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.
Sanjit Chakraborty is a Junior Research Fellow at the Indian Council of Philosophical Research and a Research Scholar in the Department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University. His research interests focus on the philosophy of Hilary Putnam, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, ethics, phenomenology and Indian philosophy. He has published papers in a number of well-known journals and edited volumes. He has also lectured at various renowned institutions and universities all over the world.
“Understanding Meaning and World is a clearly written and careful assessment of some key aspects of the debate on semantic externalism and its metaphysical consequences. Sanjit Chakraborty covers the views of key protagonists of the debate, including Putnam, Chalmers, Bilgrami, and Fodor, admirably and offers his theory of ‘internalistic-externalism’ as a novel solution. This is a welcome addition to an important topic.”
Professor Maria Baghramian
MRIA, Chair of American Philosophy, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, Ireland
“Sanjit Chakraborty engages intensely with the nature of meaning and related issues at the heart of philosophy of mind and of language. His new proposal is very promising: a ‘reformed’ version of externalism that can accommodate many of the intuitions that motivate internalists. Many of the foremost figures are covered in compelling detail, including Quine, Kripke, Burge, Evans, and Bilgrami, and there is a fascinating digression on Heidegger. But the hero here is Putnam, whose work the author obviously knows intimately and whose direct, unforced style he adopts. Food for thought is rarely such a pleasure to read.”
Professor Maximilian de Gaynesford
Head of the Department of Philosophy, University of Reading, UK
"In the preface to Reason, Truth and History Putnam says: "The mind and the world jointly make up the mind and the world". Understanding Meaning and the World can be read as an exegesis of the position Putnam was trying to capture by this metaphor—a theory of meaning that does justice to the links between language and objective reality and, at the same time, to the freedom language enjoys vis a vis that reality. Beginning with Putnam's celebrated externalism, the book moves on to examine a series of arguments for and against Putnam's conception of meaning. In the light of these arguments, Chakraborty seeks to put forward a synthesis of externalist and internalist insights. Two points are particularly significant. Firstly, the book argues convincingly that Frege's philosophy of language has been a source of inspiration for both externalists and internalists and can thus serve as a basis for the said synthesis. Secondly—and this is a novel and more controversial idea—the book uses Heidegger's notion of Dasein as a platform for its modified externalism."
Professor Yemima Ben-Menachem Department of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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