Discusses the general form of a theory of meaning, and difficulties for traditional approaches to the theory of meaning that introduce meanings as entities in the theory of meaning. Discusses and criticizes Davidson’s argument to show that if sentences refer to their meanings, then all sentences alike in truth value refer to the same thing. But it also concludes with Davidson that introducing meanings construed as entities is neither necessary nor sufficient for carrying out the project of providing a compositional meaning theory for natural languages.
Keywords: substitutional quantification, inutility of meanings, slingshot argument, third man argument, traditional theories of meaning