This paper was published for the first time in the book called lines of thought: rethinking philosophical assumptions (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014), pp. 73-99.
Chapter Three
On the Meaning of ‘Water’
Unacceptable doctrines that
illuminate are like crosses on maps that show where treasures lie hidden.
—Bryan
Magee
In this paper, I propose a reconfiguration of
what many philosophers still seem to believe about the meaning of the word
‘water’. To better follow my explanation, readers should put aside their usual
notions about the meaning of ‘water’ and open themselves to a new perspective.
I hope to show how many semantic misconceptions usually associated with this
meaning can be cleared up by my reconfiguration, including ones such as the
Twin Earth fantasy and the epistemic status of the sentence ‘Water is H2O’.
The results invite generalization.
Limitations of the
traditional descriptivist view
Consider first the traditional descriptivist
view of the meaning of ‘water’. According to this understanding, the meaning
can usually be expressed by descriptions naming phenomenal characteristics such
as ‘a transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid that makes up rain, oceans, lakes
and rivers’. This sense can be thought of as a Fregean mode of presentation,
that is, as an informative semantic content. Moreover, this meaning can be
hypothetically thought of as constituted by semantic-cognitive rules
that are implicitly or tacitly instantiated in our heads when – with an
understanding of its sense – we employ the word ‘water’ in speaking and
thinking.[1]
This view contrasts with Hilary Putnam’s externalist theory of meaning.
According to him, the extensional meaning of the word ‘water’ cannot be
something instantiated in our heads, since it is external and determined by the
existence in the world of great volumes of liquids that all display the same
essential subjacent micro-structure of H2O.[2]
A first point that I wish to
clarify here is that descriptivism need not be restricted to descriptions of
surface phenomenal characteristics, as Putnam and Kripke seem to think.
Descriptions can be functional, denoting temporal processes. For
example, ‘a compound that reacts with oxygen and iron to cause oxidation’
describes how water behaves as a catalyst under certain conditions. Moreover,
it would be mere prejudice to exclude the micro-structure of water from the
domain of descriptions, for both ‘a chemical compound made up of two atoms of
hydrogen and one atom of oxygen’ and ‘a transparent, tasteless and odorless
liquid’ are indefinite descriptions in the same sense of the word. Avrum
Stroll, who realized these shortcomings of traditional descriptivism, called
attention to the number and variety of descriptions belonging to the informative
content of names of natural kinds. He appealed to the following definition of
‘water’, taken from a standard contemporary dictionary:
Water n. The liquid which in a more or less
impure state constitutes rain, ocean, lakes, rivers, and which in a pure state
is a transparent, odorless, tasteless liquid, a compound of hydrogen and
oxygen, H2O, which freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C. It consists of
11.188 percent hydrogen and 88.812 percent oxygen by weight.[3]
What the entry shows is that the meaning of
‘water’ is given by descriptions like these, suggesting that the correct
descriptive theory of the meaning of natural kind words like ‘water’, ‘gold’,
‘tree’… should include in its repertoire not only phenomenal characteristics,
but also descriptions of chemical micro-structural characteristics, along with
a wide range of dynamic functions.
Accordingly, I wish to take
seriously a commonplace notion that philosophers often seem to forget,
according to which dictionaries give us the meanings of words in an abbreviated
form. After all, this is what dictionaries are for: to give definitions that concisely
state the meanings of words. If we wish to know more about the meaning of the
word ‘water’, more about its informational semantic content, we can consult
encyclopaedias, which already summarize a great deal of information. And if we
need to learn still more about what this word means, we can turn to specialized
monographs like Philip Ball's The Biography of Water. It is no wonder
that all we usually know about the meaning of a word like ‘water’ is a few of
the more important and useful characteristic properties. Let us adopt this
commonsensical view and see where it leads us.
Further developing
neo-descriptivism
To elaborate on the neo-descriptivist
viewpoint proposed above, it is worthwhile to consider the historical
development of the meaning of the word ‘water’, beginning with what stone-age
cultures may have understood by the corresponding words in their languages.[4]
In this and comparable cases, the descriptive meaning of the word ‘water’ could
be something very similar to the meaning that Kripke and Putnam claimed was
proposed by descriptivists. I call descriptions expressing these meanings surface
descriptions, abbreviated as sD:
sD: a transparent, tasteless,
odorless liquid that quenches thirst, extinguishes fire, falls to earth in the
form of rain, and fills oceans, lakes and rivers.
Admittedly, the Stone Age was a long time
ago! Over the course of many centuries, this initial meaning has expanded,
slowly and gradually acquiring new elements. People have added a number of
dispositional properties to those included in the sD, which I will call dispositional
surface descriptions, or dD. Here are a few, most of them already known
three centuries ago:
dD: a liquid that (under normal
atmospheric pressure) freezes at O° C and boils at 100° C. It is a good
solvent, but does not mix with oil, and in a pure state is a poor conductor of
electricity. When brought into contact with iron and oxygen, oxidation occurs…
Descriptions like these are also functional,
or dynamic. Thinking of the word water in terms of what it meant centuries ago,
we can suggest that it had two sub-cores of informational meaning: sD and dD,
so that we can symbolically summarize what was descriptively meant by the word
‘water’ in those times with the formula:
<sD + dD>
The resulting meaning component considered
here is the informed commonsensical content of the word ‘water’. I will call
this water’s popular core of meaning. This is how people understood the
word around the year 1750.
Nevertheless, in the following
century a revolution took place in the understanding of the concept of water.
In 1768, Lavoisier placed hydrogen and oxygen in a bottle and heated the
mixture, producing an explosion that released gas and water. Based on this and
other experiments, he subsequently concluded that water is composed of two
volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen. In 1781, Cavendish made similar
experiments in England using electrical sparks. Then in 1783, Lavoisier
experimented with the reverse procedure and decomposed water into oxygen and
hydrogen. After that, in 1800, Nicholson and Carlisle obtained the same
results, using electricity from a ‘Voltaic pile’ in a process called
electrolysis. In 1811, based on his law of gases and on electrolysis, Avogadro
concluded that the atomic composition of water was HO1/2, This
result was later revised by Berzelius, who in 1821 discovered the correct
chemical formula, H2O.[5]
Subsequently, more and more was discovered about the micro-structure of water,
for example, that it is a dipolar compound that tends to form isomeric chains
when in a liquid state.
From our neo-descriptivist
viewpoint, these experiments and discoveries have added a new and contrasting
core of informational content to the old popular meaning core of ‘water’, which
we may call its scientific core of meaning. The scientific core of
meaning is chiefly constituted by the sense of the scientific description of
the micro-structure of water, its atomic deep description, which can be stated
as:
aD: a liquid constituted by
molecules made of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen (a dipolar
compound, etc.).
