Theory of Meaning and Knowledge

FAIN: FA-11124-75

Hilary Putnam
President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)

To produce a systematic development of the theory of meaning and apply it to a number of questions in the theory of knowledge. Two main ideas of the PI's "causal" theory of meaning are the idea of linguistic division of labor and the idea of the contribution of the environment. The first part of the project will be a systematic statement of a theory of meaning and reference; the second part will apply the theory to questions in philosophy of mind and science.