{"product_id":"9781400845989","title":"Aboutness","description":"\u003cp\u003eAboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness-features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion.\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e But it has played no real role in philosophical semantics. This is surprising; sentences have aboutness-properties if anything does. \u003ci\u003eAboutness\u003c\/i\u003e is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning.\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth-conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection--about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned.\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e Stephen Yablo maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results--directed content--is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology.\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e Written by one of today's leading philosophers, \u003ci\u003eAboutness\u003c\/i\u003e represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47124012957936,"sku":"9781400845989","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781400845989_p0.jpg?v=1769893858","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781400845989","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}