Nonetheless, I believe that a description of
the micro-structural essence of water (which from a descriptivist perspective
could still be regarded as a nominal essence) can be seen as
expressing only the central sub-core of the scientific core of meaning, but not
the whole scientific core, except when used as an abbreviation for it. This is
because the description of the essential atomic structure of water is
inferentially linked on a ‘horizontal’ dimension with other chemical phenomena,
and on the ‘vertical’ and ‘diagonal’ dimensions with surface phenomenal
functions.[6]
Indeed, all these links can be expressed by dynamic descriptions. Thus, we link
H2O with descriptions of chemical reactions like ‘2H2O ↔
2H2 + O2’, ‘2H2O + O2 ↔ 2H2O2’
and ‘Fe + 2H2O ↔ Fe(OH)2 + 2H’, thereby making horizontal
inferences. We also inferentially link H2O with surface descriptions
on a vertical dimension. For example, by considering the strong cohesive force
of the positive and negative dipoles of water molecules, we can explain the
properties of surface tension and the fact that water remains in a liquid state
at room temperatures. Moreover, starting with ‘2H2O + O2’
and ‘Fe + 2H2O’, we can also make diagonal inferences leading to
surface descriptions of the resulting phenomenal properties of respectively
hydrogen peroxide and rust. Finally, descriptions of experiments like those of
Lavoisier, Cavendish, Avogadro, Berzelius and others, which provide a variety
of dynamic surface descriptions, can be linked by inferential descriptions on
diagonal and vertical dimensions with the chemical structure of H2O.
It seems impossible to give much of the informative content of the formula H2O
without relying on any of these inferences, even if most are known only by
specialists. Detailed information about the scientific meaning of the word
‘water’ is given, if not by dictionaries, then by encyclopaedias and
specialized works.
Here it could be objected that we
are setting no limits on the possible number of descriptions of inferential
relations included in the concept of water. If they are not limited and they
form the meaning of the concept-word ‘water’, then there can likewise be no
limits on this meaning. We find an answer to this objection when we compare the
given case with the surface descriptions of the popular core of meaning.
Indeed, the popular core of meaning is constituted by central descriptions
(e.g., a transparent, tasteless and odorless liquid…) surrounded by less and
less central descriptions (e.g., a liquid with high surface tension that does
not mix with oil, etc.). By analogy, even if the descriptions belonging to the
scientific core of information are not clearly limited in number, their
relative values differ, so that the most central deep descriptions are included
in dictionaries, while other, less essential ones can be found chiefly in
encyclopaedias or specialized works. Consider, for example, the formula ‘2H2O
↔ 2H2 + O2’. It is central to the scientific meaning of
the word ‘water’ – every chemistry student knows this. On the other hand, ‘2H2O
+ O2 ↔ 2H2O2’ and ‘Fe + 2H2O ↔
Fe(OH)2 + 2H’ are respectively more central to the meanings of
hydrogen peroxide (oxygen combined with water) and iron (since it explains
rust). As the cognitive content of a term decreases, it merges into the
cognitive contents of other terms, gradually absorbing their contents.
I believe that the proposed
understanding is in perfect conformity with our intuitions about the nature of
meaning as informative semantic content, for meaning is typically not a matter
of all or nothing. It has variable magnitudes and usually has blurred and
overlapping boundaries. And the lack of clear limits between sets of
constitutive inferential descriptions of different concept-words seems to
justify these characteristics. In order to summarize the scientific meaning
component (informative content) of the word ‘water’, I will introduce the
following abbreviations:
aD = (atomic deep
description) the most central descriptions concerning the inferential
relations between the micro-structure of water, along with horizontally related
micro-structural inferential formulas (e.g., ‘2H2O ↔ 2HH2O
+ O2’, ‘2H2O + O2 ↔ 2H2O2’,
etc.).
sdD = (surface-deep
description) the most central descriptions concerning diagonal and vertical
inferential relations between the surface phenomena and the micro-structure of
water (as in the experiments of Lavoisier, Cavendish, etc.).
dsD = (deep-surface
description) the most central descriptions concerning diagonal and vertical
inferential relations between the micro-structure of water and its surface
phenomena (e.g., the combination of molecules of iron and oxygen to form rust,
and dipolarity, producing high surface tension, respectively).
In this way, we have three semantic
sub-cores, which I call aD, alongside of sdD and dsD, where aD is a kind of
indispensable convergence-point of the other two (which in my view supports a
realist interpretation of its ontological status). Together, these central
segments of informational content form what we might call the scientific
meaning of ‘water’, which can be summarized as:
<sdD + /aD/ + dsD>
As noted above, most people know this
scientific meaning of ‘water’ only very schematically. Moreover, this
scientific core remained unknown to or was even neglected by descriptivist
views of meaning from Locke to Carl Hempel. I see this as the fatal shortcoming
of traditional descriptivism. For it is perfectly legitimate to construct the
descriptivist account as we do, taking into consideration descriptions of the
hidden micro-structure of water as expressing part of this natural kind word’s
informative content.
Finally, we can synoptically
portray the whole system of descriptions expressing the semantic rules
constitutive of the entire informative content of the word ‘water’ as the union
of the two semantic cores – popular and scientific – as follows:
_____PCM_____ ______CCM______
<sD
+ dD>+<sdD + /aD/ + dsD>
I suggest that this is the system of
descriptions that forms the relevant informative semantic content or meaning of
the word ‘water’ as it is or can be made to be acceptable to a language's
speakers. The descriptions forming this system have different values, from the
most central to the most peripheral ones, which merge with the stronger values
of other related concepts. We can see this semantic content concisely expressed
in dictionary entries on water and presented in a more detailed way in
encyclopaedias and specialized works.
Characterizing rule for
water samples
Although I have offered a concise descriptive
elucidation of what counts as the meaning of the term ‘water’, I believe we
also need a more systematic approach in order to explain its referential
function, that is, how this natural kind term works to locate its reference. We
need what might be called a rule of characterization or of
application[7]
for the referential application of the concept-word ‘water’. This conceptual
rule would establish how and to what extent descriptions of the whole system of
descriptions must be satisfied in order to allow the referential application of
the concept-word ‘water’. Concerning the two nuclei of descriptions expressing
the meaning, there are two obvious possibilities: their conjunction and their
disjunction. Without aiming to give a fully satisfactory account, but hopefully
to offer the most reasonable one, I would like to construct a disjunctive
characterizing rule (DCR) or, simply, a characterizing rule (CR)
constituting our most general concept of water. This rule could be stated as
follows:
CR-‘water’:
We use the term
‘water’ to refer to a property singularized by the instantiation x of a liquid
substance
iff
(i) x satisfies the
meaning rules expressed by the popular semantic core <sD + dD> and/or by
the scientific semantic core <sdD + /aD/ + dsD> associated with the word
(ii) to an extent
that is on the whole sufficient, and
(iii) condition (i)
applies to x better than any other competing characterizing rule for
liquid substances.
