This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the purpose of the book, which is to defend semantic realism against Kripke's sceptical attack. According to the semantic realist, to understand the meaning of a word (mental representation) is to know its correctness conditions, and that to understand the meaning of a sentence is to know its truth conditions. Semantic realism, on this definition, is compatible with a variety of metaphysical theories of which grasp of correctness conditions or truth conditions consist in. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.
Keywords: Kripke, sceptical argument, semantic realism, word meaning, sentence meaning, metaphysics