About

Scott Soames is a distinguished philosopher with a focus on the philosophy of language, the history of analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of law. He completed his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Stanford University and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from M.I.T. in 1976, where he also studied linguistics. His academic career includes teaching positions at Yale University from 1976 to 1980, followed by a long tenure at Princeton University from 1980 to 2004. Since 2004, he has been a faculty member at the University of Southern California (USC), where he served as the Director of the School of Philosophy from 2007 to 2022. Soames has authored numerous influential books, including 'The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy' (Volumes 1 and 2), 'Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning,' 'What is Meaning?', and 'The World Philosophy Made.' His work significantly contributes to understanding the foundations of language, meaning, and their relation to philosophy and law.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Computer Security
• Cognitive science
• Neuroscience
• Library science
• Environmental ethics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 3

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2025-05-06

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• Issue Information

  Philosophical Perspectives · 2023-12-01

  paratextOpen access
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• Syntactic Argumentation and the Structure of English

  2023-11-15

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• The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 3

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2022-12-31

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  An in-depth history of modal logic in analytic philosophy, from a leading philosopher of language This is the third of five volumes of a definitive history of analytic philosophy from the invention of modern logic in 1879 to the end of the twentieth century. Scott Soames, a leading philosopher of language and historian of analytic philosophy, provides the fullest and most detailed account of the analytic tradition yet published, one that is unmatched in its chronological range, topics covered, and depth of treatment. Focusing on the major milestones and distinguishing them from detours, Soames gives a seminal account of where the analytic tradition has been and where it appears to be heading. Volume 3 explains the most important achievement in the analytic tradition in the twentieth century—the rise and development of the epistemic and metaphysical modalities of necessity, possibility, and conceivability—and how it opened new vistas for the understanding of mind, meaning, and metaphysics. At the center of the story is Saul Kripke, who generated new modal systems and their open-ended philosophical applications, and his undergraduate teacher, W.V.O. Quine, who rejected the modalities plus our notions of linguistic meaning and reference. Part 1 traces the rise of modal logic from C. I. Lewis’s unhappiness with Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica , through Lewis’s modal S-systems, Ruth Marcus’s proof-theoretic quantified modal logic, Rudolph Carnap’s Meaning and Necessity , and Kripke’s logical and philosophical breakthrough. Part 2 chronicles Quine’s rejection of meaning, necessity, synonymy, and reference. Part 3 assesses the philosophical framework provided by Kripke’s Naming and Necessity , separating its revolutionary insights from its unsolved problems.

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• Semantics and Semantic Competence

  2022-02-14

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  The central psycho-semantic fact about speakers is that they understand the claims about the world made by sentences of their language. This parallel suggests an intimate connection between semantic theories and theories of semantic competence. A semantic theory should tell us what information is encoded by sentences relative to contexts. Since competent speakers seem to grasp this information, and since the ability to correctly pair sentences with their contents seems to be the essence of semantic competence, it might appear that a semantic theory is itself a theory of competence. Variable-binding operations, like lambda abstraction and existential quantification, can be handled by using propositional functions to play the role of complex properties corresponding to certain compound expressions. Intensions (and extensions) of sentences and expressions relative to contexts (and circumstances) derive from intensions (and extensions) of the propositions and propositional constituents.

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• Mario Gómez-Torrente. 2020. Roads to Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press

  THEORIA An International Journal for Theory History and Foundations of Science · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Library science
  • Environmental ethics

  Review of "Mario Gómez-Torrente. 2020. Roads to Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press"

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• Viennese Lessons: Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Schlick

  Vienna Circle Institute yearbook · 2022-01-01

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• Cognitive Propositions: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Empirical Adequacy

  Routledge eBooks · 2022 · 2 citations

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  • Epistemology
  • Philosophy
  • Cognitive science

  Propositions have been central elements of theories of mind and language for nearly 150 years. They have been suspect because it has been unclear that any one thing can play all these roles, and uncertain which things play each of them. Resolving these worries requires taking the metaphysics of meaning seriously. For Frege and Russell, propositions were real, mind-independent entities to which agents bear real cognitive relations of entertaining, believing, and knowing, etc. The cognitive operations involved in generating intensional and hyperintensional propositions are similar. The author stressed the importance of giving a naturalistic epistemology of propositions. The advantages of cognitive propositions are matched by empirical advantages in dealing with problems, like those posed by hyperintensional constructions, which have arisen from incorrectly individuating propositions. Linguistic cognition is one source of representational identity without cognitive identity. Surely, one might think, the vast totality of propositions must outstrip the totality of purely representational cognitive act-types.

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• Cognitive propositions, truth functions and the <i>Tractatus</i>

  Inquiry · 2022-01-17

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  Over a century ago Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein put propositions at the center of philosophy of language, logic, mathematics and mind. By 1912 Russell had become dissatisfied with his earlier efforts, which were at best models of what we assert, believe, and know. He was then struck with the idea that what unites the elements of assertion and belief, and gives them representational content are the minds of agents. Although he failed to capitalize on this idea, Wittgenstein was more successful. The tractarian theory of propositions was grounded in our use of linguistic, and other, artifacts to represent things as being one way or another. Despite remaining long submerged, his idea has now been revived in cognitive form by several philosophers. The present article is part of that revival. Although we have made great progress in the philosophy of mind and language, we still don't know nearly enough about propositions. If that progress is to continue we must develop our conception of propositions as primary bearers of truth conditions, objects of attitudes, and contents of some mental states. It is striking that classic texts like the Tractatus continue to shed light on this task.

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• Legal Applications

  Open Agenda Publishing eBooks · 2021-05-17

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Frequent coauthors

• David M. Perlmutter

  58 shared

• David M. Perlmutter

  9 shared

• Howard Burton

  University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust

  8 shared

• David M. Perlmutter

  4 shared

• Nathan Salmón

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  3 shared

• Alan Berger

  Brandeis University

  3 shared

• John Burgess

  University of Alabama

  2 shared

• Deirdre Wilson

  Rethink Mental Illness

  1 shared