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Putnam, Reference and Essentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

John Weckert
John Weckert
Affiliation:
Melbourne College of Advanced Education
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Extract

In Putnam's theory of reference, an historical component and an indexical one both play some part in establishing the extension of terms, although in “The meaning of ‘meaning’” it is not altogether clear just how important he believes the historical element to be. He seems to be much more interested in its indexical component, which he believes plays more or less the same role in his theory as rigidity does in Krip-ke's. In this paper, I will look more closely at these two elements and see what sorts of roles they could play in a theory like Putnam's. A theory of the extensions of general terms will emerge which differs from Putnam's in some important respects. It does, however, have some similarity with a recently published theory of Matthen's, but the arguments are different. I will also outline a theory of essences and kinds, which is based on this modified version.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1986 , pp. 509 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1986

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References

1 Putnam, H., “The Meaning of Meaning”, in Putnam, H., Mind, Language and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 215–271CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Kripke, S. A., “Naming and Necessity”, in Davidson, D. and Harman, G., eds., Semantics of Natural Language (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1972), 253–355, for à discussion of rigidityCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Matthen, M., “Ostension, Names and Natural Kind Terms”, Dialogue 23 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Devitt, M., “Singular Terms”, Journal of Philosophy 71 (1974), 183–205, for discussion of naming ceremoniesCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Matthen, “Ostension”, §7.

6 Putnam, “The Meaning”, 231.

7 Ibid., 225.

8 Ibid., 235.

9 Moravcsik, J. M. E., “How do Words Get their Meaning?”, Journal of Philosophy 73 (1981), especially 17–20Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., 18.

11 Putnam, “The Meaning”, 229.

12 See Ayers, M. R., “Locke versus Aristotle on Natural Kinds”, Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981), 247–272CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Matthen, “Ostension”.

14 Ibid., 52.

15 Schwartz, S. P., “Natural Kinds and Nominal Kinds”, Mind 89 (1980), 185Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., 187.

17 Ibid., 184.

18 This example comes from Walton, K., “The Dispensability of Perceptual Inferences”, Mind 68 (1963), 357–368CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 I discuss this in “The Theory-Ladenness of Observations”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science (forthcoming).

20 I am grateful to the editor of Dialogue and to à referee for some useful comments made on an earlier version of this paper.