As I will show, I do not claim that this is
the only possible concept of water. I am only suggesting that this rule
produces the widest, most generic, most inclusive and most liberal sense of the
word ‘water’ that we can reasonably conceive. It is what we could call the
topic-neutral sense, because it is applicable in nearly all imaginable
contexts. (On the other hand, if we replace the ‘and/or’ in condition (i) with
an ‘&’, we get a conjunctive characterizing rule –
CCR-‘water’ – which provides for the most exclusive or narrow application of
the word, but is clearly at variance with common usage.)
The suggested formulation of the
characterizing rule for ‘water’ requires some clarification. First, there is a general
assumption, namely, that water is a liquid substance, limiting its
domain to that of something evoking a genus proximus, which can be
understood as the closest relevant class. According to
CR-‘water’, if at the ambient temperature and pressure, x is not a liquid, but
instead a hard black stone that resembles coal, it cannot be water, even if we
made the curious discovery that its micro-structure was that of H2O.
And this seems intuitive enough. (A still wider concept of water would drop the
assumption of liquidity, only demanding that it belong to the genus of material
substances. In this sense a black rock similar to coal but with the chemical
structure of H2O could be water. Although a degree of arbitrariness
is unavoidable here, this option seems more difficult to accept, as well because
the whole point of finding the closest relevant class is to narrow the
possibilities for identification, in order to make this identification easier.)
Something must also be said about
the three partial conditions of DC-‘water’. Condition (i) is what we could call
the meaning condition, for it concerns the proper informative
content of the word ‘water’ that we find summarized in dictionaries. As
suggested above, if we use the word ‘water’ in its generic, all-inclusive
sense, the two meaning components – popular and scientific – should be
connected by an inclusive disjunction. According to this, we can call a liquid
‘water’ if it has the phenomenal properties of water, even if it lacks its
subjacent micro-structure, and vice versa. Some may at first see this as an
overly liberal way of understanding the concept of water. However, this
all-inclusive sense is intuitively acceptable, and it seems clear that we will
be correctly understood if we use the term ‘water’ in this way. As we will see
below, only meaning condition (i) is able to make the application of the word
sufficiently flexible for this.
Condition (ii) is what we call a sufficiency
condition, according to which the true descriptions of (i) do not need
to be completely satisfied, but – if taken as a whole – merely sufficiently
satisfied. Just what ‘sufficient’ means here I will leave unspecified, as part
of the vagueness of the concept of water. (It is not inconceivable that under
certain conditions even a liquid that is neither transparent nor tasteless nor
made of H2O could still be called ‘water’ because it quenches
thirst, extinguishes fires, fills oceans, lakes and rivers…).
Finally, there is condition (iii),
which we may call the predominance condition. This condition
states that in order to be called ‘water’ a sample x of a liquid must
satisfy condition (i) better than it satisfies any other conflicting
characterizing rule. This is equivalent to saying that the meaning-rule for the
liquid called ‘water’ must be more completely satisfied than any other
conceptual meaning-rule for liquid substances competing with (i)[8]
(suppose we need to distinguish between water and alcohol: Of the conflicting
descriptions of the two liquids, the one that predominates would be decisive).
Furthermore, it is worth noting
that conditions (ii) and (iii) cannot be a relevant part of the informational
meaning of the term ‘water’: Since they clearly also apply to many other
concepts, they cannot differentiate the meaning. Based on this we can even
explain the intuitive difference we sense between concept and meaning:
the general concept of water is the entire characterizing conceptual rule – the
CR-‘water’ – while the general meaning of the word ‘water’ is the content of
meaning condition (i) of this conceptual rule. The meaning belongs to the
concept (the conceptual rule). This is why we can say that concepts have
meanings, but not that meanings have concepts.
Finally, it is also worth noting
that CR-‘water’ would be a necessary analytic sentence, true in all possible
worlds (for this reason, in its generic sense the term ‘water’ also works as a
rigid designator in the sense that it applies in all possible worlds where
there are samples of water).
Putting the
characterization rule to work
Using a few selected examples, I will show
that we can make use of CR-‘water’. Suppose we take samples of water from a
swamp and find that this liquid is brown, has an unpleasant odor, a bitter
taste, etc., but still looks like water, albeit ‘impure water’. We call it
water because it satisfies the three partial conditions that constitute the
rule: It satisfies (i) with regard not only to its scientific meaning, but in
part also to its popular meaning. It satisfies (ii) because the conditions are sufficiently
met (even if it is muddy, it is still a liquid that can extinguish fire, etc.).
Finally, condition (iii) is also satisfied, assuming that the CR-‘water’ is
more applicable to the case in question than any competing characterization
rules for chemical compounds.
By contrast, suppose we have a
sample of a semi-transparent blue liquid with high viscosity and a bitter
taste. It does not quench thirst, and when exposed to copper the liquid burns,
releasing water and oxygen… Even if its chemical composition, H2O2,
resembles that of water, in this case we would not say that the liquid is
water. It satisfies the characterization rule for hydrogen peroxide more
completely than it does the characterization rule for the concept of water, and
these chemical compounds differ significantly. Consequently, because of
condition (iii), we call it hydrogen peroxide and not water. (However, it would
be correct to call the hydrogen peroxide commonly sold over the counter in
drugstores and pharmacies a kind of ‘water’, since it contains only 3% hydrogen
peroxide, as opposed to 97% water, and it is indeed so named in some languages.
For a similar reason we do not call D2O (deuterium oxide, also
called ‘heavy water’) or T2O (tritium oxide, also called ‘tritiated
water’) water, even if these isotopes are present in minute quantities in tap
water.)
Now, suppose that we prepare
gelatin in our kitchen. We know that it consists mostly of water, and therefore
it satisfies condition (i) of CR-‘water’. However, since gelatin is not a
liquid substance, it cannot be called ‘water’ in the strict sense, since it
does not satisfy the general assumption of CR-‘water’. Indeed, who would call
it ‘water’? However, it is easier to say that it is water when it is still in a
liquid state: the warm water that you have just mixed with gelatin powder... A
similar case is that of words for states of water like ‘ice’ and ‘steam’.
