Well, ‘left’ means ‘right’ and ‘right’ means ‘left’, right?
Yes, as far as the literal spatial meanings are concerned. (Everything else is as in English: right-wing parties are conservative, left-continuous functions means the same as in English as they traditionally draw the x axis the other way round, left dislocation in their grammatical terminology means you move a phrase to the beginning of the sentence—because (even if I’m not showing that in the, er..., transliteration I’m using, they write left (right) to right (left)), etc.)
I don’t see how it would justify translating ‘left’ as ‘left’.
Well, if you asked someone living before parity violation was discovered who can’t see you what they meant by “left”, they could have answered, say, “the side where most people have their hearts”, or “the side other than that where most people have the hand they usually use to write”, and those would be true of left on the other planet, too.
If you show the twin-earther your left hand they would say “it’s your right hand”.
And if you gave a Putnamian twin-earther nothing but H2O to drink for a day, they’d still be thirsty (and possibly even worse, depending on the details of Putnam’s thought experiment).
“Right” has several meanings and can be analysed as several different words: “right.1“ means “conservative” (identical to “right.1”), “right.2” means “at the end of a sentence” (identical to “right.2”), “right.3“ means “correct” (identical to “right.3”) while “right.4” means “left”, i.e. opposite to “right.4”. Historically they were the same word which acquired metaphorical meanings because certain contingent facts, but now practically we have distinct homonyms and would better specify which is the one we are talking about.
Well, if you asked someone living before parity violation was discovered who can’t see you what they meant by “left”, they could have answered, say, “the side where most people have their hearts”, or “the side other than that where most people have the hand they usually use to write”, and those would be true of left on the other planet, too.
They can answer that after parity violation was discovered, even if they could see us, and it would still be true. Those are true sentences about “left” or “left”, but not complete descriptions of their meaning. When I ask you what you mean by “bus”, you can truthfully answer that it’s “a vehicle used for mass transportation of people” and another person can say the same about “train”, but that doesn’t imply that your “bus” is synonymous to the other person’s “train”.
Also don’t forget to translate (or italicise) other words. “Most people have hearts on the left” is true as well as “most people have hearts on the left”, but “most people have hearts on the left” or “most people have hearts on the left” are false. (If “people” is used to denote the populations of both mirror worlds then all given sentences are false.)
And if you gave a Putnamian twin-earther nothing but H2O to drink for a day, they’d still be thirsty (and possibly even worse, depending on the details of Putnam’s thought experiment).
Is it really the case? I am not much familiar with Putnam, but I had thought that XYZ was supposed to be indistinguishable from H2O by any accessible means.
“Right” has several meanings and can be analysed as several different words: “right.1“ means “conservative” (identical to “right.1”), “right.2” means “at the end of a sentence” (identical to “right.2”), “right.3“ means “correct” (identical to “right.3”) while “right.4” means “left”, i.e. opposite to “right.4”. Historically they were the same word which acquired metaphorical meanings because certain contingent facts, but now practically we have distinct homonyms and would better specify which is the one we are talking about.
This assumes connotations and denotations can be perfectly separated, whereas they are so entangled that connotations pop up even in contexts which aren’t obviously related to language. An example I’ve read about is that The Great Wave off Kanagawa evokes in speakers of left-to-right languages (such as English) a different feeling than the Japanese-speaking painter originally intended, and watching it in a mirror would fix that. (Well, it does for me, at least.)
(In the following, by ‘person/people’ I mean the population of both planets—or more generally any sapient beings, by ‘human’ I mean that of this planet, and by ‘human’ that of the other planet. And unfortunately I’ll have to use boldface for emphasis because italics is already used for the other purpose.)
They can answer that after parity violation was discovered, even if they could see us, and it would still be true.
They could, but they wouldn’t need to. After parity violation, they could give an actual definition by describing details of the weak interactions; and if they could see us, they could just stick out their left hand. But if someone didn’t know about P-violation and couldn’t see us, the only ‘definitions’ they could possibly give would be ones based on said contingent facts. Hence, for all beliefs of such a human about left there’s a corresponding belief of such a human about left, and vice versa, and the only things that distinguish them are outside their heads (except that the hemisphere lateralizations are the other way round than each other, but an algorithm stays the same if you flip the computer, provided it doesn’t use weak interactions.)
Is it really the case? I am not much familiar with Putnam, but I had thought that XYZ was supposed to be indistinguishable from H2O by any accessible means.
