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Single Idea 2354

[filed under theme 19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use ]

Full Idea

"Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning.

Gist of Idea

"Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning

Source

Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §7 p.119)

Book Ref

Putnam,Hilary: 'Representation and Reality' [MIT 1992], p.119

A Reaction

I agree. It probably fails to define meaning because it is false. A corkscrew is not the action of opening a wine bottle.

The 22 ideas from 'Representation and Reality'

2334 Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam]
2335 Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam]
2336 Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [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]
2343 Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam]
2340 We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam]
2341 Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam]
2342 "Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam]
2344 If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam]
2345 Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam]
2346 Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam]
2347 Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam]
2348 Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam]
2349 Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam]
2351 Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam]
2352 The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam]
2354 "Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam]
2331 Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam]
2332 Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam]
2074 Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam]
2071 If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam]