Descriptive Names and Singular Thought

This chapter is concerned with an apparent disagreement between Gareth Evans (1982) and David Kaplan (1989) with regard to the capacities of names introduced into the language by describing their referents. The question at issue is whether such expressions are potential sources of novel singular thought. While Evans’ response is an emphatic “no,” Kaplan’s response is an equally emphatic “yes.” The chapter attempts to resolve (or rather dissolve) this apparent dispute by suggesting that the two philosophers have importantly different phenomena in mind when they talk of “thoughts”—including (and in particular) singular thoughts. Whereas Evans construes thoughts as mental states, Kaplan construes them as semantic contents. Before concluding, it argues for the superiority of the proposed resolution of the Evans/Kaplan debate over that of Francois Recanati (2012), who invokes his Mental File Framework in an attempt to reconcile the seemingly contrary views of Evans and Kaplan.

The Predicate of Existence

Kant famously declared that existence is not a (real) predicate. This famous dictum has been seen as echoed in the doctrine of the founders of modern logic, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, that existence isn’t a first-order property possessed by individuals, but rather a second-order property expressed by the existential quantifier. Russell in 1905 combined this doctrine with his new theory of descriptions and declared the paradox of nonexistence to be resolved without resorting to his earlier distinction between existence and being. In recent years, however, logicians and philosophers like Saul Kripke, David Kaplan, and Nathan Salmon have argued that there is no defensible reason to deny that existence is a property of individuals. Kant’s dictum has also been re-evaluated, the result being that the paradox of nonexistence has not, after all, disappeared. Yet it’s not clear how exactly Kripke et al. propose to resolve the paradox.

Fellow Travelers

A synoptic account of the ontology of death developed in the book is offered, according to which the dead (and the unborn) are seen to be nonexistent objects that possess being but lack existence, and that retain their essential natures as living beings that are now no longer actually alive. This approach has points of contact with the approaches offered by several other philosophers, only one of whom, however, is engaged in the philosophy of death, which helps to confirm the thesis that philosophers of death have failed to take into account the insights achieved in other branches of philosophy. The approach taken by each of these “fellow travelers”—Niall Connolly, Timothy Williamson, Nathan Salmon, Kit Fine, David Kaplan, Derek Parfit—is considered, in turn, and the places where there is agreement, and also disagreement, with the views advanced in this study are delineated.

Kaplan’s Counterexample to Quine’s Theorem

In his article “Opacity” (1986), David Kaplan propounded a counterexample to the thesis, defended by Quine and known as Quine’s Theorem, that establishes the illegitimacy of quantifying from outside into a position not open to substitution. He ingeniously built his counterexample using Quine’s own philosophical material and novel devices, arc quotes and $entences. The present article offers detailed analysis and critical discussion of Kaplan’s counterexample and proposes a reasonable reformulation of Quine’s Theorem that bypasses both this counterexample and another, in the author’s opinion, more persuasive counterexample, also discussed in this paper and somehow implicit in “Opacity”, which involves Russellian propositions instead of the Quinean apparatus.

The problem of cognitive significance - a solution and a critique

In this paper I will deal with the solution to the problem of cognitive significance offered by the so-called new theorists of reference, as well as with the critique of that solution given by Howard Wettstein. I will claim that the answer to this critique provided by John Perry is not sufficiently convincing. First, I will clarify some relevant concepts in order to present the problem of cognitive significance in a clear manner. Then I will expose the solution to the problem offered by Perry and David Kaplan. After that, I will present Wettstein?s critique of that solution. Subsequently, I will also analyze Perry?s attempt to defend against this critique. Finally, I will discuss the extent to which Perry?s attempt is successful. It will be shown that it is significantly not so.

Retaining a belief

I examine several views of belief retention in relation to the data given by David Kaplan concerning the case of Rip Van Winkle who slept for twenty years thinking that he had only slept for one day, and argue that none of these views are satisfactory, including Kaplan?s character/content framework. I then propose a view of belief retention which is in line with how the subject represents the world from her first-person cognitive perspective.

Indexicals, fiction, and perspective

David Kaplan elaborated a so-called two-step method for the analysis of indexical expressions. In the first step of the method, the content of indexical sentences is determined with respect to a particular collection of contextual parameters. The second step of the method identifies an actual or counterfactual circumstance with respect to which it is possible to ask for the truth values of sentence contents. In some cases of language use, however, the two-step method cannot be applied in its original form. In fictional discourses, for example, indexical sentences seem to shift their content. Truth Perspectivism is a Kaplanian view that conceives the phenomenon of content-shift as an effect of perspectival operators. It is argued in this paper that Truth Perspectivism has some counterintuitive consequences. For this reason, an alternative view is proposed that is able to explain the underlying mechanism of content-shift in a less controversial way. This alternative view is introduced here under the label Meaning Perspectivism.