Reevaluating the Kripke-Putnam thesis

• Autor(a) principal: Baumann, Pierre
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Argumentos : Revista de Filosofia (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://periodicos.ufc.br/argumentos/article/view/19016
• topic: Kripke-Putnam thesis. Natural kind terms. Reference. Rigidity. Semantic underdetermination.; Tesis Kripke-Putnam. Términos de clases naturales. Referencia. Rigidez. Subdeterminación semântica.

This paper challenges the Kripke-Putnam thesis about natural kind terms, according to which natural kind terms are referential and rigid. I argue that natural kind terms are semantically underdetermined expressions, and are therefore intrinsically neither referential nor rigid. After reviewing Kripke’s and Putnam’s original arguments, I look at examples of natural kind terms discussed by them and others in the literature, aiming to show that they are indeed semantically underdetermined. I conclude that contextualist considerations should be taken into account to explain the differing truth-conditional values these expressions may have.