Language, World, and Limits: Essays in the Philosophy of Language and Metaphysics

This collection of essays by A.W. Moore is concerned with the business of representing how things are - its nature, its scope, and its limits. The chapters in Part One deal with linguistic representation and discuss topics such as rules of representation and their nature, the sorites paradox, and the very distinction between sense and nonsense. Wittgenstein’s work, both early and late, figures prominently. One thesis that surfaces at various points is that some things are beyond representation. The essays in Part Two deal with representation more generally and with the character of what is represented, and owe much to Bernard Williams’s argument for the possibility of representation from no point of view. They touch more or less directly on the distinction between representation from a point of view and representation from no point of view-in some cases by exploring various consequences of Kant’s belief that representation of how things are physically is always, eo ipso, representation from a point of view. One thesis that surfaces at various points is that nothing is beyond representation. Each of the chapters in Part Three, which draw inspiration from the early work of Wittgenstein, indicate how the resulting tension between Parts One and Two is to be resolved: namely, by construing the first part as a thesis about states of knowledge or understanding, and the second part as a thesis about facts or truths.