Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind [Paperback]

In this important new collection, Gilbert Harman presents a selection of fifteen interconnected essays on fundamental issues at the center of analytic philosophy. The book opens with a group of four essays discussing basic principles of reasoning and rationality. The next three essays argue against the once popular idea that certain claims are true and knowable by virtue of meaning. In the third group of essays Harman presents his own view of meaning and the possibility of thinking in language. The final three essays investigate the nature of mind, developing further the themes already set out.
Reasoning, Meaning, and Mindoffers an integrated presentation of this rich and influential body of work, which Harman has developed over thirty years.

Introduction
Part I. Reasoning
1. Rationality
2. Practical Reasoning
3. Simplicity as a Pragmatic Criterion for Deciding What Hypotheses to Take Seriously
4. Pragmatism and Reasons for Belief
Part II. Analyticity
5. The Death of Meaning
6. Doubts about Conceptual Analysis
7. Analyticity Regained?
Part III. Meaning
8. Three Levels of Meaning
9. Language, Thought, and Communication
10. Language Learning
11. Meaning and Semantics
12. (Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics
Part IV. Mind
13. Wide Functionalism
14. The Intrinsic Quality of Experience
15. Immanent versus Transcendent Theories of Meaning and Mind
Bibliography
Index

Gilbert Harman is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His books includeThought(1973),The Nature of Morality: An Introduction to Ethics(Oxford, 1977),Change in View: Principles of Reasoning(1986),Skepticism and the Definition of Knowledge(1990), andMoral Relativism and MoralObjectivity (1996).