I agree with Putnam's Hypothesis of the Universality of the Division of Linguistic Labor. In other words, I believe that different people or "linguistic communities" may have different senses of a word that cooperate or fit together like puzzle pieces to refer to a single reference.
I disagree with many of the ideas discussed in Putnam's paper, or at the very least the examples he uses to portray them. First of all, in his far-fetched "twin earth" anecdote, I do not follow his argument that the extensions of earth and twin earth varieties of water differ. Sure, they may have different formulas, but I do not think that is what is important to the people using the term 'water' in his example. To them, 'water' refers to the clear, drinkable liquid that falls from the sky and is found in lakes and rivers. Similarly, let's think of the word 'juice'. In this case both apple juice and orange juice have the same extension regardless of the psychological intensions people have about what 'juice' means. For this reason, I do not agree with Putnam's idea that intension does not determine extension.
Are "intension" and "extension" roughly related to sense and reference, which is how I understood them? In this case, should the reference or extension depend on the sense or intension used rather than the other way around, as Putnam seems to think?
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