Hilary Putnam
Nov. 18th, 2011 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Let us once again engage in science fiction. This time we use an example devised by Rogers Albritton. Imagine that we someday discover that pencils are organisms. We cut them open and examine them under the electron microscope, and we see the almost invisible tracery of nerves and other organs. We spy upon them, and we see them spawn, and we see the offspring grow into full-grown pencils. We discover that these organisms are not imitating other (artifactual) pencils - there are not and never were any pencils except these organisms. It is strange, to be sure, that there is lettering on many of these organisms - e.g. BONDED Grants DELUXE made in U.S.A. No. 2. - perhaps they are intelligent organisms, and this is their form of camouflage. (We also have to explain why no one ever attempted to manufacture pencils, etc., but this is clearly a possible world, in some sense.)
If this is conceivable, and I agree with Albritton that it is, then it is epistemically possible that pencils could turn out to be organisms. It follows that pensils are artifacts is not epistemically necessary in the strongest sense and, a fortiori, not analytic.
Hilary Putnam: The meaning of "meaning", in : "Mind, Language and Reality", Philosophical Papers, Volume 2.
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Let us once again engage in science fiction. This time we use an example devised by Rogers Albritton. Imagine that we someday discover that pencils are organisms. We cut them open and examine them under the electron microscope, and we see the almost invisible tracery of nerves and other organs. We spy upon them, and we see them spawn, and we see the offspring grow into full-grown pencils. We discover that these organisms are not imitating other (artifactual) pencils - there are not and never were any pencils except these organisms. It is strange, to be sure, that there is lettering on many of these organisms - e.g. BONDED Grants DELUXE made in U.S.A. No. 2. - perhaps they are intelligent organisms, and this is their form of camouflage. (We also have to explain why no one ever attempted to manufacture pencils, etc., but this is clearly a possible world, in some sense.)
If this is conceivable, and I agree with Albritton that it is, then it is epistemically possible that pencils could turn out to be organisms. It follows that pensils are artifacts is not epistemically necessary in the strongest sense and, a fortiori, not analytic.
Hilary Putnam: The meaning of "meaning", in : "Mind, Language and Reality", Philosophical Papers, Volume 2.
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