Fregean Theories of Meaning

In this review of Irad Kimhi's "Thinking and Being", I consider some of the book's potentially sweeping consequences for the Fregean proposition.

A speaker can express the same thought, true under the same conditions, while using different expressions and grammatical constructions. According to Frege, these are differences in colourings. Colourings may convey additional contents; in that, they resemble Gricean conventional implicatures. Sander (2019) argues that Gricean implicatures do not subsume the category of colourings, as some colourings do not communicate their content. I show that this argument relies on a notion of communication focused on the speaker's intentions. But a notion of communicative (...) intentions where a speaker is responsible for the intentions her audience ascribes her possible. Under this notion, since so-called non-communicative colourings trigger specific inferences, a speaker who uses them communicates these inferences. Therefore, I vindicate the communicative role of colourings with content. (shrink)

Zeitgenössische Positionen in der Debatte über fiktionale Namen lassen sich in zwei Lager aufteilen: deskriptivistische und Millsche Ansätze. Deskriptivisten nehmen an, dass der semantische Inhalt eines Namens synonym mit einer Kennzeichnung sei, während Millianerinnen, behaupten, dass der semantische Inhalt eines Namens sein Bezugsobjekt sei. Da es sich bei diesen Ansätzen um Theorien handelt, die sich nicht auf fiktionale Namen beschränken, sondern Eigennamen generell behandeln, müssen sie sich auch Einwänden stellen, die nicht nur auf fiktionale Namen zutreffen. Dieses Kapitel konzentriert sich (...) weniger auf die Darstellung allgemeiner Probleme, sondern auf solche, die sich besonders im Zusammenhang mit fiktionalen Namen stellen. (shrink)

Near the end of 'Naming the Colours', Lewis (1997) makes an interesting claim about the relationship between linguistic and mental content; we are typically unable to read the content of a belief off the content of a sentence used to express that belief or vice versa. I call this view autonomism. I motivate and defend autonomism and discuss its importance in the philosophy of mind and language. In a nutshell, I argue that the different theoretical roles that mental and linguistic (...) content play suggest these kinds of content should be understood as sensitive to different things. (shrink)

The paper explores what it could mean to speak of love as involving a delight in ‘the simple actuality’ of another, or, as Buber does, of the ‘touchable’ human being as ‘unique and devoid of qualities’. Developing strands in Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of perception, it is argued that the relation between recognising this as a particular individual and recognising particular qualities in her may be close to the reverse of what might be supposed: a recognition of this distinctive smile being dependent (...) on a recognition of who this is. The fundamental place of particulars, as opposed to kinds, in our thought about those we know and care for is developed in part through a phenomenological treatment of our perception of faces. That treatment is set in a context of the justification of our judgements about who someone is, and is linked with a critique of treatments of proper names of individuals in the spirit of Frege. It is in our speaking to those we know that we find a relation to a particular that is direct—not mediated by a description of its properties—that Russell sought in ‘knowledge by acquaintance’. (shrink)

I shall discuss some of the issues concerning a notorious doctrine of Frege that sentences are names of truth-values. I am interested in a problem raised by Kripke that the doctrine obscures the distinction between judgeable and unjudgeable contents. I shall present what I take to be Frege’s account of judgeable content: a proper expression of a judgeable content is susceptible to an analysis into a predicate and an argument-word, where a predicate is understood as a concept-word used to attribute (...) a certain property to the referent of the argument-word. In the light of this analysis, I shall argue that the doctrine does not obscure the distinction. The problem will also be discussed within the formal context of Grundgesetze. A new light will be shed on his rather peculiar conception of the symbol ‘ ${\boldsymbol \vdash}$’. (shrink)

This is an entry on Empty Names for the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language, edited by Delia Graff Fara and Gillian Russell.

It was argued by Célia Teixeira (2003) that the actualized descriptivist theory of names have the problem of generating undesired epistemic necessities. In this paper I want to argue for a descriptivis theory that does not suffer from such problem. For this I will explain Teixeira's objections and later present my own conception of an actualized descriptivist theory of names; it is, protected against the problem of undesired necessities.