Although ‘ice’ and ‘steam’ are made from water, they are not water in the
required sense. The reason is that they are not liquids and thus do not satisfy
the general assumption of belonging to the class of liquid substances.
Finally, suppose we make a cup of
tea by adding tea leaves to boiling hot water. This new liquid satisfies the
condition of consisting of a coloured and flavorful substance in water, but it
is nevertheless water. It is both tea and water. And it is both because
the characterizing rule for tea (water with the taste and smell of cured tea
leaves) does not conflict with the characterizing rule for water,
which concerns the general classification as a liquid substance. It only adds
something to what CR-‘water’ identifies. Some concepts cannot coexist in their
applications, while others can coexist simply because they can both be applied
to the same entity.
It seems that the proposed
CR-‘water’ captures our chief semantic expectations. It is true that this rule
is vague and does not always seem to satisfy our semantic expectations. But
some unavoidable arbitrariness of our natural language conventions can be accounted
for this.[9]
The cognitive network of
language
As stated above, the meaning of ‘water’ has
grown in the course of history, as could be expected. Note, however, that it
has grown within linguistic communities, and consequently
the knowledge of this word’s meaning, like that of many others, does not need
to be shared equally by all speakers of the language. Because this knowledge is
a property of the linguistic community as a society of speakers, the individual
speaker needs only a partial knowledge of the meanings of many concept-words.
Although this does not seem to be the case with the word ‘chair’, this is
surely the case with the word ‘water’. There are privileged speakers
who know a lot about the meaning of ‘water’. Even so, in all its details the
meaning as a whole could be known only by an ideal speaker. Ordinary speakers
know only the most central descriptions. Many know only the popular nucleus of
meaning… Insofar as speakers share enough of these central descriptions, they
can be aware that they are speaking about the same entity. Indeed, to use a
concept-word correctly, we need to know only a small part of its meaning, such
as the class of things to which it belongs, which is enough to correctly insert
it in the network of communicative praxis, in discourse, insofar as we
are aware of our lack of knowledge of meaning. And we usually do this assuming
that we are inserting the word in a linguistic network composed of speakers and
hearers and that in some nodes of this linguistic network there are privileged
speakers with a sufficient knowledge of the meaning, those able to give the
concept its effective reference. We are able to insert concept-words in a
dialogical context in a reasonable way, insofar as at least two conditions are
satisfied:
A. Condition of grammatical awareness:
We are aware of our own ignorance of the full meaning, that is, we know the
form of the characterizing rule and we know that we lack knowledge of much of
its content.
B. Condition of convergence: We at
least associate a convergent description with the concept-word,
understanding this as a description that classifies its objects in the closest
more general relevant category.
If a speaker satisfies these two conditions,
he is already able to insert the concept-word ‘water’ into a sufficiently
undemanding discursive context, even if the meaning he is able to give to the
concept-word is only very incomplete and the manner of reference is parasitic.
One example is provided by
incorrect but convergent indefinite descriptions like ‘a very big fish in the
ocean’ for the concept-word ‘whale’. Although incorrect, this description is
convergent, since it at least correctly classifies whales under the more
general category of large marine animals. Because of this, the speaker can give
at least a partial meaning and a parasitic reference to the concept-word. The
meaning is partial because he would not be able to use the concept-word
adequately in demanding contexts, like that of a specialized zoological
discourse. And the reference is parasitic, insofar as in using the word he
trusts that others will understand at least what kind of animal he means with
the word and that somewhere in the network of speakers and hearers there will
be highly competent speakers, able to give this concept-word a more complete
and adequate meaning and reference.
On the other hand, if a speaker
does not know the form of the conceptual rule and thus does not satisfy
condition (A), or if he associates a concept-word with an incorrect and
divergent description, and thus does not satisfy condition (B), he will not be
able to give it an adequate sense or use it in a referential way, not even in a
parasitic referential way. Suppose, e.g., that a speaker associates the
concept-word ‘whale’ with the description ‘the name of a peak in the Rocky
Mountains’. This description is not only incorrect, but also divergent, since
it classifies ‘whale’ wrongly as a singular term and a kind of geological
phenomenon. By using the word ‘whale’ in this way, one fails to satisfy the
condition of convergence and thus shows that one is unable to correctly insert
the word into discourse.
Here we see a cognitivist
counterpart of what Hilary Putnam called a division of linguistic labor.
However, I do not understand this division of labor in an externalist way, as
Putnam aimed to achieve. Rather, I understand it internalistically, because it
is a cognitive division of linguistic labor among conscious speakers of
a language.[10]
The application dilemma
and its contextualist solution
Before we discuss Putnam’s Twin Earth
fantasy, it is instructive to apply the proposed view to a well-known dilemma
concerning the meaning of ‘water’, which can be solved neither by traditional
naïve descriptivism nor by causal-externalist theories.[11]
The question that generates the dilemma arises from a mismatch between surface
phenomenal properties and subjacent micro-structures, which can be analyzed
using two scenarios:
(a) Imagine that somewhere in the
world people discover a liquid that has all the surface properties of water (it
is transparent, odorless and tasteless, quenches thirst, puts out fires, etc.),
but nevertheless has a completely different molecular structure, say XYZ. Would
we still call the liquid water?
(b) Imagine now that in another
part of the world we find an oily red liquid that does not have any of the
surface properties of water (it is not transparent, has an unpleasant odor,
does not quench thirst, does not extinguish fires, etc.). Nevertheless, to
everyone’s surprise, this liquid is found to consist entirely of H2O.
Would we say that this liquid is water?
Causal-externalists and
descriptivist-internalists have given contrary answers to these questions.
Consider, first, the reactions of philosophers like Putnam and Kripke in
defending the causal-externalist view of the reference of terms for natural
kinds.[12]
What really matters for these philosophers is the essential chemical structure
of water, H2O, referred to by the scientific core of meaning (SCM).
Consequently, their answer will be that the liquid considered in case (a)
cannot be water, despite its appearance, since it lacks the right chemical
structure, while the liquid considered in case (b) must be water, since it
possesses its essential chemical structure.
On the other hand, descriptivist-internalist
philosophers like A. J. Ayer and most of Putnam’s critics have reacted with the
opposite answers.[13] What
counts for them are the surface properties of the watery liquid, such as those
referred to by the popular core of meaning (PCM). They answer affirmatively to
case (a): If somewhere on Earth we found a liquid with the surface properties
of water, but the chemical structure XYZ, we would still classify it as water,
albeit water of a different kind. And they answer negatively to case (b): Even
with the atomic structure of water, the oily red liquid cannot be water, since
it lacks the surface properties we are used to assuming when we speak of water.
