Abstract
It is argued here that there is no fact of the matter between direct reference theory and neo-Fregeanism. To get a more precise idea of the central thesis of this paper, consider the following two claims: (i) While direct reference theory and neo-Fregeanism can be developed in numerous ways, they can be developed in essentially parallel ways; that is, for any (plausible) way of developing direct reference theory, there is an essentially parallel way of developing neo-Fregeanism, and vice versa. And (ii) for each such pair of theories, there is no fact of the matter as to which of them is superior; or more precisely, they are tied in terms of factual accuracy. These are sweeping claims that cannot be fully justified in a single paper. But arguments are given here that motivate these theses, i.e., that suggest that they are very likely true.
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Notes
I say “predicates like ‘bachelor’” because the two Karls might want to endorse different theories in connection with other sorts of predicates, most notably, natural kind predicates like ‘water’. For the sake of simplifying things, I’ll ignore such predicates here. (I suppose you might think that the predicate ‘bachelor’ is defined in terms of a natural kind predicate, namely, ‘human’. If this were true, it wouldn’t really matter because I could just change the example to a different non-natural-kind predicate, like ‘round’, or ‘pregnant’, or whatever. But I don’t think it is true. I don’t think it’s analytic that all bachelors are humans. I agree that chimps and dogs can’t be bachelors—at least given how those creatures actually are—but I think that members of a species of marrying, human-like Martians could be bachelors.)
Again, this view of demonstratives is different from Kaplan’s. But Salmon developed a view like this in his (2002) and argued that it’s superior to Kaplan’s view.
One question that might be raised here is this: What happens when different features of context conflict with one another? Suppose, for instance, that Albert Einstein is standing right in front of me and I point at him and (thinking I’m pointing at George W. Bush and intending to refer to Bush) I say, “He is an idiot.” Have I referred to Einstein or Bush? Well, I suppose different people will give different answers to this question. Personally, I have no strong intuition about it, and indeed, I’m not sure there’s even a right answer. But for present purposes, we don’t need to bother with this; in particular, we don’t need to know what Karl II’s view here is or, indeed, whether he even has a view about it.
See footnote 1. What I said there about the two Karls applies to the two Freds as well.
They’re also pronounced differently; ‘dthat’ sounds just like ‘that’, but ‘rthat’ sounds like ‘rrrrr-that’, where ‘rrrrr’ is long and drawn out, like a growl, and ‘that’ is a short, bursting monosyllable. Thus, when ‘rthat’ is pronounced correctly, it sounds much the way ‘great’ sounds in the mouth of Tony the Tiger.
I also think that (a) the simple theory suggested by direct reference theory can be given a neo-Fregean formulation, and (b) the simple theory suggested by Fregeanism can be given a direct-reference formulation. But I won’t pursue this here.
This case is derived from a similar case in Higginbotham (1995).
For a discussion of essential uses of indexicals, see Perry (1979).
This view is similar in certain ways to views developed by Forbes (1987) and the early Kaplan (1968–1969). But the ‘contextually appropriate’ qualifier sets this view apart from those earlier views, and as we’ll presently see, this qualifier is a crucial part of the theory.
It’s not quite right to say that in uttering this belief report, I’ve zeroed in on a unique neo-Fregean proposition that Lila needs to believe; for I haven’t been precise about how she needs to represent her root canal. We can ignore this complication here; the remarks in the text capture Fred II’s view of my belief report with respect to the word ‘now’.
Of course, to make this work, Karl II would need to define the notion of covacuity so that it covers mental representations as well as expressions; but (a) I don’t see any reason why he can’t do this, and (b) it doesn’t even matter because Karl II could avoid this issue by changing clause (ii) to the following, which is clumsier but essentially equivalent: (ii*) ‘a’ is vacuous (in the relevant context), and S believes the gappy singular proposition <__, Fness> under some (contextually appropriate) mental representation that has the same character as some expression ‘b’ that’s covacuous with ‘a’ (in the relevant context).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stephen Schiffer, David Pitt, Ed Becker, and Liz Harman for commenting on earlier versions of this paper.
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Balaguer, M. Is there a fact of the matter between direct reference theory and (neo-)Fregeanism?. Philos Stud 154, 53–78 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9702-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9702-9