If, relative to a context, what a sentence says is necessarily true, then what it says must be so. If, relative to a context, what a sentence says is possible, then what it says could be true. Following natural philosophical usage, it would thus seem clear that in assessing an occurrence of a sentence for possibility or necessity, one is assessing what is said by that occurrence. In this paper, I argue that natural philosophical usage misleads here. In assessing an (...) occurrence of a sentence for possibility or necessity, one is not assessing the modal status of the proposition expressed by that occurrence of the sentence. (shrink)

Juhani Yli-Vakkuri has argued that the Twin Earth thought experiments offered in favour of semantic externalism can be replaced by a straightforward deductive argument from premisses widely accepted by both internalists and externalists alike. The deductive argument depends, however, on premisses that, on standard formulations of internalism, cannot be satisfied by a single belief simultaneously. It does not therefore, constitute a proof of externalism. The aim of this article is to explain why.

It is largely through a return to the old-fashioned topic of judgment that the new "revisionist" history is seen to be taking shape according to which the "apostolic succession" proceeds from Kant not to Hegel but to Frege, though the Begriff is by no means ignored. A pivotal work, David Bell’s elegant monograph is at once useful and challenging. In the forefront lies the purely exegetical question, "What does Frege mean when he says that concepts are unsaturated?" In the background: (...) a fight over Frege’s soul, Kant vs. Plato, where Bell discreetly advances the cause of the new anti-realism of which Michael Dummett is the éminence grise. (shrink)

Sainsbury and Tye (2011) propose that, in the case of names and other simple extensional terms, we should substitute for Frege's second level of content—for his senses—a second level of meaning vehicle—words in the language of thought. I agree. They also offer a theory of atomic concept reference—their ‘originalist’ theory—which implies that people knowing the same word have the ‘same concept’. This I reject, arguing for a symmetrical rather than an originalist theory of concept reference, claiming that individual concepts are (...) possessed only by individual people. Concepts are classified rather than identified across different people. (shrink)

This book is far more than an exposition of Frege's logical system and semantic concepts, although it is that. The author puts forward the challenging thesis that in trying to cope with Russell's paradox Frege deserted principles of his system which he had relied on throughout. Sternfeld attempts to show, by offering his own interpretation of Frege's logical theory, that if Frege had relied consistently on his previously formulated logical principles, Russell's paradox would have given him no trouble. Further, he (...) uses these arguments as a basis for defending the general thesis that paradoxes and other difficulties with various logical systems can only be discussed relative to the philosophical principles underlying the logical system and adopted independently of it. While these are the most challenging of the book's theses they are not its only topics. The author seems to have read everything by and about Frege and is in control of his material. There will undoubtedly be disagreements over his interpretation of Frege because Frege did not write to make expositors happy. But all students of Frege, as well as students of the philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics, will find this book rewarding.--R. H. K. (shrink)

Are there distinctively second-personal thoughts? I clarify the question and present considerations in favour of a view on which some second-personal thoughts are distinctive. Specifically, I suggest that some second-personal thoughts are distinctive in also being first-personal thoughts. Thus, second-personal thinking provides a way of sharing another person's first-personal thoughts.

Argues that because Frege's semantic ideas were introduced into analytic philosophy of language by Russell and Carnap the general understanding of his distinction between sense and reference has been severely misrepresented.

