Abstract

According to Putnam, meaning and reference depend on acts of structured cooperation between language‐users. For example, laypeople defer to experts regarging the conditions under which something may be called ’gold’. A modest expert may defer to a greater expert. Question: can deference be never‐ending? Two theories say no. I expound these, then criticize them. The theories deal with semantic processes bound by a ’stopping’ constraint which are not cases of ordimary deferring. Deferring is normally done for a reason, and a rational person is always disposed to defer if there is good reason.