Fact and Meaning

Part 1: varieties of realism; minimal realism; reflecting on minimal realism; realism, idealism and empericism; realism, relativism and intersubjectivity. Part 2 Instrumentation and meaning of scepticism; Quine's arguments for the indeterminacy of translation; setting up a predictive sentence machine; indeterminacy of function and meaning; instrumentalism and the revisability of logic. Part 3 Quine's naturalized empiricism: Quine's epistemology; ontological relativity and disquotation; Quine's version of realism; should empiricism be naturalized?. Part 4 The Mona Lisa mosaic: semantic holism; holism and indeterminacy - the mosaic analogy; holism, indeterminacy and language; can we restore determinacy?. Part 5 The slide into the abyss: the incompatibility of realism and meaning of scepticism; thoroughgoing pragmatism; Wittgenstein and pragmatism; empiricism and Platonism. Part 6 The dissolving mirror: Wittgenstein's hostility to mirroring realism; explanation and the absolute conception; Kripke and norms. Part 7 Interpretations and misinterpretations: speech acts and language games; Wittgenstein and anti-realism. Part 8 Interests, activities and meanings: proof and new concepts; conceptual change and determinacy of sense; other forms of life?; modal realism; facts about meaning.