Reference and Truth
The most difficult challenge to a mentalist semantics is the intuition that language refers to objects and events ‘in the world’. A direct connection between a language in the mind and objects in the world is severely problematic. It is argued that the proper formulation of reference is as a relation between linguistic expressions and the world as conceptualized by the language user. Such a formulation aligns with standard views in perceptual psychology, and permits a far richer ontology of entities for language. Some of the standard philosophical objections to this view are answered; at the same time, some of the standard puzzles of reference are shown to dissolve.
Keywords: language, objects, reference, consciousness
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