Abstract
It is commonly accepted, after Frege, that identity statements like “Tully is Cicero” differ from statements like “Tully is Tully”. For the former, unlike the latter, are informative. One way to deal with the information problem is to postulate that the terms ‘Tully’ and ‘Cicero’ come equipped with different informative (or cognitive) values. Another approach is to claim that statements like these are of the subject/predicate form. As such, they should be analyzed along the way we treat “Tully walks”. Since proper names can appear in predicative position we could go as far as to dismiss the sign of identity altogether, some told us. I will try to discuss the advantages and/or disadvantages of this approach and investigate whether Frege’s view that the ‘is’ of identity must be distinguished from the ‘is’ of predication (copula) can be reconciled with the fact that names can appear in predicative position.
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Notes
Both the view that the ‘is’ of identity is reducible to the ‘is’ of predication and the opposite view that the ‘is’ of predication is reducible to the ‘is’ of identity have been proposed. As we will see, the former is advanced by Lockwood, while the latter pertains to the middle-aged logical tradition as in, e.g., Leibnitz’s two-terms theory (see Sommer 1982). Another view is the one proposed by Montague in his PTQ [“The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English” (1973)]. Montague circumvents Frege’s ambiguity thesis of ‘is’ and gives the verb ‘to be’ a unique interpretation. The ‘is’ of identity and of predication are considered as the same transitive verb in terms of types couched within an intensional logic. Yet, via the syntactic and translational rules we obtain the required interpretation, i.e. that “Tully is Cicero” is a statement of the form a = b, while “Tully is a man” of the form Fa. As interesting as this is, it transcends the scope of this paper and does not affect its main argument. I thank the referee of this journal for raising this point.
Under the category of proper names (Eigenname) Frege subsumes indexicals, names, and definite descriptions. For simplicity sake I will concentrate on what we commonly characterize as proper names. Furthermore, I will not consider utterances where names appearing in predicative position, like in the examples given by Geach, cease to be proper names and works as genuine predicates with the name used either in a deferral, metaphorical or sarcastic way, like ‘Caravaggio’, ‘Lionel Messi’ and ‘Einstein’ in: “There are five Caravaggios in the museum”, meaning that there are five paintings of Caravaggio in the museum; “John Smith is not Lionel Messi” meaning that as a soccer player John Smith is not as good as Lionel Messi; “John Smith is Einstein” meaning that John Smith is not intelligent. An interesting question would be to discuss how the position I will propose compares (and possibly undermines) so-called predicativism about proper names (see, among others, Sloat 1969; Burge 1973; Castañeda 1989; Graff Fara 2015; for a criticism of the latter see, for instance, Jeshion 2015). If the picture I will propose, in claiming that a given utterance comes equipped with different contents, comes close to be the right one, the intuitions supporting predicativism about proper names can be easily explained without embracing the view that proper names work as predicates. A detailed discussion of predicativism about proper names, though, transcends the scope of this paper.
In the spirit of Frege’s account it would be more correct to talk about a place-holder instead of a variable. For the x in Fx should be understood as a place-older for a proper name (an Eigenname in Frege’s terminology), i.e. x signals the place where the Eigenname must be inserted to form a whole (a sentence). For simplicity sake, though, we can overlook this distinction.
As Dummett puts it: “although there cannot be a featureless object, no object is made up out of the concepts under which it falls: the relation of falling under a concept is just not to be identified with that of containing as a part. … the notion of an object is said to be simple and unanalyzable: but the extension of the predicate ‘ξ is an object’ coincide with that of ‘ξ is the same as ξ’, so that it would be easy to introduce the former by defining it to be equivalent to the latter” (Dummett 1981: 170). The same can be said about functions: “The notion of a function is, as Frege frequently remarks, a primitive one, in the sense of being incapable for definition. … Likewise, in Frege’s system, a function is not a special kind of relation: rather, a relation (Beziehung) is a special kind of function of two arguments” (Dummett 1981: 172–173).
“The general notion of a value-range can, according to Frege, be arrived at only via that of a function: we can think of a value-range only as an extension of a function” (Dummett 1981: 173).
Or, at least, individuals that can, in normal conditions, be classified as having a nose. Someone may have cut away Socrates’ nose or Socrates may have born with the physical defect of missing the nose and Socrates could be nose-less. To be precise we should thus say individuals that in normal or paradigmatic conditions have a nose. In some cases ‘having a nose’ can also be used in a sort of metaphorical way: “The Iberian Peninsula is snub nosed” meaning that on the map it looks as having a snub-nose. In cases like the latter, though, the predicate is not understood literally.
Dummett, though, suggests that we should not take too seriously Frege’s view that declarative sentences refers to either the Truth or the False: “[H]e went too far, and wholly assimilated concepts and relations to functions from objects to objects, the True and the False. It is ungrateful to dwell too heavily upon his mistake without recognizing the enormous liberation from the confused metaphysic of centuries which his basic insights effected” (Dummett 1981: 176). Roughly, according to Dummett, Frege’s mistake was to assimilate sentences to complex proper names. And it is this mistake that drew him to the view that the referents of declarative sentences were objects: the Truth or the False. In denying that sentences are complex proper names and that truth-values are objects, we should embrace the view that truth-functions are not, properly speaking, functions. They belong to a different logical type: “We can perfectly well admit the functional character of concepts, that is to say the analogy between concepts and functions … without taking the former as a special case of the latter. On this view, functions proper map objects on to objects, truth-functions maps truth-values on to truth-values, and concept and relations map objects on to truth-values, the logical type being different in all three cases; to acknowledge the analogy is to recognize that the notion of mapping plays an essential role in grasping the character of all these logical types. This is obvious for truth-functions, although the fact has no tendency to make us regard sentences as proper names, nor, therefore, truth-values as objects. It is less obvious for concept and relations; all the more credit to Frege for having perceived their functional character, that is, the analogy, even though he made the mistake of taking it to be more than an analogy” (Dummett 1981: 168–169).
This would no doubt be the interpretation Frege would give, for the demonstrative ‘this’, like the name ‘York’, for Frege is an Eigenname. Thus when the ‘is’ is flanked by two singular terms (Eigennames) it should be understood as ‘=’.
For an interesting and instructive account of Frege’s distinction between the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication (copula), see Mendelshon (1987): “Insofar, then, as the alleged distinction between the two senses of ‘is’ is intended to buttress an argument designed to show that proper names are not genuine predicates, Frege’s is simply a petitio: the claim that (1) [The morning star is Venus] must be read as (3) [John saw Mary] rather than as (10) [The morning star falls under the concept Venus] requires that it had already been established that there is no such thing as the concept Venus, whereas this is just what Frege is setting out to demonstrate here … What he should have argued, I believe, is that (11) [The morning star falls under Venus] is incoherent because ‘is Venus’ could be interpreted as ‘equal Venus’ or as ‘falls under the concept Venus’, but not as ‘falls under Venus’ or as ‘equals the concept Venus’” (Mendelshon 1987: 144).
Another possibility to spell out the connotative aspect of proper names is in adopting Bach’s nominal description theory, i.e. that a name ‘N’ is semantically equivalent to “bearer of ‘N’”. For Bach, although the use of a name does not mention itself, it nonetheless expresses the reflexive property of bearing itself (see Bach 1987, 2002). