This document discusses different theories of meaning and thought. It describes Frege's account of meaning, Russell's view of propositions bearing truth and falsity, and 20th century theories linking meaning to use. It also discusses views that thought involves a language of thought separate from natural languages, as well as social and contextual views of meaning determined through social practices and communities.

13.  This is a matter of how sentences interact with each
other.
 Frege’s account is a certain theory of meaning
 Russell’s proposition are the bearers of truth and falsity,
language is a vehicle for expressing one’s thought,
rather than a social institution participation in which
extends one’s cognitive reach
 A given proposition will be true under such and such
conditions and false under so and so conditions, there is
nothing else to meaning for Russel.

14.  In twentieth century theory of meaning of a term
is determined by how it is used, e.g : how to
verify an instance or how to use it in inferences.
 To understand a theory, one has typically to learn
a set of theoretical terms and how they function
together.
 Knowing the meaning of each term requires
knowing what the others mean and knowing how
to use them in internal and external inferences.
Meanings of those terms consist in their
interactive conseptual roles.
 The meanings of terms and statements are
determined by the interconnections of all other
terms

15.  Gilbert Harman (1973) argued that we think in
language
 Hartry Field proposed that propositional
attitudes are grounded in sentential attitudes
certain internal states so “x believes that p” is
to be understood as having the deeper
structure “x believes* sentences and “ s means
p”. Here “ believes* “ designates a sentential
attitude as does “wants*” etc.
 These are relations between a thinker and an
internal sentence.

16.  Cognitive capacities are as systematic as
our mastery of a natural language.
 Thoughts have constituent structure so
there must be a language of thought.
 Jerry Fodor (1975, 1981) asserted that
we do think in language but not in the
language we speak.
 There is a language of thought called
mentalese which is independent of and
more basic than natural language.

17.  Carruthers said that our conscious thoughts
are in a natural language.
 People’s reporting that they think in ordinary
language, together with other empirical facts.
 Fodor (1998) expresses skepticism about
whether what we instrospect is adequate to
explain what we think
 A central problem is the ambiguity of the
sentences we encounter in our conscious
thinking, especially their syntactic ambiguity.

18.  For instance: Everyone loves someone
 This sentence has two meanings
 Fodor furthermore asserted that thought needs to
be ambiguity free and so must a language of
thought be
 Thought is language-like but does not involve a
language in the foregoing sense.
 Thought that incorporates such concepts would
still be systematic and have constituent structure.

19.  Thoughts, concepts, linguistic meaning are
constituted socially.
 Many abilities depend on having learned them
from others
 Hillary Putnam pointed out that the references of
one’s words are often determined by what others
refer to by them
 We implicitly intend certain words to refer to what
the established users of that word refer to.
 They are sometimes called “experts” when they
have unusual or specialized knowledge

20.  The arithmetical (+), plus is determinate in its
meaning:
 57 + 68 = 125
 The use of (+)____ correct
 According Kripke: here we have a skeptical
problem, (+) nothing constructive is needed,
needless to say not everyone accepts this
 For Kripke’s wittgenstein, we must bring in the
social background, it is socially established and
becomes assertion condition for the favored
answer