Abstract
Twin Earth thought experiments are a standard philosophical tool for those offering, or criticizing, metasemantic theories: theories that attempt explain why referring words have the particular referents they have. The general recipe for Twin Earth thought experiments centrally features the description of a planet and population just like Earth and Earthlings, but with some single crucial differeence. In Hilary Putnam’s original version of the experiment, the difference is that the chemical composition of the stuff that looks and behaves like (our) water is XYZ rather than H2O. Such cases show how variation in the physical environment can induce a corresponding variation in reference. In other versions, variations in the linguistic dispositions of speakers are shown to induce corresponding variations in reference. The extension of the word ‘red’ depends on how the linguistic community is disposed to apply that word, as against ‘purple’ or ‘orange’. Perhaps most interestingly, basic normative terms like ‘ought’ or ‘immoral’ seem to vary in neither of these ways. Even if Earthlings and Normative Twin Earthlings consistently made moral judgments in line with two quite distinct moral theories, they might still be talking about the very same property: moral wrongness. The present paper describes and applies a general metasemantic view that yields plausible claims about all three sorts of cases. The view I will defend—neopragmatism—is a fully generalized version of the sort of local expressivism defended in the past by people like Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard. Throughout the paper, a contrast is made with a rival approach to the same phenomena: an appeal to reference magnetism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See, for example, Blackburn (1993) and Gibbard (1990, 2003). Local expressivism is the view that the semantics of some restricted vocabulary—quite often moral or normative vocabulary—is to be understood in terms of a non-representational psychological state that it can be used to express. Quasi-realism is a supplement to expressivism that explains why that restricted vocabulary behaves just like “normal” representational vocabulary. Typically expressivists are also quasi-realists, so I will use the terms interchangeably in what follows. It is worth noting that both Blackburn and Gibbard have been generalizing their views in recent years, and it is harder now to say for sure whether they count as neopragmatists or merely quasi-realists.
Of course most of the theory will be directed at clarifying the phrase ‘right sort’ in ‘right sort of regulatory role’. But that doesn’t matter for Horgan and Timmons. However it is clarified, they argue, the resulting theory will fail for moral terms.
In fact, Dowell’s solution tentatively appeals to the metasemantics of Ruth Millikan. Millikan’s view shares an empirical and genealogical perspective on the functions of our words. So Dowell might be somewhat sympathetic to the view I present below, despite her skepticism about the probative value of many of the thought experiments that I discuss in its defense.
This is the effect of reference magnetism when it is thought of as a tiebreaker. Many advocates of reference-magnetism hold that it can do more than merely break ties. They hold that it can attract reference even when—in the absence of its influence—some other, less elite property might have been positively favored by the rest of the metasemantic theory. This is sometimes referred to as the trumping role of reference-magnetism. For purposes of this paper this subtlety does not matter, though I think Dunaway and McPherson are working with the trumping version.
Schwarz (2014, p. 33) makes a similar point about toys, tools, and teddy bears. My point is somewhat stronger, since I am talking about properties that figure in systematic theories.
See also Dunaway (2020, ch. 5).
I thank an anonymous reviewer for helping me to see that this is the nature of the argument.
The notion of expression most appropriate for an actual human language is not a causal one, but might be understood in terms of sincerity conditions. But for present purposes, the simpler causal notion actually suffices. For more on the relevant notion of expression, see Schroeder (2008).
What is the relevant sense of ‘incompatibility’? A neopragmatist certainly cannot explain this notion in terms of truth and falsity! Rather, it should be explained in practical terms. Price’s own quick gloss is that our beliefs conflict when, other things being equal, they are such as to lead us to make different choices (1990, p. 224). The account of ‘true’ and ‘false’ offered here directly applies only to simple expressions of agreement and disagreement. For an extension to embedded contexts, see Gert (2023).
For one explanation of this role, see Thomasson (2020).
For a defense of this claim, in the context of a neopragmatist account of color, see Gert (2017).
This is precisely the reverse of a claim that Dunaway makes: ‘that negatively charged objects repel each other is a law in part because charge is elite. Eliteness is part of what explains why charge plays these roles. These roles cannot in turn provide a definition of eliteness—this would be to get the explanatory order backwards’ (2020, p. 123). Given that Dunaway take eliteness to be a primitive and ungrounded property, discoverable by determining which properties turn up in basic laws, the neopragmatist will think that Dunaway’s preferred direction of explanation recalls explanations of opium’s tendency to induce sleep that cite its possession of a dormitive virtue.
What about explaining duplication and supervenience? While I cannot get into it here, my strong suspicion is that we can explain facts about duplication and supervenience by reference to laws of nature, and without appeal to eliteness. For one neopragmatist attempt to explain natural modals such as ‘…is a law of nature’, see Roberts (2023).
This counts as “sloppy,” because there are strong salience constraints on the ways that human languages break down our shared color space. Still, there are many ways.
For a more adequate, but more complex, deflationary account of reference, see Båve (2009).
We need not say that the color words of these speakers are synonymous with ours. This avoids a worry that the stipulations of the case violate an assumption that Dunaway and McPherson (2016, p. 646) make, called ‘the necessity of eliteness’. According to this assumption, any given property has its degree of eliteness as a matter of necessity. But nothing in the argument here depends on the idea that the word ‘red’, as used by the people in the thought experiment, refers to actual-world redness. The point of the thought experiment is only to show, in a simple case, how usage so thoroughly trumps eliteness when it comes to color terms that, on reflection, it should be clear that eliteness is doing no work whatsoever.
