Abstract

In this dissertation I tried to defend the basic doctrines of Putnam's internal realism, while rejecting his theory of meaning. I found myself an anti-realist in Dummett's sense, and from that viewpoint I tried to save internal realism without the notion of referential rigidity. ;'Internal realism' is the view that our conceptual scheme is relative and that 'the ontological' cannot be separated from 'the epistemological'. In short, internal realism is the view which gives up what Putnam calls the God's Eye View. All that we can have with respect to our conceptual scheme and to our sub-theories are, then, objectivity and truth for us, but not the absolute objectivity and truth from the absolute point of view. ;I argued that these basic doctrines of internal realism do not allow Putnam's theory of meaning. When he asserts that, for the people who lived in 1750 and could not distinguish H$\sb2$O from XYZ, 'water' still referred to H$\sb2$O but not to XYZ, his assertion leads to the consequence that we do not have privileged access to our mental representation. Putnam himself holds that the notion of reference and truth should be a realist one. I argued that the realist theory of meaning is incompatible with the doctrines of internal realism. If it is inevitable to give up Putnam's theory of meaning, then we must also give up his realist notion of truth. I argued that giving up the absolute notion of truth does not cause any problem in our interaction with the world, nor denies the role of the external world in fixing the reference of our words within our conceptual scheme. I argued that all of these claims are quite compatible with the basic doctrines of internal realism and, in fact, make for a more consistent internal realism.