Philosophy of Language

An Introduction

Chris Daly

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781441180513
• eBook ISBN: 9781441175168
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Philosophy of Language is an accessible yet detailed introduction to the major issues and thinkers in the subject. Thematically structured, Philosophy of Language introduces the work of leading thinkers who
have contributed to the discipline, including Frege, Russell, Strawson, Grice and Quine and also examines key distinctions that arise, such as sense and reference, sense and force, descriptions and names, semantics and pragmatics, extensional, intensional, and hyperintensional contexts, and the problems which these distinctions involve. Cogent and thorough analysis throughout is supplemented by student-friendly features, including chapter summaries, questions for discussion, guides to further reading, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. Closely reflecting the way the philosophy of language is taught and studied, the structure and content of this introduction is ideal for use on undergraduate courses and of value for postgraduate students.

1

Frege on Names

Chapter Outline 1. Introduction 2. Names and descriptions 3. The puzzle of informative identity sentences 4. Frege on names 5. Frege’s distinction between sense and reference 6. What is the sense of a name? 7. The puzzle of empty names 8. Do names have senses? 9. Conclusion Questions for discussion Further reading

1. Introduction

In the first four chapters of this book we will be considering central aspects of Gottlob Frege’s philosophy of language. Frege’s philosophy of language is developed from his research in philosophy of mathematics. Frege seeks to show how we can have mathematical knowledge. In order to show this, he advances a programme known as logicism. This programme attempts to reduce mathematics to logic. As part of this programme, Frege devises a system which would perspicuously represent chains of inference in mathematics (Frege 1879). Devising such a system requires, among other things, devising a language which clearly expresses the logical notions introduced by the system and which makes transparent the logical structure of sentences formulated in that language. For these reasons Frege is led into developing a philosophy of language. (For further discussion of the background of Frege’s thought, see Currie 1982, chapters 1 and 2.)

In this first chapter, we will consider Frege’s views about the meaning of names. The philosophical issues concerning the meaning of names are as follows. Is there anything more to the meaning of a name than whatever it refers to? For example, does the meaning of your name consist solely in its referring to you? Does the meaning of ‘Barack Obama’ consist solely in its referring to Barack Obama? Or does that name not only refer to Obama but also tell us something about him?

Frege argues that there is more to the meaning of a name than what it refers to because of an important puzzle: the puzzle of informative identity sentences. To solve the puzzle, Frege distinguishes between two aspects of the meaning of a name: its sense and its reference. Frege subsequently extends this distinction from names to predicates and sentences. (See Chapters 2 and 3, respectively.) Before we discuss the difference between sense and reference, however, we need first to consider a different distinction, that between names and descriptions.

2. Names and descriptions

On the face of it, there is a distinction between two kinds of linguistic expression: proper names and descriptions. Consider descriptions. Some descriptions do not purport to pick out any particular thing. These are called ‘indefinite descriptions’. An indefinite description applies to anything which fits the description, and there may be more than one thing that fits it. Examples of indefinite descriptions include ‘a reader’, ‘a President of the United States’, ‘some capital city’ and ‘some planet’. Other descriptions purport to pick out exactly one particular thing. These are called ‘definite descriptions’. They include ‘the author of this book’, ‘the 35th President of the United States’, ‘the capital of France’ and ‘the largest planet in the Solar System’. Now consider proper names. Proper names include ‘John F. Kennedy’, ‘Paris’ and ‘Jupiter’. Unlike indefinite descriptions, proper names attempt to pick out a particular thing. Yet proper names also seem to differ from definite descriptions as well. A proper name purports to pick something out apparently without describing that thing, or at least some philosophers, such as John Stuart Mill, think so. Mill writes:

Proper names . . . denote the individuals who are called by them, but they do not indicate or imply any attributes as applying to those individuals. When we name a child by the name [‘Paul’], or a dog by the name [‘Caesar’], these names are simply marks used to enable those individuals to be made subjects of discourse. (Mill 1843, book I, chapter II, §5, p. 33)

In Mill’s view, using a proper name to pick something out does not provide any information about whatever has been picked out. It does not ‘indicate or imply’ that the thing picked out has any features. Using the name ‘Jupiter’ to talk about something, for example, does not indicate or imply anything about what the thing you are talking about is like. Names, according to Mill’s view, are ‘simply marks’. Contrast this with the case of the description ‘the largest planet in the Solar System’. By using this description to talk about something, you would be indicating that it is not only a planet and that it is in the Solar System, but that it is the largest planet in the Solar System. (For further discussion of Mill’s theory of names, see Cargile 1979, chapter 2.)

3. The puzzle of informative identity sentences

Frege poses the following problem for Mill’s theory of names. It is the problem of how there can be informative identity sentences. Suppose that, as Mill claims, the meaning of a name consists solely in whatever unique object it picks out. It follows that two names that pick out the same object will have the same meaning. So if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are names of the same object, then ‘a’ will have the same meaning as ‘b’. Now if ‘a’ and ‘b’ have the same meaning, then any sentence involving one of these names will have the same meaning as any sentence that differs only by containing the other name instead. So, for instance, ‘a is F’ and ‘b is F’ will have the same meaning, for any one-place predicate ‘F’. Moreover, if these sentences have the same meaning, then they will convey the same information to anyone who understands them. But this generates the following puzzle. The identity sentence ‘a = b’ can be more informative than the identity sentence ‘a = a’. ‘a = a’ is obvious and trivially true, whereas ‘a = b’ need not be obvious and trivially true – it can tell us something which we did not already know. Since ‘a = b’ can be more informative than ‘a = a’, these identity sentences do not have the same meaning. But the only difference between the sentences is that the first sentence contains the name ‘b’, whereas the second sentence contains the name ‘a’ instead. The difference in meaning of the two sentences then traces back to the difference in meaning between ‘a’ and ‘b’. Yet if a is identical to b, then ‘a’ and ‘b’ refer to the same thing. And, according to Mill, names that refer to the same thing have the same meaning.

