Extract

Our normal discourse is replete with discussion of things which do not exist — the objects of fiction, of illusion and hallucination, of religious worship (whichever ones you do not believe to be true), of misguided fears and other intentional states. Let us call such discourse empty (my word not Azzouni's). How to account for the meaning of empty discourse, and such truth values as its statements have, are perennial and thorny philosophical topics. Many positions are well known; in this book of five chapters Azzouni advocates another. Empty discourse is literally about nothing; nonetheless, one may give an account of how its sentences are both meaningful and have appropriate truth values. In the first three chapters, the ideas are applied to the objects of mathematics, hallucination, and fiction, respectively. (One might not think of mathematical discourse as empty, but Azzouni's nominalist credentials are well established. So for him, it is.) Chapter 5 fills out the picture with a discussion of truth-conditional semantics. Chapter 4 broaches the question of how all this is relevant to a broader question: the unity of the sciences.

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