Isomorphism and Idealism

Abstract It is a common and perhaps natural view that the world itself has a structure which is isomorphic with the structure of language. One form of linguistic idealism holds that the world has this structure because language has it. This chapter argues that this belief in structural isomorphism derives from a certain view of the way in which the state of the world justifies the use of language. It argues that the view in question involves a commitment to a kind of Given, and is at least parallel to traditional appeals to the notion of the Given in epistemology. But, the chapter argues, it is also found in the most mundane, apparently innocent, conceptions of semantics and our understanding of language. Since the motivation for the view is epistemological, the belief in structural isomorphism is naturally understood in an idealist way. The chapter offers a sketch of a way of understanding how the state of the world justifies the use of language which does not lead either to structural isomorphism or to idealism.