"... an excellent collection... " —Journal of Language & Social Psychology
An important collection of original essays by well-known scholars debating the questions of logical versus psychologically-based interpretations of language.
An important collection of original essays by well-known scholars debating the questions of logical versus psychologically-based interpretations of language.
Most readers, however, had never heard of him before the 1980 publication of The Name of the Rose, a mystery novel set in medieval Italy. Dense with historical and literary allusions, the book was a surprise international hit, selling millions of copies in dozens of languages. Its popularity got an additional boost when it was made into a Hollywood movie starring Sean Connery. Eco followed his first bestseller with another, Foucault's Pendulum, an intellectual thriller that interweaves semiotic theory with a twisty tale of occult texts and world conspiracy.
Since then, Eco has shifted topics and genres with protean agility, producing fiction, academic texts, criticism, humor columns and children's books. As a culture critic, his interests encompass everything from comic books to computer operating systems, and he punctures avant-garde elitism and mass-media vacuity with equal glee.
More recently, Eco has ventured into a new field: ethics. Belief or Nonbelief? is a thoughtful exchange of letters on religion and ethics between Eco and Carlo Maria Martini, the Roman Catholic cardinal of Milan; Five Moral Pieces is a timely exploration of the concept of justice in an increasingly borderless world.
Eco also continues to write books on language, literature and semiotics for both popular and academic audiences. His efforts have netted him a pile of honorary degrees, the French Legion of Honor, and a place among the most widely read and discussed thinkers of our time.
Pressured by his father to become a lawyer, Eco studied law at the University of Turn before abandoning that course (against his father's wishes) and pursuing medieval philosophy and literature.
His studies led naturally to the setting of The Name of the Rose in the medieval period. The original tentative title was Murder in the Abbey.
Introduction: Marco Santambrogio and Patrizia Violi
On the Circumstantial Relation between Meaning and Content: Jon Barwise
On Truth. A Fiction: Umberto Eco
Quantification, Roles and Domains: Gilles Fauconnier
Conceptual Semantics: Ray Jackendoff
How Is Meaning Mentally Represented?: Philip N. Johnson-Laird
Cognitive Semantics: George Lakoff
The Analysis of Nominal Compounds: Wendy G. Lehnert
Knowledge Representation in People and Machines: Roger Schank and Alex Kass
Identity in Intensional Logic: Subjective Semantics: Bas Van Fraassen
Reference and Its Role in Computational Models of Mental Representation: Yorick Wilks
Overview
"... an excellent collection... " —Journal of Language & Social Psychology
An important collection of original essays by well-known scholars debating the questions of logical versus psychologically-based interpretations of language.
An important collection of original essays by well-known scholars debating the questions of logical versus psychologically-based interpretations of language.