Fregean Sense

The thesis that agents should calibrate their beliefs in the face of higher-order evidence—i.e., should adjust their first-order beliefs in response to evidence suggesting that the reasoning underlying those beliefs is faulty—is sometimes thought to be in tension with Bayesian approaches to belief update: in order to obey Bayesian norms, it's claimed, agents must remain steadfast in the face of higher-order evidence. But I argue that this claim is incorrect. In particular, I motivate a minimal constraint on a reasonable treatment (...) of the evolution of self-locating beliefs over time and show that calibrationism is compatible with any generalized Bayesian approach that respects this constraint. I then use this result to argue that remaining steadfast isn't the response to higher-order evidence that maximizes expected accuracy. (shrink)

We draw attention to a series of implicit assumptions that have structured the debate about Frege’s Puzzle. Once these assumptions are made explicit, we rely on them to show that if one focuses exclusively on the issues raised by Frege cases, then one obtains a powerful consideration against a fine-grained conception of propositional-attitude content. In light of this consideration, a form of Russellianism about content becomes viable.

I here discuss two problems facing Russellian act-type theories of propositions, and argue that Fregean act-type theories are better equipped to deal with them. The first relates to complex singular terms like '2+2', which turn out not to pose any special problem for Fregeans at all, whereas Soames' theory currently has no satisfactory way of dealing with them (particularly, with such "mixed" propositions as the proposition that 2+2 is greater than 3). Admittedly, one possibility stands out as the most promising (...) one, but it requires that the Russellian treat complex properties as constituents of propositions. This leads to the second major problem for Russellians: that of proliferating propositions. I show how the most direct solution to this problem, that of rejecting complex predicative propositional constituents is available to Fregeans but very implausible for Russellians, since this virtually means rejecting complex properties. (shrink)

Among the virtues of relationist approaches to Frege’s puzzle is that they put us in a position to outline structural features of the puzzle that were only implicit in earlier work. In particular, they allow us to frame questions about the relation between the explanatory roles of sense and sameness of sense. In this paper, I distinguish a number of positions about that relation which have not been clearly distinguished. This has a few pay-offs. It allows us to shed light (...) on recent controversies about the ‘essential indexical’, and it also allows us to see what’s at stake between relationists and their opponents. When we see what’s at stake, we can see that we have reason to adopt an account of cognitive significance that incorporates elements of both relationist and Fregean approaches. (shrink)

Frege's Puzzle is a founding problem in analytic philosophy. It lies at the intersection of central topics in the philosophy of language and mind: the theory of reference, the nature of propositional attitudes, the nature of semantic theorizing, the relation between semantics and pragmatics, etc. This chapter is an overview of the puzzle and of the space of contemporary approaches to it.

A central dispute in understanding Frege’s philosophy concerns how the sense of a complex expression relates to the senses of its component expressions. According to one reading, the sense of a complex expression is a whole built from the senses of the component expressions. On this interpretation, Frege is an early proponent of structured propositions. A rival reading says that senses compose by functional application: the sense of a complex expression is the value of the function denoted by its functional (...) component for the arguments denoted by its remaining components. I argue that two non-negotiable Fregean theses entail that senses compose by functional application. One thesis is that referents compose by functional application. The other thesis is that an expression in an indirect context refers to its customary sense. (shrink)

Goodman and Lederman (2020) argue that the traditional Fregean strategy for preserving the validity of Leibniz’s Law of substitution fails when confronted with apparent counterexamples involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs. We argue, on the contrary, that the Fregean strategy succeeds and that Goodman and Lederman’s argument misfires.

David Chalmers’ two-dimensionalism is an ambitious philosophical program that aims to “ground” or “construct” Fregean meanings and restore “the golden triangle” of apriority, necessity, and meaning that Kripke seemingly broke. This paper aims to examine critically what Chalmers’ theory can in reality achieve. It is argued that the theory faces severe challenges. There are some gaps in the overall arguments, and the reasoning is in some places somewhat circular. Chalmers’ theory is effectively founded on certain strong philosophical assumptions. It is (...) concluded that it is unclear whether the theory can deliver all it promises. (shrink)

In this paper, I revisit Frege's theory of sense and reference in the constructive setting of the meaning explanations of type theory, extending and sharpening a program–value analysis of sense and reference proposed by Martin-Löf building on previous work of Dummett. I propose a computational identity criterion for senses and argue that it validates what I see as the most plausible interpretation of Frege's equipollence principle for both sentences and singular terms. Before doing so, I examine Frege's implementation of his (...) theory of sense and reference in the logical framework of Grundgesetze, his doctrine of truth values, and views on sameness of sense as equipollence of assertions. (shrink)

We show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Frege’s distinction between sense and reference does not reconcile a classical logic of identity with apparent counterexamples to it involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs.

Fregeanism and Relationism are competing families of solutions to Frege’s Puzzle, and by extension, competing theories of propositional representation. My aim is to clarify what is at stake between them by characterizing and evaluating a Relationist argument. Relationists claim that it is cognitively possible for distinct token propositional attitudes to be, in a sense, qualitatively indistinguishable: to differ in no intrinsic representational features. The idea of an ‘intrinsic representational feature’ is not, however, made especially clear in the argument. I clarify (...) it here and, having done so, offer reason to doubt the argument. This will put us in a position to draw some lessons about the relation between object-directed and representation-internal aspects of cognitive significance. (shrink)

The new theory of reference has won popularity. However, a number of noted philosophers have also attempted to reply to the critical arguments of Kripke and others, and aimed to vindicate the description theory of reference. Such responses are often based on ingenious novel kinds of descriptions, such as rigidified descriptions, causal descriptions, and metalinguistic descriptions. This prolonged debate raises the doubt whether different parties really have any shared understanding of what the central question of the philosophical theory of reference (...) is: what is the main question to which descriptivism and the causal-historical theory have presented competing answers. One aim of the paper is to clarify this issue. The most influential objections to the new theory of reference are critically reviewed. Special attention is also paid to certain important later advances in the new theory of reference, due to Devitt and others. (shrink)

In the paper, various notions of the logical semiotic sense of linguistic expressions – namely, syntactic and semantic, intensional and extensional – are considered and formalised on the basis of a formal-logical conception of any language L characterised categorially in the spirit of certain Husserl's ideas of pure grammar, Leśniewski-Ajdukiewicz's theory of syntactic/semantic categories and, in accordance with Frege's ontological canons, Bocheński's and some of Suszko's ideas of language adequacy of expressions of L. The adequacy ensures their unambiguous syntactic and (...) semantic senses and mutual, syntactic and semantic correspondence guaranteed by the acceptance of a postulate of categorial compatibility of syntactic and semantic categories of expressions of L. This postulate defines the unification of these three logical senses. There are three principles of compositionality which follow from this postulate: one syntactic and two semantic ones already known to Frege. They are treated as conditions of homomorphism of partial algebra of L into algebraic models of L: syntactic, intensional and extensional. In the paper, they are applied to some expressions with quantifiers. Language adequacy connected with the logical senses described in the logical conception of language L is, obviously, an idealisation. The syntactic and semantic unambiguity of its expressions is not, of course, a feature of natural languages, but every syntactically and semantically ambiguous expression of such languages may be treated as a schema representing all of its interpretations that are unambiguous expressions. (shrink)

The paper proposes a way for adherents of Fregean, structured propositions to designate propositions and other complex senses/concepts using a special kind of functor. I consider some formulations from Peacocke's works and highlight certain problems that arise as we try to quantify over propositional constituents while referring to propositions using "that"-clauses. With the functor notation, by contrast, we can quantify over senses/concepts with objectual, first-order quantifiers and speak without further ado about their involvement in propositions. The functor notation also turns (...) out to come with an important kind of expressive strengthening, and is shown to be neutral on several controversial issues. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss Dummett’s interpretation of Frege’s “On sense and reference” that takes place in his Frege: Philosophy of Language, where he attributes a notion of meaning to Frege that is not explicit on the text of “On sense and reference”. I believe that this attribution is incompatible with what Frege is really saying in the article and with the partition of the notion that Dummett himself exposes.

One well known problem regarding quantifiers, in particular the 1st order quantifiers, is connected with their syntactic categories and denotations.The unsatisfactory efforts to establish the syntactic and ontological categories of quantifiers in formalized first-order languages can be solved by means of the so called principle of categorial compatibility formulated by Roman Suszko, referring to some innovative ideas of Gottlob Frege and visible in syntactic and semantic compatibility of language expressions. In the paper the principle is introduced for categorial languages generated (...) by the Ajdukiewicz’s classical categorial grammar. The 1st-order quantifiers are typically ambiguous. Every 1st-order quantifier of the type k > 0 is treated as a two-argument functor-function defined on the variable standing at this quantifier and its scope (the sentential function with exactly k free variables, including the variable bound by this quantifier); a binary function defined on denotations of its two arguments is its denotation. Denotations of sentential functions, and hence also quantifiers, are defined separately in Fregean and in situational semantics. They belong to the ontological categories that correspond to the syntactic categories of these sentential functions and the considered quantifiers. The main result of the paper is a solution of the problem of categories of the 1st-order quantifiers based on the principle of categorial compatibility. (shrink)

Öz: Frege özel adların (ve diğer dilsel simgelerin) anlamları ve gönderimleri arasında ünlü ayrımını yaptığı “Anlam ve Gönderim Üzerine” (1948) adlı makalesinde, bu ayrımın önemi, gerekliliği ve sonuçları üzerine uzun değerlendirmeler yapar ancak özel adın anlamından tam olarak ne anlaşılması gerektiğinden yalnızca bir dipnotta kısaca söz eder. Örneğin “Aristoteles” özel adının anlamının Platon’un öğrencisi ve Büyük İskender’in öğretmeni ya da Stagira’da doğan Büyük İskender’in öğretmeni olarak alınabileceğini söyler. Burada dikkat çeken nokta örnekteki özel adın olası anlamları olarak gösterilen belirli betimlemelerin (...) de özel ad içeriyor olması. Anlamın Frege için bileşimsel olduğu, bir başka deyişle bir dilsel simgenin anlamının (varsa) parçalarının anlamlarınca belirlendiği düşünülürse, örnekteki belirli betimlemelerin anlamlarının saptanabilmesi için içerdikleri özel adların da anlamları saptanıp betimleme içinde geçtikleri yere konmalıdır. Bu işlem hiçbir özel ad kalmayana kadar sürdürülmelidir. Ancak biraz düşünülünce bir özel adın nesnesini tekil olarak betimleyecek ve içinde özel ad geçmeyecek bir betimleme bulmanın kolay olmadığı görülür. Örneğin yukarıdaki betimlemelerde geçen “Platon”, “Büyük İskender” ve “Stagira” gibi özel adların anlamları olabilecek ancak özel ad içermeyen betimlemeler bulmak pek kolay görünmüyor. Ortaya bir sonsuz gerileme sorunu çıkmış gibi duruyor. Frege’nin anlam-gönderim ayrımını için ciddi sonuçları olabilecek bu sorunu Frege çözebilir mi? Bu yazıda bu sorunun yanıtını arayacağım. Sorunu betimledikten sonra Frege’nin önündeki seçenekleri (örneğin bağlama duyarlı terimlerden (gösterme adılları veya belirteçler) yararlanma veya bağlamı sınırlama gibi) değerlendireceğim. -/- Abstract: In his “Sense and Reference” (1948), Frege makes his famous distinction between the sense and the reference of a proper name (and other signs) and discusses at length the significance, necessity and consequences of the distinction, but he explains how the sense of a proper name should be understood very briefly in a footnote. According to him, for example, the sense of the proper name “Aristotle” can be taken as the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great or the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira. What is interesting here is that the definite descriptions given as the possible senses of this proper name do themselves contain proper names too. Since the sense is something compositional for Frege, which means the sense of a linguistic sign is determined by its constituents (if there are any), in order to determine the sense of definite descriptions in question, we should first determine the senses of proper names they contain and substitute these senses with the proper names themselves. This process should continue until no proper name remains. However, it does not seem easy to find a definite description which describes the object of a proper name uniquely but contains no proper name itself. For instance, could we find appropriate senses that contain no proper name for “Plato”, “Alexander the Great” and “Stagira”? It does not seem likely. A problem of infinite regress appears to arise. Can Frege solve this problem, which poses a serious threat for his sensereference distinction? I will explore this problem in this paper. After explaining the problem, I will discuss the options (e.g. turning to indexicals or context restriction) Frege can take to deal with it. (shrink)

Frege's puzzle is a fundamental challenge for accounts of mental and linguistic representation. This piece surveys a family of recent approaches to the puzzle that posit representational relations. I identify the central commitments of relational approaches and present several arguments for them. I also distinguish two kinds of relationism—semantic relationism and formal relationism—corresponding to two conceptions of representational relations. I briefly discuss the consequences of relational approaches for foundational questions about propositional attitudes, intentional explanation, and compositionality.

There are two common reactions to Frege’s claim that some senses and thoughts are private. Privatists accept both private senses and thoughts, while intersubjectivists don’t accept either. Both sides agree on a pair of tacit assumptions: first, that private senses automatically give rise to private thoughts; and second, that private senses and thoughts are the most problematic entities to which Frege’s remarks on privacy give rise. The aim of this paper is to show that both assumptions are mistaken. This will (...) motivate a so far neglected, reconciliatory position between privatism and intersubjectivism according to which all thoughts are public while some senses are private. (shrink)

كان «فريجه» – على حد تعبير «دامت» – من أوائل من أدركوا أن نظرية المعنى، أو فلسفة اللغة، هي جزءٌ اساسي من الفلسفة ترتكز عليه كافة الأجزاء الاخرى؛ فإلى جانب دراساته التأسيسية الرائدة في الرياضيات والمنطق، كان يُؤسس ايضًا لفلسفة اللغة ببعض المقالات التي فاقت في تاثيرها وشهرتها تاثير وشهرة معظم أعماله الرياضية الأخرى، دون إقلال من شان هذه الأخيرة وريادتها. وهذه الدراسة بمثابة قراءة تحليلية – نقدية لمقاله الأكثر أهمية في هذا الصدد «في المعنى والإشارة»، مشفوعة بترجمة إلى العربية (...) للجزء الأكبر والاهم منه. (shrink)

In his book The Things We Mean, Stephen Schiffer advances a subtle defence of what he calls the ‘face-value’ analysis of attributions of belief and reports of speech. Under this analysis, ‘Harold believes that there is life on Venus’ expresses a relation between Harold and a certain abstract object, the proposition that there is life on Venus. The present essay first proposes an improvement to Schiffer’s ‘pleonastic’ theory of propositions. It then challenges the face-value analysis. There will be such things (...) as propositions only if they possess conditions of identity and distinctness. By analyzing Frege’s theory of propositions (Gedanken), I argue that such conditions may be found for the special case of beliefs and sayings advanced as premises and conclusions of deductive arguments. These conditions, however, are not applicable to most ordinary beliefs and sayings. Ordinary attributions and reports, then, do not place thinkers and speakers in relations to propositions. A bonus is exposure of the fallacy in the Putnam-Taschek objection to Frege’s theory of sense and reference. (shrink)

Frege's mature writings apparently contain two different criteria of sense identity. While in "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (1892) and in "Kurze Übersicht meiner logischen Lehren" (1906?) he seems to advocate a psychological criterion, his letter to Husserl of December 12, 1906 offers a thoroughly logical criterion of sense identity. It is argued that the latter proposal is not a "momentary aberration", but rather Frege's official criterion; his psychological criteria only serve as a way of illustrating questions of sense identity by (...) appealing to the thoughts of completely rational thinkers. (shrink)

The paper deals with the main contribution of the Finnish logician Jaakko Hintikka: epistemic logic, in particular the 'static' version of the system based on the formal analysis of the concepts of knowledge and belief. I propose to take a different look at this philosophical logic and to consider it from the opposite point of view of the philosophy of logic. At first, two theories of meaning are described and associated with two competing theories of linguistic competence. In a second (...) step, I draw the conclusion that Hintikka's epistemic logic constitutes a sort of internalisation of meaning, by the introduction of epistemic modal operators into an object language. In this respect, to view meaning as the result of a linguistic competence makes epistemic logic nothing less than a logic of unified meaning and understanding. (shrink)

In the paper, original formal-logical conception of syntactic and semantic: intensional and extensional senses of expressions of any language L is outlined. Syntax and bi-level intensional and extensional semantics of language L are characterized categorically: in the spirit of some Husserl’s ideas of pure grammar, Leśniewski-Ajukiewicz’s theory syntactic/semantic categories and in accordance with Frege’s ontological canons, Bocheński’s famous motto—syntax mirrors ontology and some ideas of Suszko: language should be a linguistic scheme of ontological reality and simultaneously a tool of its (...) cognition. In the logical conception of language L, its expressions should satisfy some general conditions of language adequacy. The adequacy ensures their unambiguous syntactic and semantic senses and mutual, syntactic, and semantic compatibility, correspondence guaranteed by the acceptance of a postulate of categorial compatibility syntactic and semantic categories of expressions of L. From this postulate, three principles of compositionality follow: one syntactic and two semantic already known to Frege. They are treated as conditions of homomorphism partial algebra of L into algebraic models of L: syntactic, intensional, and extensional. In the paper, they are applied to some expressions with quantifiers. Language adequacy connected with the logical senses described in the logical conception of language L is, of course, an idealization, but only expressions with high degrees of precision of their senses, after due justification, may become theorems of science. (shrink)

We introduce the notions of syntactic synonymy and referential syn- onymy due to Moschovakis. Those notions are capable of accounting for fine- grained aspects of the meaning of linguistic expressions, by formalizing the Fregean distinction between sense and denotation. We integrate Moschovakis’s theory with the theory of concepts developed in the foundational ontology DOLCE, in order to enable a formal treatment of equivalence between concepts.

Between April and November 1912, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein were engaged in a joint philosophical program. Wittgenstein‘s meeting with Gottlob Frege in December 1912 led, however, to its dissolution – the joint program was abandoned. Section 2 of this paper outlines the key points of that program, identifying what Russell and Wittgenstein each contributed to it. The third section determines precisely those features of their collaborative work that Frege criticized. Finally, building upon the evidence developed in the preceding two (...) sections, section 4 recasts along previously undeveloped lines Wittgenstein‘s logical–philosophical discoveries in the two years following his encounter with Frege in 1912. The paper concludes, in section 5, with an overview of the dramatic consequences the Frege-Wittgenstein critique had for Russell‘s philosophical development. (shrink)

When “Sinning Against Frege” was published in 1979 I thought it should have given a real turn in the discussion on Frege’s ideas. Actually the impact was less then I imagined, and the problem was that – at the end of the story – Tyler Burge’s interpretation should have posed a shadow on the direct reference theories and the Millean criticism of descriptivist theories of proper names, based on the criticism of the identification of Frege’s notion of sense with linguistic (...) meaning or connotation1. In fact Burge (1979) claims that the identification of Frege’s notion of sense with the notion of linguistic meaning is a «basic misunderstanding» of Frege’s work2. This claim implies that Fregean senses are not like Mill’s connotations; therefore many direct-reference criticisms against Frege, which are grounded on Mill’s claims that proper names have no connotation, lose their efficacy. Burge, in giving specifications3, apparently accepts at least the idea that sense is an aspect of meaning, in particular «the aspect of meaning relevant to fixing the truth value of sentences». This feature is the “harmless” part of the assimilation of sense and linguistic meaning; but this assimilation becomes dangerous when context dependence is concerned. Revisiting Burge (1979), after more than two decades of debate on indexicals, may help to better understand the originality and the limitation of his claims. (shrink)

In this paper I shall outline a short history of the ideas concerning sense and reference of a concept-word from Frege to model theoretic semantics. I claim that, contrary to what is normally supposed, a procedural view of sense may be compatible with model theoretic semantics, especially in dealing with problems at the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. A first paragraph on the paradox of the concept horse will clarify the attitude concerning the history of ideas that I assume in (...) this paper. In the second paragraph I will discuss some misunderstandings in the shift from the sense/reference distinction in Frege to the intension/extension distinction in model theoretic semantics. In the third I will show how a particular interpretation of the Fregean sense of a concept word may be of interest for model theoretic semantics. (shrink)

This paper develops a criterion for sameness of Fregean senses. I consider three criteria: logical equivalence, intensional isomorphism, and epistemic equipollence. I reject the first two and argue for a version of the third.

My aim is to show that once we appreciate how Searle (1958) fills in the details of his account of proper names – which I will dub the presuppositional view – and how we might supplement it further, we are in for a twofold discovery. First, Searle’s account is crucially unlike the so-called cluster-of-descriptions view, which many philosophers take Searle to have held. Second, the presuppositional view he did hold is interesting, plausible, and worthy of serious reconsideration. The idea that (...) Searle’s account is a largely Fregean interlude between the Fregean description theory of proper names and Kripke’s proposals presented in “Naming and Necessity” is in major ways a myth, a mythical chapter in how the story of 20th-century philosophy of language is often told. (shrink)

Are Fregean thoughts compositionally complex and composed of senses? We argue that, in Begriffsschrift, Frege took 'conceptual contents' to be unstructured, but that he quickly moved away from this position, holding just two years later that conceptual contents divide of themselves into 'function' and 'argument'. This second position is shown to be unstable, however, by Frege's famous substitution puzzle. For Frege, the crucial question the puzzle raises is why "The Morning Star is a planet" and "The Evening Star is a (...) planet" have different contents, but his second position predicts that they should have the same content. Frege's response to this antinomy is of course to distinguish sense from reference, but what has not previously been noticed is that this response also requires thoughts to be compositionally complex, composed of senses. That, however, raises the question just how thoughts are composed from senses. We reconstruct a Fregean answer, one that turns on an insistence that this question must be understood as semantic rather than metaphysical. It is not a question about the intrinsic nature of residents of the third realm but a question about how thoughts are expressed by sentences. (shrink)

نگاهی به تفسیر و انتقادات دامت از آموزه‌های فرگه پیرامون مباحث معناشناختی .

In this paper we give some formal examples of ideas developed by Penco in two papers on the tension inside Frege's notion of sense (see Penco 2003). The paper attempts to compose the tension between semantic and cognitive aspects of sense, through the idea of sense as proof or procedure – not as an alternative to the idea of sense as truth condition, but as complementary to it (as it happens sometimes in the old tradition of procedural semantics).

