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Full Idea
Mental state (in either the individualistic or the collective sense) does not fix reference.
Gist of Idea
Neither individual nor community mental states fix reference
Source
Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2)
Book Ref
Putnam,Hilary: 'Reason, Truth and History' [CUP 1998], p.25
A Reaction
The idea that communities fix reference seems to me plausible. See Tyler Burge on this.
| 12524 | For the correct reference of complex ideas, we can only refer to experts [Locke] |
| 23645 | A word's meaning is the thing conceived, as fixed by linguistic experts [Reid] |
| 10430 | Reference is mainly a social phenomenon [Strawson,P, by Sainsbury] |
| 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] |
| 14202 | Neither individual nor community mental states fix reference [Putnam] |
| 2338 | Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam] |
| 2339 | Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam] |
| 4689 | Kripke makes reference a largely social matter, external to the mind of the speaker [Kripke, by McGinn] |
| 17504 | Kripke's theory is important because it gives a collective account of reference [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| 17035 | We refer through the community, going back to the original referent [Kripke] |
| 4956 | A description may fix a reference even when it is not true of its object [Kripke] |