One of the many important tasks of semantics is to provide an account of the substitution patterns of a language—that is, to furnish an explanation of the conditions under which semantic values of complexes are preserved when components are replaced. The importance of this issue is plain: we only have to recall the debates regarding substitutivity between proponents of direct reference theories and advocates of some version of Fregeanism, as well as the disagreements among different proponents of direct reference theories (...) as regards substitutivity in belief reports. This is why it is important to articulate an acceptable principle of substitution. A traditional statement of the principle of substitution holds that codesignative singular terms should be intersubtitutable salva veritate. In the past I have argued that such a principle is not connected properly to some pretheoretical data about the function of referring terms. In this chapter I argue that such a principle does not gain support either from other, more fundamental, laws. I end by defending the adequacy of a different principle of substitution. (shrink)

The Fregean analysis of definite descriptions as referring expressions predicts that copular sentences with definite descriptions in postcopular position are invariably interpreted as identity statements. But as numerous diagnostics show, such sentences are frequently capable of receiving a predicational reading. A uniform Fregean analysis therefore won’t do. Things aren’t that simple, however. I show that descriptions which exhibit the structure [the + N + of + Proper Name] fall into two semantically distinct classes, and that the members of one of (...) these classes of descriptions (those I call “identifying”) pattern with proper names in resisting a predicative reading. I argue that a proposal according to which referring expressions can quite generally undergo a type shift that transforms them into predicates thus fails on grounds of overgeneration. I propose that we can account for the data by instead appealing to two definite determiners: a Fregean determiner ‘the r ’ which forms referring descriptions, and a determiner ‘the p ’ which forms predicative descriptions. I argue that this proposal also correctly predicts that copular sentences with proper names in postcopular position fail to have a predicational reading. I conclude the paper by defending the analysis of names to which I appeal against an alternative view inspired by Burge (J Philos 70(14):425–439, 1973), and suggest a way in which the desired results could be achieved while making do with a single definite article. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to the historical roots of the analytical tradition. As Michael Dummett points out in his Origins of Analytic Philosophy, many tendencies in Central European thought contributed to the early development of analytic philosophy. Dummett himself concentrates on just one aspect of this historical complex, namely on the relationship between the theories of meaning and reference developed by Frege and by Husserl in the years around the turn of the century. It is to this specific issue (...) that the present essay is devoted, though we attempt a more sympathetic reading of Husserl's views on these matters than is to be found in Dummett’s work. Topics covered include Husserl’s theory of intentionality, his view of meanings as types or essences of mental acts, of the relation between meaning and expression, of states of affairs, and of indexicality. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers apply the term ‘object’ both to concreta and to abstracta of certain kinds. The theory of objects which this implies is shown to rest on a dichotomy between object-entities on the one hand and meaning-entities on the other, and it is suggested that the most adequate account of the latter is provided by Husserl’s theory of noemata. A two-story ontology of objects and meanings (concepts, classes) is defended, and Löwenheim’s work on class-representatives is cited as an indication of (...) how the need for higher types may be obviated, even in mathematical contexts. The paper concludes with a sketch of the taxonomy of the object realm which results from the above. (shrink)

In this paper I apply a well known tension between cognitive and semantic aspects in Frege’s notion of sense to his treatment of indexicals. I first discusses Burge’s attack against the identification of sense and meaning, and Kripke’s answer supporting such identification. After showing different problems for both interpreters, the author claims that the tension in Frege’s conception of sense (semantic and cognitive) accounts for some shortcomings of both views, and that considering the tension helps in understanding apparently contradictory Fregean (...) claims about sameness of sense of sentences with indexicals. I conclude that the Fregean notion of sense, also in its cognitive aspect, cannot be reduced to linguistic meaning, and that the Fregean tension between two notions of sense may also explain the discussion Frege gives on the indexical “I”, proposing to develop a picture of indexicals as hidden complex demonstratives, as originally suggested by Burge. (shrink)

This paper is a comparison of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s theory of indexicals, especially concerning Frege’s remarks on time as “part of the expression of thought”. I analyze the most contrasting features of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s remarks on indexicals. Subsequently, I try to identify a common ground between Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations, and hint at a possible convergence between those two views, stressing the importance given by Frege to nonverbal signs in defining the content of (...) thought. I conclude by indicating a possible direction for further research. (shrink)