Well, if he actually specified that you couldn’t possibly tell XYZ from H2O even carrying stuff from one planet to another, then the scenario is much more blue-tentacley than I had thought, and I take back the whole “deliberately missing the point of Putnam’s experiment” thing this subthread is about. FWIW, I seem to recall that he said that there are different conditions on the two planets such that H2O would be unwaterlike on Twin Earth and XYZ would be unwaterlike on Earth, but I’m not sure this is a later interpretation by someone else.
But if someone didn’t know about P-violation and couldn’t see us, the only ‘definitions’ they could possibly give would be ones based on said contingent facts.
That’s an unfortunate fact about impossibility to faithfully communicate the meaning of some terms in certain circumstances, not about the meaning itself.
Yes, as far as the literal spatial meanings are concerned. (Everything else is as in English: right-wing parties are conservative, left-continuous functions means the same as in English as they traditionally draw the x axis the other way round, left dislocation in their grammatical terminology means you move a phrase to the beginning of the sentence—because (even if I’m not showing that in the, er..., transliteration I’m using, they write left (right) to right (left)), etc.)
Well, if you asked someone living before parity violation was discovered who can’t see you what they meant by “left”, they could have answered, say, “the side where most people have their hearts”, or “the side other than that where most people have the hand they usually use to write”, and those would be true of left on the other planet, too.
And if you gave a Putnamian twin-earther nothing but H2O to drink for a day, they’d still be thirsty (and possibly even worse, depending on the details of Putnam’s thought experiment).
“Right” has several meanings and can be analysed as several different words: “right.1“ means “conservative” (identical to “right.1”), “right.2” means “at the end of a sentence” (identical to “right.2”), “right.3“ means “correct” (identical to “right.3”) while “right.4” means “left”, i.e. opposite to “right.4”. Historically they were the same word which acquired metaphorical meanings because certain contingent facts, but now practically we have distinct homonyms and would better specify which is the one we are talking about.
They can answer that after parity violation was discovered, even if they could see us, and it would still be true. Those are true sentences about “left” or “left”, but not complete descriptions of their meaning. When I ask you what you mean by “bus”, you can truthfully answer that it’s “a vehicle used for mass transportation of people” and another person can say the same about “train”, but that doesn’t imply that your “bus” is synonymous to the other person’s “train”.
Also don’t forget to translate (or italicise) other words. “Most people have hearts on the left” is true as well as “most people have hearts on the left”, but “most people have hearts on the left” or “most people have hearts on the left” are false. (If “people” is used to denote the populations of both mirror worlds then all given sentences are false.)
Is it really the case? I am not much familiar with Putnam, but I had thought that XYZ was supposed to be indistinguishable from H2O by any accessible means.
This assumes connotations and denotations can be perfectly separated, whereas they are so entangled that connotations pop up even in contexts which aren’t obviously related to language. An example I’ve read about is that The Great Wave off Kanagawa evokes in speakers of left-to-right languages (such as English) a different feeling than the Japanese-speaking painter originally intended, and watching it in a mirror would fix that. (Well, it does for me, at least.)
(In the following, by ‘person/people’ I mean the population of both planets—or more generally any sapient beings, by ‘human’ I mean that of this planet, and by ‘human’ that of the other planet. And unfortunately I’ll have to use boldface for emphasis because italics is already used for the other purpose.)
They could, but they wouldn’t need to. After parity violation, they could give an actual definition by describing details of the weak interactions; and if they could see us, they could just stick out their left hand. But if someone didn’t know about P-violation and couldn’t see us, the only ‘definitions’ they could possibly give would be ones based on said contingent facts. Hence, for all beliefs of such a human about left there’s a corresponding belief of such a human about left, and vice versa, and the only things that distinguish them are outside their heads (except that the hemisphere lateralizations are the other way round than each other, but an algorithm stays the same if you flip the computer, provided it doesn’t use weak interactions.)
Well, if he actually specified that you couldn’t possibly tell XYZ from H2O even carrying stuff from one planet to another, then the scenario is much more blue-tentacley than I had thought, and I take back the whole “deliberately missing the point of Putnam’s experiment” thing this subthread is about. FWIW, I seem to recall that he said that there are different conditions on the two planets such that H2O would be unwaterlike on Twin Earth and XYZ would be unwaterlike on Earth, but I’m not sure this is a later interpretation by someone else.
That’s an unfortunate fact about impossibility to faithfully communicate the meaning of some terms in certain circumstances, not about the meaning itself.