Professors Anne Hiskes, Austen Clark, Scott Lehmann, and Samuel Wheeler III, my mentors at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, read early versions of several chapters of the manuscript. They are exceptionally perceptive philosophers and generous friends. Their illuminating questions, detailed written comments, extensive criticisms, and insightful suggestions enabled me to make considerable improvements on the earlier drafts. Without their help and encouragement, I might still be struggling in the ‘morass’ of the issue of incommensurability. I realize that all those cited above are unlikely to agree with all of my conclusions, but they can pride themselves on having diverted me from erroneous claims that I might have said and helped me to bring my ideas and arguments into clearer focus. I owe an enormous intellectual debt and immense gratitude to them.
I am very fortunate to have the writer Joe Schall as my book editor, who used his literary talent to help me make my expressions more accurate, idiomatic, and readable.
I am grateful to the research leave granted to me by Juniata College in 2005, during which the final version of the book was written. Special thanks go to the college provost, Dr James Lakso, who, besides giving me continuous administrative support and moral encouragement during the past few years, graciously provided a research fund from his office’s budget to cover the cost of the manuscript preparation.
I am deeply in debt to an anonymous manuscript reviewer, one of the Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy advisors, who gave a positive evaluation to the project and provided me with many insightful suggestions.
Many thanks also to Publisher Sarah Lloyd, Humanities Editorial Administrator Anne Keirby, Commissioning Editor Paul Coulam, and editor Jane Fielding at Ashgate Publishing Limited, for their extreme patience and help throughout the process of producing this book.
All errors, either philosophical or linguistic, that may exist in the book are, of course, my sole responsibility.
An earlier version of several chapters of this book appeared in a few philosophy journals. Chapter 2 is an extended version of my article ‘A Critique of the Translational Approach to Incommensurability’, Prima Philosophia, Band 11 / Heft 3 (1998). Chapter 7 is an expansion of my article ‘Taxonomy, Truth-Value Gaps and Incommensurability: a reconstruction of the Kuhn’s taxonomic interpretation of incommensurability’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33 (2002). An earlier version of chapter 8 was published as ‘Is the Notion of Semantic Presupposition Empty?’ in Diádlogos 73 (1999). Chapter 12 is a revision based on my article ‘Presuppositional Languages and the Failure of Cross-Language Understanding’, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review XLII (2003). I appreciate the editors and publishers for giving me permission to use them in this book.