Understanding Meaning and World A Relook on Semantic Externalism

This book explores the internalism/externalism debate inherent in ontology and semantics from the point of view of phenomenology. The debate centres around whether or not the world bears a constitutive relation with the mind. Are meanings of terms to be found inside the head (intrinsic) or in the outside world (external)? The book elegantly introduces a way of resolving such queries, attending them from a range of perspectives, including the theory of description, the causal theory of reference, mental content, self-knowledge, first person perspective, being-in-the-world, and socio-linguistic background, among others. It thus presents a critical overview on the seminal works of prominent thinkers like Frege, Putnam, Searle, Fodor, Jackson, Block, Davidson, Quine, and Bilgrami. It begins by highlighting the groundwork of the theory of meaning and mind, and explores the location of content from the perspectives of the causal theory of reference and descriptivism. It then investigates how meaning theory represents the world and the mind in the contemporary debate, before looking at this debate from the philosophy of language and metaphysics standpoints. It finishes with an investigation of how internalism and externalism can be combined from the perspectives of holism and phenomenology. The book’s approach is distinctive in the sense that it formulates a reconciliation between both sides of this ongoing debate by inventing an Internalistic-externalism view from the perspectives of analytic trends and continental philosophy. It will be of interest not only to professional philosophers, linguists, researchers and graduates in the field, but also to the reader wishing to learn more about the mind-world relationship.