Irene Olivero

Quite recently, several ongoing disputes in semantics have gained attention. Some of these disputes include questions about whether we would apply the term ‘pencil’ to objects that satisfy the superficial description of the properties associated with classic artifactual pencils but are in fact a species of organisms; whether ‘woman’ applies only to females; or whether the rules governing the application of terms for natural substances and species (e.g., ‘water’, ‘tiger’, gold’, etc.) are the same as those governing the application of words for artifacts and artifactual kinds (like ‘chair’, ‘pencil’, ‘television’, etc.) or social and institutional kinds (e.g., ‘pediatrician’, ‘university’, ‘parent’, etc.). These disputes in semantics, I argue, are also disputes about what the referents in question are--that is, they are also metaphysical disputes. The aim of this paper is to show how abandoning the traditional “heavyweight meta-metaphysical realism” within which such disputes are typically framed, in favor of Amie L. Thomasson’s normativist, pragmatic approach, allows us to see them as “metalinguistic negotiations”. That is, these are best understood as disputes about how the words in question ought to be applied rather than about how they are in fact applied. I thus highlight several advantages of this pragmatic perspective, which I label a “Negotiating Approach”. It offers a more viable and appealing explanation of why such disputes arise in the first place, it avoids the epistemological mysteries faced by traditional accounts, and provides a more promising attempt to address or (dis)solve such quarrels. Moreover, I argue that this approach reveals that meaning is a variable whose value can be negotiated according to pragmatic and empirical factors (including nature, authority, ethics, and other contextual considerations.). This recognition is crucial for its further pragmatic import, which represents an additional advantage of the approach proposed: meaning can be revised and engineered in line with these relevant factors.

‘Pencil’, ‘Tiger’, ‘Christianity’. What kind of reference (if any) do these terms have? Do they have the same semantics? In his celebrated The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ (1975), Hilary Putnam suggests so when arguing that they have externalist semantics. However, this claim is highly controversial. A lengthy discussion has been going on the matter. So far, neither Putnam’s nor other defenses of Externalism proposed within this debate have actually succeeded in showing that the terms at stake (and their likes) are semantically on a par. Here I examine further options left to the externalist. I conclude that, still, none is a viable alternative for defending that Externalism applies to the mentioned terms (and their likes).

This chapter aims to correlate and analyse the regulations in place to ensure the rights of refugee children and their right to family reunification. Specific laws in force (albeit considered generally and a priori) that are purported to guarantee fundamental rights to refugee minors, in practice, lead to injustices. The existing laws serve the rights of unaccompanied refugee minors, while the rights of the accompanied ones remain comparatively unguarded. Moreover, due to the use (or abuse) of DNA testing, regulations in place to grant family reunification lead to the favourable treatment of children biologically related to their parents vs minors who are not. Additionally, if the two contexts are evaluated together, the considered regulations inadvertently create lose-lose situations for refugee minors without a biological family connection, raising additional ethical concerns. These resulting injustices seem even to head us towards the ethically challenging, provocative consequence that refugee minors may be better off without parents. The chapter then argues for the ethical revision of the relevant laws through a critical examination of the underlying assumptions, challenging, in particular, the existing concept of family. Doing so will contribute to safeguarding the best interests of refugee minors and guarantee them equal access to opportunities.

What kind of reference (if any) do terms such as “pencil,” “chair,” “television,” and so on have? On the matter, a de-bate between directly referential theorists and descriptiv-ist theorists is open. It is largely acknowledged that natural kind terms (such as “water,” “gold,” “tiger,” etc.) are directly referential expressions (cf. Putnam,1975). That is, they are expressions whose reference is determined by their refer-ents' nature, independent of whether we know or will ever know what this nature is. However, it does not seem like-wise convincing that all artifactual kind terms (like “pen-cil,” “chair,” “television,” etc.) semantically behave the same. Terms for artifactual kinds seem more likely to be subjected to a descriptivist view, that is, definable not by links to their extensions' nature but in terms of conjunctions or clusters of properties. In his celebrated “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” (1975), Hilary Putnam originated the mentioned debate by arguing that artifactual kind terms also refer directly. Thus, the discussion ultimately revolves around establishing whether artifactual and natural kind terms are both directly referential expressions. The authors engaged in this debate have tried to argue in favor of (or against) Putnam's proposal by highlighting the similarities (or differences) between nat-ural vis-à-vis artifactual kind words and their respective ref-erents. This paper aims to provide a thorough and reasoned overview of the debate at stake, pointing out trends and problems associated with each proposed account.

The “nature” of an artifact is often equated with its function. Clearly, an artifactual function must be an extrinsic property. This feature of functions has important implications on the semantics of artifactual kind terms: it enables us to vindicate that artifactual kind terms have an externalist semantics. Any alleged externalist theory, indeed, must show that the referents of the considered terms share a common nature (i.e., an extrinsic property), whether we know or could possibly ever know what that nature is. However, the state of the art shows that function is not enough to represent such “nature”: function does not exhaustively account for important phenomena that characterize artifacts and artifactual kinds, nor does it thoroughly define what they are. Thus, extending the scope of externalism to artifactual kind terms seems doomed to fail. Pace opposite views, it could even be argued that artifacts are a sub-class of social kinds. If so, not only social but also artifactual kind terms cannot refer externalistically, since their referents constitutively depend on human intentions and norms. Either way, externalism fails to apply to those kinds of terms.

Putnam’s suggestion of extending the scope of his semantic theory has opened an ongoing debate. The majority seem to agree with Putnam as long as he restricts his analysis to natural kind terms, whereas many doubts have arisen about whether or not it can be applied to artifactual kind terms as well. Specifically, this disagreement originated with the thought experiment that Putnam laid out in order to prove his controversial thesis. Here I analyze it in detail in order to evaluate whether it proves what it has been alleged to prove. Unlike the other authors engaged in the debate, I point out that this particular argument cannot demonstrate that artifactual words refer externalistically. I claim that, on closer inspection, Putnam’s thought experiment only shows that an artifactual term like ‘pencil’ can turn out to be a natural kind word, but, in the end, it tells us little about how our “actual” artifactual kind terms work. In order to make my point, I also bring out the two fundamental requirements that a genuine externalist argument about artifactual words ought to meet. Finally, I report, albeit briefly, the main externalist accounts in this respect, illustrating how none of them actually meet the challenge.