On Putnam's Twin Earth Thought Experiment
In his “Meaning and Reference”, Putnam tries to establish a point against what he calls the traditional theory meaning. According to his analysis, there are two fundamental and unchallanged assumptions behind the theory of meaning. What he intends to do with his science-fiction example -known as Twin Earth Thought Experiment- is to construct a concievable scenario where he can drive counter-intuitive points against the traditional meaning theory. After a brief summary of Putnam's thought experiment, I will discuss the line of reasoning in Putnam's arguments and try to put some objections. The first assumption of the traditional meaning theory is that to know what a term means is to be in a certain psychological state. In this case, meaning of a term determined by the one's psychological state. The second assumption is that the reference (or “extension” in Putnam's terms) is determined by the meaning. Once jointly thought, these two assumptions conclude that, “sameness of intension entails sameness of extension”. For the sake of keeping this paper focused on a certain point, I will not discuss whether this analysis of traditional meaning theory is convincing or not. Putnam does not adress a specific philosopher that …show more content…
Since he defends that meanings doesn't determine extensions, he assumes in such an encounter, we would intuitively think that “water means H2O here but XYZ there.” but do we really have such an intuition? Or, more precisely, what justifies Putnam's assumption of an intuition that we would certainly seperate between our water and their water as if they mean completely different things while we can point out no macro-level difference between the two. Putnam claims that even before the advancement of chemistry in both Earth and Twin Earth, 'water' means H2O here and XYZ there. Are we really justified to reduce meanings of kind terms to their physical
In his “Meaning and Reference”, Putnam tries to establish a point against what he calls the traditional theory meaning. According to his analysis, there are two fundamental and unchallanged assumptions behind the theory of meaning. What he intends to do with his science-fiction example -known as Twin Earth Thought Experiment- is to construct a concievable scenario where he can drive counter-intuitive points against the traditional meaning theory. After a brief summary of Putnam's thought experiment, I will discuss the line of reasoning in Putnam's arguments and try to put some objections. The first assumption of the traditional meaning theory is that to know what a term means is to be in a certain psychological state. In this case, meaning of a term determined by the one's psychological state. The second assumption is that the reference (or “extension” in Putnam's terms) is determined by the meaning. Once jointly thought, these two assumptions conclude that, “sameness of intension entails sameness of extension”. For the sake of keeping this paper focused on a certain point, I will not discuss whether this analysis of traditional meaning theory is convincing or not. Putnam does not adress a specific philosopher that …show more content…
Since he defends that meanings doesn't determine extensions, he assumes in such an encounter, we would intuitively think that “water means H2O here but XYZ there.” but do we really have such an intuition? Or, more precisely, what justifies Putnam's assumption of an intuition that we would certainly seperate between our water and their water as if they mean completely different things while we can point out no macro-level difference between the two. Putnam claims that even before the advancement of chemistry in both Earth and Twin Earth, 'water' means H2O here and XYZ there. Are we really justified to reduce meanings of kind terms to their physical