Abstract
I argue that Fregeanism with respect to proper names—the view that modes of presentation are relevant to the contents of proper names—is able to account for the thesis that there are necessarily true a posteriori identity propositions such as the one expressed in “Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus”, whereas the Direct Reference Theory—according to which the semantic function of certain expressions, e.g., proper names, is only to pick out an object (referent)—is able to deal with only their necessary truth. Thus, at least in so far as necessarily true a posteriori identity propositions are concerned, Fregeanism should be preferred to the Direct Reference Theory.
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Notes
Such acceptance of rigidity combined with rejection of direct reference is made possible by the simple fact that these concepts differ: rigidity means reference to the same referent in every possible world (in which that referent exists), whereas direct reference means reference without a mediation of the content—‘the square of 2’, for example, is rigid but not directly referential. (See, in particular, Kaplan 1989, 492–497.) Because rigidity does not entail direct referentiality, incorporating the former is open for Fregeanism, even though it by its very nature excludes the latter.
Note that this is not a metalinguistic view—I am not appealing to the fact that ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’, for example, are distinct patterns.
Or a modest beginning of Soft Fregeanism, articulated only for ordinary proper names in this paper.
Here, I am indebted to Tapio Korte (personal communication). See Maunu (2015) for a fuller exposition of this conception of MOPs as arising from symbolhood.
An anonymous referee of this journal raised a question whether, according to Soft Fregeanism, in an imagined world W which differs from the actual world only in that “the statement ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’ is not known” in W, the true proposition that Hesperus is Phosphorus is a posteriori or a priori for the inhabitants of W. My reply is that our proposition that Hesperus is Phosphorus is a posteriori even with respect to W—the inhabitants of W do not have access to that proposition (so to speak) but were they to give these both names to Venus (in relevant circumstances), they would gain that access.
Utilizing lambda abstraction, the argument in a nutshell is that assuming DRT, λx(~Ax)q follows by Leibniz’s Law from p = q and λx(~Ax)p, where p is the proposition that Hesperus is Hesperus and q the proposition that Hesperus is Phosphorus and ‘A’ stands for aposteriority. Note that ‘y’ is in λx(~Ax)y in an extensional position, which means that intensional fallacy is not committed in this argument.
Some advocates of DRT have ventured to deny (P2), arguing, somewhat desperately, that that Hesperus is Hesperus is, whereas that Hesperus is Phosphorus is not, of the logical form that Hesperus is self-identical (see, for instance, Salmon 1986b, 409–422, and Soames 1990, 204–211). One problem with this is that it invalidates the evident inference, by salva veritate substitution, from “Hesperus is Hesperus” to “Hesperus is Phosphorus”. (Cf. the next Note.).
Some hardline direct reference theorists, for example Salmon (1986a, 137–138) and Soames (2002, 237, 278) have held that the proposition that Hesperus is Phosphorus is, indeed, not a posteriori but a priori. However, the Salmon-Soames option is irrelevant with respect to the present paper, which concerns the evaluation of competing theories on the presupposition that the proposition that Hesperus is Phosphorus and the like are necessarily true but a posteriori.
I thank an anonymous referee of this journal for pointing out the need to address this suggestion.
Also known as counterfactual proposition, subjunctive proposition, secondary proposition, and 2-proposition.
Also known as actual-proposition, epistemic proposition, primary proposition, and 1-proposition.
In some versions (e.g., Stalnaker 1978), two-dimensionalism is explicitly fleshed out by saying that an utterance of “Hesperus is Phosphorus” expresses different propositions in different circumstances (for instance, a false proposition in Mars-world). However, as already indicated above, an utterance of the pattern “Hesperus is Phosphorus” in, say, Mars-world is not an utterance of what is semantically our sentence “Hesperus is Phosphorus”.
Cf. Kripke (1980, 104): “we do not know a priori that Hesperus is Phosphorus […] because we could have evidence qualitatively indistinguishable from the evidence we have and determine the reference of the two names by the positions of two planets in the sky, without the planets being the same.” (See also ibid., 142–144.) Again, to my mind this is an incorrect way to put things, for such qualitatively indistinguishable evidence does not really concern the proposition that Hesperus is Phosphorus, which involves only Venus—in Mars-world such evidence is about Venus and Mars, and not about Venus only.
Two-dimensional approach is rejected by some prominent advocates of DRT, most notably, perhaps, by Soames (2005).
Note that my Soft Fregeanism is not a version of a sophisticated DRT. The defining feature of DRT is that nothing like MOPs belong to contents of proper names (and other directly referential terms).
I thank the anonymous referees of this journal for their constructive comments.
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Maunu, A. Necessary a Posteriori Identity Truths: Fregeanism Beats Direct Reference Theory. Axiomathes 28, 73–80 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-017-9332-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-017-9332-8