Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Word and Plan

Word and Plan

MacFarlane, John

Paperback

Series: Columbia Themes in Philosophy

PhilosophyGeneral ReferenceLinguistics

ISBN10: 023121281X
ISBN13: 9780231212816
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: May 26 2026
Pages: 228
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.52 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
We commonly believe that communication is successful when a hearer grasps what a speaker means. But Abe can assert Sam is tall without having any definite intention about how tall one must be to count as tall, and Bertha can understand his assertion without grasping such an intention. What exactly has been communicated in such a case? John MacFarlane argues that standard models of meaning and communication cannot answer this question. To answer it, he proposes, we need to see vague talk as not purely factual but in part expressive of linguistic plans. In this book, he gives a novel expressivist account of vagueness and explores its implications for semantics, pragmatics, thought, and disagreement.

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