Who is right? The
causal-externalist or the descriptivist-internalist? Here we find a clash of
intuitions. If we think like the descriptivist, the answer seems to be the one;
if we think like the externalist, it seems to be the other.
However, the more elaborate
version of descriptivism I am proposing opens the way to a more convincing
answer. As I see it, the dilemma results from the fact that ‘water’ has two
different cores of informative content: PCM or </sD/ + dD> (the popular
meaning component), and SCM or <sdD + /aD/ + dsD> (the scientific meaning
component). Conceivable situations of this sort satisfy one core of meaning but
fail to satisfy the other. In this case, according to the general CR-‘water’ –
whose meaning condition demands only a disjunction between the popular and the
scientific meaning components – both substances should be water, at least
insofar as there is no relevant concurrence with other concepts of liquid
substances that could change our intuitions. However, the important point is
that this first generic, wide, topic-neutral alternative is not the only one,
since an indexical element can be introduced into the semantics of the term. It
seems that the weight of each meaning component can be affected by contextual
variations, changing according to the context of interests associated with an
utterance. I will call a context of interests one that elevates the
weight of aspects of a term’s meaning that we need for some purpose to the
detriment of other aspects that are of little interest, in this way
constructing a contextually dependent sub-concept with a more restricted meaning.
And I suggest that in the case of the concept-word ‘water’ the contexts of
interest could be either popular or scientific, in each case giving the word a
complex contextualized meaning.
In order to make this suggestion
convincing, first imagine a context of scientific interests involving only
speakers versed in chemistry who assemble in a laboratory to carry out
experiments using electrolysis. In this case, we have a context of scientific
interests, and the scientific core of meaning is privileged. Here the word
‘water’ is treated in a narrow, non-literal way as meaning the same thing as
‘hydrogen oxide’ or ‘hydrogen hydroxide’ or ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ or ‘hydroxic
acid’ or ‘oxidane’… which are a few of the many scientific terms for H2O.
These terms only refer to the scientific core of meaning – a meaning condition
expressed by the description <sdD + /aD-H2O/ + dsD> – and not
to the meaning condition that gives the popular core of meaning. In this case,
scientifically trained speakers rightly reject the claim that any watery liquid
with a different chemical structure, say XYZ, can be water.
Now, imagine that people from a
remote fishing village dig a well to obtain water for drinking, washing and
bathing. In this case, their context of interests is quite mundane and
practical. It is irrelevant to them whether the liquid they are seeking is H2O
or XYZ, as long as it serves the intended purposes and do not have any
unhealthy effect. In this case, the traditional popular semantic component is
what matters, and even if they are informed about the differences in the
chemical structure, they will feel no need to replace the word.[14]
The context of interest produces a contextually dependent sub-concept of water
that has the meaning condition </sD/ + dD> as its sense. However, if they
found a liquid with none of the surface properties of water that was of no use
for drinking and washing… they would deny that this was a sample of water, even
if they were somehow persuaded that its micro-structure was that of H2O.
We conclude that the best solution
to the dilemma is one based on the recognition that the semantics of the word
‘water’ are sufficiently flexible to allow us to choose the horn of the dilemma
that we prefer to hold to in those contexts where we cannot hold to both. In
this view, causal-externalists and descriptivist-internalists are right in each
holding to one horn of the dilemma, since they are tacitly considering
sub-concepts of water with the respective scientific and popular cores of
meaning. But they are wrong in their belief that the other horn cannot be held
to.
Putnam’s externalist
thesis about meaning
Below, I will contrast our analysis of the
meaning of ‘water’ with that offered by Hilary Putnam in his essay ‘The Meaning
of ‘Meaning’’. I begin by summarizing Putnam’s argument. Putnam proposed an
imaginary situation to show that in its essentials meaning cannot be some sort
of psychologically instantiated Fregean Sinn, that is, something in the head.
In his fantasy scenario, there is a Twin Earth exactly like ours in all
details, except that there the liquid called ‘water’, although having all the
surface properties of what we on Earth call water, has a chemical structure
entirely different from that of H2O, which can be abbreviated as
XYZ. Now, suppose that in 1750, when the chemical structure of water was still
unknown, Oscar pointed to a sample of water on our Earth and said ‘This is
water’, and on Twin Earth his Doppelgänger, Twin Oscar, also said this.
Both had the same psychological state of mind, since both perceived the same
transparent, odorless and tasteless liquid. However, we might suppose that they
meant two different things with two different extensions. What Oscar meant, we could say,
was a sample of a liquid with the chemical structure H2O, while Twin
Oscar meant a sample with the chemical structure XYZ. Since the psychological
states were the same, the different meanings of ‘water’ could not be in their
heads. More generally: The meanings of natural kind terms like ‘water’ (as chiefly
conceived) must be outside our heads, extensionally determined by the essential
micro-structure of their references.[15]
Putnam concedes that surface
descriptions, which he calls stereotypes, express a dimension of meaning
that is located in the head; however, he regards this as a secondary dimension.[16]
In our proposed characterization rule, the stereotype is expressed by the
surface descriptions. And what Putnam calls the semantic marker
(natural kind, liquid…) is expressed by the condition that we must be thinking
of a liquid (or a chemical) substance.
Some well-known
difficulties
There are various well-known difficulties
with Putnam’s solution. One is that according to his view, in 1750 the two
Oscars could not really have known the meaning of the word ‘water’, since they
did not know its essential micro-structure. Nonetheless, it seems clear that
they really did know the meaning, since we recognize that they could fully
communicate it to other persons, and that they didn’t know the new dimension of
meaning, understood as the micro-structure, since it didn’t belong to the
meaning at that time. In fact, if we accept Putnam’s view, we need to admit a
wide range of counter-intuitive ideas about meaning. If we have a natural kind
word referring to a still unknown micro-structure, for example, we must accept
that we do not yet know its presently given meaning, even if we can swear that
we know it. (It would make sense if we said that we do not yet know its future
meaning, namely, the still undiscovered descriptions of its micro-structure,
which is consistent with our view.) If we make mistakes in designating the
essence and are not aware of them, we do not know the meaning of the
corresponding terms, whose meaning we are certain we know, which is incoherent.
