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Published: 2015
Total Pages: 0
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DOWNLOAD EBOOKReferred to as the problem of substitutivity, there has been a consistent difficulty in accounting for when---and how---two co-referring names can be substituted, salva veritate, within a given utterance. More recently, this difficulty appears even for seemingly simple sentences---i.e. sentences that lack any opacity-producing content. For example, "Clark Kent went into the phone booth and Superman came out," may seem an accurate description of an event in Metropolis, whereas "Superman went into the phone booth and Clark Kent came out," seems infelicitous, at best. Alternatively, "Superman leaps more tall buildings than Clark Kent," strikes many competent language users as true, whereas "Superman leaps more tall buildings than Superman" must be false: The same individual cannot leap more tall buildings than himself. The debate on these simple sentences has been divided upon traditional semantic and pragmatic lines of reasoning. However, all the proposed solutions rely to some degree on the claim that two co-referring names, such as 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent', can convey or express additional content regarding distinct modes of presentation, guises, or aspects that a community of language users associate with each name. Lacking any psychological verb or other opacity producing content, though, presents a difficulty: How does this additional content become a relevant contribution to the utterance in question? I argue that a traditional causal account of direct reference can be expanded from its application to attitude ascriptions in order to resolve the problem of substitutivity for such simple sentences. In the proposal I put forward, I contend that a causal account of reference can avoid the two major objections found within this debate: A causal account explains how the meaningful content of two co-referring names like 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' can be properly differentiated, and it also explains how rational, well-informed language users are able to deploy this distinction in simple, everyday utterances. The account I put forward extends a single solution to the problem of substitutivity within philosophy of language, both across traditionally opaque and simple sentence types and across proper names and singular terms, more generally
Book Synopsis Intuitions, Substitutions, & a Causal Account of Reference Within Simple Sentences by :
Download or read book Intuitions, Substitutions, & a Causal Account of Reference Within Simple Sentences written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Referred to as the problem of substitutivity, there has been a consistent difficulty in accounting for when---and how---two co-referring names can be substituted, salva veritate, within a given utterance. More recently, this difficulty appears even for seemingly simple sentences---i.e. sentences that lack any opacity-producing content. For example, "Clark Kent went into the phone booth and Superman came out," may seem an accurate description of an event in Metropolis, whereas "Superman went into the phone booth and Clark Kent came out," seems infelicitous, at best. Alternatively, "Superman leaps more tall buildings than Clark Kent," strikes many competent language users as true, whereas "Superman leaps more tall buildings than Superman" must be false: The same individual cannot leap more tall buildings than himself. The debate on these simple sentences has been divided upon traditional semantic and pragmatic lines of reasoning. However, all the proposed solutions rely to some degree on the claim that two co-referring names, such as 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent', can convey or express additional content regarding distinct modes of presentation, guises, or aspects that a community of language users associate with each name. Lacking any psychological verb or other opacity producing content, though, presents a difficulty: How does this additional content become a relevant contribution to the utterance in question? I argue that a traditional causal account of direct reference can be expanded from its application to attitude ascriptions in order to resolve the problem of substitutivity for such simple sentences. In the proposal I put forward, I contend that a causal account of reference can avoid the two major objections found within this debate: A causal account explains how the meaningful content of two co-referring names like 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' can be properly differentiated, and it also explains how rational, well-informed language users are able to deploy this distinction in simple, everyday utterances. The account I put forward extends a single solution to the problem of substitutivity within philosophy of language, both across traditionally opaque and simple sentence types and across proper names and singular terms, more generally
