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Essay On Quine's View On Possibility Of Semantics

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Quine’s view on Possibility of Semantics – As per Putnam, quine was pessimistic towards the possibility of semantics and semantic theory as per se. Because it would be like constructing the entire separate theory of causation as science deals with cause. Quine’s Pessimism towards the utility of language cannot be simply dismissed as far as the meaning is concerned. Returning to his critique of traditional theory of natural kind term. Putnam says, if someone asks me what a tiger is or what lemon is? How do I convey the meaning of word lemon or tiger? Is important. According to Quine’s basic notion it is the notion of stimulus meaning. But it is very unlikely that I convey exactly the same stimulus meaning which I have of tiger in my idiolect. In any case I don’t convey it …show more content…

When they arrive on their distant planet, they discover that no one remembers the atomic weight (or any other defining characteristic) of aluminum, nor the atomic weight (or other characteristic) of molybdenum. There is some aluminum in the spacecraft, and some molybdenum. Let us suppose that they guess which is which, and they guess wrong. Henceforth, they use 'aluminum' as the name for molybdenum, and 'molybdenum' as the name for aluminum. It is clear that 'aluminum' has a different meaning in this community than in ours: in fact, it means molybdenum. Yet how can this be? Didn't they possess the normal linguistic competence'? Didn't they all 'know the meaning of the word "aluminum"'? [ed. Eric Margollis and Stephen Lawrence, Concepts Core Understanding, July 1999 edi., Pg- 185-186] Once they will know how to distinguish aluminum from other metals , they will use the correct extension for the word. But to know the correct extension we require expert. And in ordinary context we don’t refer to an expert. Thus Putnam modifies his account of core facts in case of natural kind words as

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