Frege’s claim that proper names have senses has come to seem untenable following Kripke’s argument that names are rigid designators. It is commonly thought that if names had senses, their referents would vary with circumstances of evaluation. The article defends Frege’s claim by arguing that names have word-reflexive senses. This analysis of names’ senses does not violate Kripke’s noncircularity condition, and it differs crucially from related views of Bach and Katz. That names have reflexive senses confirms Frege’s own solution to (...) his puzzle about the content of identity sentences, solves Kripke’s Pierre and Peter puzzles about belief ascription, and entails that bearerless names have meanings. Furthermore, names’ having reflexive senses explains why they designate rigidly. (shrink)

"On Sense and Reflexivity" offers the answer to a crucial question that was posed, and left without a satisfactory answer, by Gottlob Frege in "On Sense and Reference" (1892): What is the sense of a proper name? The century-long failure to answer this question has been the main motivation and support for recent nondescriptional accounts of lexical singular terms.

Frege's thesis that each singular term has a sense that determines its reference and serves as its cognitive value has come to be widely doubted. Saul Kripke argued that since names are rigid designators, their referents are not determined by senses. David Kaplan has argued that the rigid designation of indexical terms entails that they also lack referent–determining senses. Kripke's argument about names and Kaplan's argument about indexical terms differ, but each contains a false premise. The referents of both names (...) and indexical terms are determined by reflexive senses. It is reflexive sense that makes these terms rigid designators. (shrink)

Singular-term semantics has been intractable. Frege took the referents of singular terms to be their semantic values. On his account, vacuous terms lacked values. Russell separated the semantics of definite descriptions from the semantics of proper names, which caused truth-values to be composed in two different ways and still left vacuous names without values. Montague gave all noun phrases sets of verb-phrase extensions for values, which created type mismatches when noun phrases were objects and still left vacuous names without values. (...) There is a single type of value for all noun phrases that dissolves the difficulties which have beset singular-term semantics. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that Mill’s classification of names as nonconnotative terms is incompatible with Frege’s thesis that names have senses. However, Milldescribed the senses of nonconnotative terms—without being aware that he was doing so. These are the senses for names that were sought in vain by Frege. When Mill’s and Frege’s doctrines are understood as complementary, they constitute a fully satisfactory theory of names.

Truth Be Told explains how truth and falsity result from relations that sentences and their constituents have to the circumstances at which they are evaluated. It offers a precise analysis of truth and a diagnosis of the Liar paradox. Current semantic theory employs generalized quantifiers as the extensions of noun phrases. The book provides simpler extensions for noun phrases. These permit intuitive compositions of truth-values and a diagnosis of the Liar and Grelling paradoxes.

Frege's thesis that each singular term has a sense that determines its reference and serves as its cognitive value has come to be widely doubted. Saul Kripke argued that since names are rigid designators, their referents are not determined by senses. David Kaplan has argued that the rigid designation of indexical terms entails that they also lack referent–determining senses. Kripke's argument about names and Kaplan's argument about indexical terms differ, but each contains a false premise. The referents of both names (...) and indexical terms are determined by reflexive senses. It is reflexive sense that makes these terms rigid designators. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Every social order depends on a pathway to atonement for those who breach behavioral expectations. However, observers from a variety of fields now agree that the United States has entered an age of non-apology, where the two words “I’m sorry” simply cannot be said, particularly by powerful men facing allegations of sexual misconduct. This essay draws attention to, and comments upon, this trend. We first identify the sociopolitical factors that have inaugurated the era of non-apology, namely growing political polarization. (...) We then explain the consequences of this shift in societal expectations surrounding apology. This state of affairs, which associates genuine apology with emasculation and defeat, is harmful: it foments a toxic culture that will not allow redress for survivors of sexual assault and harassment; and it provides no answers to complex questions of how society can address the guilt of those who engage in sexual misconduct. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that Mill’s classification of names as nonconnotative terms is incompatible with Frege’s thesis that names have senses. However, Milldescribed the senses of nonconnotative terms—without being aware that he was doing so. These are the senses for names that were sought in vain by Frege. When Mill’s and Frege’s doctrines are understood as complementary, they constitute a fully satisfactory theory of names.

Theoreticians of names are currently split into two camps: Fregean and Millian. Fregean theorists hold that names have referent-determining senses that account for such facts as the change of content with the substitution of co-referential names and the meaningfulness of names without bearers. Their enduring problem has been to state these senses. Millian theorists deny that names have senses and take courage from Kripke's arguments that names are rigid designators. If names had senses, it seems that their referents should vary (...) among possible worlds. However, the Millians have the enduring problem of explaining the apparent cognitive content of names. I argue that Mill's original theory, when purged of confusion, provides word-reflexive senses for names. Frege failed to notice senses of this particular sort. Moreover, it is these senses that account for names' rigid designation. When the views of Mill and Frege are understood as complementary, the problems that have faced the divided theorists of names vanish. (shrink)

This book approaches the problems and circumstances confronting blacks in the context of black values, the black community, and the role of government. ^BContents:: The Black Community's Values as a Basis for Action; The Community as Agent of Change; and The Government's Role in Meeting New Challenges.

In spite of advances in medicine and public health, malaria and other mosquito‐borne diseases are on the rise worldwide. Although vaccines, genetically modified mosquitoes and safer insecticides are under development, herein we examine a promising new approach to malaria control through better repellents. Current repellents, usually based on DEET, inhibit host finding by impeding insect olfaction, but have significant drawbacks. We discuss how comparative genomics, using data from the Anopheles genome project, allows the rapid identification of members of three protein (...) classes critical to insect olfaction: odorant‐binding proteins, G‐protein‐coupled receptors, and odorant‐degrading enzymes. A rational design approach similar to that used by the pharmaceutical industry for drug development can then be applied to the development of products that interfere with mosquito olfaction. Such products have the potential to provide more complete, safer and longer lasting protection than conventional repellents, preventing disease transmission by interrupting the parasite life cycle. BioEssays 25:1011–1020, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The Jeu d'Adam—staged outside a church, sporting an energetic vernacular dialogue—was for Hardin Craig drama “caught in the very act of leaving the church,” as for E. K. Chambers it was a herald of secularization. O. B. Hardison's investigation into the origins of medieval drama has rendered that position untenable, but at the same time has left us with no explanation for this play's innovations. Scholars of the Chambers-Craig tradition at least did not imagine that style is without meaning or (...) that innovation is unmotivated. I want to suggest that the significance of the Adam's dramaturgic novelty can be traced to particular ideological disturbances created by particular developments in ecclesiastical life. The play appropriates the liturgy of public penance to reassert traditional authoritative forms at a time when the disposition of spiritual authority was being reimagined, both in formal theological discussions and in the concrete act of sacramental absolution. The world of historical experience, which Erich Auerbach saw in the realistic vernacular dialogue, finds a place in this play only to be put in its place; the innovations express in a new way the old idea that submission to the ecclesiastical hierarchy is a healthy way to live. In placing the action before the church doors the author made the church building not merely the context of the play , but also its subject. (shrink)

Leveraging perspectives from social cognitive theory, the attention-based view, and social networks literatures, we tested the relationship between unethical choice and network unethicality, which we define as respondents’ perceptions of their peer advisors’ unethical choices. Although social cognitive theory predicts that perceptions of peer advisor unethical choice are positively associated with unethical choice, we theorize that the nature of this relationship depends on the personality of the actor and the situation. Results from a lagged study suggest that individual and situational (...) variables may act as key buffers to the adverse impact of unethical social influence on ethical choice. Strengths, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

"Case notes." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (199), pp. 34–35.