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Full Idea
Reference is a social phenomenon. Individual speakers do not have to know how to distinguish robins, or elms, or aluminium. They can always rely on experts to do this for them.
Gist of Idea
Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts
Source
Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §2 p.22)
Book Ref
Putnam,Hilary: 'Representation and Reality' [MIT 1992], p.22
A Reaction
It can't just be a social phenomenon. The experts don't just enquire about standard usage, or defer to Hilary Putnam.
Related Idea
Idea 23645 A word's meaning is the thing conceived, as fixed by linguistic experts [Reid]
| 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] |