
Too often today it seems we find ourselves communicating from radically different perspectives on the world and we often despair of communication even being possible. Peter Ludlow argues that perspectival content, or what some call indexical content, is ineliminable and ubiquitous, running through our accounts of human action and emotions, perception, normative behaviour, and even our theories of computation and information. While such content may be ineliminable, it also gives rise to philosophical puzzles - particularly those involving reporting these contents from different perspectival positions. Such puzzles have led some to try and abandon perspectival content, and others to despair of communication across diverse perspectival positions. Ludlow argues that communication across diverse perspectival positions is not only possible, but routine, and develops a theory of interperspectival content and cognitive dynamics to explain how it is accomplished.
How can communication remain coherent when individuals operate from fundamentally different perspectival positions? Peter Ludlow, a philosopher specializing in the philosophy of language and mind, investigates the ubiquity of indexical content in human interaction. He argues that while perspectival content is an ineliminable feature of human cognition—affecting everything from emotional expression to computational theory—it does not preclude successful communication. The book presents a formal theory of interperspectival content and cognitive dynamics to demonstrate how agents bridge these gaps in routine discourse.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Experts in the philosophy of language recognize this work as a significant contribution to the ongoing debate regarding indexicality and communication. Readers frequently note the technical density of the prose, which requires a strong background in formal semantics and analytic philosophy to fully grasp.
Page Count:
257
Publication Date:
2019-01-01
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
ISBN-10:
0192557076
ISBN-13:
9780192557070
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