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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Descriptivism about natural kind terms is false.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.If descriptivism were true, competent users of a kind term 'C' could come to know a priori that members of kind C possess property complex D.
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    • 2.There are cases where a competent user knows something is of kind C but cannot thereby come to know it possesses property complex D.
      ?

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    • 3.There are cases where a competent user knows something possesses property complex D but cannot thereby come to know it is of kind C.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Putnam's Twin Earth argument shows 'water' refers to H2O even in worlds where speakers associate it only with superficial properties like 'clear drinkable liquid'.
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    • 2.If descriptivism were true, 'water' on Twin Earth would co-refer with 'water' on Earth, but intuitively XYZ and H2O are distinct natural kinds with distinct extensions.
      ?

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    • 3.The best explanation of this referential divergence is that kind terms are rigid designators fixed by underlying constitution, not by descriptive content in speakers' heads.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Kripke's modal argument shows natural kind terms like 'gold' rigidly designate their actual referents across possible worlds, unlike definite descriptions which can shift reference.
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    • 2.Descriptivist analyses entail that 'gold' could refer to fool's gold in worlds where fool's gold satisfies the associated description 'yellow malleable metal', but this result is semantically incorrect.
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    • 3.The theoretical identity 'gold is the element with atomic number 79' is discovered empirically yet holds necessarily, a combination that descriptivism cannot explain without collapsing the a priori/a posteriori distinction.
      ?

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    Strongest counterpoint
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