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Kuhn on Essentialism and the Causal Theory of Reference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
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Extract

The causal theory of reference is often taken to provide a solution to the problems, such as incomparability and referential discontinuity, that the meaning-change thesis raised. I show that Kuhn successfully questioned the causal theory and Putnam's idea that reference is determined via the sameness relation of essences that holds between a sample and other members of a kind in all possible worlds. Putnam's single ‘essential’ properties may be necessary but not sufficient to determine membership in a kind category. Kuhn argued that extension is fixed by similarity-dissimilarity relations that are liable to change in taxonomic reorganizations of science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 544 - 564
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

This article has been under work for an unusually long time. While not all were, some of the reasons that prolonged the process were beyond my control. I wish to warmly thank all those who have kindly offered their comments on different versions of this paper or otherwise helped to improve the content over the years. I have especially the following persons in my mind: Alexander Bird, John Henry, Ranjan Chaudhuri, James W. McAllister, and a number of anonymous referees.

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