🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Nov9.202812.11520@midway.uchicago.edu> Jacob Galley
	writes:

>Now I think my original question was not specific enough. What bothers
>me about the theories of meaning that I have seen is that they do not
>adequately account for how meaningful symbols are linked to WHAT >THEY
>MEAN. Ie, while we have made a good amount of progress in syntax and
>taxonomic classifications, which describe how meaningful signs
>interact with and relate to each other, I have not encountered any
>theories of how the signifier is linked to the signified.

You should look at:
Donald Davidson's writing on truth theory and radical interpretation,
collected in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation(1983)

Michael Dummett--start with Truth  and Other Enigmas, which will
prepare you for his classic paper "What is a Theory of Meaning?", in
Truth and Meaning ,  (McDowell and Evans,eds.)

The Varieties of Reference by Gareth Evans, which sets out an account
of what abilities one needs in order to make reference to objects in the world.

This stuff is hard going, but immensely rewarding.  Although all three
authors are firmly in the analytic tradition (and you might want to look
at Frege and Quine before plunging in), they aren't proposing new
formalisms, but possible ways for grounding these formalisms.

							--John Beer