What Is Meaning: Reference or Something Else?

Abstract

The debate over the meaning of referential terms has a long history in both linguistics and language philosophy. Moore applied referential theory of meaning in two famous arguments: The Refutation of Idealism and The Open Question Argument. The validity of referential theory is key point to decide whether these two arguments are successful or not. This paper argues that the plausibility of referential theory is subject to controversy and thus the conclusions of these two arguments are logically invalid. This research firstly demonstrates the logic behind Moore’s two arguments and explain how Moore reached his conclusions by assuming the referential theory of meaning, then discusses problems that referentialism inevitably confronts, proving the solutions that Moore proposed to solve these problems are unfeasible, and concludes that these arguments fail for it doesn’t comply with our rational intuition, providing linguistic perspective to examine philosophical problems.