Abstract

Montague’s analysis of the well-known temperature paradox poses a problem for Gupta’s syllogism, whose surface syntax differs from the temperature syllogism in the addition of the intensional adverb necessarily. Lasersohn (2005) argues that the puzzle arising from these syllogisms can be solved if one adopts the Fregean presuppositional treatment of definite descriptions, and concludes that the temperature-Gupta puzzle provides an argument in favor of such treatment. This paper shows that the analysis of definite descriptions is in fact orthogonal to the puzzle. Instead, it will be shown that the differences between the two syllogisms stem from the temporal interpretation of their premises.