The Metaphysics of Representation

Representation is puzzling. Physical events in our heads and sounds in our mouths come to be 'about' the world around us, equipping us to think and talk about anything fromÂthe most fundamental regularities in the universe to trivial matters of gossip. InThe Metaphysics of Representation, Robert Williams tells a story about how representational properties arise out of a fundamentally non-representational world. The representational properties of language are reduced, via convention, to the representational properties of thoughts. The representational properties of thoughts are reduced, via principles of rationalization, to the representational properties of perception and intention. This most fundamental layer of representation is grounded in the functions these structures have to cause and be caused by events in the world. Williams integrates work from rival traditions to present a combined perspective in the metaphysics of representation, gives new predictions and explanations of representational phenomena, and offers new solutions to long-standing problems.

J. Robert G. Williams, University of Leeds

J. Robert G. Williams is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Leeds. Prior to joining Leeds in 2005, he studied as a graduate at the University of Oxford and the University of St Andrews. He works on philosophy of logic, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, with a particular focus on the metaphysics of representation and the nature of indeterminacy.

0. A Manifesto and A Plan
Part I: Radical Interpretation
1. Radical Interpretation as a Metaphysics of Mental Content
2. Radical Interpretation and the Logical Form of Thoughts
3. Radical Interpretation and Reference Magnetism
4. Radical Interpretation and the Referential Stability of Wrongness
5. Reducing Mental Representation?
Part II: Linguistic Representation
6. From Mental Representation to Linguistic Representation
7. Linguistic Convention and Shared Mental Content
8. Elegant Interpretations
Part III: Source Intentionality
9. The Basis of Radical Interpretation
10. Laying the Foundations
Overall conclusions: scope and limits
Bibliography