Speakers can get to know the meaning of any of indefinitely many sentences that they have never heard before. This statement encapsulates the problem of linguistic creativity, which lies at the core of philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics. It has also sparked off a considerable amount of work on the philosophy of mind.
After establishing the failure of the familiar compositional approach to the problem, the book adopts a radically new start. It develops core elements of the later Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy, putting them to work todissolve' the problem, proving...