4. Deflationist Views of Meaning and Content

Author: Field, Hartry

Source: Truth and the Absence of Fact, March 2001 , pp. 104-157(54)

Publisher: Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs

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Abstract:

Attempts to motivate and clarify a radically ‘deflationist’ view of the relations of ‘meaning that’ and ‘having the content that’, and to defend it against many of the arguments that are widely viewed as decisive against any such view. One of its claims is that standard work in the theory of reference (for instance, that of Kripke and Putnam) can be reconceived so as not to be primarily about reference at all. Includes a long postscript that, among other things, includes an account of how the degree to which behaviour is successful can be explained within a ‘deflationist’ framework.

Keywords: deflationism; reference; belief; Putnam; truth-conditions; interpersonal synonymy; meaning; truth; psychological explanation; representation; conceptual role; logical connectives; Kripke