap, and vise versa. All interchanges of any kind - conversations, daydreams, sensations - are not only about something but also about everything. Thus, this book concerns itself with no less than the nature of what is and what it means for something to be what it is. It provides a new approach to the basic Western philosophical and psychological issues of identity, determinacy, being, desire, boredom, addiction, love and truth.
"Many studies of Simone de Beauvoir have concentrated on her literature, her life, and her famous 1949 work The Second Sex. The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir places Beauvoir's theory of women's "otherness" in the context of a number of contemporary theories of ambiguity. Professor Deutscher reconsiders the resources on which Beauvoir drew and the innovation involved in their transformation to her purposes." "The focus given Beauvoir's philosophy on gender and thus to her earliest work has overlooked the transformations she affected to her own concepts of ambiguity, reciprocity, and ethics as she considered different modes of otherness. Gender was just one of a number of these, and this book counterbalances its grip on our memory of her work by situating gender in the context of embodied time, ageing, generational differences, and race. By differentiating these aspects of otherness, Beauvoir revisited some of the concepts of reciprocity and ethics for which she is best remembered."--BOOK JACKET.
Focusing on pragmatics, this work examines verbal ambiguity and verbal generality whilst providing a detailed theory of conversational implicature using the work of Paul Grice as a starting point.
In Plurality and Ambiguity, David Tracy lays the philosophical groundwork for a practical application of hermeneutics, while constructing an innovative model of theological interpretation developed out of the notions of conversation and argument. He concludes with an appraisal of the religious significance of hope in an age of radically different voices and constantly shifting meanings.
In a series of stimulating essays, William E. Connolly explores the element of ambiguity in politics. He argues that democratic politics in a modern society requires, if it is to flourish, an appreciation of the ambiguous character of the standards and principles we cherish the most. Connolly's work, lucidly, presented and intellectually challenging, will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, philosophy, rhetoric, and law, and to all whose interests include the connections between contemporary epistemological arguments and politics and, more broadly, between thought and language. Connolly criticizes the ways in which contemporary politics extends normalization into various areas of modern existence. He argues, against this trend, for an approach that would provide relief from the rigid identity formations that result from normalization. In supporting his thesis, Connolly shows how the imperative for growth must be relaxed if normalizing pressures are to be obviated. His, however, is not the familiar antigrowth argument; rather, he ties his thesis to his general antinormalization argument, asking how one could create an ethic that would sustain itself when the growth imperatives are relaxed. Connolly's chapters on the work of other thinkers (including Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, and Charles Taylor) are linked with his main theme, as he shows how various tendencies in the philosophy of the social sciences and in political theory aid and abed the normalizing tendency. His analyses of Rorty and Taylor are especially important. Connolly shows the significance of antifoundationalism (Rorty's contribution to the debate on epistemology), while providing a compelling critique both of Rorty's stance and Taylor's alternative to it. Especially important to Connolly's thesis is the ontology on which it rests. He shows how the endorsement of an ontology of discordance within concord--a view that all systems of meaning impose order on that which was not designed to fit neatly within them--can support a more democratizing process. His final chapter, "Where the Word Breaks Off," vindicates the ontology of discordance, which has governed the argument throughout the text. Throughout these essays, Connolly builds a consistent argument for the politicalization of normalization, disclosing forms of normalization where others have seen unproblematic modes of communication and problem solving. Original in concept and bold in presentation, Connolly's work will form the basis for considerable debate in the several disciplines it serves.
Ambiguity, vagueness and metaphor are pervasive features of language, deserving of systematic study in their own right. Yet they have frequently been considered mere deviations from ideal language or obstacles to be avoided in the construction of scientific systems. First published in 1979, Beyond the Letter offers a consecutive study of these features from a philosphical point of view, providing analyses of each and treating their relations to one another. Addressed to the fundamental task of logical and semantic explanation, the book employs an inscriptional methodology in the attempt to avoid prevalent forms of question-begging, and, further, in the conviction that sparseness of assumption often reveals points of theoretical interest irrespective of methodolgical preference. The author distinguishes and analyses several varieties of ambiguity, developing new semantic notions in the process; recasts the philosophical treatment of vagueness in the light of recent criticisms of analyticity; discusses the bearing of vagueness on logic; and provides a systematic critique of major recent interpretations of metaphor, developing a revised version of contextualism.
