Abstract
This paper considers the problem of assigning meanings to empty natural kind terms. It does so in the context of the Twin-Earth externalist-internalist debate about whether the meanings of natural kind terms are individuated by the external physical environment of the speakers using these terms. The paper clarifies and outlines the different ways in which meanings could be assigned to empty natural kind terms. And it argues that externalists do not have the semantic resources to assign them meanings. The paper ends on a sceptical note concerning the fruitfulness of using the Twin-Earth setting in debates about the semantics of empty natural kind terms.
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Notes
This paper only concerns natural kind terms in scientific or literal contexts (e.g. ‘phlogiston’), where there is a genuine attempt to name a kind using a natural kind term; it does not discuss empty natural kind terms in fictional or mythical contexts (e.g. ‘unicorn’). It is an open question whether these two sorts of contexts demand for different treatments of empty natural kind terms.
Some natural kind terms are mass nouns (e.g. ‘water’) and some are count nouns (e.g. ‘tiger’). It has been argued that, unlike count nouns, mass nouns are not general terms (or at least not in all their uses). See Koslicki (1999) for discussion. For convenience, all natural kind terms are here treated as general terms; but nothing in the arguments below hangs on doing so.
Notice here that some have argued (e.g. Devitt 2005) that general terms should be treated as expressions whose semantic function is merely apply or be true of objects, and not at all to refer.
Saying that natural kind terms both refer and apply is of course not saying that they are both singular terms and general terms. There are syntactic constraints on whether a word is a singular term or a general term: being a singular term is not sufficient for being a referring expression, and being a general term is not sufficient for being an expression that applies to things. Unlike singular terms, general terms are syntactically words that can form noun-phrases, be preceded in English by (in)definite articles, quantifiers and attributive adjectives. It is thus adequate to say that natural kind terms are general terms which have the semantic properties of both referring and applying. (But see again n.4 for a possible caveat.)
The natural way to understand the idea of a kind not having any sample is as not having any sample on Earth (or at the actual world) or at the Earth (or world) under consideration. A further question is whether a kind that does not have any sample on Earth (or at the actual world) could have any sample. There is no need to make a decision on this matter at this stage.
See in particular Burge (1979, 1982, 1986). The story seems to have gone like this: Putnam’s externalist thesis was formulated as a thesis about natural kind terms. However, there still seemed to be something internalist about his view in that stereotypes (typical beliefs associated with a term) didn’t seem to be externally determined. That is to say, Putnam (as far as his original paper goes) is not obviously an externalist about the mind. Burge notably extended externalism to mental states, which then became the focus of discussions of externalism. Thanks to Åsa Wikforss for discussion here.
For instance Lewis (1979, p. 143) seems to think that the fact that externalism is true of meaning does not entail that it is true of mental content.
The externalist-internalist debate at issue here concerns whether the natural kinds that are part of the external physical environment partly individuate the meanings of natural kind terms. There is another externalist-internalist debate about the meanings of natural kind terms, not at issue here, that concerns the extent to which speakers’ understanding of natural kind terms is determined by social interactions. It is assumed here that these two debates are independent.
Most internalists are not denying that natural kind terms are referring expressions, but merely that this semantic property is relevant to the individuation of their meanings. But see Chomsky (1995) for a contrasting view.
There seems to be some confusion in the literature as to what the second horn of this dilemma is. For instance Korman (2006, p. 508) says that the problem is that ‘the externalist contends that the concept dwater is necessarily vacuous’. But it would be question-begging for externalists to stipulate that there even is such a concept dwater. What is at issue here is not whether the concept is vacuous; it is whether there is such a concept at all that is expressed by ‘water’ on Dry-Earth. It is unclear why the former would be so much of a problem for externalists; and Segal (2000, p. 32) makes it very clear that it is the latter that is really problematic for them.
Alternatively, externalists may say that they are not interested in giving a semantics for empty natural kind terms, but only for nonempty ones. They can agree that it would be desirable to have an account of empty natural kind terms, but argue that that is just not what they aim to do, and so need not have a tailor-made account for them. This reply is attractive, but I do not pursue it here. See also Korman (2006, pp. 517–518) for discussion.
I do not want to insist on labels here: it is simpler to say, especially if one wants to preserve an analogy with proper names, that natural kind terms are semantically simple and anything that is not semantically simple is not a natural kind term (Korman 2006). Alternatively, one might say that there are two sorts of natural kind terms: those (paradigmatic) that are semantically simple and those that are not. Note that in the literature anti-individualism (as opposed semantic externalism), the distinction is often stated in terms of atomic versus complex concepts. Here see Boghossian (1997), Brown (2004), Goldberg (2005) and Korman (2006).
See Häggqvist and Wikforss (2007) for arguments that it is.
It has been suggested that empty proper names refer to merely possible objects. I do not consider here assigning merely possible kinds to empty natural kind terms—there does not seem to be much difference between empty kinds and merely possible kinds. And even if there were one all the objections considered in this section would also apply.
This argument is similar to the more extended one offered by Kripke in his (1972) for the claim that there could not be unicorns.
See Evans (1982, p. 32) for discussion. In this passage Evans considers a way in which a Fregean semantics could handle empty names: he considers replacing the distinction sense-reference by that of sense-semantic value and to identify semantic values with sets, the empty set in the case of empty proper names.
I assume here that intensions are total functions—i.e. exist in all possible times and worlds. They could also be construed as partial functions that are not defined for instance in all worlds—e.g. in worlds in which there are no samples of the relevant kind. I do not pursue these suggestions here, which would not make a substantive difference to the discussion.
See McKinsey (1991), who first raised this issue.
See Besson (2009) for discussion here.
Internalists could also argue that ‘water’ on Dry-Earth does not refer to a natural kind at all, but to a property that is determined by/identical with the (superficial) properties that water, twater, etc. have in common. In this case there would not be too many candidates for the reference of ‘water’, but just one. Thus ‘water’ on Earth would refer to the kind water and ‘water’ on Dry-Earth would refer to this property. This, even by internalist standards, would entail that ‘water’ on Dry-Earth is not at all the same kind of expression as on Earth, and it would invalidate the claim that internalists do not have to give a special treatment for empty expressions. Thanks to Åsa Wikforss for discussion here.
Thanks to Andrew Hudson and Åsa Wikforss for very helpful comments on a draft of this paper. I am also grateful to an audience in Barcelona at the BW6—the Sixth Barcelona Workshop on Issues in the Theory of Reference, on Reference and Non-Existence. Thanks also to the referees for this journal for their very useful comments.
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Besson, C. Empty Natural Kind Terms and Dry-Earth. Erkenn 76, 403–425 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9286-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9286-y