Moreover, as descriptivists and
Putnam's other critics have pointed out, the competing intuition remains
acceptable, that Twin Oscar uses the word ‘water’ in the same sense. Avrum
Stroll, for example, invites us to imagine that since 1750 people have been able
to fly from our Earth to Twin Earth and from Twin Earth to our Earth,
transporting water from one planet to the other, using it to drink, wash, cook,
and for other purposes. Now, suppose that only in the last year have people
made a chemical analysis of the liquids they respectively call ‘water’,
discovering that the liquid from the Earth is composed of H2O, while
the liquid from Twin Earth is composed of XYZ. Under such circumstances, he
notes:
Would the persons moving
between the planets stop calling one of the fluids ‘water’? I doubt it. I think
that they would say that water is composed of different components, depending
on where it is found, or perhaps they would say it comes in two different
forms, like jade.[17]
It would be difficult to give this intuition
a satisfactory causal-externalist answer. Nevertheless, in terms of how we
analyze the semantic content of the word ‘water’, it is easy to explain this
intuition by appealing to contextual interests. Here we have a context of use
in which the popular sense of ‘water’ is still predominant, and the scientific
sense has not yet become sufficiently established to produce any possible
confusion between the two.
The right explanation of
the Twin Earth fantasy
What I wish to show now is that to explain
Twin Earth fantasy intuitions, the proposed internalist-descriptivist view
works much better than both Putnam’s theory and traditional descriptivism. As
we already saw when considering a parallel dilemma about the application of the
word ‘water’, our semantic intuitions oscillate between two alternatives:
(A) With the word ‘water’ both
Oscars refer to the same reference and extension, namely, the same
transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid (traditional descriptivism, from Ayer
to Stroll).
(B) Each Oscar refers to a
different substance with a different extension (causal-externalism, from
Putnam to John McDowell).
Now, our analysis allows us to save both
conflicting intuitions. For what we think the two Oscars meant with the word
‘water’ in 1750 could have a double interpretation, which varies with the
perspective we take: that of the two Oscars or our own. Here it goes:
- Perspeval explanation of
intuition (A): Suppose, first, that we take the perspective of
the two Oscars in 1750. In this case, we explain intuition (A), according
to which they were both pointing to the same reference with the same extension.
The meaning of ‘water’ at this time was only its popular meaning, given by the
surface description </sD/ + dD>, which at that time constituted the whole
meaning condition (i) for the word. In this way, we have an explanation for our
commonsense intuition that in 1750 the two Oscars used the word water with a
shared meaning and also felt certain that they were able to communicate this
whole meaning. Considering that they had the same mental state caused by the
same kinds of superficial properties, we do not need to suppose that the
meaning had to be outside of their heads.
Putnam writes that in 1750 people
already knew that water has a subjacent micro-structure, although they still
didn’t know what this was. But we can think back in time and imagine two
stone-age Oscars who lived at a time when there was no assumption that water
could have a uniform subjacent micro-structure, differing from things such as
urine, oil, air and dust, which lack this structure. The meaning of the
equivalent word for the stone-age Oscars would be almost entirely restricted to
<sD> and couldn’t have even a hint of a scientific subjacent
micro-structure. This meaning is part of the meaning assigned to ‘water’ by the
Oscars in 1750, and is still part of the meaning we assign to this word today,
particularly in popular contexts of interest.
- Perspectival explanation of
intuition (B): Now, suppose we consider what the Oscars were referring to
in 1750 from our own perspective. In this case, we can explain intuition
(B). What makes the explanation possible is the fact that references and
extensions belong to the extra-linguistic domain, which in the case of external
things like water samples exists outside the head, being able to be accessed
and understood in different ways. For, if the reference and extension are
outside our heads and minds, they can be conceived independently of what
persons such as the Oscars have in mind when referring to them. This allows us,
naturally and unconsciously, to change the epistemic subject and consequently
the perspective of evaluation. In our case we can consider what the Oscars were
pointing to in 1750 not from the perspective of what they had in their minds,
but from the perspective of what we presently mean with the word ‘water’,
namely the chemical substance that satisfies the meaning condition ‘</sD/ +
dD> and/or <sdD + /aD/ + dsD>’. From this perspective, we can already
say that Oscar was pointing to water consisting of H2O, while Twin
Oscar was pointing to water consisting of XYZ. And not only is what we mean in
each case obviously different, but also what we have in our heads.
What Putnam implicitly does is
something more. Rejecting the popular meaning, he employs the word ‘water’
intending it only in the sense it acquires in a context of scientific
interests, a sense tacitly also known to us. If we do this, we are able to
distinguish two different concepts of water: Earth water, with
the scientific meaning of <sdD + /aD-H2O/ + dsD> and Twin
Earth water, with the scientific meaning of <sdD + /aD-XYZ/ +
dsD>. Based on this, we are able to conclude that the reference and
extension of the word ‘water’ meant (that is, pointed to, referred
to) by the Earth Oscar was that of H2O, while the reference
and extension of the word ‘water’ meant (that is, pointed to, referred to) by
Twin Earth Oscar must have been that of XYZ, for the first reference satisfies
the first meaning rule, while the second reference satisfies the second.
Now, I propose that what we
inadvertently do when we think of the fantasy in Putnam’s way is the following:
We use the Oscars (in 1750, in the Stone Age, etc.) as indexical devices
for the projection of our own scientific senses of the word
‘water’, that is, of our own cognitive ways of presenting its
reference and extension, and because of this we obtain different references and
extensions. Indeed, the Oscars mean different things with the word ‘water’ only
in the trivial sense that they point to things with different
micro-structures. For we should not forget that in this case we are the ones
who are giving the senses, and not the Oscars: When we consider only the
scientific core of meaning, what we have in our heads must be a certain mental
state when we consider what Oscar refers to with the word ‘water’, and a different
mental state when we consider what Twin Oscar refers to with it. And since the
difference in what we have in our heads corresponds to a difference in meaning,
we are able to conclude that obviously there is no reason to think that
anything belonging to the meaning must exist outside our heads. Moreover, we
find here different meanings, different informative contents, different modes
of presentation determining the difference in the reference and, ultimately,
the difference in the extension (all very Fregean).
Indeed, even the Oscars would agree with our
alternative explanation. Suppose we put them in a time machine, bring them to
our own time and teach them some chemistry. Once we do this, they will be able
to agree with us that in 1750 they were pointing to (‘meaning’) different
things with different extensions. However, this would only be because they had
learned the scientific meaning core of the word ‘water’. They would be able to
entertain different meanings, different informative contents, and different
modes of presentation instantiated by different mental states, which are, of
course, in their heads. These Oscars would now project the different concepts
of water they have in their heads into their own indexical utterances in 1750,
in order to characterize the two different kinds of stuffs they were pointing
to at that time and the different implied extensions. In this way, they would
be using themselves in the past as indexical devices for the projection of
their own new scientific senses of the word ‘water’.
