Terms of Natural Kind and Theoretical Identities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2011.747n1006Keywords:
Natural kind term, theoretical identity, necessity, rigid designatorAbstract
Kripke asserts in Naming and Necessity that there are certain similarities between proper names and natural kind terms. One of them is that both sorts of expressions occur in identity statements that are, if true, necessary a posteriori; in the case of natural kind terms Kripke designates these statements “theoretical identities”. Kripke claims that this similarity follows from another, which consists in that both sorts of expressions are rigid designators. My aim in this paper is to argue that, though it can be claimed that natural kind terms are rigid designators, this property of natural kind terms does not make possible to justify the feature of necessity that Kripke attributes to theoretical identities. In this regard I will concentrate my considerations on one sort of natural kind term, the terms of chemical substances, to which I will allude as “substance terms”.
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Kaplan, David (1989): “Afterthoughts”, en Almog, Joseph et al. (eds.), Themes from Kaplan, Nueva York: Oxford University Press, pp. 565-614.
Kripke, Saul (1971): “Identity and necessity”, en Munitz, Milton (ed.), Identity and Individuation, Nueva York: New York University Press, pp. 135-164.
Kripke, Saul (1980): Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Blackwell. Reimp. revisada y con prefacio añadido de “Naming and necessity”, en Davidson, Donald y Gilbert Harman (eds.), Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972.
Salmon, Nathan (1981): Reference and Essence, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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