La teoría autónoma del sentido de Katz y la determinación de la referencia de términos de clases naturales

Abstract

In this article, the author exposes the autonomous theory of sense of Katz as an alternative to fregean intensionalism. According to the author, Katz argues that fregean intensionalism  has the problem of the too weak restriction and this leads him to indeterminacy of meaning. A key step to get rid this problem is, according to Katz, the independence between the theory of meaning from the theory of reference. However, despite the rejection of fregean intensionalism, Katz’s proposal acquires new problems to determine the reference of natural kind terms. Cohen notes that the only alternative to explain successfully how to determine the reference of these terms is accepting that the actual definitions do all the work. But accepting this leads us to conclude that the meaning of a term t does not necessary to fall in the range of t. Katz can’t accept this conclusion, because he argues that sense is necessary but not sufficient for reference. Therefore, the author argues that the strategy of Katz fails when trying to determine the reference of natural kind terms.