Online research in philosophy

There are plausible objections to substitutional construals of generalization. But these objections do not apply to a substitutional construal of generalization proposed by Peter Geach several years ago. This paper examines Geach’s conception.

In the 1960s, Peter Geach and John Searle independently posed an important objection to the wide class of 'noncognitivist' metaethical views that had at that time been dominant and widely defended for a quarter of a century. The problems raised by that objection have come to be known in the literature as the Frege-Geach Problem, because of Geach's attribution of the objection to Frege's distinction between content and assertoric force, and the problem has since occupied a great deal of the attention both of defenders of broadly noncognitivist views, and of their critics. In this article I explain Geach and Searle's historical objections, and put the subsequent discussion into dialectical context, paying some attention to the developments along the way and how they have enhanced our overall understanding of the problem. The article covers a lot of territory, so we will only be able to see the highlights, along the way. For further reading, see the Works Cited.

Expressivists, such as Blackburn, analyse sentences such as 'S thinks that it ought to be the case that p' as S hoorays that p'. A problem is that the former sentence can be negated in three different ways, but the latter in only two. The distinction between refusing to accept a moral judgement and accepting its negation therefore cannot be accounted for. This is shown to undermine Blackburn's solution to the Frege-Geach problem.

Preface -- The problems of metaethics -- The noncognitivist turn -- The Frege-Geach problem, 1939-1970 -- Expressivism -- Moral thought -- The Frege-Geach problem, 1973-1988 -- The Frege-Geach problem, 1988-2006 -- Truth and objectivity -- Epistemology : wishful thinking -- The hybrid gambit -- Prospects and applications.

An -ever free relative is felicitous only when the speaker doesn’t know, or doesn’t care about, the identity of the entity denoted. In this paper we investigate what it means to identify an entity by examining the non-identification condition on -ever free relatives. Following Dayal (In A. Lawson (Ed.), Proceedings of SALT VII, 1997 ), we analyze -ever free relatives as definites with a modal dimension. We show that the variation in the identity of the entity across the possible worlds in the modal dimension cannot be captured in a model where transworld identity is expressed using a single trivial principle of identity, and present an analysis within a model where transworld identity is relativized to noun meanings, which has been proposed in the philosophical literature for other reasons (Geach 1968 ; Gupta, The logic of common nouns: an investigation in quantified modal logic, 1980 ). The analysis thus shows that natural language semantics is sensitive to relative identity in the sense of Geach and Gupta; furthermore, it sets the stage for a new typology of referring expressions based on which expression types contribute principles of transworld identity.

This essay offers a detailed philosophical criticism of Frege’s popular thesis that identity is a relation of names. I consider Frege’s position as articulated both in ‘On Sense and Reference’, and in the Grundgesetze, where he appears to take an objectual view of identity, arguing that in both cases Frege is clearly committed to the proposition that identity is a relation holding between names, on the grounds that two different things can never be identical. A counterexample to Frege’s thesis is considered, and a positive thesis is developed according to which, in contradistinction to the Fregean position, identity is a reflexive, symmetric, and transitive relation holding only between a thing and itself which can be expressed as a relation between names.

Relativists maintain that identity is always relative to a general term (RI). According to them, the notion of absolute identity has to be abandoned and replaced by a multiplicity of relative identity relations for which Leibniz’s Law does not hold. For relativists RI is at least as good as the Fregean cardinality thesis (FC), which contends that an ascription of cardinality is always relative to a concept specifying what, in any specific case, counts as a unit. The same train of thought on cardinality and identity is apparent among those – Artifactualists – who take relative identity sentences for artifacts as the norm. The aim of this paper is (i) to criticize the thesis (T1) thatfrom FC it is possible to derive RI, and (ii) to explain why Artifactualists mistakenly believe that RI can be derived from FC. The misunderstanding derives from their assumption that the concept of artifact – like the concept of object – is not a sortal concept.

P.T. Geach has maintained (see, e.g., Geach (1967/1968)) that identity (as well as dissimilarity) is always relative to a general term. According to him, the notion of absolute identity has to be abandoned and replaced by a multiplicity of relative identity relations for which Leibniz’s Law – which says that if two objects are identical they have the same properties – does not hold. For Geach relative identity is at least as good as Frege’s cardinality thesis – which he takes to be strictly connected with relative identity – according to which an ascription of cardinality is always relative to a concept which specifies what, in any particular case, counts as a unit. The idea that there is a close connection between relative identity and Frege’s cardinality thesis has been issued again quite recently by Alston and Bennett in (1984). In their opinion, Frege’s cardinality thesis is not only similar to relative identity – as Geach maintains – but it implies it. Moreover, they agree with Geach in claiming that a commitment to Frege’s cardinality thesis forces a parallel commitment to relative identity. Against Geach, Alston and Bennett we will claim that (T1): «Frege’s cardinality thesis is similar to relative identity» is false and that therefore (T2) «Frege’s cardinality thesis implies relative identity» is false as well.