Beyond Rigidity : The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity

In Beyond Rigidity, Soames introduces a new conception of the relationship between linguistic meaning and assertion made by utterances. He looks at the meanings of proper names and natural-kind predicates, explains their use in attitude ascriptions, and demonstrates the limitation of rigid designation. Beyond Rigidity distils, modifies and develops some of the most important ideas in the philosophy of language in the last thirty years. This book is a major contribution to the field, with an impact that will be far reaching and deeply influential.