Stephen Barker sets out and defends a radically new semantic theory, and shows how it solves notable problems in the philosophy of language. According to the theory, linguistic meaning should be understood in terms of speech acts, and the fundamental bearer of truth is not a proposition but an assertion. Barker sets this theory in a broader philosophical framework, including a simple, common-sense ontology and an account of pre-linguistic mental representation. This is an ambitious, rich, and original view of language and its world.

Disorientation is the first publication in English of the second volume of Technics and Time, in which French philosopher Bernard Stiegler engages in a close dialogue with Husserl, Derrida, and other philosophers who have devoted their energies to technics, such as Heidegger and Simondon.The author's broad intent is to respond to Western philosophy's historical exclusion of technics and techniques from its metaphysical questionings, and in so doing to rescue critical and philosophical thinking. For many years, Stiegler has explored the origins and philosophical, ethical, and...