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Pierre Jacob

Why Do Things Have Meaning? Publication date : May 1, 1997

Pierre Jacob is one our (rare) alalytical philosophers. His book, published simultaneously in English by the Cambridge University Press and in French, seeks to resolve two fundamental questions :The first is a dilemma : if on one hand, things have meaning and if on the other, our representations are cerebral processes endowed with physical, chemical and biological properties, how can we conciliate the two ? Pierre Jacob shows how we can resolve this dilemma by providing giving semantic properties to cerebral processes.The second question stems from the body/mind problem : can our representations explain our behaviours ? Pierre Jacob shows how the solution to the preceeding dilemma makes it possible to give this question an affirmative response.At the same time, he also makes a very original contribution to the book by offering a magistral exposé of the current thought process concerning these questions in the domain of analytical philosophy.Pierre Jacob, philosopher, is director of research at the CNRS.