I agree with Putnam that knowing the meaning is “not a function of the psychological state of the speaker by itself” (Putnam 1973, 702). For if there were two identical mirror objects that held existence in two different places with people having exactly the same psychological state and use the same states of words used to describe the object,but the object differs by composition of chemicals, then the people residing in these places would not differ psychologically by the use of the word based on chemical traits of the object. Furthermore, if we hold this concept to our own world and objects of alike words—peanut and cashew—that are the same in our idiolect, it is found that meaning is not a function of the psychological state of the speaker by itself.
I disagree with Putnam that we could hardly use words without recognizing the object associated with that word, such as knowing to say gold when one sees gold. I see this as false, for there is the possibility that an individual can make words off of the object that he or she sees and that this be the correct word associated to the object. Although unlikely, the power of inference based on a set of know rules would allow of this possibility—for example, I don’t know the name of an nth number, but when I see that number I use a set of naming rules to correctly name that number.
What did Putnam’s argument against extension determined by its meaning?
I don't know if I quite follow your intuition to disagree with Putnam in the case of the 'gold' example. I understood the purpose of this example to be that people often refer to things, like gold, with a degree of confidence that the object is in fact gold, but it may not be. I think it was meant to show that with the development of science comes more divisions of possible descriptions of what objects, like gold, are. It's mainly to drive home this idea that when we refer to an object like gold, or water, we aren't referring to exactly what that thing is, but rather merely what we think it to be in the moment of inquiry or reference. I am confused as to how the example you bring up about appealing to a set of rules to name a new number clarifies your objection, because as in the case of gold, the very set of rules designated to name a number are in fact based on incomplete, partial linguistic understandings of objects all the same.
ReplyDelete