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Against rigidity for natural kind terms

Synthese 198 (Suppl 12):2957-2971 (2018)

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  1. Are Chemical Kind Terms Rigid Appliers?Michael Rubin - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (6):1303-1316.
    According to Michael Devitt, the primary work of a rigidity distinction for kind terms is to distinguish non-descriptional predicates from descriptional predicates. The standard conception of rigidity fails to do this work when it is extended to kind terms. Against the standard conception, Devitt defends rigid application: a predicate is a rigid applier iff, if it applies to an object in one world, it applies to that object in every world in which it exists. Devitt maintains that rigid application does (...)
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  • Lot 2: The Language of Thought Revisited.Jerry A. Fodor - 2008 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Jerry A. Fodor.
    Jerry Fodor presents a new development of his famous Language of Thought hypothesis, which has since the 1970s been at the centre of interdisciplinary debate about how the mind works. Fodor defends and extends the groundbreaking idea that thinking is couched in a symbolic system realized in the brain. This idea is central to the representational theory of mind which Fodor has established as a key reference point in modern philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. The foundation stone of our present (...)
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  • General terms as designators : a defence of the view.Genoveva Martí & José Martínez-Fernández - 2010 - In Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds. New York: Routledge. pp. 46--63.
    We argue that the view that kind terms designate universals does not fall prey to the trivialization problem. We also argue that the view can respond to other challenges, specifically, the claims that an adequate notion of rigidity for kind terms must: (a) classify natural kind terms as rigid and classify many other general terms as non-rigid and (b) account for the necessity of true theoretical identifications involving rigid terms.
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  • The analytic and synthetic.Hilary Putnam - 1975 - In Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 33-69.
    The present paper is an attempt to give an account of the analytic-synthetic distinction both inside and outside of physical theory. It is hoped that the paper is sufficiently nontechnical to be followed by a reader whose background in science is not extensive; but it has been necessary to consider problems connected with physical science (particularly the definition of 'kinetic energy,' and the conceptual problems connected with geometry) in order to bring out features of the analytic-synthetic distinction that seem to (...)
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  • Beyond rigidity: the unfinished semantic agenda of Naming and necessity.Scott Soames - 2002 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    In this fascinating work, Scott Soames offers a new conception of the relationship between linguistic meaning and assertions made by utterances. He gives meanings of proper names and natural kind predicates and explains their use in attitude ascriptions. He also demonstrates the irrelevance of rigid designation in understanding why theoretical identities containing such predicates are necessary, if true.
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  • Kinds, general terms, and rigidity: A reply to LaPorte.Stephen P. Schwartz - 2002 - Philosophical Studies 109 (3):265 - 277.
    Joseph LaPorte in an article on `Kind and Rigidity'(Philosophical Studies, Volume 97) resurrects an oldsolution to the problem of how to understand the rigidityof kind terms and other general terms. Despite LaPorte'sarguments to the contrary, his solution trivializes thenotion of rigidity when applied to general terms. Hisarguments do lead to an important insight however. Thenotions of rigidity and non-rigidity do not usefullyapply at all to kind or other general terms. Extendingthe notion of rigidity from singular terms such as propernames to (...)
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  • (1 other version)The meaning of 'meaning'.Hilary Putnam - 1975 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7:131-193.
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  • (4 other versions)Naming and Necessity.S. Kripke - 1972 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 45 (4):665-666.
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  • (1 other version)Truth by Convention.W. V. Quine - 1976 - In Willard Van Orman Quine (ed.), The ways of paradox, and other essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 90–124.
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  • (4 other versions)Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Critica 17 (49):69-71.
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  • Names Are Predicates.Delia Graff Fara - 2015 - Philosophical Review 124 (1):59-117.
    One reason to think that names have a predicate-type semantic value is that they naturally occur in count-noun positions: ‘The Michaels in my building both lost their keys’; ‘I know one incredibly sharp Cecil and one that's incredibly dull’. Predicativism is the view that names uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are predicates (...)
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  • Descriptions as predicates.Delia Graff Fara - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 102 (1):1-42.