بررسی اصلی‌ترین چالش‌های میان دامت و مک داول در باب نظریة معنا و توصیف مناسب رفتار زبانی .

In this paper I shall deal with the role of "understanding a thought" in the debate on the definition of the content of an assertion. I shall present a well known tension in Frege's writings, between a cognitive and semantic notion of sense. This tension is at the source of some of the major contemporary discussions, mainly because of the negative influence of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which did not give in-depth consideration to the tension found in Frege. However many contemporary authors, (...) after the first attempt by Carnap himself, have tried to make room both for a cognitive and semantic aspect of meaning. I claim that at least some of these attempts (Dummett, Perry and Chalmers) are seriously flawed, mainly due to the difficulty in making a proper connection between the two different conceptions of sense. I shall outline an alternative project, which takes into consideration Frege's requirements on antipsychologism and of the objectivity of thought, while maintaining a close connection between the two aspects of sense. (shrink)

I’m going to present a new idea about how to find the right place for the indexical and demonstrative expressions in Gottlob Frege’s semantics. My main thesis is: that it is possible to find such interpretation of Frege’s view on indexicals and demonstratives which is entirely “fregean” and is not vulnerable to the counterexamples given by Kaplan and Perry. According to the interpretation I propose, these expressions are functional and they denote first-level functions defined on objects. These functional expressions taken (...) together with an object form a hybrid proper name. (shrink)

Semantic externalism in contemporary philosophy of language typically – and often tacitly – combines two supervenience claims about idiolectical meaning (i.e., meaning in the language system of an individual speaker). The first claim is that the meaning of a word in a speaker’s idiolect may vary without any variation in her intrinsic, physical properties. The second is that the meaning of a word in a speaker’s idiolect may vary without any variation in her understanding of its use. I here show (...) that a conception of idiolectical meaning is possible that accepts the “anti-internalism” of the first claim while rejecting (what I shall refer to as) the “anti-individualism” of the second. According to this conception, externally constituted idiolectical meaning supervenes on idiolectical understanding. (shrink)

An investigation of Frege’s various contributions to the study of language, focusing on three of his most famous doctrines: that concepts are unsaturated, that sentences refer to truth-values, and that sense must be distinguished from reference.

The paper shows how ideas that explain the sense of an expression as a method or algorithm for finding its reference, preshadowed in Frege’s dictum that sense is the way in which a referent is given, can be formalized on the basis of the ideas in Thomason (1980). To this end, the function that sends propositions to truth values or sets of possible worlds in Thomason (1980) must be replaced by a relation and the meaning postulates governing the behaviour of (...) this relation must be given in the form of a logic program. The resulting system does not only throw light on the properties of sense and their relation to computation, but also shows circular behaviour if some ingredients of the Liar Paradox are added. The connection is natural, as algorithms can be inherently circular and the Liar is explained as expressing one of those. Many ideas in the present paper are closely related to those in Moschovakis (1994), but receive a considerably lighter formalization. (shrink)

The main objective of this paper is to examine how theories of truth and reference that are in a broad sense Fregean in character are threatened by antinomies; in particular by the Epimenides paradox and versions of the so-called Russell-Myhill antinomy, an intensional analogue of Russell’s more well-known paradox for extensions. Frege’s ontology of propositions and senses has recently received renewed interest in connection with minimalist theories that take propositions (thoughts) and senses (concepts) as the primary bearers of truth and (...) reference. In this paper, I will present a rigorous version of Frege’s theory of sense and denotation and show that it leads to antinomies. I am also going to discuss ways of modifying Frege’s semantical and ontological framework in order to avoid the paradoxes. In this connection, I explore the possibility of giving up the Fregean assumption of a universal domain of absolutely all objects, containing in addition to extensional objects also abstract intensional ones like propositions and singular concepts. I outline a cumulative hierarchy of Fregean propositions and senses, in analogy with Gödel’s hierarchy of constructible sets. In this hierarchy, there is no domain of all objects. Instead, every domain of objects is extendible with new objects that, on pain of contradiction, cannot belong to the given domain. According to this approach, there is no domain containing absolutely all propositions or absolutely all senses. (shrink)

