ANALYSIS 67.

4 OCTOBER 2007

The contingencies of ambiguity

Ian Hacking

This note uses Joseph LaPorte’s (2004: 94–100) new look at Putnam’s
example of jade: (a) To illustrate the sheer contingencies of naming. (b) To
urge that the philosopher’s question, ‘What would (or should) we say if?’
is often trumped by, ‘What did we say, when?’ (c) To support Putnam’s
opinion that identity criteria for substances are ‘interest-relative’.
What follows is disproportionately dense in small facts, compared to
most analytic philosophy. The facts do not matter, qua facts. They illus-
trate down-to-earth possibilities. These include an elegant example of
Kripke’s observation that after a ‘baptism’, ‘real reference can shift to
another real reference’ (1980: 163) – and not just for proper names but for
names for kinds of substances. The examples remind us that reality is
richer than a priori possible worlds. They also lead to a valuable distinc-
tion that falls within the family of concepts that includes vagueness and
ambiguity.
Putnam drew attention to a gemstone with two distinct hidden
structures.
Although the Chinese do not recognize a difference, the term ‘jade’
applies to two minerals: jadeite and nephrite. Chemically, there is a
marked difference. Jadeite is a combination of sodium and aluminum.
Nephrite is made of calcium, magnesium, and iron. These two quite
different microstructures produce the same unique textural qualities!
(Putnam 1975: 241)
LaPorte (2004) looked into the history of jade. ‘Amazingly, jade met its
XYZ’ (2004: 95), referring to Putnam’s water look-alike. He points a
‘moral’ (2004: 100). I shall add thirteen vignettes to his report. Each ends
with an Observation, from which readers can draw their own morals. The
vignettes powerfully illustrate (a). I conclude with their application to (b)
and (c).
(1) Prehistory. Jade is found in Neolithic sites around the world,
with ample evidence of regional trade. Both nephrite and jadeite are
tough and very hard. Only Chinese, Maori and Mesoamerican (especially
Maya) civilizations discovered how to work jade into elaborate objects
of great cultural significance. Obs 1: Human beings have always loved
jade.
Analysis 67.4, October 2007, pp. 269–77. © Ian Hacking
270 ian hacking
01
(2) China. Putnam was correct about chemistry but misleading about
‘the Chinese’. Chinese has many names for kinds of jade. The generic term
is yu. It covers both nephrite and jadeite. The distinction between the two
is not just chemical. They feel different, jadeite being more ‘slippery’ than
nephrite; it is also harder and heavier. Classic jadeite is esteemed for its
deep green colour, but since impurities colour it, some superb pieces are
lavender, honey-yellow, or brownish-red. Chinese nephrite is predomi-
nantly creamy in colour (‘mutton-fat’). What is common to both is that
they are readily worked by abrasion (not carving) into exquisite shapes.
Obs 2: The extension of the name ‘yu’ can be specified as covering two
chemically distinct minerals, but it was determined by the workability of
the substances, their polished appearance, and a deep cultural tradition.
(3) The Americas 1569: baptism. The conquistadores found that
Mesoamericans valued jade more highly than gold. They despised the
cultural tradition, but did notice that jade was applied for pains in the side
and lower back, that Spanish medicine blamed on bad kidneys. So, accord-
ing to a study of Mesoamerican medicine (Monardes 1569; see OED, and
Meyer-Lübke 1905: 408) they named it piedra de ijada (ijada = flank of the
lower back). Hence French ‘éjade’, later ‘jade’, Italian ‘giade’, English
‘jade’, and so forth. Dog Latin: lapis nephriticus, stone good for the
kidneys. Mesoamerican jade was the mineral now called jadeite. Obs 3:
Jadeite was baptized ‘jade’, and the given name implied a theory about the
powers of the stone.
(4) Sweden 1758: Nephrite. Axel von Cronstedt (the geologist who
named nickel) renamed lapis nephriticus ‘Nephrit’ in Swedish. That
became the German scientific name when he was translated, 1780. It
entered A. G. Werner’s classic system (1791). The mineralogists probably,
but not certainly, had nephrite samples before them. ‘Nierenstein’ was
used in German much earlier, meaning stone good for the kidneys, along-
side its other meaning, kidney stone (calculus). In English ‘nephritic stone’
was common. The OED cites a text of 1794 defining jade as the ‘Nephrit
of Werner’. Obs 4: The name ‘nephrite’ is derived from a Latin name given
in the first instance to jadeite (Cf. Kripke, ‘real reference can shift to
another real reference’), and which retained its medical connotations
(contrary, perhaps, to a purely referential theory of names for natural
kinds).
(5) New Zealand 1777: the persistence of paradigms. The OED citation
for ‘green nephritic stone, or jadde’ is from Georg Forster’s account of his
father’s journeys as Captain Cook’s reporter on natural history. Maori did
marvellous work with nephrite, common on the South Island. Forster
describes it with admiration. It happens that the very piece of green
nephritic stone, in the citation by the OED, is a ceremonial Maori club,
#161 in the collection that Forster left to Oxford, now in the Pitt-Rivers
 the contingencies of ambiguity 271
01
Museum. Obs 5: Actual paradigms can be preserved for centuries, not by
deliberation, as the standard meter in Paris, but by historical flukes.
(6) China before 1784. Jade has been enormously important for Chinese
civilizations. The character ‘yu’ is one of the oldest signs in calligraphy; it
also connotes purity and beauty. For millennia, almost all Chinese jade
was nephrite. It is, however, probable that by the 17th century CE small
amounts of jadeite were in circulation, and much esteemed.1 Obs 6: For
very many centuries the generic Chinese name for jade applied almost
solely to nephrite.
(7) Burma 1784: The Qianlong emperor annexes northern Burma.
Bonanza! Jadeite was discovered in northern mountainous jungles and
exported via Yunnan to Pekin and the imperial court. New names evolved
to fit the new stuff.2 ‘Old-mine’ jadeite, geologically older, was wanted for
its lustre and translucency. The finest green became imperial jade.
Imperial-green old-mine jade is the best of all. The Qianlong emperor
adored jade and welcomed the stunning new stones. Although jadeite was
different from the familiar nephrite, and acquired its own battery of
specific names, it was taken to be the same generic stuff as nephrite, falling
within the extension of ‘yu’.3 Obs 7: In China, jadeite, when discovered,
was treated as the same generic gemstone as nephrite.
(8) France, 1846: Nephrite is analysed. ‘The generic name jade has been
given to different minerals’, but only ‘nephritic jade or oriental jade’, ‘has
been thought by mineralogists to constitute a distinct species.’ (Damour,
1846: 469.) Minerals were now being identified by their chemistry. Alexis

1
This is controversial, and there is money at work. A jadeite buffalo, auctioned for a
fortune over 30 years ago, was judged by experts to be from the Ming dynasty, which
ended 1644.
2 The new stuff was hard jade, ying yu; ancient jade accordingly became ruan yu, soft
jade. Yunnan jade: jadeite came through Yunnan, as opposed to Xinjiang jade, the
region where nephrite is mined. Some superb jadeite is called feicui, which also
means ‘kingfisher’. According to Xu Shen’s etymological dictionary, 102 CE, this
word was used for jewellery decorated with red (fei) and green (cui) feathers. It may
also have been used for the small amounts of jadeite in circulation before 1784, or
perhaps only for especially translucent green nephrite. The names go on. Red skin
(hong pi) is so called because it is reddish jadeite from the outside of large stones of
jadeite.
3
LaPorte disagrees. But in support of the claim that the Chinese had a problem with
jadeite, he cites only Chi Yun (2004: 189, n. 5), whose evidence, he agrees, is
equivocal. Indeed it may show that more jadeite was circulating before 1784 than
LaPorte admits. He cites many Westerners (post-1863) who express surprise that
jadeite was so readily accepted, but they write with the Western sensibility that, since
there are two distinct chemical substances, there ‘ought’ to have been a problem.
272 ian hacking
01
Damour made the definitive analysis of nephrite. Obs 8: What Putnam
called ‘microstructure’ became the criterion for identifying minerals only
during the 19th century.
(9) France, 1863: Jadeite is baptised ‘jadeite’. In 1860, French and
British armies sacked the Summer Palace. Many beautiful jadeite artefacts
were brought as loot to Paris and London. It was called ‘green jade’ [jade
vert] (Damour 1863: 861). Damour showed it was chemically different
from ‘white or oriental jade’. ‘It is appropriate to treat green jade as a
separate species, attached to the family of Wernerites. I propose to give it
the name jadeite [jadéite], in order to distinguish it from white jade ...’
(1863: 865). On the literary side, Édmond de Goncourt (1881, Vol. 2, 303)
makes no distinction in species between the milky white nephrite of China
(si laiteusement blanche), and the kingfisher green jadeite (si limpidement
vert d’eau de mer). Obs 9: In France, white jade (nephrite) and green jade
(jadeite) were seen as kinds of jade.
(10) Germany, 1875. A fascinating but obsessive monograph (Fischer
1875), has an exhaustive literature search4 for descriptions of jade and
similar substances such as jasper, going back to Moses. (There was once,
and may still be, some discussion of whether the circumcision stone used
in Exodus 4:25 was not flint but jade.) After the 16th century, Fischer’s
citations and quotations are legion, and he lists over 100 names given to
those substances, which he generically refers to as nephrite, though he is
well aware that Damour has chemically distinguished jadeite. He regards
‘jade’ as a noun in only French and English; this is surely because the
German nouns ‘Jade’ and ‘Jadeit’ (or, after the French, ‘Jadëit’), together
with Chinese jadeite art, entered Germany about the same time, around
1870. (The stolen stuff went first to Paris and London.) The philologist
Meyer-Lübke (1905) regards ‘jade’ as a French word. The 1908 Brockhaus
Konverstions-Lexikon entry for Jade is simply, ‘Handelname des
Nephrits’, Nephrit being the generic word for both kinds of jade. The
current Brockhaus says that ‘Jade’ is a non-scientific word used chiefly in
trade. Obs 10: The German language never had the opportunity to be
ambiguous with the German noun ‘Jade’.
(11) England 1889: Is jadeite jade? LaPorte cites an eminent English
mineralogist, whose article in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th
edn.) said that ‘jade’ should be restricted to nephrite. The author was then
71; he merely revised what he had published in the 1889 (9th) edition. Obs
11: In fin-de-siècle England, the meaning of ‘jade’ was not agreed.

4 Exhaustive? Of course not, but astonishing. Philologists cite the great Meyer-Lübke
(1905) as the source for the Mesoamerican etymology of ‘jade’, but there is Monar-
des 1569 in Fischer (1875: 84–85), and the claim, that I am unable to check, that
‘piedra de ijaada’ appears in an earlier book by Monardes, 1563 or 1565.
 the contingencies of ambiguity 273
01
(12) Hong Kong 1902: Britannia rules, but the jade market rules jade.
In the late 19th century, jadeite production took off – better transport etc.
The Empress Dowager (1835–1908) sets the pace with a sumptuous
collection. Britain leases Hong Kong, capital of the world jade market. The
main traders are rich Chinese. For them, the generic substance is yu,
spanning nephrite and the esteemed jadeite (with a hundred subspecies to
boot). Commerce dictates that the English will resolve their semantic
scruples and use ‘jade’ to mean yu, and especially jadeite. Obs 12: The
present meaning of ‘jade’ in English was determined by business interests,
not artistic or mineralogical ones.
(13) British Columbia 2007: Nature has the last laugh. It turns out that
most nephrite is in northern British Columbia, where it is mined in 20 ton
boulders. One Vancouver dealer already has enough downtown to satisfy
the world market for 200 years. He proposes selling it for floor tiles. The
Burmese jadeite mines and the B.C. nephrite mines are on opposite sides of
the globe, and are equally inhospitable to homo sapiens. The Canadian
mines can be worked only 60 days a year. Temple monuments recall the
prodigious numbers of top brass who died at the Burmese mines. Lord
knows how many navvies died from jungle scourges. No human being has
ever visited both the Canadian and the Asian sites. Obs 13: Tawmaw in
Myanmar, with its jadeite, and Dease Lake, B.C., near nephrite moun-
tains, are the closest analogies on this planet to Putnam’s Earth, with
H2O, and Twin-Earth, with XYZ.
These summary facts supplement LaPorte in numerous ways, but differ
from him chiefly at (7). He holds that in China there was a real question,
after 1784, whether the stone from Burma should count as yu. Scholars
may discover there was a profound argument, but it does appear that the
Qianlong emperor (who ruled until 1796) loved the stuff, and the question
of whether it was yu did not arise. Moreover I find no evidence of serious
debate about ‘jade’ in France after 1865 – only in Britain.
LaPorte describes the British situation as one in which the name ‘jade’
was vague. He states that ‘yu’ was vague in China until its usage vis-à-
vis jadeite was established. He also holds that there was a ‘hidden vague-
ness’ in the term before jadeite came on the scene. ‘Hidden vagueness in
a word’s application that is later exposed like this with more informa-
tion is known as open texture’ (2004: 97). I avoid the debate on how to
use Waismann 1945, but suggest that what follows is relevant. (On a
contrast between actual vagueness and open texture, see Waismann
1968: 97.)
Here are descriptions that avoid LaPorte’s word ‘vague’ by defining two
more specific terms, ‘indeterminate’ and ‘undetermined’. The former refers
to an experienced and exposed ambiguity in the use of a term at a time
within a linguistic community. The latter applies if we see that such an
274 ian hacking
01
ambiguity might have been experienced in a historical community, not just
as a logical possibility, but as a real historical possibility.
Case 1, London. The extension of the English term ‘jade’ was indeter-
minate between 1870 and say 1914, because there was an actual felt
ambiguity in the relevant British community, and people had to determine
which way to go. In 1770 the extension was undetermined, in the way that
the outcome of a sea battle is undetermined until it has been fought.
Nothing up to 1770 could possibly have predicted, let alone determined,
how English-speaking mineralogists would react after two chemically
different but otherwise similar types of gemstone came on the market.
(Obviously, undetermined is far stronger than Quine’s underdetermined.)
A clarification is called for. The extension of a term is undetermined at
a time, with respect to alternatives, only if then, or at a later time, a real
ambiguity arises within one community, or two sub-communities diverge
over the application of the term. An extension is not undetermined if it is
merely logically possible that an ambiguity should emerge, or two sub-
communities should diverge. When David Bloor (1986: 387) wrote that
‘Every classification that we accomplish is precarious, essentially incom-
plete and under threat’, he clearly thought that splittings were far closer to
daily life than I do. This is a constant theme of Bloor 1983. Many
scenarios that Bloor would regard as possible, seem to me only logically
possible. The full-blown study of the mere logical possibility of sub-
community splits, is of course due to Kripke (1982). When I speak of the
extension of a term being undetermined, I do not refer to Kripke-Bloor
logical possibilities.
Case 2, Paris. Damour described jadeite and nephrite as two species of
jade. A casual search has turned up no French chemists or mineralogists or
collectors who had the British worries. They may have thought that the
perfidious English are at it again – quibbling about words!5 It is improb-
able that the French noun ‘jade’ was ever indeterminate. In 1770 Paris, as
in London, it was of course undetermined whether the noun would come
to seem ambiguous when jadeite was brought to Paris and analysed.
Case 3, China. In 1770 the extension of the term ‘yu’ was probably
undetermined vis-à-vis jadeite. If LaPorte’s version of events after 1784 is
correct, then the extension was indeterminate until ‘the Chinese [came] to

