Meaning and reference

Abstract

The traditional theory of meaning rests on two assumptions: (1) Knowing the meaning of a term is just a matter of being in a certain psychological state; and (2) The meaning of a term determines its extension (in the sense that sameness of intension entails sameness of extension). However, these two assumptions are not jointly satisfied by any notion, let alone any notion of meaning. The traditional concept of meaning is a concept which rests on a false theory. The falsity of this concept is demonstrated by means of hypothetical examples in which individuals, though identical in every respect and possessing identical psychological states, either identify two different things as the same thing, or interchange the meanings of two different things. There is a generally unrecognized division of linguistic labor in which the meaning of a term can be acquired without acquiring the method of recognizing that term. It is hypothesized that this division of labor exists in every linguistic community; every linguistic community possesses at least some terms whose associated criteria are known only to a subset of the speakers who acquire the terms, and whose use by other speakers depends upon a structured cooperation between them and the relevant subsets. L. Lessem