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  1. A serpent in the garden?Mark Bowker - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    This paper presents Elmar Unnsteinsson’s novel theory of Edenic Intentionalism, on which a speaker cannot refer to an object when the speaker is relevantly confused about its identity. A challenge to the theory is presented and several possible responses considered. The challenge is this: According to Edenic Intentionalism, reference often fails even when speakers seem to refer successfully. Elmar therefore supplements Edenic Intentionalism with an explanation of how communication can succeed without reference. If such an explanation is available, it isn’t (...)
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  2. Higher-order metaphysics and propositional attitudes.Harvey Lederman - forthcoming - In Peter Fritz & Nicholas K. Jones (eds.), Higher-order Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.
    According to relationism, for Alice to believe that some rabbits can speak is for Alice to stand in a relation to a further entity, some rabbits can speak. But what could this further entity possibly be? Higher-order metaphysics seems to offer a simple, natural answer. On this view (roughly put), expressions in different syntactic categories (for instance: names, predicates, sentences) in general denote entities in correspondingly different ontological categories. Alice's belief can thus be understood to relate her to a sui (...)
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  3. Leverage: A Model of Cognitive Significance.Stephen Yablo - forthcoming - In David Sosa & Ernie Lepore (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language Volume 3.
    Analytic semantics got its start when Frege pointed out differences in cognitive content between sentences that in some good sense “say the same.” Frege put cognitive content (in the form of sense) at the heart of semantic content. Most prefer nowadays to see cognitive contents as generated by semantic contents in context; a sentence's cognitive significance is an aspect rather of the information imparted by its use. I argue for a particular version of this idea. Semantic contents generate cognitive contents (...)
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  4. Against Fregean Quantification.Bryan Pickel & Brian Rabern - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (37):971-1007.
    There are two dominant approaches to quantification: the Fregean and the Tarskian. While the Tarskian approach is standard and familiar, deep conceptual objections have been pressed against its employment of variables as genuine syntactic and semantic units. Because they do not explicitly rely on variables, Fregean approaches are held to avoid these worries. The apparent result is that the Fregean can deliver something that the Tarskian is unable to, namely a compositional semantic treatment of quantification centered on truth and reference. (...)
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  5. À Propos de Pierre, Does He…or Doesn’t He?Nathan Salmon - 2023 - In Ernest Lepore & David Sosa (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language, 3. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 176-181.
    In Frege’s Puzzle (1986), Salmon analyzed ‘a withholds believing p’ in terms of a ternary relation BEL of x believing a proposition p under a guise g. The proposed analysis is the following: There is a proposition guise g such that a grasps p by means of g but a does not stand in BEL to p and g. Sean Crawford has made a proposal for Millians to evade propositional guises through second-order belief. Specifically, in effect, Crawford’s proposes to analyze (...)
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  6. Propositions as (Flexible) Types of Possibilities.Nate Charlow - 2022 - In Chris Tillman & Adam Russell Murray (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Propositions. Routledge. pp. 211-230.
    // tl;dr A Proposition is a Way of Thinking // -/- This chapter is about type-theoretic approaches to propositional content. Type-theoretic approaches to propositional content originate with Hintikka, Stalnaker, and Lewis, and involve treating attitude environments (e.g. "Nate thinks") as universal quantifiers over domains of "doxastic possibilities" -- ways things could be, given what the subject thinks. -/- This chapter introduces and motivates a line of a type-theoretic theorizing about content that is an outgrowth of the recent literature on epistemic (...)
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  7. Mental filing.Rachel Goodman & Aidan Gray - 2022 - Noûs 56 (1):204-226.
    We offer an interpretation of the mental files framework that eliminates the metaphor of files, information being contained in files, etc. The guiding question is whether, once we move beyond the metaphors, there is any theoretical role for files. We claim not. We replace the file-metaphor with two theses: the semantic thesis that there are irreducibly relational representational facts (viz. facts about the coordination of representations); and the metasemantic thesis that processes tied to information-relations ground those facts. In its canonical (...)
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  8. Minimal Fregeanism.Aidan Gray - 2022 - Mind 131 (522):429-458.
    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 (...)
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  9. Meaning and Metaphysical Necessity.Tristan Grotvedt Haze - 2022 - New York: Routledge.
    This book is about the idea that some true statements would have been true no matter how the world had turned out, while others could have been false. It develops and defends a version of the idea that we tell the difference between these two types of truths in part by reflecting on the meanings of words. It has often been thought that modal issues—issues about possibility and necessity—are related to issues about meaning. In this book, the author defends the (...)
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  10. An object-centric solution to Edelberg's puzzles of intentional identity.Eugene Ho - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):364.
    My belief that Socrates was wise, and your belief that Socrates was mortal can be said to have a common focus, insofar as both these thoughts are about Socrates. In Peter Geach’s terminology, the objects of our beliefs bear the feature of intentional identity, because our beliefs share the same putative target. But what if it turned out that Socrates never existed? Can a pair of thoughts share a common focus if the object both thoughts are about, does not actually, (...)
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  11. Fregeanism, sententialism, and scope.Harvey Lederman - 2022 - Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (6):1235-1275.
    Among philosophers, Fregeanism and sententialism are widely considered two of the leading theories of the semantics of attitude reports. Among linguists, these approaches have received little recent sustained discussion. This paper aims to bridge this divide. I present a new formal implementation of Fregeanism and sententialism, with the goal of showing that these theories can be developed in sufficient detail and concreteness to be serious competitors to the theories which are more popular among semanticists. I develop a modern treatment of (...)
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  12. Frege’s Puzzle and Act-based Propositions.Nikhil Mahant - 2022 - Acta Analytica 37 (2).
    I argue that the act-based accounts of propositions, like the one defended by Soames, cannot be used to address Frege’s Puzzle without also giving up the Millian view of names. I begin by identifying two puzzles—both of which have been called Frege’s puzzle—and discuss the act-based theorist’s solution to the first puzzle. I then raise an objection against the solution and argue that it cannot be overcome unless a concession is made. Making the concession, however, would make it impossible for (...)
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  13. De Se Puzzles and Frege Puzzles.Stephan Torre & Clas Weber - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (1):50-76.
    What is the relationship between Frege’s puzzle and the puzzle of the de se? An increasingly influential view claims that the de se puzzle is merely an instance of Frege’s puzzle and that the idea that de se attitudes pose a distinctive theoretical challenge rests on a myth. Here we argue that this view is misguided. There are important differences between the two puzzles. First, unlike Frege puzzle cases, de se puzzle cases involve unshareable Fregean senses. Second, unlike Frege puzzle (...)
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  14. Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2022 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Combining new insights from cognitive science and speech act theory, Unnsteinsson develops a compelling theory of singular reference which avoids well-known puzzles. The theory, Edenic intentionalism, is grounded in a mechanistic perspective on explanation in cognitive science and a new Gricean account of speaker meaning and speaker reference.
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  15. Semantic Relationism.Chulmin Yoon - 2022 - In Chris Tillman & Adam Russell Murray (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Propositions. Routledge.
    In this article, I present different characteristics of de jure coreference, including an epistemological one and a logical one. Then, I present the semantic relation of coordination as what explains or grounds the phenomenon of de jure coreference. And I compare two theories of relational semantics, Fine’s (2007) and Taschek’s (1995a, 1995b, 1998), with respect to two famous puzzles in the philosophy of language, Frege’s puzzle and Kripke’s puzzle about belief. Lastly, I briefly discuss coordination between empty terms.
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  16. Frege Cases and Bad Psychological Laws.Mahrad Almotahari & Aidan Gray - 2021 - Mind 130 (520):1253-1280.
    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.
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  17. Cognitive Significance.Aidan Gray - 2021 - In Stephen Biggs & Heimir Geirsson (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Reference. New York, NY, USA:
    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.
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  18. Fine-grained semantics for attitude reports.Harvey Lederman - 2021 - Semantics and Pragmatics 14 (1).
    I observe that the “concept-generator” theory of Percus and Sauerland (2003), Anand (2006), and Charlow and Sharvit (2014) does not predict an intuitive true interpretation of the sentence “Plato did not believe that Hesperus was Phosphorus”. In response, I present a simple theory of attitude reports which employs a fine-grained semantics for names, according to which names which intuitively name the same thing may have distinct compositional semantic values. This simple theory solves the problem with the concept-generator theory, but, as (...)
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  19. Belief Fragments and Mental Files.Michael Murez - 2021 - In Cristina Borgoni, Dirk Kindermann & Andrea Onofri (eds.), The Fragmented Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 251-278.
    Belief fragments and mental files are based on the same idea: that information in people’s minds is compartmentalized rather than lumped all together. Philosophers mostly use the two notions differently, though the exact relationship between fragments and files has yet to be examined in detail. This chapter has three main goals. The first is to argue that fragments and files, properly understood, play distinct yet complementary explanatory roles; the second is to defend a model of belief that includes them both; (...)
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  20. The Functional Composition of Sense.Bryan Pickel - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):6917-6942.
    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 (...)
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  21. The Direct Reference of Pejoratives in Hate Speech.Kanit Sirichan - 2021 - Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy (Philippine e-journal) 22 (2):245-259.
    The use of language in hate speech is understandably offensive. Though words do not kill, they convey an alarming message that can harm the victim. To understand how words can harm, it is necessary to understand the nature of the meaning of pejoratives or slurs that are used in hate speech. Pejoratives are undeniably offensive. However, they are puzzling as they can be used in two directions, namely, the offensive power preservation and the offensive power destruction. This paper proposes that (...)
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  22. How I Really Say What You Think.José Manuel Viejo - 2021 - Axiomathes 31 (3):251-277.
    The apparently obviously true doctrine of opacity has been thought to be inconsistent with two others, to which many philosophers of language are also attracted: the referentialist account of the semantics of proper names and indexicals, on the one hand, and the principle of semantic innocence, on the other. I discuss here one of the most popular strategies for resolving the apparent inconsistency, namely Mark Richard’s theory of belief ascriptions, and raise three problems for it. Finally, I propose an alternative (...)
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  23. Frege’s Puzzle and Cognitive Relationism: An Essay on Mental Files and Coordination.Paolo Bonardi - 2020 - Disputatio 12 (56):1-40.
    This paper will critically examine two solutions to Frege’s puzzle: the Millian-Russellian solution proposed by Salmon and Braun, which invokes non-semantic modes of presentation (guises, ways of believing or the like); and Fine’s relationalist solution, which appeals to semantic coordination. Special attention will be devoted to discussing the conception of modes of presentation as mental files and to elucidating the nature of coordination. A third solution to Frege’s puzzle will be explored which, like Salmon’s and Braun’s, adopts the Millian-Russellian semantics (...)
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  24. On the Substitution of Identicals in Counterfactual Reasoning.Alexander W. Kocurek - 2020 - Noûs 54 (3):600-631.
    It is widely held that counterfactuals, unlike attitude ascriptions, preserve the referential transparency of their constituents, i.e., that counterfactuals validate the substitution of identicals when their constituents do. The only putative counterexamples in the literature come from counterpossibles, i.e., counterfactuals with impossible antecedents. Advocates of counterpossibilism, i.e., the view that counterpossibles are not all vacuous, argue that counterpossibles can generate referential opacity. But in order to explain why most substitution inferences into counterfactuals seem valid, counterpossibilists also often maintain that counterfactuals (...)
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  25. Frege's Puzzle and the Meaning of Words.Graham Seth Moore - 2020 - 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology.
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  26. The Metaphysics of Mental Files.Simon Prosser - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (3):657-676.
    There is much to be said for a diachronic or interpersonal individuation of singular modes of presentation (MOPs) in terms of a criterion of epistemic transparency between thought tokens. This way of individuating MOPs has been discussed recently within the mental files framework, though the issues discussed here arise for all theories that individuate MOPs in terms of relations among tokens. All such theories face objections concerning apparent failures of the transitivity of the ‘same MOP’ relation. For mental files, these (...)
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  27. Theories of Reference: What Was the Question?Panu Raatikainen - 2020 - In Andrea Bianchi (ed.), Language and Reality From a Naturalistic Perspective: Themes From Michael Devitt. Springer. pp. 69–103.
    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 (...)
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  28. The Logic of Opacity.Andrew Bacon & Jeffrey Sanford Russell - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (1):81-114.
    We explore the view that Frege's puzzle is a source of straightforward counterexamples to Leibniz's law. Taking this seriously requires us to revise the classical logic of quantifiers and identity; we work out the options, in the context of higher-order logic. The logics we arrive at provide the resources for a straightforward semantics of attitude reports that is consistent with the Millian thesis that the meaning of a name is just the thing it stands for. We provide models to show (...)
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  29. Patterns, Noise, and Beliefs.Lajos Ludovic Brons - 2019 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 23 (1):19-51.
    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 (...)
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  30. Frege on identity, cognitive value, and subject matter.John Perry - 2019 - In Studies in language and information. Stanford, California: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
    Frege continues by explaining what bothered him in the Begriffsschrift, and motivated his treatment of identity in that work.2 He goes on to criticize that account. By the end of the paragraph, he has introduced his key concept of sinn, abandonning not only the Begriffsschrift account of identity, but its basical semantical framework. In the Begriffsschrift Frege’s main semantic concept was content [Inhalt ]. Already in the Begriffsschrift, he is struggling with this concept. In §3 he..
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  31. De Se Exceptionalism and Frege Puzzles.James R. Shaw - 2019 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6:1057-1086.
    De se exceptionalism is the view, notably championed by Perry (1979) and Lewis (1979), that our characteristically 'first-personal' ways of thinking about ourselves present unique challenges to standard views of propositional attitudes like belief. Though the view has won many adherents, it has recently come under a barrage of deserved criticism. A key claim of detractors is that classic examples used to motivate de se exceptionalism from de se ignorance or misidentification are nothing more than familiar Frege-puzzles, which raise no (...)
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  32. Frege’s puzzle is about identity after all.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (3):628-643.
    Many philosophers have argued or taken for granted that Frege's puzzle has little or nothing to do with identity statements. I show that this is wrong, arguing that the puzzle can only be motivated relative to a thinker's beliefs about the identity or distinctness of the relevant object. The result is important, as it suggests that the puzzle can be solved, not by a semantic theory of names or referring expressions as such, but simply by a theory of identity statements. (...)
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  33. The edenic theory of reference.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (3):276-308.
    I argue for a theory of the optimal function of the speech act of referring, called the edenic theory. First, the act of singular reference is defined directly in terms of Gricean communicative intentions. Second, I propose a doxastic constraint on the optimal performance of such acts, stating, roughly, that the speaker must not have any relevant false beliefs about the identity or distinctness of the intended object. In uttering a singular term on an occasion, on this theory, one represents (...)
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  34. Ultra-liberal attitude reports.Kyle Blumberg & Ben Holguín - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (8):2043-2062.
    Although much has been written about the truth-conditions of de re attitude reports, little attention has been paid to certain ‘ultra-liberal’ uses of those reports. We believe that if these uses are legitimate, then a number of interesting consequences for various theses in philosophical semantics follow. The majority of the paper involves describing these consequences. In short, we argue that, if true, ultra-liberal reports: bring counterexamples to a popular approach to de re attitude ascriptions, which we will call ‘descriptivism’; and (...)
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  35. Frege Puzzles and Mental Files.Henry Clarke - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2):351-366.
    This paper proposes a novel conception of mental files, aimed at addressing Frege puzzles. Classical Frege puzzles involve ignorance and discovery of identity. These may be addressed by accounting for a more basic way for identity to figure in thought—the treatment of beliefs by the believer as being about the same thing. This manifests itself in rational inferences that presuppose the identity of what the beliefs are about. Mental files help to provide a functional characterization of a mind capable of (...)
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  36. Indistinguishable Senses.Aidan Gray - 2018 - Noûs 54 (1):78-104.
    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 (...)
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  37. Propositions, Meaning, and Names.Tristan Grøtvedt Haze - 2018 - Philosophical Forum 49 (3):335-362.
    The object of this paper is to sketch an approach to propositions, meaning and names. The key ingredients are a Twin-Earth-inspired distinction between internal and external meaning, and a middle-Wittgenstein-inspired conception of internal meaning as role in language system. I show how the approach offers a promising solution to the problem of the meaning of proper names. This is a plea for a neglected way of thinking about these topics.
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  38. Singular thoughts and de re attitude reports.James Openshaw - 2018 - Mind and Language 33 (4):415-437.
    It is widely supposed that if there is to be a plausible connection between the truth of a de re attitude report about a subject and that subject’s possession of a singular thought, then ‘acquaintance’-style requirements on singular thought must be rejected. I show that this belief rests on poorly motivated claims about how we talk about the attitudes. I offer a framework for propositional attitude reports which provides both attractive solutions to recalcitrant puzzle cases and the key to preserving (...)
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  39. Critical Notice of 'On Reference' by Andrea Bianchi (ed.).Lukas Skiba - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):160-171.
    ‘On Reference’ is a collection of 18 original articles. While united in their concern with reference, they deal with a large variety of topics, ranging from questions concerning the nature of reference, through the interaction of reference and cognition, to more specific questions about the semantics of particular referring expressions. The contributions are of high quality: thought provoking, insightful and engagingly written. Many have the potential to substantially advance the debate in their field. In this critical notice I will do (...)
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  40. Relational approaches to Frege's puzzle.Aidan Gray - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (10):e12429.
    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.