    Although Strawson’s main aim in “On Referring” was to argue that definite descriptions can be used referentially – that is, “to mention or refer to some individual person or single object . . . , in the course of doing what we should normally describe as making a statement about that person [or] object” (1950, p. 320) – he denied that definite descriptions are always used referentially. The description in ‘Napoleon was the greatest French soldier’ is not used referentially, says (...)
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  • Are General Terms Rigid?Nathan Salmon - 2004 - Linguistics and Philosophy 28 (1):117 - 134.
    On Kripke’s intended definition, a term designates an object x rigidly if the term designates x with respect to every possible world in which x exists and does not designate anything else with respect to worlds in which x does not exist. Kripke evidently holds in Naming and Necessity, hereafter N&N (pp. 117–144, passim, and especially at 134, 139–140), that certain general terms – including natural-kind terms like ‘‘water’’ and ‘‘tiger’’, phenomenon terms like ‘‘heat’’ and ‘‘hot’’, and color terms like (...)
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  • Analyticity reconsidered.Paul Artin Boghossian - 1996 - Noûs 30 (3):360-391.
    This essay distinguishes between metaphysical and epistemological conceptions of analyticity. The former is the idea of a sentence that is ‘true purely in virtue of its meaning’ while the latter is the idea of a sentence that ‘can be justifiably believed merely on the basis of understanding its meaning’. It further argues that, while Quine may have been right to reject the metaphysical notion, the epistemological notion can be defended from his critique and put to work explaining a priori justification. (...)
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  • Criteria for Nontrivial General Term Rigidity.Miloš Kosterec - 2018 - Acta Analytica 33 (2):255-270.
    In this paper, I present, generalize and develop the extensionalist theory of rigidity for general terms in light of criteria commonly applied to theories of general term rigidity. According to the theory, a general term is rigid if its extension is constant across all possible worlds. This position has been widely dismissed because it conflicts with the seemingly straightforward idea that natural kind terms have varying extensions from world to world. This criticism holds only to the extent that natural kind (...)
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  • (1 other version)Fact, Fiction, and Forecast.Nelson Goodman - 1955 - Philosophy 31 (118):268-269.
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  • Rigidity for predicates and the trivialization problem.Dan López de Sa - 2008 - Philosophers' Imprint 8:1-13.
    According to the simple proposal about rigidity for predicates, a predicate is rigid (roughly) if it signifies the same property across the relevant worlds. Recent critics claim that this suffers from a trivialization problem: any predicate whatsoever would turn out to be trivially rigid, according to the proposal. In this paper a corresponding "problem" for ordinary singular terms is considered. A natural solution is provided by intuitions concerning the actual truth-value of identity statements involving them. The simple proposal for predicates (...)
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  • Paradigm Terms: The Necessity of Kind Term Identifications Generalized.Christian Nimtz - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (1):124-140.
    Standard Kripke-Putnam semantics is widely taken to entail that theoretical identifications like ‘Brontosauruses are Apatosauruses’ or ‘Gold is 79Au’ are necessary, if true. I offer a new diagnosis as to why this modal consequence ensues. Central to my diagnosis is the concept of a paradigm term. I argue that modal and epistemic peculiarities that are commonly considered as distinctive of natural kind expressions are in fact traits that are shared by paradigm terms in general. Philosophical semantics should broaden its focus (...)
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  • Language and reality: an introduction to the philosophy of language.Michael Devitt & Kim Sterelny - 1999 - Cambridge: MIT Press. Edited by Kim Sterelny.
    Completely revised and updated in its Second Edition, Language and Reality provides students, philosophers and cognitive scientists with a lucid and provocative introduction to the philosophy of language.
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  • The Reference of Natural Kind Terms.Luis Fernández Moreno - 2018 - Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 53:35-39.
    This paper aims to propose a version of the description theory of reference –for short, descriptivism– on natural kind terms. This version is grounded on some proposals of descriptivists, such as Searle and Strawson, about proper names, which will be extended to natural kind terms. According to Searle and Strawson the reference of a proper name is determined by a sufficient number of the descriptions that speakers associate with the name, but among the sorts of descriptions admitted by these authors (...)
