ABSTRACT
My first philosophy tutor displayed an embroidered injunction above his fireplace that declaimed, "Beware lest any man tempt you with philosophy." I can confess that the reading of philosophical works has caused me more anguish even than the reading of newspapers. It is also true, however, that such writings have brought me more insight into the human condition than those of any other profession, especially those written before there were professions. Perhaps the most common cause of the anguish has been when the insightful ideas have been extended, generalized, and abstracted way beyond their usefulness and their attachment to reality as experienced. Some of the ideas spiral away into a hyperspace of fruitless terminological dialectics or unnecessary paradoxes. Two such seemingly never-ending struggles that continue to cause difficulties to philosophers have been their attempts to describe and explicate the Janus-like relationships between language (in use) and minds in one direction, and between language and reference to the various worlds in the other. The everyday users of language themselves do not suffer from the same worries, and here the issues will not be pursued into any labyrinthine complexities. Rather, an attempt will be made to cut a path through the tangles to arrive at answers that make good sense to ordinary mortals. Incidentally, the route taken should expose how and why some of the philosophical aspirations toward constructing valid generalizations that transcend space and time are misguided.
