This approach is incompatible with the traditional view that the meaning of linguistic items is to be explained in terms of the thoughts they express.  This issue is the heart of Sellars’s correspondence with Roderick Chisholm, published as “Intentionality and the Mental” [ITM].  Chisholm maintained that reference to mental states is always implicit in semantic statements and in our ability to comprehend the meanings of utterances.  Sellars demurs: