The meaning and reference of natural kind terms

1. The meaning and reference of natural kind terms Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska Warsaw University j.odrowaz@uw.edu.pl

3. 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

4. „A tiger is a large carnivorous quadrupedal feline, tawny yellow in color with blackish transverse stripes and white belly”

5. Kripke’s arguments against descriptivism

6. 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”

7. 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”

8. 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)

9. The causal theory of reference fixing for NKT

10. Putnam was wrong about the meaning of NKT, but he was more or less right about their reference

11. 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))

12. motley collection • linguistic and meta-linguistic • connotation and denotation • requires ‘sophisticated’ meta-liguistic knowledge

13. 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’”

14. Important insights • Social dimension Hypothesis 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

15. Dummett’s social descriptivism

16. 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”

17. 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)

18. competent speakers have to know (i) and know that (iii) • (ii) may not be known even by experts • (ii) may not be finally settled

19. NKT are nondescriptive in a sense that: • their reference originally was determined ‘causally’ (by ostension and induction) • their meaning ‘comes after’ their reference