William G. Lycan is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is author of Logical Form in Natural Language (1984), Knowing Who (with Steven Boër, 1986), Consciousness (1987), Judgement and Justification (1988), Modality and Meaning (1994), Consciousness and Experience (1996), Real Conditionals (2001), On Evidence in Philosophy (2019), and Perceptual Content (2024).

Praise for the third edition:"An authoritative, pedagogically sensitive and superbly clear introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language." – Paul Boghossian, New York University, USA

• Introduction: meaning and reference PART I: Reference and referring 2 Definite descriptions 3 Proper names: the Description Theory4 Proper names: Direct Reference and the Causal–Historical Theory PART II: Theories of meaning 5 “Use” theories 6 Psychological theories: Grice’s program 7 Verificationism 8 Truth-Condition theoriesPART III Pragmatics and speech acts 9 Semantic pragmatics 10 Speech acts and illocutionary force 11 Implicative relations PART IV: The expressive and the figurative 12 Expressive language 13 Metaphor Glossary Bibliography Index

William G. Lycan is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is author of Logical Form in Natural Language (1984), Knowing Who (with Steven Boër, 1986), Consciousness (1987), Judgement and Justification (1988), Modality and Meaning (1994), Consciousness and Experience (1996), Real Conditionals (2001), On Evidence in Philosophy (2019), and Perceptual Content (2024).

Praise for the third edition:"An authoritative, pedagogically sensitive and superbly clear introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language." – Paul Boghossian, New York University, USA

• Introduction: meaning and reference PART I: Reference and referring 2 Definite descriptions 3 Proper names: the Description Theory4 Proper names: Direct Reference and the Causal–Historical Theory PART II: Theories of meaning 5 “Use” theories 6 Psychological theories: Grice’s program 7 Verificationism 8 Truth-Condition theoriesPART III Pragmatics and speech acts 9 Semantic pragmatics 10 Speech acts and illocutionary force 11 Implicative relations PART IV: The expressive and the figurative 12 Expressive language 13 Metaphor Glossary Bibliography Index

William G. Lycan is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is author of Logical Form in Natural Language (1984), Knowing Who (with Steven Boër, 1986), Consciousness (1987), Judgement and Justification (1988), Modality and Meaning (1994), Consciousness and Experience (1996), Real Conditionals (2001), On Evidence in Philosophy (2019), and Perceptual Content (2024).

Praise for the third edition:"An authoritative, pedagogically sensitive and superbly clear introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language." – Paul Boghossian, New York University, USA

• Introduction: meaning and reference PART I: Reference and referring 2 Definite descriptions 3 Proper names: the Description Theory4 Proper names: Direct Reference and the Causal–Historical Theory PART II: Theories of meaning 5 “Use” theories 6 Psychological theories: Grice’s program 7 Verificationism 8 Truth-Condition theoriesPART III Pragmatics and speech acts 9 Semantic pragmatics 10 Speech acts and illocutionary force 11 Implicative relations PART IV: The expressive and the figurative 12 Expressive language 13 Metaphor Glossary Bibliography Index