In Meanings as Species (2019), Mark Richard argues that meanings are analogous to biological species in some philosophically significant ways. On this view, meaning is a “population-level, process-like phenomenon” (p. 201), so the view promises to do justice to the social and historical dimensions of meaning. On the other hand, Richard identifies the meaning of an expression with a certain set of presuppositions associated with it — those that are “common ground in the population” and thus constitute an “interpretive common ground” (ICG) (p. 65).

I begin by arguing against two related aspects of Richard’s view: his analysis of public language and his conditions for linguistic understanding. In both cases, I argue, Richard’s view ends up making incorrect predictions. I also show that this is due to Richard’s identification of meaning with ICG, which leads to some of the same problems affecting the theories that Richard himself criticizes. In the final part of the talk, I propose an alternative picture, which aims at better capturing the insights behind Richard’s view: the analogy between meaning and species, on the one hand, and the emphasis on the social and historical dimensions of meaning, on the other.