Putnam, Meaning and Reference

Meaning and Reference

 

 

 

1. Against Semantic Internalism

• Two incompatible principles

  • Semantic Internalism: Knowing the meaning of a term is just to be in a certain psychological state (of the speaker)

  • Meaning Determines Reference / Extension: The meaning of the Term determines the its referent(s) / extension

    Extension

    1. Extension of a Term = a set of things that the term applies

       Example: Extension of "Red" = $\{x|x \text{ is red}\}$

    2. If two Terms mean the same thing, they have the same referent(s) / extension

    3. But if two Terms have the same referent(s) / extension, they might NOT have identical meanings

       Example: Renate and Cordate have the same extension but different meanings

• Putnam rejects Semantic Internalism

  ... in light of these counterexamples

  • "Twin Earth"

    Oscar and Twin Oscar live on Earth and Twin Earth respectively, both planets being qualitatively identical on a macroscopic level

    Both use the term "water" to refer to qualitatively identical things: the liquids on their respective planets that fills their oceans and that they drink when thirsty

    The only difference is the chemical structure of the "water":

    • Oscar is drinking $\textcolor{red}{H_2O}$
    • Twin Oscar is drinking $\textcolor{blue}{XYZ}$

    Intuition:

    1. Despite being psychologically identical, Oscar and Twin Oscar are REFERRING to two different substances when they use the term "water" (and not the water on the other planet)

       By Semantic Internalism, given identical psychological state, their meanings should be the same

       But since they have different Nominatums on the two planets, they have different meanings

       Contradiction!

    2. Assume it was in the 1700s, [1] still holds, even though no one at the time had the mean to distinguish $\textcolor{red}{H_2O}$ from $\textcolor{blue}{XYZ}$

  • "Beeches and Elms"

    Many of us cannot visually differentiate Beech trees and Elm trees

    In the presence of an Elm, we would inhabit the same psychological state as we would if in the presence of a Beech

    Nevertheless, if we said "This is a beech" we would be:

    • saying something correct if in the presence of a Beech
    • saying something incorrect if in the presence of an Elm

    Intuition:

    1. We are in the same psychological state with respect to both Beech trees and Elm trees
    2. But we are referring to different things by the words "Elm" and "Beech"
    3. Think about the Twin Earth, where our twins used "Beech" to refer to Elms and "Elm" to refer to Beeches

• Conclusion

  The referent(s) / extension of a Term is not determined by psychological state (of the speaker)

 

 

 

2. Linguistic Division of Labor (LDL)

• Definition

  Our ability to refer to distinct things requires there to be Experts in the linguistic community who are able to tell the difference between the things

• Kripke's Criticism of LDL

  1. We have Experts on Beeches and Elms, they know more about "Beech" and "Elm" AS OBJECTs than we do

     But they are NOT Linguistic Experts, they don’t know more about "Beech" and "Elm" AS WORDs than we do

     Natural Kinds of Terms: "water", "beech", ... $\longrightarrow$ very much like names (tag objects)

  2. We can make discoveries about the THINGs which our words refer to, but we don’t make discoveries about our words

     Questions

     Meanings of Natural Kinds of Terms are determined through its property?

     More knowledge on Property $\Longrightarrow$ More knowledge on its Meaning?

  3. Counterexample

     LDL implies that, if ALL our Experts on a Subject Matter die, then we would no longer be able to refer to the objects in question