One particular topic in the literature on Frege’s conception of sense relates to two apparently contradictory theses held by Frege: the isomorphism of thought and language on one hand and the expressibility of a thought by different sentences on the other. I will divide the paper into five sections. In (1) I introduce the problem of the tension in Frege’s thought. In (2) I discuss the main attempts to resolve the conflict between Frege’s two contradictory claims, showing what is wrong (...) with some of them. In (3), I analyze where, in Frege’s writings and discussions on sense identity, one can find grounds for two different conceptions of sense. In (4) I show how the two contradictory theses held by Frege are connected with different concerns, compelling Frege to a constant oscillation in terminology. In (5) I summarize two further reasons that prevented Frege from making the distinction between two conceptions of sense clear: (i) the antipsychologism problem and (ii) the overlap of traditions in German literature contemporary to Frege about the concept of value. I conclude with a hint for a reconstruction of the Fregean notion of ‘thought’ which resolves the contradiction between his two theses. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss a well-known oscillation in Frege’s conception of sense. My point is only partially concerned with his two different criteria of sense identity, and touches upon a more specific point: what happens if we apply Frege’s intuitive criterion for the difference of thoughts to logically equivalent sentences? I will try to make a schematic argument here that will preempt any endeavor to make Frege more coherent than he really is. In sections A and B, I (...) will present two alternative Fregean ways to treat the sense of logically equivalent sentences. Frege really oscillated between two alternative conceptions of sense, and his inability to detect the contrast between the two alternative conceptions is partly due to his strong conception of rationality. To apply the criterion of difference of thoughts to logical matters, we may also use a weak notion of rationality, or at least a notion of rationality of human agents, with limited computational resources. The distinctions towards which Frege was striving are better understood nowadays from the point of view of the treatment of limited rationality, which imposes itself even in logical matters. (shrink)

Frege held that referring expressions in general, and demonstratives and indexicals in particular, contribute more than just their reference to what is expressed by utterances of sentences containing them. Heck first attempts to get clear about what the essence of the Fregean view is, arguing that it rests upon a certain conception of linguistic communication that is ultimately indefensible. On the other hand, however, he argues that understanding a demonstrative (or indexical) utterance requires one to think of the object denoted (...) in an appropriate way. This fact makes it difficult to reconcile the view that referring expressions are "directly referential" with any view that seeks (as Grice's does) to ground meaning in facts about communication. (shrink)

Millianism is reasonable; that is, it is reasonable to think that all there is to the semantic value of a proper name is its referent. But Millianism appears to be undermined by the falsehood of Substitutivity, the principle that interchanging coreferential proper names in an intentional context cannot change the truth value of the resulting belief report. Mary might be perfectly rational in assenting to ‘Twain was a great writer’ as well as ‘Clemens was not a great writer’. Her confusion (...) does not seem to preclude her from assenting to those sentences in a normal, understanding manner. That is, Assent-for-Mary is true: Mary can knowingly assent to ‘Twain was a great writer’ and ‘Clemens was not a great writer’. By Disquotation—the rough principle that if in ordinary circumstances one assents to “P”, then one believes that P—Mary believes that Twain was a great writer and she believes that it’s not the case that Clemens was a great writer. If Substitutivity were true, then since ‘Mary believes that Twain was a great writer’ is true, ‘Mary believes that Clemens was a great writer’ would have to be true too. But then Mary would amount to a refutation of the plausible principle Consistency that, roughly put, no rational adult can have occurrently held and reflectively considered and compared contradictory beliefs. Since Disquotation, Assent-for-Mary, and Consistency are true, Substitutivity has to go. (shrink)

In this article I offer a three-pronged defense of Millian theories, all of which share the rough idea that all there is to a proper name is its referent, so it has no additional sense. I first give what I believe to be the first correct analysis of Kripke’s puzzle and its anti-Fregean lessons. The main lesson is that the Fregean’s arguments against Millianism and for the existence of semantically relevant senses (that is, individuative elements of propositions or belief contents (...) that are sensitive to our varying personal conceptions of the referents of those elements) are viciously circular. Thus, the Fregean must give new arguments for her central claims. Second, I offer an original, positive argument for the Millian idea that the thoughts that Cicero was bald and that Tully was bald are identical. Incredibly, the argument appeals to nothing but highly intuitive, pre-theoretical principles regarding folk psychological usage—traditionally the source of Fregean intuitions. Third, I examine one of the most important recent papers on Kripke’s puzzle, that by David Sosa (1996). Sosa claims to have found a way to turn the tables on Kripke’s puzzle by using it to argue against Millian theories. I argue that Sosa’s argument on behalf of the Fregean is question-begging. I conclude that Millian theories can be seriously defended without any use of theoretical constructs such as guises or Russellian propositions, and Fregeans need to start over arguing for their theory’s central claims. (shrink)

Saul Kripke's puzzle about belief demonstrates the lack of soundness of the traditional argument for the Fregean fundamental principle that the sentences 'S believes that a is F' and 'S believes that b is F' can differ in truth value even if a = b. This principle is a crucial premise in the traditional Fregean argument for the existence of semantically relevant senses, individuative elements of beliefs that are sensitive to our varying conceptions of what the beliefs are about. Joseph (...) Owens has offered a new argument for this fundamental principle, one that is not subject to Kripke's criticisms. I argue that even though Owens' argument avoids Kripke's criticisms, it has other flaws. (shrink)

A reply to Byrne and Thau's criticisms of "The Sense of Communiction".

