A Comparison of the Semantics of Natural Kind Terms and Artifactual Terms

Abstract

This paper aims to compare the semantics of natural kind terms and that of artifactual terms. To that end, we rely on the natural kind terms’ theory regarded as paradigmatic in contemporaneous semantics, the one put forward by Putnam, who sketched the extension of the semantics of natural kind terms to artifactual terms. In this paper we develop such extension concerning the reference of artifactual terms, although the reference fixing theory we advocate differs from that of Putnam’s. On the other hand, we propose a view on the meaning of these terms which conflicts with the one it would follow from extending to such terms Putnam’s view of meaning on natural kind terms.