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Full Idea
Externalists are typically committed to counting expressions as 'synonymous' if they happen to be linked in the right way to the same external phenomena, even if a thinker couldn't realise that they are by reflection alone.
Gist of Idea
Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena
Source
Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.2)
Book Ref
'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.11
A Reaction
[He cites Fodor] Externalists always try to link to concrete things in the world, but most of our talk is full of generalities, abstractions and fiction which don't link directly to anything.
9009 | Single words are strongly synonymous if their interchange preserves truth [Quine] |
7317 | 'Renate' and 'cordate' have identical extensions, but are not synonymous [Quine, by Miller,A] |
7319 | If we give up synonymy, we have to give up significance, meaning and sense [Grice/Strawson] |
3090 | There is only similarity in meaning, never sameness in meaning [Harman] |
11967 | Sentences might have the same sense when logically equivalent - or never have the same sense [Kaplan] |
2996 | Mental states may have the same content but different extensions [Fodor] |
20300 | Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena [Rey] |
9372 | Could expressions have meaning, without two expressions possibly meaning the same? [Boghossian] |