The „Paradox of the Concept Horse" arises on the assumption of the Reference Principle: that co-referential expressions should be cross-substitutable salva veritate in extensional contexts and salva congruitate in all. Accordingly no singular term can co-refer with an unsaturated expression. The paper outlines a number of desiderata for a satisfactory response to the problem and argues that recent treatments by Dummett and Wiggins fall short by their lights. It is then pointed out that a more consistent perception of the requirements (...) of the Reference Principle leads not to the Paradox but to the result that Frege had no business extending the notion of Bedeutung to unsaturated expressions in the first place. Rather the relation between, e.g., predicates and the entities that comprise the range of higher-order logical variables must be logically unlike that between singular terms and their referents; the way is therefore opened for singular terms to refer to entities of the former kind after all. The Concept Horse is a concept (and a Fregean object too.). (shrink)

The paradox of analysis is the problem of formulating analyses that avoid the metaphilosophical dilemma of uninformativeness where analysandum and analysans are identical in meaning, and incorrectness or unsoundness where analysandum and analysans are nonidentical in meaning. Frege's distinction between sense and reference supports an intentional solution to the paradox, incorporating Roderick M. Chisholm's concept of converse intentional properties. Formal definitions of unrestricted Leibnizian or conceptual identity and referential identity or codesignation are provided, under which analysanda and analysantia are referentially (...) identical, guaranteeing informativeness, of philosophically correct analyses. (shrink)

Frege's obscure key concept of the unsaturatedness of functions is clarified with the help of the concepts of dependent and independent parts and foundation relations used by Husserl in describing the ontology of complex wholes. Sentential unity in Frege, Husserl and Wittgenstein: all have a similar explanation. As applied to linguistic expressions, the terms 'unsaturated' and 'incomplete' are ambiguous: they may mean the ontological property of Unselbständigkeit, inability to exist alone, or the property of being what categorial grammar calls a (...) functor. Separation of these two senses resolves a dispute between Dummett and Geach on the nature of predicates. (shrink)

Fine (2007) argues that Frege’s puzzle and its relatives demonstrate a need for a basic reorientation of the field of semantics. According to this reorientation, the domain of semantic facts would be closed not under the classical consequence relation but only under a stronger relation Fine calls “manifest consequence.” I examine Fine’s informally sketched analyses of manifest consequence, showing that each can be amended to determine a class of strong consequence relations. A best candidate relation emerges from each of the (...) two classes, and I prove that the two candidates extensionally coincide. The resulting consequence relation is of independent interest, for it might be held to constitute a cogent standard of reasoning that proceeds under a deficient grasp on the identity of objects. (shrink)

We try to define the essential features of the Fregean paradigm. Then we demonstrate that Suszko's non-fregean logic, Wolniewicz's ontology of situation and Barwise-Perry's situational semantics go meaningfully beyond the fregean paradigm: what is presupposed in all of these theories is that as semantic correlates of sentences serve certain objects which are not logical values of these sentences.

In nearly forty years’ of work, Simon Blackburn has done more than anyone to expand our imaginations about the aspirations for broadly projectivist/expressivist theorizing in all areas of philosophy. I know that I am far from alone in that his work has often been a source of both inspiration and provocation for my own work. It might be tempting, in a volume of critical essays such as this, to pay tribute to Blackburn’s special talent for destructive polemic, by seeking to (...) take down that by which I’ve been most provoked over the years. But Blackburn’s biting wit has both more wit and more bite than I could hope to emulate. So instead I’ll try to emulate here what I’ve admired the most about Blackburn – the constructive vein of much of his work. (shrink)

This book is in the Studies in Philosophy: Outstanding Dissertations series. Its central theme is that Frege’s concept-notation is inadequate because it does not formalize his semantic theory after the introduction of the sense-reference distinction in 1891. This failing, according to Klement, opens Frege up to a number of philosophical and logical challenges that can be met only by completing the project of showing “how Frege’s mature semantic views would be incorporated into his mature logical system”, a project which, Klement (...) plausibly argues, Frege would have endorsed. This involves: allowing the concept-notation to represent explicitly what is expressed in natural language with indirect constructions such as “said that...” or “believes that... ”; allowing principles to be formulated over this notion which capture inferences involving indirect constructions such as: The Morning Star is a planet, Gottlob believes the Morning Star is a planet, so, Gottlob believes something true; being able to respond to certain objections to Frege’s views, some first bruited by Russell and in later correspondence, others involving the identity conditions on intensional entities and “quantifying in” ; making the concept-notation reflect Frege’s ontology; and evaluating the consistency of Frege’s ontology. The chapters of this book are devoted to fulfilling this project “based upon a careful reading of Frege’s own works”, and their contents are mostly self-explanatory. Chapter 2 sets out the formal apparatus of the Grundgeseze, even the bits Frege left out. Chapter 3 is the most philosophical. Senses are construed as interpersonally accessible information uniquely true of the references they determine—senses are objects and functions in the “third realm.” Singular terms are associated with an impossibly rich hierarchy of senses as objects. Functors, including predicates, are associated with senses as functions. Sentences are associated with thoughts as objects, composed of constituent sense-functions, and in many cases, also sense-objects. Robust compositionality at the level of sense raises the question of the nature of the relation between constituents and the whole—is it functional, or not? Compositionality potentially conflicts with a number of other claims, and Klement’s conclusion is reasonable: “the context principle, the priority thesis, and the possibility of there existing multiple decompositions for the same Gedanke, do not pose any great difficulty for the compositionality principle or the understanding of Gedanke as having determinate inner structures”. Chapter 4 sets out Church’s original system and investigates reformulations suggested by Church himself, Kaplan, and others. Chapter 5 presents Klement’s formalization of an intensional logic of sense and reference, based on the results of chapters 2 and 4, and sufficient for indirect speech and quantifying-in, but containing a contradiction. Chapter 6 takes up arguments of early Russell, Searle, and Bergmann. Chapter 7 addresses strategies for repairing the inconsistencies of chapter 5, but in a Fregean spirit: dropping some realms of entities, restricting their number, or modifying our conception of their nature. (shrink)

This book claims to provide a revisionist interpretation of Frege's philosophy. According to the author, Frege uses words "that to us have odd meanings derived from a foreign and dated philosophical framework". His philosophy is said to be deeply flawed, beset by fatal errors.

The authors are known for an analytic commentary on Wittgenstein: Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning. The preface reveals their original hope to write an analytic commentary on a philosopher more systematic than the later Wittgenstein. They planned a year for a short undergraduate introduction to the general principles of Frege's philosophy. In that year they failed to find in Frege a philosophical system similar to a monumental building to which instructors could take students and point out what made it such an (...) architectural marvel. Other philosophers apparently believed in a monumental Fregean edifice to which they could lead people, and on whose materials and structural merits they could elaborate. But these authors found only ruins and rubble. The debris did not even clearly give evidence of past glory, let alone provide any useful material, foundations, or plans for a reconstruction. (shrink)

This book contains English translations of nearly all Frege's published writings other than Begriffsschrift, Grundlagen, and Grundgesetze. The works translated are selected from Kleine Schriften. About thirty percent of Collected Papers has never appeared in English before. This includes Frege's Göttingen dissertation, "On a Geometrical Representation of Imaginary Forms in the Plane", and his Jena Habilitationsschrift, "Methods of Calculation based on an Extension of the Concept of Quantity". Also translated for the first time are six brief reviews of mathematical works, (...) a reply to Cantor's review of Grundlagen, two short mathematical lectures: "Lecture on a Way of Conceiving the Shape of a Triangle as a Complex Quantity" and "Lecture on the Geometry of Pairs of Points in the Plane", and a satire, "On Mr. H. Schubert's Numbers". Everything else in Collected Papers has appeared in English before in various journals and books. Frege's only published works not translated here are three explanations of Begriffsschrift and a short lecture, "Ueber den Briefwechsel Leibnizens und Huygens mit Papin", which apparently has not been translated into English. Thus, with the exception of the complete Grundgesetze, the publication of this book, together with The Foundations of Arithmetic, Conceptual Notation, Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence, and Posthumous Writings, makes almost all Frege's known surviving work, both published and unpublished, available in English. (shrink)

The author claims that "'true' is not a real predicate". She argues to this conclusion by first dividing the received accounts of truth into the correspondence, redundancy, and prosentential theories, continues by attempting to refute them all, and ends by replacing them with what she calls the "resentential theory." The author correctly identifies the problems facing any theory of truth only to offer a theory which itself succumbs to those very problems.