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  • Rigid designation and theoretical identities.Joseph LaPorte - 2013 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Rigid designators for concrete objects and for properties -- On the coherence of the distinction -- On whether the distinction assigns to rigidity the right role -- A uniform treatment of property designators as singular terms -- Rigid appliers -- Rigidity - associated arguments in support of theoretical identity statements: on their significance and the cost of its philosophical resources -- The skeptical argument impugning psychophysical identity statements: on its significance and the cost of its philosophical resources -- The skeptical (...)
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  • Putnam on artifacts.Stephen P. Schwartz - 1978 - Philosophical Review 87 (4):566-574.
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  • Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity.Scott Soames - 2004 - Philosophical Quarterly 54 (217):637-640.
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  • General terms and rigidity: another solution to the trivialization problem.Eleonora Orlando - 2014 - Manuscrito 37 (1):49-80.
    In this paper I am concerned with the problem of applying the notion of rigidity to general terms. In Naming and Necessity, Kripke has clearly suggested that we should include some general terms among the rigid ones, namely, those common nouns semantically correlated with natural substances, species and phenomena, in general, natural kinds -'water', 'tiger', 'heat'- and some adjectives -'red', 'hot', 'loud'. However, the notion of rigidity has been defined for singular terms; after all, the notion that Kripke has provided (...)
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  • The contingent a priori and rigid designators.Keith S. Donnellan - 1977 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 2 (1):12-27.
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  • Rigid designation and semantic structure.Arthur Sullivan - 2007 - Philosophers' Imprint 7:1-22.
    There is a considerable sub-literature, stretching back over 35 years, addressed to the question: Precisely which general terms ought to be classified as rigid designators? More fundamentally: What should we take the criterion for rigidity to be, for general terms? The aim of this paper is to give new grounds for the old view that if a general term designates the same kind in all possible worlds, then it should be classified as a rigid designator. The new grounds in question (...)
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  • Fact, Fiction and Forecast.Edward H. Madden - 1955 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 16 (2):271-273.
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  • Rigidity and kind.Joseph LaPorte - 2000 - Philosophical Studies 97 (3):293-316.
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  • Harlequin semantics.Michael Johnson - unknown
    This dissertation is about Semantic Uniformity. Semantic Uniformity is the claim that what is true for some expressions is true for them all—at least, when it comes to semantics. In particular, I defend three claims in three chapters, in this order: First, all simple linguistic expressions, and not just some, are non-descriptive. That is, their referents are not determined by fit with our beliefs. Second, all simple linguistic expressions are rigid. Relative to each possible world, construed as a world of (...)
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  • Kripke and Putnam on natural kind terms.Keith S. Donnellan - 1983 - In Carl Ginet & Sydney Shoemaker (eds.), Knowledge and Mind: Essays Presented to Norman Malcolm. New York: Oxford Univresity Press. pp. 84-104.
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  • Rigid Application.Michael Devitt - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 125 (2):139-165.
    Kripke defines a rigid designator as one that designates the same object in every possible world in which that object exists. He argues that proper names are rigid. So also, he claims, are various natural kind terms. But we wonder how they could be. These terms are general and it is not obvious that they designate at all. It has been proposed that these kind terms rigidly designate abstract objects. This proposal has been criticized because all terms then seem to (...)
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  • General Terms as Rigid Designators.Bernard Linsky - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 128 (3):655-667.
    According to Scott Soames’ Beyond Rigidity, there are two important pieces of unfinished business left over from Saul Kripke’s influential Naming and Necessity. Soames reads Kripke’s arguments about names as primarily negative, that is, as proving that names don’t have a meaning expressible by definite descriptions or clusters of them. The famous Kripkean doctrine that names are rigid designators is really only part of the negative case. The thesis that names refer to the same object with respect to every possible (...)
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  • Rigid designation and semantic value.Colin McGinn - 1982 - Philosophical Quarterly 32 (127):97-115.
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  • General Terms as Designators.Bernard Linsky - 1984 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 65 (3):259-276.
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