New Royal Book Company

Necessity, Identity and Conceptual Structures

About Book - This work is an analytic examination of Philosophy's central concepts of necessity Analyticity, naming reference and conceptual structures. Analytic Philosophy and the famous Linguistic turn of philosophy in the second half of the last century heavily rested on a conventionalist reading of necessity and formal notion of identity. However Quines attack on the two dogmas and Davidson's attack on the third dogma challenged some fundamental assumptions. Kripke and later many others including Professor P.K. Sen contested the identification of analytic with the necessary and argued for A priori contingent and A posteriori necessary statements. Debates on essentialism were reopened. This work problematizes the critique of Quine, while appreciating strawson's response it argues that extensional semantics is still far from over. The work examines Kripke Platinga thesis of new combinations and finds them .inappropriate. While examining Stephen Korner and Davidson on conceptual structures and categorical framework it is felt that translatability requirement for conceptual structures while significant for identification may not be necessary for the existence of such structures. The initial form of the work have been appreciated deeply by Prof. Suresh Chandra, Prof. P.K. Sen and Prof. Sibjiban Bhattacharya.
The author is grateful to Professor Roop Rekha Verma for her ideas and guidance and to Professor Rajendra Prasad for his very positive appraisal.

About Author - Dr. Rakesh Chandra teaches History of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Lucknow. His areas of interest are Philosophy of language, philosophical logic, Buddhism and gender studies. He has regularly made presentations on central philosophic themes of naming necessity, natural kind terms, law of addition, reference scepticism, Pratiyasamutpada and human rights. He has written on Wittgenstien, Shopenhauer, Rorty, Kripke from unusual points of view arguing that Shapenhever could be treated as an analyst while Rorty, Davidson and Nagarjuna could be treated as skeptics and antifoundalists.
He is the Director, Institute of Women's Studies and his work in the area of child rights education and feminist concerns is well known. He has been a consultant with UNICEF and has supported projects funded by UNDP, OXFAM, UNIDO and USAID. He is member of apex Government bodies for primary education and gender. He has co-authored state policy for primary education and written extensively on gender bias and axiological weight of primary school text books.
He has organized several refresher courses on Philosophy, women studies and information technology. He has also convened national and international seminars in collaboration with ICPR.
 

ISBN : 81-89267-32-9
Price : INR 495/-