What, if anything, do Putnams Twin Earth thought experiments demonstrate about meaning?
With his Twin Earth thought experiments, Putnam attempts to demonstrate that the meaning of utterances is dependent on more than mental states. In this essay I hope to show how he attempts this and how he ultimately fails. While some discussion on mental states is warranted, I shall primarily be focussing on the meaning of words and the meaning of “meaning”. Before we discuss Putnam though, some groundwork is required. “Mean” can mean many things, even ignoring homonyms such as “mean” in the sense of “cruel” or “mean” in the sense of “average”. Grice separates them into natural and non-natural senses. [Grice, Reading 1, p180] Natural meaning is “mean” in the sense of “indicate”, e.g. “the spots on your face mean you have measles” or “these tracks in the snow mean a fox has passed by”. Natural meaning contains an implication of truth. If I say “these tracks mean a fox has passed by, but in fact a fox has not passed by” I am contradicting myself. However, I might be mistaken. Perhaps a b
