Abstract
Here the relationship between understanding and
knowledge of meaning is discussed from two different perspectives:
that of Dummettian semantic anti-realism and that of the
semantic externalism of Putnam and others. The question addressed
is whether or not the truth of semantic externalism would
undermine a central premise in one of Dummetts key arguments
for anti-realism, insofar as Dummetts premise involves an assumption
about the transparency of meaning and semantic externalism
is often taken to undermine such transparency. Several
notions of transparency and conveyability of meaning are
distinguished and it is argued that, though the Dummettian argument
for anti-realism presupposes only a weak connection between
knowledge of meaning and understanding, even this much
is not trivially true in light of semantic externalism, and that semantic
externalism, if true, would thus represent a reason for
rejecting the crucial assumption on which the Dummettian argument
depends.