5 There is a parallel with measles in almost the same period. After German clinicians
had distinguished measles from what we now call rubella, French medicine took
existing terminology one way, without ambiguity or equivocation, while English
physicians took the same names in a different way, urging that there was a terrible
ambiguity. See Hacking (forthcoming b), where the stories of the names of such
diseases as gout, multiple sclerosis (Putnam’s longtime example), measles, and
Down’s syndrome further illustrate the contingencies of naming.
 the contingencies of ambiguity 275
01
accept jadeite as true jade’ (2004: 96). If my version of events is correct,
there was never any question, never any perceived ambiguity, and the term
was never indeterminate.
The facts do not matter to anyone: I could well be wrong about French
and Chinese. The distinction that the stories illustrate, between being
undetermined and being indeterminate, does matter to the philosophy of
language and to epistemology.
Having said enough about (a), the contingencies of naming, let us turn
to point (b), about the philosopher’s question, ‘What would (or should) we
say if?’
LaPorte uses the example of jade to argue against Putnam’s uses of
Twin-Earth. When Putnam was considering logically possible worlds,
‘what we would say’ was moot: since possible worlds are stipulations,
perhaps you can stipulate what you say about them. Later, however,
Putnam (1981: 23) wrote of ordinary possibilities, e.g., what ‘one should
say, if such a planet [as Twin-Earth] is ever discovered’. LaPorte uses jade
as a quasi-counterexample to Putnam on Twin-Earth. Obs 13 suggests that
the example is well-taken: the best source of jadeite on earth is metaphori-
cal light years away from the best source of nephrite. But the entire
sequence of observations shows how utterly contingent – and unpredict-
able – are our practices of naming.
Because of the sheer contingency we have no idea what we would say, let
alone should say, if a Twin-Earth were ever to be discovered. If philoso-
phers were to pay a little more attention to the real-life historical contin-
gencies of language use, they would be less inclined to construct zealously
over-confident arguments about what we would or should say, if.
Take a far less ambitious case of would-say-iffery. On the very same
page that he gave us jade, Putnam wrote that
if H2O and XYZ had both been plentiful on Earth, then we would
have had a case similar to the jadeite/nephrite case: it would have been
correct to say that there were two kinds of ‘water’. And instead of
saying that ‘the stuff on Twin Earth turned out not to really be water’,
we would have to say ‘it turned out to be the XYZ kind of water.
(Putnam 1975: 241, his italics.)
In fact people did not say that the stuff in B.C. turned out to be ‘the
nephrite kind of jade’; they said that it turned out to be nephrite. But
that is just a matter of colloquial English. More importantly, our history
of contingencies makes plain that there was very little that ‘we would
have to say’ when B.C. jade was shown to be nephrite. The French,
British, and Germans appear to have said different types of thing, in
their respective languages, when nephrite and jadeite were chemically
distinguished.
276 ian hacking
01
In a quite different respect, jade furnishes powerful support for a far
more fundamental thesis of Putnam about natural kinds and the identity of
substances, point (c). Interests trump metaphysics.
Few natural-kind philosophers today would count jade among the
natural kinds, but in the ordinary way of speaking it has a semantics
similar to that of common substances. Two liquids bear the same-liquid
relation if ‘they agree in important physical properties’ (Putnam 1975:
238). This works for solids too. Putnam continued: ‘Importance is an
interest-relative notion. Normally the “important” properties of a liquid
or solid, etc., are the ones that are structurally important.’ For jade, other
interests dominate: aesthetics, ease of working into exquisite objects, and,
as in Obs 12, money.
In a parallel context Putnam asks if two other substances are the same
substance, and answers: ‘Well, it may depend on our interests. (This is the
sort of talk Kripke hates!)’ (1990: 68). Yes indeed. Philosophers who write
about the ‘Kripke-Putnam theory’ have too little noticed that Putnam’s
theory, about natural kinds and their names, is not the same as Kripke’s
(Hacking forthcoming a).

