Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Jerry A. Fodor, Hilary Putnam and Thomas Hobbes

expand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these philosophers

display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers

49 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning
2346 Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam]
2457 If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor]
2439 Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor]
6282 Theory of meaning presupposes theory of understanding and reference [Putnam]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 3. Meaning as Speaker's Intention
2998 Grice thinks meaning is inherited from the propositional attitudes which sentences express [Fodor]
2482 It seems unlikely that meaning can be reduced to communicative intentions, or any mental states [Fodor]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
2451 To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor]
6281 Truth conditions can't explain understanding a sentence, because that in turn needs explanation [Putnam]
6278 We should reject the view that truth is prior to meaning [Putnam]
3006 Whatever in the mind delivers falsehood is parasitic on what delivers truth [Fodor]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
3007 Many different verification procedures can reach 'star', but it only has one semantic value [Fodor]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
2354 "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam]
3004 The meaning of a sentence derives from its use in expressing an attitude [Fodor]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism
2334 Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam]
2335 Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam]
2336 Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam]
2433 For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor]
3000 Meaning holism is a crazy doctrine [Fodor]
2477 If to understand "fish" you must know facts about them, where does that end? [Fodor]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / c. Meaning by Role
3003 Very different mental states can share their contents, so content doesn't seem to be constructed from functional role [Fodor]
12634 'Inferential-role semantics' says meaning is determined by role in inference [Fodor]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 8. Synonymy
2996 Mental states may have the same content but different extensions [Fodor]
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
6271 How reference is specified is not what reference is [Putnam]
12642 Co-referring terms differ if they have different causal powers [Fodor]
12663 We refer to individuals and to properties, and we use singular terms and predicates [Fodor]
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / a. Direct reference
2340 We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam]
2341 Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam]
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / b. Causal reference
17506 I now think reference by the tests of experts is a special case of being causally connected [Putnam]
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / c. Social reference
2338 Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam]
14202 Neither individual nor community mental states fix reference [Putnam]
9170 We need to recognise the contribution of society and of the world in determining reference [Putnam]
14201 Maybe the total mental state of a language community fixes the reference of a term [Putnam]
2339 Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam]
19. Language / B. Reference / 4. Descriptive Reference / a. Sense and reference
3893 Often reference determines sense, and not (as Frege thought) vice versa [Putnam, by Scruton]
2436 It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor]
19. Language / B. Reference / 4. Descriptive Reference / b. Reference by description
6268 The claim that scientific terms are incommensurable can be blocked if scientific terms are not descriptions [Putnam]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
12616 English has no semantic theory, just associations between sentences and thoughts [Fodor]
12645 Semantics (esp. referential semantics) allows inferences from utterances to the world [Fodor]
12646 Semantics relates to the world, so it is never just psychological [Fodor]
2434 Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 6. Truth-Conditions Semantics
2459 Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor]
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 3. Analytic and Synthetic
2473 Analysis is impossible without the analytic/synthetic distinction [Fodor]
19. Language / F. Communication / 4. Private Language
5817 Language is more like a cooperative steamship than an individual hammer [Putnam]
6279 A private language could work with reference and beliefs, and wouldn't need meaning [Putnam]
2484 The theory of the content of thought as 'Mentalese' explains why the Private Language Argument doesn't work [Fodor]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation
6270 The correct translation is the one that explains the speaker's behaviour [Putnam]
6283 Language maps the world in many ways (because it maps onto other languages in many ways) [Putnam]
14206 There are infinitely many interpretations of a sentence which can all seem to be 'correct' [Putnam]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity
6275 You can't say 'most speaker's beliefs are true'; in some areas this is not so, and you can't count beliefs [Putnam]