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    Carmelics

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    Kripke and Putnam show that reference is fixed by causal-... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Belief content and sentence meaning must be defined jointly in terms of a principle of charity — whatever assignment maximizes the truth of an agent's beliefs and utterances

    Kripke and Putnam show that reference is fixed by causal-historical chains, not by truth-maximizing interpretation of the agent's total belief set.

    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Natural kind terms like 'water' and 'gold' refer to substances discovered through empirical investigation, not definitions agents antecedently believed.
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    • 2.Twin Earth thought experiments show identical belief sets can have different referents based on environmental causal history, not interpretation alone.
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    • 3.The causal-historical account explains how reference can be determinate even when agents hold systematically false or incomplete theories about referents.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
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    • 1.Causal chains are often vague, broken, or multiply realizable in ways that leave reference indeterminate, contrary to the theory's determinacy claims.
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    • 2.Some intentional states (numbers, moral properties, abstract objects) lack clear causal-historical chains, suggesting the theory cannot be fully general.
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    • 3.Agents' own interpretive frameworks and communicative intentions do constrain reference in ways the causal account underestimates or ignores.
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    Connections

    2 topics

    Truth & Knowledge1 linkedPhilosophy of Language1 linked

    Related

    Agents' own interpretive frameworks and communicative intentions do constrain re...Belief content and sentence meaning must be defined jointly in terms of a princi...Causal chains are often vague, broken, or multiply realizable in ways that leave...Natural kind terms like 'water' and 'gold' refer to substances discovered throug...
    +3 moreShow less
    Some intentional states (numbers, moral properties, abstract objects) lack clear...The causal-historical account explains how reference can be determinate even whe...Twin Earth thought experiments show identical belief sets can have different ref...

    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit