ABSTRACT
Putnam is known for having demonstrated the existence of a new form of context-dependence, namely that which characterizes natural kind terms. A term like 'water' or 'tiger' is conventionally associated with a stereotype, i.e. a cluster of properties known to any competent user of the language. Putnam's twin-Earth thought-experiment has the same structure. According to Putnam, the predicate 'water' means something like: 'same-L[iquid] as the transparent, odorless, thirst-quenching stuff to be found in lakes and rivers in the local environment', or more simply 'same-L as that'. 'Water', therefore, has an indexical component, Putnam says. Yet there is another form of context-sensitivity in play, which Putnam's ostensive definitions do not properly capture: the dimension of similarity itself is not given, but contextually determined. On the contextualist picture, words are not primitively associated with abstract 'conditions of application', constituting their conventional meaning. One particularly important factor in the contextual variation is the relevant 'contrast set'.
