more from this thinker | more from this text
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] |