PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Philosophy of Language 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Saul Kripke's concept of a 'rigid designator' refers to a term that:
- Changes its referent depending on the context of utterance
- Designates the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists (Correct answer)
- Refers only to abstract entities like numbers or properties
- Derives its meaning from a definite description
Correct answer: Designates the same object in all possible worlds in which that object exists
Kripke argued in Naming and Necessity that proper names are rigid designators—they pick out the same individual across all possible worlds, unlike definite descriptions.
Question 2: Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment was designed to demonstrate that:
- Mental content is entirely determined by what is inside the speaker's head
- Linguistic meaning depends partly on factors external to the speaker's mind (Correct answer)
- Language is an innate biological capacity
- Reference is always fixed by the descriptions speakers associate with a term
Correct answer: Linguistic meaning depends partly on factors external to the speaker's mind
Putnam argued that 'water' refers to H₂O on Earth and XYZ on Twin Earth, even if speakers are internally identical, supporting semantic externalism.
Question 3: The causal-historical theory of reference, developed by Kripke and Donnellan, holds that a name refers to its bearer by:
- Matching a cluster of descriptions speakers associate with the bearer
- Being connected to the bearer through a causal chain tracing back to an initial dubbing (Correct answer)
- Expressing the speaker's mental image or concept of the referent
- Following grammatical rules governing the substitution of co-referential terms
Correct answer: Being connected to the bearer through a causal chain tracing back to an initial dubbing
On the causal theory, a name's reference is grounded in a historical chain of communication back to an initial naming event, not in descriptive content.
Question 4: W.V.O. Quine's thesis of the 'indeterminacy of translation' claims that:
- All languages can be translated into one another without any loss of meaning
- There is always a unique correct translation between any two languages
- Multiple incompatible translation manuals can be equally consistent with all observable behavior (Correct answer)
- Translation is impossible between cultures with radically different conceptual schemes
Correct answer: Multiple incompatible translation manuals can be equally consistent with all observable behavior
Quine argued in Word and Object that no empirical evidence uniquely determines the correct translation of a speaker's utterances, leaving translation radically underdetermined.
Question 5: Propositional attitudes (e.g., believing, desiring, fearing) are characterized by having:
- Purely behavioral dispositions with no intentional content
- A subject, an attitude type, and a propositional content (Correct answer)
- A necessary identity with specific brain states
- No cognitive or semantic significance
Correct answer: A subject, an attitude type, and a propositional content
Propositional attitudes are mental states directed toward a proposition, combining a psychological attitude (belief, desire) with intentional content (that p).
Question 6: The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic determinism) claims that:
- Language and thought are entirely independent processes
- Language merely reflects pre-existing thought structures
- The structure of a language determines or strongly constrains how its speakers think (Correct answer)
- All human languages share the same deep grammatical structure
Correct answer: The structure of a language determines or strongly constrains how its speakers think
Linguistic determinism holds that the language one speaks determines how one perceives and categorizes reality, making speakers of different languages think differently.
Question 7: Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose reference shifts depending on context. Which of the following is an indexical?
- 'Aristotle'
- 'bachelor'
- 'here' (Correct answer)
- 'triangle'
Correct answer: 'here'
Indexicals like 'here,' 'now,' 'I,' and 'you' have a constant character (a rule) but a context-dependent content that changes with each utterance.
PhB Bachelor of Philosophy Philosophy of Language 2
Saul Kripke's concept of a 'rigid designator' refers to a term that: