Editing Philosophy Of Language (section)

== <span style="color: #FFFFFF;">Analyzing</span> ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Theories of Meaning Compared
! Theory !! Meaning is... !! Strength !! Challenge
|-
| Ideational (Locke) || Mental idea in speaker's mind || Intuitive || Private language problem; different minds?
|-
| Description theory (Frege/Russell) || Satisfying a description || Handles empty names || Kripke's modal and epistemic objections
|-
| Direct reference (Kripke) || Causal link to object || Handles modal contexts || Empty names (Sherlock Holmes)?
|-
| Meaning as use (Wittgenstein) || Mastery of language game || No abstract entities needed || Vague; resists formalization
|-
| Truth-conditional semantics || Truth conditions of sentences || Formally precise; compositional || Meaning beyond truth conditions (metaphor, irony)
|}

'''Central puzzles''': The problem of empty names: "Sherlock Holmes is a detective" seems meaningful and true — but Holmes doesn't exist, so what does "Sherlock Holmes" refer to? The puzzle of propositional attitudes: "John believes that Hesperus is visible" can be true while "John believes that Phosphorus is visible" is false, even though Hesperus = Phosphorus. Semantic externalism (Putnam): "meanings ain't in the head" — Twin Earth thought experiment.
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