Water is and is not H 2 O

Mind and Language 35 (2):183-208 (2019)
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Abstract

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Debates about natural kind concepts have sought to accommodate an apparent fact about ordinary people's judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results showing that people do not have this intuition. Instead, people tend to judge that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water.

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Author Profiles

Kevin Tobia
Georgetown University
Joshua Knobe
Yale University

References found in this work

The meaning of 'meaning'.Hilary Putnam - 1975 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7:131-193.
Doing without concepts.Edouard Machery - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Philosophy 56 (217):431-433.
Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary.Daniel Z. Korman - 2015 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by Dana Zemack.
Naming and Necessity.S. Kripke - 1972 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 45 (4):665-666.

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