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CHAPTER 3 Frege Chapter 3 LOT Meets Frege’s Problem (Among Others). Introduction Here are two closely related issues that a theory of intentional mental states and processes might reasonably be expected to address: Frege’s Problem and the Problem of Publicity1. In this chapter, I’d like to convince you of what I sometimes almost believe myself: that an LOT version of RTM has the resources to cope with both of them. I’d like to; but since I’m sure I won’t, I’ll settle for a survey of the relevant geography as viewed from an RTM/LOT perspective. Frege’s Problem If reference is all there is to meaning, then the substitution of coreferring expressions in a linguistic formula should preserve truth. Of course it should: if `Fa’ is true, and if `a’ and `b’ refer to the same, how could `Fb’ not be true too? But it’s notorious that there are cases (what I’ll call `Frege cases’) where the substitution of coreferring expressions doesn’t, preserve truth; it’s old news that John can reasonably wonder whether Cicero is Tully but not whether Tully is; and so forth. It would seem to follow that reference can’t be all there is to meaning. Worse still, it’s common ground (more or less) that synonymous expressions do substitute salve veritate, even in prepositional attitude (PA) contexts.2. So, it seems, that substitution requires something less than synonymy but something more than coreference. Since senses are, practically by 1 A concept is `public’ iff (I) more than one mind can have it and (ii) if one time-slice of a given mind can have it, others can too. 2 This leaves the `Mates cases’ (Mates, 19xx) out of consideration; but perhaps they are special (perhaps they’re metalinguistic). It doesn’t matter for present purposes since, in any case, it’s plausible that synonymous expressions substitute in non-Mates PA contexts but coreferring expressions do not, and that needs accounting for. 1 CHAPTER 3 Frege definition, whatever it is that is supposed to fill this gap, the Frege cases offer a prima facie argument that there must be senses. A fortiori, they appear to block the identification of content with reference. So much the worse for referential theories of content, you may say. After all, the identification of content with reference isn’t intrinsic to LOT or to CTM. Accordingly, many philosophers who are friends of these are out of sympathy with pure Referentialism. Usually they prefer a `two factor’ theory according to which content is a mix reference and sense. Perhaps they’re right to, but also perhaps they aren’t. Over the years since LOT-1, I’ve suggested a number of scratches for this itch but, neither I nor anyone else has found them fully convincing. Still, I think that a purely referential theory of meaning is much to be desired if only one can pull it off. At a minimum, one might reasonably prefer a version of LOT/CTM that’s compatible with a referential semantics to one that isn’t. Here are some reasons, together with brief comments. This is, to be sure, a digression; but I suppose you’re used to those by now. Digression: meaning or reference or both? If semantics is to recognize both the sense and the reference of an expression as parameters of its content, it will have to say something about what holds the two together. (It seems pretty clear that they’re not independent; I suppose there couldn’t be a word that means bachelor but refers to doorknobs) This issue turns out to be intricate. On the one hand, Putnam’s well-known argument about water and XYZ has convinced lots of philosophers that meaning doesn’t determine reference, Frege to the contrary notwithstanding. On the other hand, it’s clear that reference doesn’t determine meaning since many intensions can have the same extension. So, then, what is the relation between the two? If reference is the only semantic property that the individuation of concepts requires, we are spared this sort of worry. ii. As just remarked, the standard alternative to identifying meaning with reference is a `two factor’ semantics according to which words (/concepts) have both referents and senses. (These days senses are widely supposed to be something like inferential roles, so the sort of view I have in mind goes under the name `Inferential Role 2 CHAPTER 3 Frege Semantics’ (IRS).)3 But inferential roles intrinsically tend to be holistic since, prima facie, the inferential role of an expression is constituted by its inferential relations to every other expression in the language it belongs to. In consequence, according to IRS, the individuation of whole languages is metaphysically prior to the individuation of the expressions that belong to them. Likewise, whole conceptual systems are prior to the concepts by which they are constituted. One might well