This is a specific instance of a more general problem with the idea of reference magnetism stressed by Schwarz (2014, p. 31).
By this I do not mean that that “real” meaning of a term is a matter of the rules that would serve these purposes best. I only mean that serving a certain purpose is a major contributor to the shape of those rules. But there is also historical happenstance, a shared human sense of elegance, and many other factors. The evolutionary history of a word in a human language has much in common with the evolutionary history of an organ or hormone in a species. We do not say that human hearts systematically malfunction simply because we can imagine a more efficient blood-pumping organ. For the relevance of a genealogical perspective on linguistic meaning, see Queloz (2020).
Schwarz (2014, p. 33) makes a similar point: ‘we use colour terms to group things by how they look to us, no matter if the grouping is physically gerrymandered’.
References
Båve, A. (2009). A deflationary theory of reference. Synthese, 169(1), 51–73.
Björnsson, G., & McPherson, T. (2014). Moral attitudes for non-cognitivists: Solving the specification problem. Mind, 123(489), 1–39.
Blackburn, S. (1993). Essays in Quasi-realism. Oxford University Press.
Brandom, R. (2008). Between saying and doing: Towards an analytic pragmatism. Oxford University Press.
Brigandt, I. (2022). How to philosophically tackle kinds without talking about ‘natural kinds’. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52(3), 356–379.
Carnap, R. (1959). The elimination of metaphysics through logical analysis of language. In A. J. Ayer (Ed.), Logical Positivism (pp. 69–81). The Free Press.
Dowell, J. (2016). The metaethical insignificance of moral twin earth. In R. Shafer-Landau (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics 11 (pp. 1–27). Oxford University Press.
Dunaway, B. (2020). Reality and Morality. Oxford University Press.
Dunaway, B., & McPherson, T. (2016). Reference magnetism as a solution to the moral twin earth problem. Ergo, 3:25, 639–679.
Franklin-Hall, L. (2015). Natural kinds as categorical bottlenecks. Philosophical Studies, 172:4, 925–948.
Gert, J. (2017). Primitive Colors: A Case Study in Neopragmatist Metaphysics and Philosophy of Perception. Oxford University Press.
Gert, J. (2018). Neo-pragmatism, morality, and the specification problem. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 48, 3–4.
Gert, J. (2023). Neopragmatist semantics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 106(1), 107–135.
Gibbard, A. (1990). Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Harvard University Press.
Gibbard, A. (2003). Thinking How to Live. Harvard University Press.
Hardin, C. L. (1993). Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow. Hackett Publishing Co.
Horgan, T., & Timmons, M. (1991). New wave moral realism meets moral twin earth. Journal of Philosophical Research, 16, 447–465.
Horgan, T., & Timmons, M. (1996). From moral realism to moral relativism in one easy step. Critica, 28(83), 3–39.
Horgan, T., & Timmons, M. (2000). Copping out on moral twin earth. Synthese, 124(1–2), 139–152.
Horgan, T., & Timmons, M. (2006). Cognitivist expressivism. In T. Horgan & M. Timmons (Ed.), Metaethics after Moore (pp. 255–298). Oxford University Press.
Horgan, T., & Timmons, M. (2009). Analytical moral functionalism meets moral twin earth. In I. Ravenscroft (Ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson (pp. 221–236). Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. (1983). New work for a theory of universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61(4), 343–377.
Lindsey, D., & Brown, A. (2009). World color survey color naming reveals universal motifs and their within-language diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106:47, 19785–19790.
McPherson, T. (2018). Authoritatively normative concepts. In R. Shafer-Landau (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics 13 (pp. 253–277). Oxford University Press.
Merli, D. (2002). Return to moral twin earth. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 32(2), 207–240.
Merrill, G. (1980). The model-theoretic argument against realism. Philosophy of Science, 47(1), 69–81.
O’Leary-Hawthorne, J., & Price, H. (1996). How to stand up for non-cognitivists. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74(2), 275–292.
Price, H. (2013). Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism. Cambridge University Press.
Putnam, H. (1975). The meaning of ‘meaning’. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7, 131–193.
Queloz, M. (2020). From paradigm-based explanation to pragmatic genealogy. Mind, 129(515), 683–714.
Roberts, J. (2023). A neopragmatist treatment of causation and laws of nature. In J. Gert (Ed.), Neopragmatism: Interventions in First-order Philosophy (pp. 118–137). Oxford University Press.
Schroeder, M. (2008). Expression for expressivists. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 76(1), 86–116.
Schwarz, W. (2014). Against magnetism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 92(1), 17–36.
Sider, T. (2011). Writing the book of the world. Oxford University Press.
Thomasson, A. (2015). Ontology Made Easy. Oxford University Press.
Thomasson, A. (2020). Norms and Necessity. Oxford University Press.
Williams, M. (2011). Pragmatism, minimalism, expressivism. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 18(3), 317–330.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
There are no conflicts of interest involved in this paper.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Gert, J. Neopragmatism as a solution to Twin Earth problems. Synthese 202, 103 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04328-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04328-7