http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/800301536

Language, logic, and epistemology a modal-realist approach

In this book Christopher Norris addresses a range of topics - deconstruction, epistemology, philosophy of logic, philosophical semantics, and music theory - on which his work has focused during the past two decades. Along the way he raises some crucial questions about the scope and limits of an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to 'deconstruct' the boundaries between various fields of enquiry. Norris makes his case through a close analysis of the arguments put forward by philosophers, linguists, cognitive psychologists, music theorists, and advocates of a Wittgensteinian treatment of philosophical problems that would count them mere symptoms of our chronic 'bewitchment by language'. He also argues for the vital role of cognitive science in resolving certain issues raised by recent philosophy of mind and language. This claim is pursued in chapters on Chomskian psycholinguistics and on the way that deconstructive musicologists have allowed their foregone theoretical commitments to preclude any adequate reckoning with our perceptual experience of music. A notable feature of Norris's book is its heterodox approach to the work of some widely influential contemporary thinkers. Thus, for instance, he reads Derrida as making a significant (though so far unrecognised) contribution to current debate about modal, deviant, and paraconsistent logics. While acknowledging the value of interdisciplinary work on these and other topics Norris urges that this should be combined with a due respect for certain area-specific standards of relevance and method.

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