An Internal Realist Account of Reference

However, Putnam s diagnosis of why the metaphysical realist is supposed to go wrong helps to bring out clearly how the internalist realist view differs from the metaphysical realist one. In his view, it is (MR1) which is the source of the problem, and it can be solved if we deny that the entities words refer to are independent of the mind. He suggests that things are, in a way, the functions of words. Since words and things, as it were, come together, there is no problem about how the one is attached to the other. As he puts it  

In the first section I shall add more details to the internal realist account. In the following one I shall deal with two objections, one posed by Quine s indeterminacy thesis and one stemming from the fact that we sometimes misclassify things. In the final section I discuss the Twin Earth argument and the causal and teleological accounts of reference. 

Step 1 Select the sentence or sentences which fix the reference of the word. 

Step 2 Identify the truth conditions of these sentences with their justification conditions. 

Step 3 From the truth of these sentences you get the reference of the 

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