more on this theme     |     more from this thinker

Single Idea 14205

[filed under theme 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism ]

Full Idea

The sentence 'A cat is on a mat' can be reinterpreted so that in the actual world 'cat' refers to cherries and 'mat' refers to trees, without affecting the truth-value of the sentence in any possible world.

Gist of Idea

The sentence 'A cat is on a mat' remains always true when 'cat' means cherry and 'mat' means tree

Source

Hilary Putnam (Reason, Truth and History [1981], Ch.2)

Book Ref

Putnam,Hilary: 'Reason, Truth and History' [CUP 1998], p.33

A Reaction

This simple suggestion is the basis of a notorious argument in favour of anti-realism. See D.Lewis's 'Putnam's Paradox'. It tracks back to Skolem's doubts about whether infinitary mathematics is possible. Putnam's conclusion sounds daft.

Related Ideas

Idea 14206 There are infinitely many interpretations of a sentence which can all seem to be 'correct' [Putnam]

Idea 14207 If cats equal cherries, model theory allows reinterpretation of the whole language preserving truth [Putnam]

The 22 ideas from 'Reason, Truth and History'

4714 Putnam's epistemic notion of truth replaces the realism of correspondence with ontological relativism [Putnam, by O'Grady]
4716 The correspondence theory is wrong, because there is no one correspondence between reality and fact [Putnam, by O'Grady]
14214 If we try to cure the abundance of theories with causal links, this is 'just more theory' [Putnam, by Lewis]
4718 If necessity is always relative to a description in a language, then there is only 'de dicto' necessity [Putnam, by O'Grady]
7624 The word 'inconsiderate' nicely shows the blurring of facts and values [Putnam]
7610 A fact is simply what it is rational to accept [Putnam]
7611 Rationality is one part of our conception of human flourishing [Putnam]
7612 Reference is social not individual, because we defer to experts when referring to elm trees [Putnam]
7613 Concepts are (at least in part) abilities and not occurrences [Putnam]
14202 Neither individual nor community mental states fix reference [Putnam]
14201 Maybe the total mental state of a language community fixes the reference of a term [Putnam]
14206 There are infinitely many interpretations of a sentence which can all seem to be 'correct' [Putnam]
14200 'Water' on Twin Earth doesn't refer to water, but no mental difference can account for this [Putnam]
14204 Naïve operationalism would have meanings change every time the tests change [Putnam]
14205 The sentence 'A cat is on a mat' remains always true when 'cat' means cherry and 'mat' means tree [Putnam]
14203 Intension is not meaning, as 'cube' and 'square-faced polyhedron' are intensionally the same [Putnam]
14207 If cats equal cherries, model theory allows reinterpretation of the whole language preserving truth [Putnam]
7616 Truth is an idealisation of rational acceptability [Putnam]
7617 Before Kant, all philosophers had a correspondence theory of truth [Putnam]
7618 Very nominalistic philosophers deny properties, though scientists accept them [Putnam]
7620 Some kind of objective 'rightness' is a presupposition of thought itself [Putnam]
7623 For ancient Greeks being wise was an ethical value [Putnam]