Background
Christopher Williams was born and grew up in Midsomer Norton in Somerset in the United Kingdom.
(Philosophers have met with many problems in discussing th...)
Philosophers have met with many problems in discussing the interconnected concepts being, identity, and truth, and have advanced many theories to deal with them. Williams argues that most of these problems and theories result from an inadequate appreciation of the ways in which the words "be," "same," and "true" work. By means of linguistic analysis he shows that being and truth are not properties, and identity is not a relation. He is thus able to demystify a number of metaphysical issues concerning the meaning of the word "I," the relation between the mental and the physical, objects of thought, times and places, and the nature of reality. Williams presents his views clearly, with a minimum of technicality, and with rich and apt examples, so that they will be accessible to readers not versed in symbolic logic.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198239718/?tag=2022091-20
Christopher Williams was born and grew up in Midsomer Norton in Somerset in the United Kingdom.
Balliol College; Shrewsbury School.
His areas of interest were philosophical logic, on which topic he did most of his original work, and Ancient philosophy, as an editor and translator. Instead he became an academic philosopher, lecturing at the University of Hull before moving to Bristol where he taught in the philosophy department as lecturer, Reader and Professor until he died following a cardiac arrest. Despite his disability, Williams commuted between Bristol and his home in Midsomer Norton and attended many philosophical conferences around the world.
He also edited the philosophy journal Analysis.
Believing that such fundamental concepts as existence, truth and identity had been widely misunderstood by the philosophical tradition, and obfuscated especially by metaphysics, Williams attempted to show that they could be elucidated by a close analysis of the way those and related terms are actually used. Williams was not, however, an ordinary language philosopher.
Rather, he produced painstaking analyses of the concepts couched in the terms of symbolic logic. He summarized his views in a trilogy of books,, and, and produced a more accessible overview, with less emphasis on symbolic logic, in a single volume.
(Philosophers have met with many problems in discussing th...)