Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
Frege's Puzzle and the Presuppositions of Proper Names
By Eric Swanson
Frege's Puzzle has many facets. This paper is about one concerning assertion. Johnny Ramone is John Cummings. And yet an assertion of(1) Johnny Ramone is in The Ramones.
may not convey any new information about Johnny Ramone to an addressee A, whereas an assertion of(2) John Cummings is in The Ramones.
may well give A new information about Johnny Ramone. If proper names are directly referential, then on several ways of thinking about propositions the content of an assertion of (1) is the same as that of (2). For example, according to standard Russellianism about propositions (and abstracting away from tense) the proposition expressed by assertions of both (1) and (2) is the ordered pair consisting of Johnny Ramone and the property of being in The Ramones. Or, on the possible worlds view of propositions, (1) and (2) both express the proposition that is the
set of worlds in which Johnny Ramone is in The Ramones.
How is it, then, that assertions of (1) and (2) can differ in their informativeness? Philosophers once thought the answer was that `Johnny Ramone' and `John Cummings' differ in semantic value. But thanks to arguments by Kripke, Putnam, and others, it's now common to think instead that the following "Millian" principle is right:dr: Irrespective of the point of evaluation, the semantic value of a proper name in a context is the thing the name denotes in that context.
If dr is true, then proper names do not have an associated description (or intension, or sense) that makes any contribution to their semantics. But then we're back to square one: How can (1) and (2) express the same proposition and yet tell us different things about Johnny Ramone?
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Posted by Tony Marmo
at 00:01 BST
Updated: Thursday, 28 October 2004 18:53 BST