According to these explanations,
it does not matter how we cut the cake, meanings are always internal. They are
where everyone always knew they were, namely, in our heads. Although Putnam’s
explanations have the advantage of simplicity, our explanations should be preferred
for the reason that they are the only ones able to accommodate all contrasting
semantic intuitions.
Supplementary arguments
Some supplementary comments complete the
picture. First, in his argument Putnam benefits from a certain ambiguity in the
meaning of ‘meaning’. In an extended sense and in the third person, ‘to mean’
can mean ‘to indicate’ or ‘to refer’ (e.g., ‘I mean this chair and not that
table’). In a non-literal sense, ‘to mean’ can even refer to the reference in
itself or the extension. But in these two senses, ‘to mean’ has no relevance
for the proper understanding of ‘meaning’ as the informative content of a
linguistic expression, as its Fregean sense. Curiously enough, the word ‘sense’
lacks this ambiguity. (It is noteworthy that this ambiguity was also explored
in Frege’s merely terminological use of the German word Bedeutung
(meaning) to designate the reference of a word, in contrast with Sinn
(sense), which lacks this ambiguity).
Second, it could be objected that
by accepting this conclusion we are denying that in the case of the 1750 Oscars
there was a causal input from the outside world – a causal input that would be
provided by the essential chemical micro-structure of water. However, it would
be a prejudice to restrict the attribution of causal input to the
micro-structure (why not a micro-micro-structure, such as a system of
one-dimensional strings as proposed by string theory in physics?). In 1750, the
causal input could be attributed to the liquid substance of water and nothing
more.
Third, as neo-Fregean
internalists, we would not have any reason to deny that often, and in ways that
are ultimately unavoidable, some external causal input in different ways genetically
determines our meanings (senses), which once established determine the
nature of the reference and its extension. Such dual movement turns out to be
nearly simultaneous in the case of indexical utterances. However, to take the
external causal origin of meaning for the external instantiation of meaning is
to commit (as Putnam does) a genetic fallacy: the error of confusing the origin
with its product.
We conclude that by postulating
some kind of extensionally determined meaning outside our heads, Putnam tries
to produce a kind of inversion of semantic values, taking a derivative
indicative sense of ‘to mean’ as its proper sense. For him, what really matters
is a supposedly external sense of ‘meaning’. However, he is playing a word
game. For when he says that reference determines meaning, he
either intends something fallacious and senseless, or he should mean that
reference often originates our linguistic conventions and that in the case of
indexical utterances the reference directly originates our own cognitive rules,
responsible for our modes of presentation, while only external references and
extensions remain outside the head. However, these are not discoveries at all,
but obvious trivialities.[18]
The statement ‘Water is H2O’
Finally, we should say something about the
sentence ‘Water is H2O’. According to Kripke, it states a necessary a
posteriori identity: it is a posteriori, because it was discovered
by chemists using scientific methods, and it is necessary, because ‘water’ and
‘H2O’ are rigid designators, applicable to the same substance in all
possible worlds.[19]
Our analysis rejects this conclusion
According to our analysis, the
word ‘water’ can have and acquire at least three meanings. Initially we have
the generic, wide, topic-neutral meaning (A), conceptually defined by the
(disjunctive) characterizing rule CR-‘water’ and abbreviated by ‘</sD/ +
dD> + <sdD + /aD/ + dsD>’. But there is also case (B): those
sub-concepts with narrower meanings acquired by the word in popular or
scientific contexts of interest. When the context of interest is a popular one,
‘water’ means (B1) ‘</sD/ + dD>’ (a transparent, tasteless liquid…), and
when the context of interest is a scientific one, ‘water’ acquires the meaning
(B2) ‘<sdD + /aD/ + dsD>’, which is the same as the meaning of ‘H2O’
or ‘hydrogen oxide’ or ‘hydrogen hydroxide’ or ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ or ‘hydric
acid’… According to this analysis, we can understand the sentence ‘Water is H2O’
in three ways, depending for the speaker (mainly) on what he has in mind and,
for the hearer, on the context in which it is applied.
Consider, first, the wide sense
(A), in which ‘water’ can mean equally the surface content expressed by
‘</sD/ + dD>’ and/or the deep content expressed by ‘<sdD + /aD/ +
dsD>’. In this case, ‘Water is H2O’ cannot express an identity,
for ‘</sD/ + dD> and/or <sdD + /aD/ + dsD>’ is not the same as
‘<sdD + /aD/ + dsD>’. Here the ‘is’ of ‘Water is H2O’ is not
an ‘is’ of identity, but rather an ‘is’ of composition, as Stroll has pointed
out.[20]
In this case, the sentence ‘Water is H2O’ expresses a contingent a
posteriori truth, stating that the chemical composition of water is always
H2O (‘For all x, if x is water, x is made of H2O’).[21]
Consider now sense (B1) of water,
in which it means the same as ‘</sD/ + dD>’. In this case, ‘Water is H2O’
is also an informative sentence, stating that what looks like water consists of
H2O, in other words, that the watery liquid is always composed of
‘<sdD + /aD/ + dsD>’ (‘For all x, if x is a watery liquid, x
is made of H2O’). In this sense the statement, ‘Water is H2O’
is not analytic. It is the result of an empirical observation, and it is also a
contingent and a posteriori truth.
Finally, consider the scientific
sense (B2) of water. In this sense, the word ‘water’ means ‘<sdD + /aD/ +
dsD>’, or (approximately) hydrogen oxide (to use chemical terminology). In
this sense, ‘Water is H2O’ can be interpreted as a true identity
statement. However, in this case we do not have a necessary a posteriori identity,
for here we use the word ‘water’ in the same sense as ‘hydrogen oxide’, and
what we are really saying is:
Hydrogen oxide is (the same as) H2O.
However, since to say ‘hydrogen
oxide’ is only another way to say ‘H2O’, what we are saying is that
‘H2O = H2O’, which is a necessary a priori truth,
an analytic tautology and not an a posteriori discovered identity. We
conclude that in no allowable sense does the sentence ‘Water is H2O’
ever express a necessary a posteriori truth.[22]
[1] Even in the case of philosophers like
Frege, who held Platonist views of meaning, it is hard to see how one could
grasp a Platonic entity without some relation of supervenience to an internal
psychological event instantiating the application of a semantic rule.
[2] Hilary Putnam, ‘The Meaning of ‘Meaning’’,
in his Mind, Language and Reality – Philosophical Papers (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975), Vol. 2. See also his book Representation
and Reality (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books, 1988), chap. 1, where he states
his view more precisely. For a discussion, see A. Pessin & S. Goldberg
(eds.): The Twin Earth Chronicles (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), with
Putnam’s introduction.
