more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
What is wrong with the Aristotelian picture (of meaning and reference based on concepts) is that it suggest that everything that is necessary for the use of language is stored in each individual mind, but no individual language works this way.
Gist of Idea
Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't
Source
Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §2 p.25)
Book Ref
Putnam,Hilary: 'Representation and Reality' [MIT 1992], p.25
A Reaction
Languages must partly work that way. You can't talk without a conceptual storehouse. In a small society I would expect every adult to know the full vocabulary.
| 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] |