Reevaluating the Kripke-Putnam thesis
Keywords:
Kripke-Putnam thesis. Natural kind terms. Reference. Rigidity. Semantic underdetermination.Abstract
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.
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