The Research On Putnam's Theory Of Meaning

The problem of meaning has always been one of the most important problems of the contemporary philosophy of language.Although many philosophers have put forward their own theories on meaning,there are still many problems in the concept of “meaning”.Hilary Putnam pointed out that “the traditional theories about meaning as myth-eaten”,he put forward the famous theory,the so-called semantic externalism and historical causal theory of reference,based on criticizing the traditional theory of meaning,gives a new view about the concept of “meaning”,and has a great influence on the history of philosophy of language.This paper takes Putnam's theory of meaning as the main object of study.On the basis of reading his original works carefully,I reinterpret Putnam's theory of meaning from a new perspective,and try to solve some problems of his theory of meaning.In the first part of this paper,I mainly introduce Putnam's philosophical achievements,and put forward my own views and take this as the starting point for my research based on summarizing the research status of Putnam's theory of meaning by domestic and foreign scholars.In the second part,I expound the main contents of Putnam's theory of meaning in a sequence of “Criticism--Reconstruction”: including how to critique of the traditional theory of meaning,determine the reference,and reconstruction of “meaning”.The third part is the innovation of this paper.I reinterpret Putnam's theory from a new perspective and put forward the standpoint of “meaning isn't in the head,but the sense is".And then,Putnam's theory is divided into "sense" and "reference".I try to through the new interpretation to solve some problems of Putnam's theory of meaning.In the fourth part,in order to find out the advantages and limitations of the Putnam's theory,I compared the theory of meaning of Putnam with theory of meaning of Kripke,Quine and Davidson.In the fifth part,I summarize my paper and the Putnam's theory of meaning.