Logic, Meaning, and Context

This volume brings together David Kaplan's most influential work in logic, the philosophy of language, and the theory of meaning, spanning more than six decades of scholarship and culminating in his receipt of the 2022 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. Alongside many of Kaplan's classic papers, which helped establish the contextual theory of meaning as a foundational framework for contemporary semantics, the collection includes several previously unpublished pieces. These range from analyses of individual identity and non-declarative expressions to Kaplan's celebrated letter to W.V. Quine on the expressive limits of marketplace English, as well as extended studies of the background to Bertrand Russell's "On Denoting."The editors provide concise introductions that situate Kaplan's writings within broader philosophical developments and trace the evolution of his ideas from early drafts to their mature formulations. Kaplan's work is marked by clarity, precision, humor, and intellectual generosity, and it engages directly with major figures including Frege, Russell, Carnap, Montague, Kripke, Putnam, and Perry. Together, these essays illuminate central questions about reference, how to understand intensionality, the notion of a cognitive state, puzzles of belief and modality, and, above all else, Kaplan's overarching quest for a general theory of meaning--questions that animated Kaplan throughout his career and continue to shape contemporary inquiry.