Belief and Meaning: The Unity and Locality of Mental Content

Belief and Meaning is a philosophical treatment of intentionality. It argues for a view of intentional content which is at once Fregean and Kantian in its conception of the relation between the mind and the external world. Without compromising the external constitution of the mind, it denies the importance and relevance of society and normativity to the intentional as well as the connection between intentionality and truth–conditions or reference in the offical sense. It offers instead an account of intentional content which is thoroughly local and contextual, and thereby also denies the philosophical importance of the theory of meaning as standardly conceived.

1. Belief, Meaning and the External World. 2. The Unity of Intentional Content. 3. Norm and Society. 4. Truth and the Locality of Content. 5. The Case for Externalism. Epilogue. Appendix: Self–Knowledge and Intentionality.

Akeel Bilgrami was educated in Bombay and then went to Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University.

"Bilgrami′s fine study penetrates deeply into some of the most lively areas of contemporary philosophy of language and mind. He makes a distinctive and original contribution to the vexed questions of the role of social factors and objective reference in the theory of belief and meaning, and the problem of constructing a unified theory that will integrate the semantic requirements on these fundamental notions with an account of behavior, the apparent public character of meaning, and the exigencies of communication. It is very thoughtful and enlightening work." Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology " Belief and Meaning stakes out a position which is highly original, and which is bound to make Akeel Bilgrami a central figure in the ongoing debates in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. This book presents nothing less than a new conception of the contents of thoughts, one which is sensitive to the considerations that led philosophers like myself to stress the role of factors external to the speaker in fixing content. There is no doubt that this is an important work –– not just an important book, but an important position. In addition, it has the merit of being written in an exceptionally clear, lively, and decidedly vigorous prose." Hilary Putnam, Harvard University