Abstract
In “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” Putnam argues, among other things, that “‘meanings’ just ain’t in the head”. Putnam’s central arguments in favor of this conclusion are unsound. The arguments in question are the famous intra-world Twin Earth arguments, given on pages 223–227 of the article in question. Each of these arguments relies on a premise to the effect that this or that Twin Earth scenario is both logically possible and one in which certain individuals are in the same overall “psychological [state] in the narrow sense”. The problem is that none of the scenarios are as advertised; that is, none of them are logically possible situations in which the relevant individuals are in the same overall “psychological [state] in the narrow sense”.
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Notes
The reflections to follow occurred to me while considering Searle’s (1983) discussion of Putnam (1975). After reading Searle’s discussion several times, it dawned on me that one of his intended responses to Putnam might, in effect, be the charge of unsoundness presented below. It is ultimately unclear to me whether this is in fact a response Searle intended. Either way the point is both important to the project of isolating the genuine lessons of Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiments and underappreciated.
See Putnam (1975, pp. 216–222).
See Putnam (1975, pp. 219–220).
See Putnam (1975, pp. 223–225).
Notice that the issue here is not whether Oscar and his twin occupy different tokens of a certain mental state type; the issue is whether Oscar and his twin both occupy a certain mental state type.
See Putnam (1975, pp. 223–225).
Those interested in two-dimensionalist semantics and the role it might play in describing Twin Earth cases should note that my main point here indicates that Putnam’s arguments cannot be used to show that “primary intensions” must be “centered” in order to be “in the head” in Putnam’s sense. Of course, only a centered primary intension will be both (a) “in the head” in Putnam’s sense and (b) such that both Oscar and his twin associate it with their use of ‘water’ (cf. Chalmers 1996, p. 61, 2002).
It is interesting that (i) what is “in the head” in Putnam’s sense and (ii) what is common to Oscar’s and his twin’s psychologies come apart in this way. It means that whenever anyone speaks of “narrow” (or “internal”) “content”, we have questions to ask: what exactly do you mean? Do you mean “content that is ‘in the head’ in Putnam’s sense”? “Content that Oscar and his twin share”?, “Content that is ‘in the head’ in some other sense”?
In the terminology of Kim (1984), the difference between the claims involving the originally intended senses of “determines” and these alternatives is, in effect, a difference in whether the supervenience thesis at issue is one of “weak” or “strong” supervenience.
Here and below I ignore the possibility that our beliefs, desires, hopes, etc. about actuality might render it logically impossible that anyone should have been in the same overall “psychological [state] in the narrow sense” that he or she is actually in if some other possible situation had been actualized.
By a kind-designating use (or manner of using) a kind term I mean a use that has a kind as its extension (e.g., the uses of ‘water’ and ‘tiger’ in the sentences ‘Water is a substance kind’ and ‘Instances of the kind tiger can be found in Asia’).
The fact that the modified position in question bears the abovementioned entailment regarding ‘the inventor of bifocals’ renders it not only un-traditional, but also implausible. The same cannot be said for the abovementioned entailment regarding the term ‘water’. What is implausible, however, about what this view entails regarding the term ‘water’ is the conjunction of the abovementioned entailment with the claim that “psychological [state] in the narrow sense” determines (in the modified sense) intension. It is, of course, the implausibility of this conjunction that would be the focus of an appropriate single-agent inter-world Twin Earth argument.
In considering this modified version of “the traditional doctrine”, I have focused on the non-traditional and implausible nature of (d) and its conjunction with (c). (c) On its own, however, is much more credibly regarded not only as a traditional doctrine, but as one with a good deal of prima facie plausibility. Moreover, under widely made assumptions regarding the connection between an expression’s intension, as it is used on a given occasion by a given speaker, and what that speaker believes, disbelieves, asserts, denies, etc. in connection with his use of various sentences containing that term, a single-agent, Burge-inspired inter-world Twin Earth argument against (c) itself can be formulated (see Burge 1979, 1982). Such an argument is both interesting from the perspective of traditional philosophizing and left un-scathed by the core criticism of Putnam’s argument in this paper. (Here it is important to recall that I am ignoring the possibility mentioned in note 9.)
In speaking of an individual associating a descriptive condition with his use of an expression I mean merely that he or she believes that the term, as he or she use it, applies or refers to things that satisfy that descriptive condition.
Recently, defender’s of various theses associated with “descriptivism” have observed that Oscar and his twin associate different descriptive properties with their use of the term ‘water’ without addressing whether any such differences are “in the head” in Putnam’s sense. Moreover, the descriptive properties on which they have focused are, like that considered in this paragraph, associated “outside the head” in Putnam’s sense. See, for example, Chalmers (1996, p. 61, 2004) and Jackson (1998a, p. 213, b, p. 75).
Thanks to David Braun, Mark Schroeder, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on previous drafts and to Neil Williams for helpful discussion.
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McGlone, M. Putnam on what isn’t in the head. Philos Stud 151, 199–205 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9426-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9426-2