The author compares Frege's theory of sense and reference with Wittgenstein's Tractatus theory of "logical picturing through language." The aim of Frege's theory, according to Carl, is to arrive at a concept of judgment suitable for his logic and at a satisfactory account of the relation between thought and truth. In all this, Frege uses both linguistic and epistemological reflections. Wittgenstein's interest is different: his theory is concerned with the relation between language and reality, his concept of truth is one (...) of correspondence. The words "Sinn" and "Bedeutung" stand, in Tractatus, for the objective "correlates" of sentence and name respectively. The Sinn of a sentence is a function of the Bedeutung of the names occurring in it. Sentences have Sinn, words have Bedeutung. According to Carl, Frege and Wittgenstein ask different questions and pursue different explanatory goals. Frege's problem, unlike Wittgenstein's, is oriented by a Kantian understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. That for Frege the Sinn is the fact that is represented in a sentence, points on the one hand to Frege's basically epistemological interest and, on the other, to Wittgenstein's linguistic-ontological concern. Tractatus gives a version of correspondence theory, which Frege explicitly rejects; just as Frege's concern with assertion and judgment are rejected by Wittgenstein as being of no logical importance. In spite of these fundamental differences in orientation, they do have, according to Carl, common theories and thematic interconnections. Both connect the idea of Sinn with understanding of linguistic expressions, both have a functional interpretation of the sense or the reference of complex expressions. Both accord centrality to the concept of truth. (shrink)

This is a book with curious origins, one that Dummett says he wrote "without meaning to." It is the result of a failed attempt to supply an introduction for the second edition of his outstanding work, Frege: Philosophy of Language. In surveying the reaction to the first edition, Dummett was struck by the diversity of interpretations of Frege, and since that edition contained little by way of justification of his own reading, he felt that an introduction to the second edition (...) was called for in which his positions were argued and defended. However the manuscript quickly grew into a much larger work and became the present volume. Consequently, says Dummett, there is little discussion of the truth of Frege's doctrines, the discussion instead focusing on why Frege should be read Dummett's way and containing a listing and explanation of the various textual changes he felt were required for the second edition. In fact, however, there is more space devoted to a defense of Frege's views than Dummett would have us believe in the preface, and this is all to the good since it allows the book to stand on its own to a greater degree than would otherwise have been the case. Even so, it is intended as a companion volume to FPL, and the reader will not obtain a full appreciation of it unless FPL is read first. (shrink)

Although Frege is now one of the most important figures in analytical philosophy, there are virtually no full-length studies available. Walker does not try to present all of Frege—that would be a monumental undertaking—but only to consider the philosophical aspects of his thought. Frege's theory of functions, concepts, and objects is first studied; then naming and describing are related to predication and thence to concepts; the notion of the sense of words and expressions, and then the notion of truth, especially (...) as picture-truth, is analyzed with their assistance. The last sections view Frege's general idea of the use of language and symbols, the nature of scientific laws, and the nature of numbers. The author sees Frege as tending to shift his interest from logic to ordinary language and so to the problems of expression in general; this view is reflected in the book itself. The affinities which the author sees with the work of Frege and Wittgenstein is only occasionally treated, but he does make it clear that the Tractatus owes much to Frege. Generally, this compact work will serve well in the study and interpretation of the work of the nineteenth century's greatest logician.—P. J. M. (shrink)

According to Russell’s famous Gray’s Elegy argument within “On Denoting”, Frege’s distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung is problematic when applied to a denoting phrase like ‘the first line of Gray’s Elegy’, which denotes a linguistic expression: ‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day’. The author shows that Russell’s Gray’s Elegy argument involves imprecision in the use of quotation marks as well as the unwarranted identification of an expression’s meaning with the expression itself.

