Reference vs. Interpretation

Reference vs. Interpretation April 17 2021 In Brains in a vat Putnam argues that if an ant walks around and the path it traces happens to “draw” or “resemble” Churchill that doesn’t imply the image left in the sand represents Churchill, because the ant had no way of knowing about Churchill. The same about a description of trees found in a text that happens to be written by monkeys randomly typing on a typewriter. The words there do not refer to anything, says Putnam. So from a reference perspective intentio