Collège de France
11 place Marcelin Berthelot
75213 Paris cedex 05, France
ian.hacking@college-de-france.fr

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Does thought imply ought?

Krister Bykvist & Anandi Hattiangadi

It is widely held that, for belief, correctness is truth (Boghossian 1989,

2003; Engel 2001; Gibbard 2003, 2005; Shah 2003; Velleman 2000;
Wedgwood 2002, 2007a, 2007b). This is often captured by the more
precise claim that:
(1) For any p: the belief that p is correct if and only if p is true.
On the face of it, (1) looks trivial, particularly if we interpret ‘correct’ as
synonymous with ‘true’ and take ‘belief’ to refer to the proposition
believed. However, as proponents of the thesis take pains to point out, the
claim is not trivial: ‘correct’ is interpreted as a normative term, not
synonymous with ‘true’, but as concerning what one ought to do (Gibbard
2003, 2005; Boghossian 2003; Wedgwood 2002); and it is applied to the
psychological state or act of believing, not the proposition believed (Wedg-
wood 2002: 267). Moreover, (1) or its close cousins are said to be consti-
tutive of belief.
Given the insistence on the interpretation of ‘correct’ as a normative
term, (1) can be restated more clearly as follows:
(2) For any S, p: S ought to believe that p if and only if p is true.
In this paper, we shall argue that the hypothesis that belief is constitutively
normative is false. In the next section, we will briefly present the view that