Language in Focus: Foundations, Methods and Systems

Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (1915-1975) was one of the leading intellectuals of Israel and of the world. His work ranged over mathematics, applied logic, communication theory, analytic philosophy, philosophy of science, and linguistics. Creative, patient, attentive, and critical, Bar-Hillel was a superb philosopher. In addition, how humane he was may be learned from the memorial tributes to him which initiate this volume. Bar-Hillel was born in Vienna, and came to Israel, then Palestine, in 1933. He took his M. A. (1938) and Ph. D. (1949) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where his subsequent career continued, as Research Fellow (1949-53), Senior Lecturer in Philosophy (1953-58), Associate Professor of Philosophy (1958-61), and Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Sci ence (1961-75). He was often abroad as visiting professor (Berkeley, 1960- 61; Michigan, 1965; La Jolla, 1966-67; Konstanz, 1971; Berlin, 1972), or as a research scholar, notably at the M. lT. Research Laboratory for Elec tronics during the early 1950's. Bar-Hillel was the Secretary and guiding spirit of the Organizing Committee for the 3rd International Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, held in Jerusalem in 1964. During 1966-68, he was President of the Division of Logic, Method ology and Philosophy of SCience of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, and in 1967 President of the International Union. From 1963 he was a Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Inhalt
I / Reference and Predication.- Identity and Reference.- Back-Reference.- On Predication and Logical Syntax.- Substance Logic.- Prime Matter, Predication, and the Semantics of Feature-Placing.- II / Truth and Meaning.- A counterexample to Tarski-Type Truth-Definitions as Applied to Natural Languages.- On Representing 'True-in-L' in L.- Necessity, Quotation, and Truth: An Indexical Theory.- Presuppositional Policies.- The Dilemma between Orthodoxy and Identity.- III / Pragmatics.- Indicative Conditionals.- Conversational Maxims and Rationality.- On Relating Pragmatics, Linguistics, and Non-Semiotic Disciplines.- Towards an Integrated Theory of Grammatical and Pragmatical Meaning.- IV / Methodological Studies.- Problems and Mysteries in the Study of Human Language.- How Empirical is Contemporary Logical Empiricism?.- Basic Aspects of the Theory of Grammatical Form.- V / Language Varieties.- Social Differentiation of Language Structure.- Talking with Children, Piaget Style.- Can Adults Become Genuinely Bilingual?.- VI / Formalizations.- Epistemic Interpretation of Conditionals.- The Role of Categorial Syntax in Grammatical Theory.- On Harris's Systems of Report and Paraphrase.- Two-Dimensional Propositional Tense Logics.- VII / Points of View.- Levels of Meaning and Moral Discourse.- A Problem in Plato's Laws.- Discourse as a Means to Enlightenment.- Points of View.- Index of Names.