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19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 2. Meaning as Mental

[meanings are essentially mental events]

15 ideas
For Aristotle meaning and reference are linked to concepts [Aristotle, by Putnam]
Words were devised as signs for inner ideas, and their basic meaning is those ideas [Locke]
Words stand for the ideas in the mind of him that uses them [Locke]
Language is presumably for communication, and names stand for ideas [Berkeley]
Frege felt that meanings must be public, so they are abstractions rather than mental entities [Frege, by Putnam]
Psychological logicians are concerned with sense of words, but mathematicians study the reference [Frege]
Identity baffles psychologists, since A and B must be presented differently to identify them [Frege]
Propositions assemble a world experimentally, like the model of a road accident [Wittgenstein]
Language pictures the essence of the world [Wittgenstein]
The 'form' of the picture is its possible combinations [Wittgenstein]
Everything that is experienced in consciousness is meaning [Derrida]
If we reject corresponding 'facts', we should also give up the linked idea of 'representations' [Davidson]
Philosophy of language is a branch of philosophy of mind [Searle]
The Picture Theory claims we can read reality from our ways of speaking about it [Heil]
If meaning is mental pictures, explain "the cat (or dog!) is NOT on the mat" [Lowe]