- Lived:
- Born 1950, New York · career at the University of Pittsburgh
- Tradition:
- American analytic pragmatism; the Pittsburgh School; inferentialism
- The Big Idea:
- Words mean what they mean not because they mirror the world but because of the reasoning they license — language is, in his phrase, a game of "giving and asking for reasons," and meaning lives in the moves.
- In their words:
- "…the game of giving and asking for reasons."
- If you remember one thing:
- Understanding a concept isn't having a picture in your head; it's knowing what follows from a claim, what it rules out, and what would count as backing it up.