A Millian-Russellian semantic theory is one according to which the meanings of proper names are the objects for which they stand, and the meanings of predicates are the properties (or relations) they express. Given a compositionality principle (which I will assume), the Millian-Russellian must hold that sentences which differ only in the substitution of proper names which have the same reference (relative to the relevant context) must express the same proposition.

There are two major semantic theories of proper names: Semantic Descriptivism and Direct Reference. According to Semantic Descriptivism, the semantic content of a proper name N for a speaker S is identical to the semantic content of a definite description “the F” that the speaker associates with the name. According to Direct Reference, the semantic content of a proper name is identical to its referent. Semantic Descriptivism suffers from a number of drawbacks first pointed out by Donnellan (1970) and Kripke (...) (1972). Direct Reference faces difficulties of its own, most importantly the problem of empty names. The most promising Directly Referential solution to this problem is the Unfilled Proposition view, according to which utterances of sentences containing empty names semantically express unfilled propositions. But this view faces the problem of accounting for the intuition that negative existentials involving empty names are true. The most promising way of dealing with this problem within Unfilled Proposition theory is to suppose (i) that utterances of sentences may be used to pragmatically convey propositions they do not semantically express, and (ii) that the proposition pragmatically conveyed by a speaker S's utterance of a sentence containing an empty name N (where “the F” is a definite description S associates with N) is identical to the proposition semantically expressed by an utterance of the sentence obtained by replacing N with “the F”. Call this view “Pragmatic Descriptivism”. With respect to the problem of negative existentials, Pragmatic Descriptivists can insist that, although an utterance of “Santa does not exist” is literally neither true nor false, our taking it to be true may be explained as the result of our having confused the unfilled proposition it semantically expresses with the clearly true descriptive proposition it pragmatically conveys. Despite its theoretical virtues, Pragmatic Descriptivism has recently come under fire. Everett (2003), in particular, has advanced four different lines of criticism, to which Adams and Dietrich (2004) have responded in some detail. In this article, I have two main aims. The first is to argue that Adams and Dietrich's replies to Everett's criticisms (with one exception) are ineffective. I conclude that there is no acceptable strategy for solving the problem of empty names within Direct Reference theory. The second is to argue that there is a promising alternative to Semantic Descriptivism and Direct Reference that requires us to fill unfilled propositions with names, thereby solving the problem of empty names. (shrink)

Fregean thoughts (i.e. the senses of assertoric sentences) are structured entities because they are composed of simpler senses that are somehow ordered and interconnected. The constituent senses form a unity because some of them are ?saturated? and some ?unsaturated?. This paper shows that Frege's explanation of the structure of thoughts, which is based on the ?saturated/unsaturated? distinction, is by no means sufficient because it permits what I call ?wild analyses?, which have certain unwelcome consequences. Wild analyses are made possible because (...) any ?unsaturated? sense that is a mode of presentation of a concept together with any ?saturated? sense forms a thought. The reason is that any concept can be applied to any object (which is presented by a ?saturated? sense). This stems from the fact that Frege was willing to admit only total functions. It is also briefly suggested what should be done to block wild analyses. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to refute the fregean assumption that declarative sentences refer to truth-Values. A consequence of the assumption is that the truth-Value of a declarative sentence containing another as part remains unchanged when the part is replaced by another sentence having the same truth-Value, Provided that the part as part has only customary reference and expresses a complete thought. The refutation proceeds by demonstrating this consequence to be false.

The author presents a philosophical critique of the basic ideas of logical semantics, as developed by Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein. He argues that these logicians understated the importance of the sense of linguistic expressions.