Hilary Putnam meaning of meaning - are there terms who are more real or true?

The purpose of this blog entry is to review the ‘meaning of meaning’ by Hilary Putnam (1975) with focus on a particular topic. Namely, the blog intends to determine the extent to which the meaning of a word can be more real and whether there is something as ‘more real’. In his text, Putnam talks about the meaning of the word ‘water’ in a fictional doppelgänger-world. He argues that, even though, it is possible that we both call two slightly different liquids water we both mean the same. We both intend to call it water because the particular liquid bears sameness to what we know as water. If our “ostensive definition” (225) turns out to be false, we will not intend to keep the definition. We rather learn from it. Therefore, the extension of water stays the same and there is a meaning which is ‘more true’. Regarding the extension, he clarifies that “whenever a term is subject to the division of linguistic labor, the ‘average’ speaker who acquires it does not acquire anything that fixes its extension” (229). The evidence presented thus far supports the idea that a meaning can be more real. 

            One misunderstanding from my everyday life experienced by my sister is comparable to the statement in Putnam’s text. Being a person that is familiar with using neologisms or the ‘Jugendwörter des Jahres’, my father said to my sister that she should not only oxidize (rumoxidieren) all day. My sister got confused. Wondering about my father’s use of the biological term ‘to oxidize’, she told me that my father could not have used ‘to oxidize’ truly in the way he did. ‘To oxidize’ would describe a chemical reaction in which electrons are moved.  But that was definitely not what she was doing. She was doing nothing and she was bored. She did not react to oxygen nor started in any metaphorical way a chemical reaction. In this particular situation she claimed her understanding of the term “oxidieren” (oxidize) was more real and more true than the one my father used. But my father, on the contrary, argued that there are similarities between the chemical process and her doing nothing.

            As indicated previously, there probably is a more ‘real’ statement, but is there a more ‘real’ usage of a word? In order to resolve the question, we need to look at the chapter ‘other senses’ (239). Putnam illustrates the point clearly by explaining that sometimes the “’hidden structure’ becomes irrelevant, and superficial characteristics become the decisive ones” (241). This is exactly what happened in the case of my father. The hidden structure or process of oxidization is not relevant. It’s the superficial characteristics that make the statement comprehensible. And those characteristic is doing nothing and, concluding from this, being lazy. However, there is an inconsistency with Putnam’s argument. Putnam claims that we would all accept if we perceived a term in a wrong way and learn about it, whereas, my sister resists to accept my father’s usage of the word. Only, because she does not agree on his extension of the term and if we think about it, she is right. Biologists use a different extension of the term. Those considerations lead me to the question whether the point I made is reasonable or whether I might have overlooked a crucial part of the theory or not have fully grasped Putnam’s theory on the concept of extension? Either way, the inconsistency I am making you aware of, everyone accepting if their extension proof to be not sufficient enough, raises, additionally, the question to which extent the situation I refer to is comparable to the Putnam’s ‘water example’.

Putnam, Hilary. “Language and Reality.” Mind, language and reality 2 (1975): 215–271. Print.