[3] Avrum Stroll, Sketches and Landscapes:
Philosophy by Examples (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 71. This is no
exception: good dictionaries in many languages offer similar descriptions.
[4] If you have any reservations concerning
inferences about the views of stone-age cultures, you can easily use as
examples cultures that existed as recently as a few thousand years ago or even
indigenous cultures before their first contacts with Western civilization.
[5] This is only a brief summary of a more
complicated history. See, for example, Philip Ball, A Biography of Water (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001), chap. 5.
[6] In this way, I think that the kind of
descriptivism I am proposing draws on the inferentialist perspective regarding
meaning. See, for example, Robert Brandon, Articulating Reasons: An
Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2000), chap. 1.
[7] The expression ‘rule of application’ or
‘rule of usage’ (Verwendungsregel) was consistently used by Ernst
Tugendhat, who (among others) theoretically anticipated the need for a rule to
classify the objects subsumed under a general term. See his Vorlesungen zur
Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1976), p. 188.
[8] In contrast, the identifying rule of a
proper name (see in this book, Chapter 2) requires that the identified object
should satisfy the identifying rule better than any other object. If the same
object satisfies two or more identification rules (as in the already
exemplified case of Marcial Maciel and Jose Rivas), the rules must be
reinterpreted as part of one and the same rule. This is because with regard to
any one object, any identification rule should enable us to pick out the
particular object that satisfies the rule. Concerning characterizing conceptual
rules, however, there is no individuating object. As a consequence, the
characterizing rule that is best satisfied by the sample in question proves to
be the rule that allows us to pick out its relevant property, insofar as we are
choosing among competing rules, and the properties described by one rule exclude
those described by others.
[9] I don’t think that the view I have
sketched here conflicts with the empirical findings of psychologists like
Eleanor Rosch, showing that prototypical cases are easier to categorize. To the
contrary, it follows from my view that when central criterial configurations
derived from a characterizing rule are satisfied, categorization under this
rule can be more easily and quickly realized. See E. Rosch, ‘Principles of
Categorization’, in E. Margolis and S. Laurence (eds.), Concepts: Core
Readings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
[10] What Putnam calls ‘the division of
linguistic labor’ is a phenomenon that has been recognized by other
philosophers at least since John Locke, who, with his theory of meanings as
ideas, already had an internalist and cognitivist perspective. See A. D. Smith,
‘Natural Kind Terms: A Neo-Lockean Theory’, European Journal of Philosophy
13 (2005), 70-88, here pp. 70-73.
[11] For a vivid description of this and other
meaning-perplexities, see W. L. Lycan, ‘The Meaning of Water: An Unsolved
Problem’, in E. Sosa and E. Villanueva (eds.), Philosophical Issues:
Philosophy of Language 16 (2006) (a supplement to Nous), 184-199.
[12] See Hilary Putnam, ‘The Meaning of
‘Meaning’, op. cit. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 128-9.
[13] A. J. Ayer, Philosophy in the Twentieth
Century (New York: Vintage, 1983), p. 270. See also D. H. Mellor, ‘Natural
Kinds’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 28 (1977),
299-312; Eddy Zemach, ‘Putnam’s Theory on the Reference of the Substance
Terms’, Journal of Philosophy 73 (1986), 116-27; G. M. A. Segal, A
Thin Book About Narrow Content (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), p. 19.
[14] As Joseph LaPorte noted, disagreeing with
Putnam, something similar occurred in China with the word ‘jade’. The old jade
(nephrite) was mostly replaced by a phenomenally identical stone with a very
different molecular structure (jadeite). Nevertheless, the same name was
applied to the new stone. In my view, this is to be expected, since here the
involved contexts of interest mainly privilege the popular core of meaning. See
his Natural Names and Conceptual Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), p. 96.
[15] In Putnam’s own words: ‘Oscar1 and Oscar2
(Twin Oscar) understood the term ‘water’ differently in 1750, although they
were in the same psychological state, and although, given the state of
science at the time, it would have taken their scientific communities about
fifty years to discover that they understood the term ‘water’ differently. Thus
the extension of the term ‘water’ (and, in fact, its ‘meaning’ in the intuitive
pre-analytical usage of that term) is not a function of the
psychological state of the speaker by itself’. H. Putnam: ‘The Meaning of
‘Meaning’’, p. 224.
[16] Putnam, ‘The Meaning of ‘Meaning’’, p.
269.
[17] Avrum Stroll, Twentieth Century
Analytic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp.
233-234.
[18] In the later and more differentiated
formulation of the argument, in the chapter 1 of Representation and Reality,
Putnam laboriously holds to a tentative path between the opposite dangers of
fallacy and trivialization. Finally, according to John Searle, he gave up his externalist
explanation of the Twin Earth paradox.
[19] Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity,
pp. 128, 134, 150.
[20] Stroll notes that
if we concede that ‘Water = H2O’, then we should also admit that
‘Ice = H2O’ and ‘Steam = H2O’, which forces us to
conclude (due to the transitivity of identity) that ‘Water = ice’ and ‘Ice =
steam’, which is absurd. See his Sketches
of Landscapes: Philosophy by Examples, p. 46 f. See also A. P. Martinich
& A. Stroll: Much Ado About
Non-Existence: Fiction and Reference (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield,
2007), pp. 122-125.
[21] Indeed, this would be the case even if
‘Water is H2O’ were here understood as an identity sentence. On the
other hand, if the concept of water were understood in a restrictive way as
CCR-‘water’, having as its meaning-condition ‘</sD/ + dD> & <sdD +
/aD/ + dsD>’, then the sentence ‘Water is H2O’ would be analytic,
since H2O would belong to the concept of water.
[22] It is curious to note that the here
developed conceptual analysis of water leads us to a result that vindicates the
basic idea of the two-dimensional semantics according to which so-called
necessary a posteriori statements have two intentions: a primary intention
(contingent) and a secondary intention (necessary). The first
corresponds to our sense (B1) of ‘Water is H2O’, while the second
corresponds to our sense (B2) of this sentence. However, it seems to me that
the here suggested semantic-pragmatic analysis would be methodologically more
adequate and potentially more perspicuous in its results, allowing a selective
emphasis on intentions according to different utterances’ contexts of interest.
For an introduction to two-dimensional semantics, see David Chalmers, ‘The
Foundations of Two-Dimensional Semantics’, in M. Garcia-Carpintero and J. Maciá
(eds.), Two-Dimensional Semantics: Foundations and Applications (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
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