Character, proper names, and Frege’s Puzzle

MILLIANISM and DESCRIPTIVISM are without question the two most prominent views with respect to the semantics of proper names. However, debates between MILLIANS and DESCRIPTIVISTS have tended to focus on a fairly narrow set of linguistic data and an equally narrow set of problems, mainly how to solve with Frege's puzzle and how to guarantee rigidity. In this article, the author focuses on a set of data that has been given less attention in these debates—namely, so-called predicative uses, bound uses, and shifted uses of names. The author first shows that these data points seem to favor a DESCRIPTIVIST view over a MILLIAN view, but the author then introduces an alternative view of names that not only provides a simple and elegant way of dealing with the data, but also retains rigidity without becoming subject to the problems raised by Frege's puzzle. This is the view that names are variables, also called VARIABILISM.

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A Puzzle about Logical Analysis

Philosophia ◽

10.1007/s11406-021-00405-8 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Stefan Rinner

Keyword(s):

Complete Solution ◽

Definite Descriptions ◽

Logical Analysis ◽

Frege’S Puzzle ◽

Main Thesis ◽

Frege's Puzzle ◽

Belief Ascriptions

AbstractIn this paper, I will present a puzzle for logical analyses, such as Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions and Recanati’s analysis of ‘that’-clauses. I will argue that together with Kripke’s disquotational principles connecting sincere assent and belief such non-trivial logical analyses lead to contradictions. Following this, I will compare the puzzle about logical analysis with Frege’s puzzle about belief ascriptions. We will see that although the two puzzles do have similarities, the solutions to Frege’s puzzle cannot be applied mutatis mutandis to the puzzle about logical analysis. Hence, to say it with Kripke, the main thesis of this paper is that the puzzle is a puzzle. A complete solution to the puzzle promises a better understanding of both logical analyses and belief ascriptions.

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Frege's Puzzle.

The Philosophical Review ◽

10.2307/2185233 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 96 (3) ◽

pp. 455 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Graeme Forbes ◽

Nathan Salmon

Keyword(s):

Frege’S Puzzle ◽

Frege's Puzzle

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Kripke on Epistemic and Metaphysical Possibility

Analytic Philosophy in America ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691160726.003.0007 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Scott Soames

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

A Posteriori ◽

Singular Proposition ◽

Metaphysical Possibility ◽

Frege’S Puzzle ◽

Frege's Puzzle ◽

Necessary A Posteriori ◽

Errors And Confusions

This chapter discusses Saul Kripke’s treatment of the necessary a posteriori and concomitant distinction between epistemic and metaphysical possibility. It extracts the enduring lessons of his treatment of these matters and disentangles them from errors and confusions that mar some of his most important discussions. It argues that there are two Kripkean routes to the necessary a posteriori—one correct and philosophically far-reaching; the other incorrect, philosophically misleading, and the source of damaging errors that persist to this day. It connects two false principles involved in the second, unsuccessful, route to the necessary a posteriori with the plausible and potentially correct idea that believing a singular proposition that o is F always involves also believing a richer more descriptively informative proposition in which some further property plays a role in the agent’s thoughts about o. It explains why this idea will not save the failed second route to the necessary a posteriori and suggests that it may help reconcile Kripke’s insights with the lessons of Frege’s puzzle.

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Why is Frege’s Puzzle Still Puzzling ?

Frege: Sense and Reference One Hundred Years Later ◽

10.1007/978-94-011-0411-1_12 ◽

1995 ◽

pp. 151-168

Author(s):

Eros Corazza ◽

Jerome Dokič

Keyword(s):

Frege’S Puzzle ◽

Frege's Puzzle

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Patterns, noise, and Beliefs

Principia an international journal of epistemology ◽

10.5007/1808-1711.2019v23n1p19 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 23 (1) ◽

pp. 19-51

Author(s):

Lajos Ludovic Brons

Keyword(s):

Empirical Evidence ◽

Gettier Cases ◽

Frege’S Puzzle ◽

Daniel Dennett ◽

Belief Reports ◽

Frege's Puzzle ◽

Principle Of Charity

In “Real Patterns” Daniel Dennett developed an argument about the reality of beliefs on the basis of an analogy with patterns and noise. Here I develop Dennett’s analogy into an argument for descriptivism, the view that belief reports do no specify belief contents but merely describe what someone believes, and show that this view is also supported by empirical evidence. No description can do justice to the richness and specificity or “noisiness” of what someone believes, and the same belief can be described by different sentences or propositions (which is illustrated by Dennett’s analogy, some Gettier cases, and Frege’s puzzle), but in some contexts some of these competing descriptions are misleading or even false. Faithful (or truthful) description must be guided by a principle (or principles) related to the principle of charity: belief descriptions should not attribute irrationality to the believer or have other kinds of “deviant” implications.

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Why Definite Descriptions Really are Referring Terms

Grazer Philosophische Studien ◽

10.1163/18756735-068001003 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 68 (1) ◽

pp. 45-79

Author(s):

John-Michael Kuczynski

Keyword(s):

Definite Descriptions ◽

Referring Expressions ◽

Frege’S Puzzle ◽

Complex Demonstratives ◽

Frege's Puzzle ◽

King Of France

According to Russell, '... the phi ...' means: 'exactly one object has phi and ... that object ...'. Strawson pointed out that, if somebody asked how many kings of France there were, it would be deeply inappropriate to respond by saying '... the king of France ...': the respondent appears to be presupposing the very thing that, under the circumstances, he ought to be asserting. But it would seem that if Russell's theory were correct, the respondent would be asserting exactly what he was asked to assert. So Russell's theory wrongly predicts that the respondent's answer will be appropriate. Russellians deal with this by saying that this anti-Russellian intuition embodies our reaction not to what is semantically encoded in the respondent's words, but to what is pragmatically imparted by them. So Russell's theory is correct: the fact that it appears wrong is due to the distorting effects of pragmatics. In this paper I show that pragmatic phenomena cannot possibly be responsible for the just mentioned anti-Russellian intuition. No matter how hard we try to put the blame on pragmatics, Russell's theory still falls short. It follows that defi nite descriptions really are what they appear to be: referring expressions. I argue that defi nite descriptions are complex demonstratives; and, within that framework, I deal with cases where defi nite descriptions appear to be functioning non-referentially. I also solve Frege's puzzle within the framework defi ned by my treatment of defi nite descriptions taken in conjunction with Kripke-Kaplan semantics.

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