I agree with Putnam's overall invocation of the claim about the largely ignored division of 'linguistic labor' that words and their meanings possess. One person's reference to a word's meaning may be completely different to another's, and therefore the intension of the word is largely contingent on social determinants.
Although I agree pretty much impartially with Putnam on how the extension of a words meaning isn't a singular unchanged entity, as in the case of "traditional semantic theory," the examples he uses, as in the case of water (being the same utility-wise, but different chemically on identical planets), seem to have an obvious intuitive objection (Putnam, 1973, p711). That is the very fact that although 'water' is used in the exact same way on both planets, it is not the same. I understand Putnam's point, but the example can be seen as a bit of a stretch.
There is a slight reference to Frege in the beginning, and how his view of the 'sense' that words have is similar to that of Putnam's, although it isn't really elaborated upon further. I wonder how similar Putnam's view of the reference following the sense is to that of Frege's view.
What I took from the reading is that Putnam was making an argument against Frege and the descriptivist points of view, by using the example that you mentioned. I believe that Putnam shows it's not possible to have all knowledge of a particular thing in which you are referencing, and so you cannot genuinely refer to something by description or 'sense' alone. So, I believe that Putnam's view is at opposition with Frege's.
ReplyDelete