system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can you refer to something that doesn’t yet exist?

I’m in a music league where we submit songs according to categories. This round’s theme is “songs that mention the title of a film.” There’s a dispute over whether a song counts if it uses a phrase that later becomes the name of a film, e.g. REM‘s song “Man on the Moon“ which preceded the film by 7 years. My feeling is this would be an erroneous use of the word “mention,” but I’m not sure I have footing in philosophy of language to argue the point. Would Kripke or someone like that be helpful here?
gpt
Wittgenstein might argue that the question, which is essentially "what does the word 'mention' really mean in this particular case?", is the wrong one to ask. Words don't have objective meaning and can be viewed as puzzle pieces in a language game played by members of a society. Thus, its "meaning" hinges on how others use it, and cannot be intelligibly spoken of apart from that.

In other words, to address your specific question, this Wittgensteinian viewpoint might suggest that, in order to determine whether the word 'mention' necessarily implies intent, it's more important to gather information on real-world use-cases, and on those around you. How did the person who picked the theme intend it to be understood? How would others in your group use the word 'mention'? Perhaps one might even consult a dictionary in an attempt to determine how the average English-speaker would use the word.

At the end of the day, the most important thing is that everyone playing the specific language game (ie everyone in your music league) agrees on the use-cases of the words being used.