Language, Meaning, and Self-Reference
These cases ask what words and symbols do: how a name can be informative, what fixes a meaning, and why sentences that talk about themselves can break down. The reading is abstract, so pause often to restate each puzzle in your own words.
Learning objectives
- Distinguish what a word refers to from how it presents its referent.
- Explain why use and behaviour may underdetermine meaning.
- Recognize the common structure of several self-referential paradoxes.
Recommended sequence
- Beetle in a Box — Start with a private object that seems to drop out of the meaning of a public word.
- Hesperus and Phosphorus — Ask how an identity statement can be informative.
- Twin Earth — Test whether meanings are fixed by what is in the head.
- Quine’s Gavagai — See how translation can be underdetermined by all the available behaviour.
- Kripke’s Quus — Ask what makes it the case that you mean addition.
- The Liar Paradox — Meet the basic self-referential paradox.
- The Grelling–Nelson Paradox (Heterological Words) — Compare a paradox about words that describe themselves.
- Fitch’s Paradox of Knowability — See how a short argument links truth to knowledge.
- The Symbol Grounding Problem — Finish with the question of how a machine’s symbols could mean anything.
Read each article’s scenario first, write an initial answer, and then read the interpretations and sources. Spend as long as useful; there is no required schedule.
Reflection questions
- Which of these puzzles is about reference, which about use, and which about self-application?
- Does any answer to the quus challenge also answer Quine’s?
Final synthesis activity
Choose one word, such as “water,” “plus,” or “heap.” Write a one-page explanation of what fixes its meaning, and say which puzzle in this path your explanation handles best and which it handles worst. Label any new scenario as your own exercise.
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