Hilary Putnam (1926-) asks whether meanings are “in the head” and answers that they are not. More specifically, what he has to say about meaning and reference is that what we know of the meaning of a term will often be insufficient to determine what it refers to. There are close analogies to Kripke, who Putnam will refer to, and you’ve seen Kripke remark that Putnam had ideas similar to his. Here Putnam focuses on natural-kind terms, saying little to say about proper names and related expressions, and he considers a range of examples different in character from Kripke’s.

As Putnam notes in his last paragraph, he sees two reasons why meanings aren’t in the head. After his introductory section (pp. 699-700), he considers a series of examples that illustrate one or both of these features of meaning (700-704). He then devotes a section each to discussing these two features, first what he calls “the division of linguistic labor” (pp. 704-706) and then what he calls “indexicality” (pp. 706-711). He gives more attention to the latter point; and it is what he says about this, along with the associated examples concerning “Twin Earth,” that has been most influential and that will probably occupy most of our discussion.

Although the term doesn’t appear in Putnam, the views he describes here are one example of externalism, a view about the nature of thought according to which the content of our thought is partially external to us. The point is not merely that we think about things external to us but that what we think about them is not determined by our mental states alone. Putnam’s two reasons why meanings aren’t in the head correspond to two grounds for externalism about thought.

The paper is fairly short and Putnam writes clearly, but his examples and the points he makes about them are likely to take some time to digest, both in your reading and in our discussion. You should plan to have at least pp. 699-706—i.e., everything but the last section—read for Monday and the paper completed for Wednesday.