Paul M. Pietroski presents an ambitious new account of human languages as generative procedures that respect substantive constraints. He argues that meanings are neither concepts nor extensions, and sentences do not have truth conditions; meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort.

• 0: Overture


• 1: Locating Meanings


• 2: Introducing Concepts


• 3: Invention and Satisfaction


• 4: Truth or Understanding


• 5: Events and Framing


• 6: Massively Monadic, Potentially Plural


• 7: Minimal Semantic Instructions


• 8: Reprise

Paul M. Pietroski (Ph.D. MIT) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He taught previously at McGill University and the University of Maryland. His research addresses questions concerning linguistic meaning and its relation to cognition: what are word meanings; how are they related to human concepts and our capacity to understand complex expressions; and how do children acquire this remarkable capacity? He is the author of Causing Actions, Events and Semantic Architecture, and numerous articles on topics that span philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. He has held visiting positions at Harvard and the École Normale Supérieure.