In this paper I argue that, in order to make (T1) and (T2) compatible within a Fregean approach, we must reject the view that all modes of presentation are senses. (T1) There is a diversity of ways in which Venus may be presented to each subject, and which are associated with the name ‘Venus’. (T2) There is only one Fregean thought expressed by the sentence ‘Venus is a planet’. Modes of presentation are essentially psychological and have causal powers on minds. (...) The mind of a subject is sensitive to differences in modes of presentation, so that if an object is presented to a subject under different modes of presentation and she has no reason to believe that they are modes of presentation of one and the same object, then she may take opposing attitudes involving those different modes of presentation. In contrast, senses are essentially semantic. For this reason, I propose that they be understood as certain ways of determining the reference of terms, and either are given by the semantic rules for those terms or are identical to those semantic rules. I agree with McDowell that an interpretive truth-theory for a language L gives us a theory of sense for L, and that something like (V) ‘Venus’ refers to Venus will give us the axiom which assigns the semantic value for ‘Venus’ within such a theory, and which is necessary in order to derive the interpretive truth-conditions of a sentence like ‘Venus is a planet’. An axiom like ‘Venus’ refers to Hesperus will not do within a theory of sense. Nonetheless, it will do within a theory of reference, a truth-theory which delivers not interpretive truth-conditions, but purely referential truth conditions. The purely referential truth-conditions for an indicative atomic sentence are, I claim, those which are specified by specifying those features in the world (objects, properties, etc.) to which the meaningful parts of the sentence refer, representing them as related in a certain way. For the specification of such truth-conditions, the difference in cognitive value between two sentences will not matter, whereas it will matter for the specification of interpretive truth-conditions. Now, senses are introduced to allow for an explanation of the difference in cognitive value between sentences with the same purely referential truth-conditions. An indication of when two sentences differ in cognitive value is when it is possible for a subject who is rational and understands the language in question to take opposing attitudes to those sentences (or their contents —whatever those contents are); and if there is in fact such a subject who takes opposing attitudes to those sentences, then those sentences differ in their cognitive value. Given this connection between cognitive value and a subject’s attitudes, and given the purpose for which senses are introduced, we must suppose that a subject’s mind must be sensitive to differences in senses, and so, that senses must be psychologically relevant. My proposal, which aims to establish some kind of identity between some modes of presentation under certain conditions and those ways of determination which are senses, is as follows: A psychological mode of presentation M is a way of determination which is a sense relative to a particular expression e in a public language L which aids in expressing propositional attitude P if and only if i the subject who has M and who is sufficiently competent in L knows (or realizes) that M goes with e in L; ii no other proposition e′ in L is more adequate for reporting the subject’s propositional attitude P; iii M is crucial in the subject’s rational failure to make certain identifications; and iv M is an appropriate function to an appropriate reference. Only the mode of presentation associated with ‘Venus’ that satisfies conditions i-iv relative to ‘Venus’ which aids in expressing a propositional attitude like the belief that Venus is a planet, will be the sense of ‘Venus’. I argue that only the mode of presentation of Venus as Venus will do, and that such mode of presentation is implicit in the way of determination shown by (V). Other modes of presentation of Venus as being big or appearing in the sky in the evenings or being the second planet in proximity to the sun will not satisfy conditions i–iv. Thus, although a subject may have all these modes of presentation of Venus and associate them with ‘Venus’ (i.e. (T1)), only the mode of presentation of Venus as Venus will do as the sense of ‘Venus’. Hence, only one thought will be expressed by a sentence like ‘Venus is a planet’ (i.e. (T2)). (shrink)

Many philosophers nowadays believe Frege was right about belief, but wrong about language: The contents of beliefs need to be individuated more finely than in terms of Russellian propositions, but the contents of utterances do not. I argue that this 'hybrid view' cannot offer no reasonable account of how communication transfers knowledge from one speaker to another and that, to do so, we must insist that understanding depends upon more than just getting the references of terms right.