This performance of the Richard Strauss opera Arabella with the Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera features vocalists such as Emily Magee, Genia Kuhmeier, and Tomasz Konieczny in the leading roles. ~ Cammila Collar, Rovi

Michael Dummett's new book is the greatly expanded and recently revised version of his distinguished William James Lectures, delivered in 1976. Dummett regards the construction of a satisfactory theory of meaning as the most pressing task of contemporary analytical philosophy. He believes that the successful completion of this difficult assignment will lead to a resolution of problems before which philosophy has been stalled, in some instances for centuries. These problems turn on the correctness or incorrectness of a realistic view of one or another realm--the physical world, the mind, the past, mathematical reality, and so forth. Rejection of realism amounts to adoption of a variant semantics, and often of a variant logic, for the statements in a certain sector of our language. Dummett does not assume the correctness of any one logical system but shows how the choice between different logics arises at the level of the theory of meaning and depends upon the choice of one or another general form of meaning-theory. In order to determine the correct shape for a meaning-theory, we must attain a clear conception of what a meaning-theory can be expected to do. Such a conception, says Dummett, will form "a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks: I have no greater ambition in this book than to set up a base camp."

Michael Dummett's new book is the greatly expanded and recently revised version of his distinguished William James Lectures, delivered in 1976. Dummett regards the construction of a satisfactory theory of meaning as the most pressing task of contemporary analytical philosophy. He believes that the successful completion of this difficult assignment will lead to a resolution of problems before which philosophy has been stalled, in some instances for centuries. These problems turn on the correctness or incorrectness of a realistic view of one or another realm--the physical world, the mind, the past, mathematical reality, and so forth. Rejection of realism amounts to adoption of a variant semantics, and often of a variant logic, for the statements in a certain sector of our language. Dummett does not assume the correctness of any one logical system but shows how the choice between different logics arises at the level of the theory of meaning and depends upon the choice of one or another general form of meaning-theory. In order to determine the correct shape for a meaning-theory, we must attain a clear conception of what a meaning-theory can be expected to do. Such a conception, says Dummett, will form a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks: I have no greater ambition in this book than to set up a base camp.

A collection of all but two of the author's philosophical essays and lectures originally published or presented before August 1976.

Timothy Williamson gives an original and provocative treatment of deep metaphysical questions about existence, contingency, and change, using the latest resources of quantified modal logic. Contrary to the widespread assumption that logic and metaphysics are disjoint, he argues that modal logic provides a structural core for metaphysics.

This wide-ranging collection of essays explores the nature of logic and the key issues and debates in the metaphysics of logic.

No one has figured more prominently in the study of the German philosopher Gottlob Frege than Michael Dummett. His magisterial Frege: Philosophy of Language is a sustained, systematic analysis of Frege's thought, omitting only the issues in philosophy of mathematics. In this work Dummett discusses, section by section, Frege's masterpiece The Foundations of Arithmetic and Frege's treatment of real numbers in the second volume of Basic Laws of Arithmetic, establishing what parts of the philosopher's views can be salvaged and employed in new theorizing, and what must be abandoned, either as incorrectly argued or as untenable in the light of technical developments. Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher whose work had enormous impact on Bertrand Russell and later on the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, making Frege one of the central influences on twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy; he is considered the founder of analytic philosophy. His philosophy of mathematics contains deep insights and remains a useful and necessary point of departure for anyone seriously studying or working in the field.