Does the Twin-Earth argument rest on a fallacy of equivocation?
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Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska,
Abstract
In this paper I show that the first part of Putnam's Twin Earth argument rests on equivocation. If we distinguish different senses of the word “means” we will see that Putnam presupposes in this part of his argument that the meaning of “water” on Earth is different from the meaning of “water” on Twin Earth. Once the equivocation is removed, it becomes apparent that the argument cannot be used in the proof that natural kind terms are nondescriptive.
I also argue that — contrary to what Putnam is claiming — his account does not preserve the traditional assumption that intension determines extension. It is true that in his conception meaning determines extension, but his notion of meaning is very different from the traditional one.
© 2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Prelims
- Semiotics and logic: Pragmatization of the common ground
- Meaning between sense and reference: Impacts of semiotics on philosophy of science
- Where does logic meet semiotics?
- The correspondence theory of truth
- The intent to lie
- Reasoning in belief contexts
- Pragmatic constraints of meaning: An inferentialist approach
- On common knowledge in conversation
- Proofs and mistakes: Their syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics
- Object realism versus mathematical structuralism
- Indeterministic tense operators and the concept of time as a substance
- Counterfactual semantics and quantum physics
- The ultimate strengthening of the Turing Test?
- Is computation based on interpretation?
- The troubles with ontological primacy
- Some remarks on the word “be” and other existential expressions
- The evolution of scientific languages in Ajdukiewicz and Kuhn
- The core of grammar
- The grammar of philosophical discourse
- Semantic bounds for everyday language
- Demonstrative descriptions and conventional implicatures
- Does the Twin-Earth argument rest on a fallacy of equivocation?
Articles in the same Issue
- Prelims
- Semiotics and logic: Pragmatization of the common ground
- Meaning between sense and reference: Impacts of semiotics on philosophy of science
- Where does logic meet semiotics?
- The correspondence theory of truth
- The intent to lie
- Reasoning in belief contexts
- Pragmatic constraints of meaning: An inferentialist approach
- On common knowledge in conversation
- Proofs and mistakes: Their syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics
- Object realism versus mathematical structuralism
- Indeterministic tense operators and the concept of time as a substance
- Counterfactual semantics and quantum physics
- The ultimate strengthening of the Turing Test?
- Is computation based on interpretation?
- The troubles with ontological primacy
- Some remarks on the word “be” and other existential expressions
- The evolution of scientific languages in Ajdukiewicz and Kuhn
- The core of grammar
- The grammar of philosophical discourse
- Semantic bounds for everyday language
- Demonstrative descriptions and conventional implicatures
- Does the Twin-Earth argument rest on a fallacy of equivocation?
