The meaning and The meaning and reference of natural reference of natural kind terms kind terms Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska Warsaw University [email protected]
Dec 27, 2015
The meaning and reference of The meaning and reference of natural kind termsnatural kind terms
Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska
Warsaw University
Descriptivism
• NKT have denotation and connotation
• connotation univocally determines denotation
• connotation of a term „T” is a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for being T
• „A tiger is a large carnivorous quadrupedal feline, tawny yellow in color with blackish transverse stripes and white belly”
• Modal (unwanted necessity): „A tiger is a large quadrupedal feline that is tawny yellow in color with blackish transverse stripes and white belly” is not necessary
• Epistemological (ignorance and error): „A tiger is a LCQFtiTYiCwBTSaWB” is not a priori;
• for a name to designate an object it is neither necessary nor sufficient for the speaker to associate with the name identifying descriptions
• Semantic (lost rigidity): „Tigers attack people” vs. „LCQFtaTYiCwBTSaWB attack people”
Kripke was right but he chose wrong properties
• Causal descriptivism„the referent of the relevant name used by the person
from whom I acquired the antecedent of my current term „N””
„the individual referred to by the uses of the name „N” from which I acquired the use of „N””
• Rigidified descriptivism„the actual last great philosopher of antiquity”„the actual LQFtiTYiCwTSaWB”
Kripke was right so descriptivism has to go
• NKT are nondescriptive expressions in a sense that their reference is not fixed by their meaning (connotation)
Putnam’s meaning
• (1) syntactic markers (mass noun, concrete)
• (2) semantic markers (natural kind, liquid)
• (3) stereotype (colorless, transparent, tasteless, thirst-quenching, etc.)
• (4) extension (H2O (give or take impurities))
motley collection
• linguistic and meta-linguistic
• connotation and denotation
• requires ‘sophisticated’ meta-liguistic knowledge
Putnam’s reference
• „ x bears the relation sameL to y just in case (1) x and y are both liquids, and (2) x and y agree in important physical properties”
• „importance is an interest-relative notion”
• „normally the ‘important’ properties (...) are the ones that are structurally important”
» Putnam, „The meaning of ‘meaning’”
Important insights
• Social dimensionHypothesis of the division of linguistic labour: „Every linguistic community (...) possesses at least
some terms whose associated criteria are known only to a subset of the speakers who acquire the terms, and whose use by the other speakers depends upon a structured cooperation between them and the speakers in relevant subsets”
Putnam, „The meaning of ‘meaning’”
• The contribution of the external world
Michael Dummett:
„(...) the sharpest distinction ought to be made between an acknowledgement of the social character of language and Kripke’s causal theory”
Meaning• „The meaning of the word ‘gold’, as a word of the
English language, is fully conveyed neither by a description of the criteria employed by the experts nor by a description of those used by ordinary speakers; it involves both, and a grasp of the relationship between them”
» Dummett, „The social character of meaning”
The meaning and reference of NKT
• Meaning („gold”):• (i) identifying criteria (being yellow, being
valuable, being the material the wedding rings are most commonly made of, etc.)
• (ii) criteria for being a designatum (being the element with the atomic number 79)
• (iii) the relation of subordination of (i) to (ii)
• competent speakers have to know (i) and know that (iii)
• (ii) may not be known even by experts
• (ii) may not be finally settled