find that odd. Surely it ought to be possible to distinguish `chein’ from other words without first distinguishing French from other languages? Prima facie, one identifies French with a (presumably infinite) set of linguistic expressions, `chein’ included, that are in turn individuated by reference to their phonology, syntax and semantics. The right direction of metaphysical analysis is thus from `chein’ is a noun that is pronounced [shen] and means dog to French is the language that contains (inter alia) a word `chein’ that means dog.4 Even a linguist who is skeptical about whether there are languages (as, in fact, many linguists say they are) can without inconsistency grant the claim that `chein’ is a word. So, arguably, positing senses would require some kind of IRS; and IRS would require some kind of semantic holism and semantic holism would require a not-very- plausible account of the metaphysics of words and languages. In contrast it is plausible prima facie that reference is atomistic; whether the expression ‘a’ refers to the individual a is prima facie independent of the reference of any other symbol to any other individual. Indeed, it’s plausible prima facie that `a’ might refer to a even if there are no other symbols. The whole truth about a language might be that its only well-formed expression is `John’ and that `John’ refers to John. I do think that uncorrupted intuitions supports this 3 It’s possible to find philosophers and (more often) linguists who endorse a reference-free semantics, specifically a version of IRS according to which the content of an expression is entirely constituted by its role in inferences . On that sort of account, neither words nor concepts refer to anything Chomsy and Jakendoff have said things that suggest that they favor some such view (see also Brandom. 19xx). But I don’t understand how a semantics can avoid lapsing into Idealistic solipsism unless it recognizes some sort of symbol-world relation . For better or worse, I assume in what follows that we use `tables’ and `chairs’ to talk about tables and chairs (respectively).. 4 This claim is, to be sure, tendentious; some think that French can be identified geo-politically (eg. as the language that was spoken in a certain spatio-temporal region and/or by a certain population.) We can then identify `chein’ as the word that means dog in French. This proposal isn’t, however, strikingly plausible; surely, the modal intuition is that French might have been spoken at some other time or place. Or, for that matter, not at all. For discussion, see Devitt (19xx); Cowie (1999). 3 CHAPTER 3 Frege sort of view; the fact that ‘John’ refers to John doesn’t seem to depend on, as it might be, such facts as that `dog’ refers to dogs.5 iii. If, as I suppose, IRS is intrinsically inclined to holism, then it’s an account of content that psychologists and philosophers of mind might particularly wish to avoid; only insofar as the possession of any given concept is insensitive to the possession of any other can concept possession be reasonably stable over variations of persons and times. I guess Homer had the concept WATER, and I guess I have it too. But I have many concepts he didn’t, and he had many concepts I don’t. Likewise, although I’ve acquired many concepts since I was seven, I still have today many of the concepts I had acquired back then; that would seem to be required if learning is to be cumulative.6 We’ll return to these and related issues when we discuss Publicity. Suffice it for now that a holistic semantics makes problems about the individuation of the mental that an atomistic semantics might reasonably hope to avoid. iii. Consideration of the productivity and systematicity of languages (and minds)7 strongly suggests that both the syntax and the semantics of complex expressions (/thoughts) must be composed from the syntax and the semantics of their constitutents.8 It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to devise a version of IRS that meets this condition.9 By contrast, the clearest available examples of semantic compositionality 5 The issue here is not Quine’s worry about ontological relativity. Suppose the ontology of a language recognizes as individuals what we would take to be time-slices of individuals. Still, it’s not plausible that this symbol’s referring to this time slice depends on that symbol referring to that time-slice. That’s so even if, metaphysically speaking, there being any time slices depends on there being others. 6 Perhaps you hold (as do many psychologists who believe in `stages’ of cognitive development) that the concepts children have are radically different from the concepts of adults, so that children can’t think the same thought that we and grown up Hopi do.

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