Caveats and Critiques: Philosophical Essays in Language, Logic, and Art

Like all of his work, these essays by Max Black are well written and cogently argued – models, in fact, of philosophical analysis in the Anglo-American style. Professor Black continues to develop in new and enlightening ways his long-standing interest in logic and induction. Reflecting the author’s widening interests, the book also contains essays on practical reasoning, the nature of symbolic and pictorial representation (with a full-scale examination of the influential views of Nelson Goodman), some polemical discussions of Noam Chomsky and B. F. Skinner, and an outline of tasks for a philosophy of the humanities. Contents include: 1) Reasonableness, 2) Induction and Experience, 3) Practical Reasoning, 4) Some Questions about Practical Reasoning, 5) The Logical Paradoxes, 6) The Elusiveness of Sets, 6) Meaning and Intention, 7) The nature of Representation, 8) The Structure of Symbols, 9) Paradigm Cases and Evaluative Words, 10) Questions for Chomsky, 11) Some Aversive Responses