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  41. Philosophy of Language for Decision Theory Part 2: Indexicals and Vagueness.Anna Mahtani - 2017 - Lse Philosophy Blog.
    In her second post in this series, Anna Mahtani explores the parallels between philosophy of language and decision theory’s treatment of indexicals and vagueness.
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  42. Does Semantic Relationism Solve Frege's Puzzle?Bryan Pickel & Brian Rabern - 2017 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 46 (1):97-118.
    In a series of recent works, Kit Fine, 605–631, 2003, 2007) has sketched a novel solution to Frege’s puzzle. Radically departing from previous solutions, Fine argues that Frege’s puzzle forces us to reject compositionality. In this paper we first provide an explicit formalization of the relational semantics for first-order logic suggested, but only briefly sketched, by Fine. We then show why the relational semantics alone is technically inadequate, forcing Fine to enrich the syntax with a coordination schema. Given this enrichment, (...)
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  43. Book review: GARCÍA-CARPINTERO, Manuel & TORRE, Stephan . About Oneself: De Se Thought and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 368pp., ISBN 9780198713265. [REVIEW]Matheus Valente - 2017 - Manuscrito 40 (2):127-135.
    ABSTRACT We review the book About Oneself: De Se Thought and Communication, a compilation of papers on de se thought and its implications for a theory of communication. We critically examine the main themes put forward by the papers and try to show how, when put together, they point the way for future discussions about the issue of indexical thought and communication.
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  44. Referentialism and the Objects of Credence: A Reply to Braun.David J. Chalmers - 2016 - Mind 125 (498):499-510.
  45. Minimal Descriptivism.Aidan Gray - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):343-364.
    Call an account of names satisfactionalist if it holds that object o is the referent of name a in virtue of o’s satisfaction of a descriptive condition associated with a. Call an account of names minimally descriptivistif it holds that if a competent speaker finds ‘a=b’ to be informative, then she must associate some information with ‘a’ which she does not associate with ‘b’. The rejection of both positions is part of the Kripkean orthodoxy, and is also built into extant (...)
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  46. On Identity Statements: In Defense of a Sui Generis View.Tristan Haze - 2016 - Disputatio 8 (43):269-293.
    This paper is about the meaning and function of identity statements involving proper names. There are two prominent views on this topic, according to which identity statements ascribe a relation: the object-view, on which identity statements ascribe a relation borne by all objects to themselves, and the name-view, on which an identity statement 'a is b' says that the names 'a' and 'b' codesignate. The object- and name-views may seem to exhaust the field. I make a case for treating identity (...)
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  47. Gottlob Frege: On Sense and Reference (Reading, Translation into Arabic and Comment).Salah Osman - 2016 - Contexts, Language and Interdisciplinary Studies, Natural Sciences Publishing Cor., USA 1 (1):277 - 298.
    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 (...)
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  48. Informative Identities: A Challenge for Frege's Puzzle.Elisa Paganini - 2016 - Dialectica 70 (4):513-530.
    Frege's puzzle about identity sentences has long challenged many philosophers to find a solution to it but also led other philosophers to object that the evidential datum it is grounded on is false. The present work is an elaboration of this second kind of reaction: it explains why Frege's puzzle seems to resist the traditional objection, giving voice to different and more elaborated presentations of the evidential datum, faithful to the spirit but not to the letter of Frege's puzzle. The (...)
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  49. The Antinomy of the Variable: A Tarskian Resolution.Bryan Pickel & Brian Rabern - 2016 - Journal of Philosophy 113 (3):137-170.
    Kit Fine has reawakened a puzzle about variables with a long history in analytic philosophy, labeling it “the antinomy of the variable”. Fine suggests that the antinomy demands a reconceptualization of the role of variables in mathematics, natural language semantics, and first-order logic. The difficulty arises because: (i) the variables ‘x’ and ‘y’ cannot be synonymous, since they make different contributions when they jointly occur within a sentence, but (ii) there is a strong temptation to say that distinct variables ‘x’ (...)
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  50. Confusion is Corruptive Belief in False Identity.Elmar Unnsteinsson - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (2):204-227.
    Speakers are confused about identity if they mistake one thing for two or two things for one. I present two plausible models of confusion, the Frege model and the Millikan model. I show how a prominent objection to Fregean models fails and argue that confusion consists in having false implicit beliefs involving the identity relation. Further, I argue that confused identity has characteristic corruptive effects on singular cognition and on the proper function of singular terms in linguistic communication.
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