We can appreciate this puzzle further with an example. Radovan Karadžić was the President of Serbia following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. As a public figure, it was widely known that:

(1) Radovan Karadžić is Radovan Karadžić.

From the late-1990s, Dragan Dabić was a practitioner in alternative medicine in Belgrade. Many of the same people who knew (1) also knew that:

(2) Dragan Dabić is Dragan Dabić.

In fact, as a fugitive from international law, Karadžić had been living under an alias, and in 2008 it was revealed that:

(3) Radovan Karadžić is Dragan Dabić

Many people who had known both that (1) and (2) had not known that (3). Those people found both (1) and (2) obvious, even trivial. Yet they found (3) far from trivial and very informative.

The problem for Mill’s theory of names is how (1) and (2) are obvious but (3) is not. Equivalently, the problem is how (1) and (2) are uninformative whereas (3) is highly informative. As Frege would put it, (3) differs from both (1) and (2) in ‘cognitive value’. Now, in Mill’s view, when a name picks out something, it does not provide any information about what it picks out. The names ‘Radovan Karadžić’ and ‘Dragan Dabić’ pick out the same person. Mill’s view entails that sentences (1–3) convey the same information: each of those sentences are saying merely a certain person is identical with himself. But that consequence seems mistaken.

The same kind of puzzle is generated by other examples. Consider sentences (4) and (5):

(4) 6 ÷ 3 = 6 ÷ 3.

(5) 6 ÷ 3 = √4.

Like sentences (1–3), sentences (4) and (5) are identity sentences. The expressions ‘6 ÷ 3’ and ‘√4’ refer to the same number, that is, the number 2. But whereas what (4) says is trivial and uninformative, what (5) says is more informative. But if the linguistic role of expressions such as ‘6 ÷ 3’ and ‘√4’ consists solely in referring to a certain number – in fact, the same number – then it is difficult to see how sentences (4) and (5) could differ in informativeness.

Frege has a subsidiary argument in the case of examples such as the Karadžić/Dabić one. It is an argument that turns on differences in the ways in which we can know certain identity sentences to be true. We can know a priori that:

(1) Radovan Karadžić is Radovan Karadžić

and also that:

(2) Dragan Dabić is Dragan Dabić.

Yet we cannot know a priori that:

(3) Radovan Karadžić is Dragan Dabić.

But if the meanings of ‘Radovan Karadžić’ and ‘Dragan Dabić’ consist solely in what they refer to, and they refer to the same person, then it is hard to see how (1) and (2) can be knowable a priori but (3) cannot.

4. Frege on names

Frege calls the expressions flanking the identity signs ‘proper names’ (Eigennamen). He would regard expressions such as ‘Radovan Karadžić’ and ‘Dragan Dabić’ as names, but also expressions such as ‘6 ÷ 3’ and ‘√4’. Frege takes a proper name to be any expression that refers to a single object. A consequence of this is that Frege would also regard definite descriptions as proper names.

By ‘object’ Frege does not mean perceivable object. He uses the term ‘proper name’ to apply also to places, instants, periods of time and numbers. This is reflected in the range of examples of identity sentences that Frege presents. He introduces objects as the referents of proper names rather than introducing proper names as those expressions which refer to objects. His thinking is that we can identify which expressions are proper names before having to consider what those expressions are names of. An object can then be understood as whatever can be referred to by a proper name. Frege’s methodology – of taking the notion of a proper name to be explanatorily prior to the notion of an object – has been adopted by various other philosophers. Some of them propose what they call ‘the syntactic priority thesis’. According to this thesis, our understanding of ontological categories, such as the notion of an object, is determined by our understanding of syntactic categories, such as the notion of a proper name. For example, Crispin Wright says that:

If . . . certain expressions in a branch of our language function as singular terms, and descriptive and identity contexts containing them are true by ordinary criteria, there is no room for any ulterior failure of ‘fit’ between those contexts and the structure of the states of affairs which make them true. So there can be no philosophical science of ontology, no well-founded attempt to see past our categories of expression and glimpse the way in which the world is truly furnished. (Wright 1983, p. 52)

The lynch-pin of Frege’s platonism, according to our interpretation, is the syntactic priority thesis: the category of objects . . . is to be explained as comprising everything which might be referred to by a singular term [a proper name, in Frege’s sense], where it is understood that possession of reference is imposed on a singular term by its occurrence in true statements of an appropriate type. (Wright 1983, p. 53)

(We will return to this issue in this book’s conclusion. For further discussion, see also Wright 1983, pp. 13, 129 and 153; Dummett 1981a, chapter 4; Reck 1987. For a query about this interpretation of Frege, see Currie 1982, chapter 6 §b; Milne 1986).

If names are to have such a central theoretical role, we need more than an intuitive understanding of what names are. In particular, we need something more than the ability to provide examples and foils (i.e. contrast cases). Frege does not undertake this task: ‘he was content to allow the whole distinction between proper names and expressions of other kinds to depend upon intuitive recognition, guided only by the most rough and ready of tests’ (Dummett 1981a, p. 54. But see also Diller 1993, p. 346). We need a criteri...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Frege on Names
• 2 Frege on Predication
• 3 Frege on Sentences
• 4 Frege on Force and Tone
• 5 Russell on Definite Descriptions
• 6 Grice on Meaning
• 7 Grice on Conversation
• 8 Quine on Meaning
• 9 Davidson on Extensional Theories of Meaning
• 10 Lewis on Intensional Theories of Meaning
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• References
• Index