Abstract
In a recent paper, Armstrong and Stanley (Philos Stud 154:205–222, 2011) argue that despite being initially compelling, a Russellian account of singular thought has deep difficulties. I defend a certain sort of Russellian account of singular thought against their arguments. In the process, I spell out a notion of propositional constituency that is independently motivated and has many attractive features.
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Notes
So a proposition can be singular with respect to multiple objects.
Of course standard Russellians can disagree about what is required to be acquainted with an object. I’ll ignore that here. I’ll try to be as neutral as possible on the question of what is required to be acquainted with an object, though I will make a few assumptions about it below.
Thus Kaplan (1989) is not a standard Russellian in my stipulative sense. He writes ‘On my view, acquisition of a name does not, in general, put us en rapport…with the referent. But this is not required for us to use the name in the standard way as a device of direct reference. Nor is it required for us to apprehend, to believe, to doubt, to assert, or to hold other de dicto attitudes toward the propositions we express using the name.’ Here Kaplan says that we can apprehend (entertain) a singular proposition in such a way that our so doing constitutes having a de dicto attitude, whereas my (stipulative) standard Russellian claims that entertaining a singular proposition is ipso facto having a de re attitude.
More needs to be said about what it is to have a thing before one’s mind, but this is not the place and time to do that. See Hawthorne and Manley (2012) for a challenge to the view that having a singular thought about an object requires acquaintance with that object.
This tradition arises out of the work of Gareth Evans and John McDowell.
J&J p. 207.
J&J p. 208.
J&J pp. 209–210. In discussing the possession of the second property J&J also talk about something they call individuation dependence, which they characterize as follows: “if P is a singular thought about a, and Q is a singular thought about b, and a is not identical to b, then P and Q are distinct singular thoughts.” (p. 209). As stated this is incorrect since nothing said rules out P and Q both being singular with respect to both a and b, in which case even though a is not identical to b, it could be that P is identical to Q. What needs to be added here is that P is singular with respect to only a and Q is singular with respect to only b. But since the principle plays no role in J&J’s argument so far as I can see, I ignore it.
e is the type of individuals, t is the type of truth values, and so an expression of type <e,t> will denote or express a function from individuals to truth values (or a set of individuals). Intuitively, an expression of this type functions as a (one-place) predicate. A quantifier like ‘Some woman’ is type <<e,t>,t> and so denotes/expresses a function from sets of things of type e (or functions from things of type e to truth values) to truth values. Hence, such a quantifier combines with an expression of type <e,t> (e.g. ‘laughs’) to yield a sentence, which is of type t (‘Some woman laughs.’).
See e.g. p. 207.
It could also be that J&J think that the proposition containing the relevant <<e,t>,t> semantic value and the property of being a philosopher exists even if Montague was wrong about names (though it would not in this case be expressed by the sentence ‘John is a philosopher.’).
J&J pp. 212–213.
J&J p. 214. They actually switch to a different proposition here, but I don’t since it doesn’t affect any point I am making.
J&J p. 213.
I am imagining that all these things I am saying about fj are true. Have the information about fj here go on as long as you’d like.
At least most people think not.
Kaplan (1977), p. 504. Kaplan relativizes extensions to contexts, assignment functions, times and worlds. For various reasons I am suppressing times and assignment functions here.
I don’t want to assume that PS,c is a proposition intension.
In saying this, I continue to assume that wc, the world of context c, is @.
e.g. see the opening of the Introduction to Jeshion (2010).
That is, they are not about an object the standard Russellian allegedly takes to be designated by ‘Actually’; they are about a property the standard Russellian allegedly takes to be so designated.
Soames (2007), pp. 3–5.
Soames (2007), p. 6.
Where D is the domain of objects the language is used to talk about (see next sentence in the text), such a function maps each variable of the language to a member of D.
Two notes on this. First, propositions other than atomic ones and their negations are made true by world states. Their truth is determined from Sw by recursive clauses for truth functional connectives, quantifiers etc. Second, this makes what world states there are relative to the language L.
Soames (2007), p. 11.
Soames (2007), p. 21.
Soames (2007), p. 19.
Note that the question is not whether I can have singular thoughtse about @. Since I am in @, I am assuming I can. The question is whether in grasping <Ac@, Φ> I am thereby having a singular thoughte about @.
Is thinking about true proposition intensions having a singular thoughte about @? I don’t see why it would be unless you thought being true was being true at @. But no one should think that. That grass is green is true is contingent; but that grass is green is true at @ isn’t.
Originally this second condition claimed that a proposition wouldn’t exist or be entertainable if a certain object didn’t exist. Here J&J shift to the question of whether the proposition I express with ‘Actually snow is white’ would exist or be entertainable had things been different. Presumably their idea is that in such a case, in some sense the actual world wouldn’t exist and my proposition is “about” the actual world. This actually raises delicate issues I will side step here. In particular, what wouldn’t exist if things had been different is the actual concrete world. @—the maximal property the actual world has and the thing we are concerned with here since it is what sentences containing ‘actually’ are “about”—is a different matter. If we think other possible worlds qua properties exist, then we should think that had things been different, @ would have existed.
J&J p. 220.
J&J p. 220.
Because of suppressing syntactic structure, tense, etc., things are likely a bit more complex than indicated, but not in ways relevant to the issues at hand.
References
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Soames, S. (2007). Actually. In: M. Kalderon (Ed.), Aristotelian Society Supplementary (Vol. LXXXI).
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Josh Armstrong, Annie Papreck King and an anonymous referee for helpful comments.
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King, J.C. Acquaintance, singular thought and propositional constituency. Philos Stud 172, 543–560 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0318-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0318-8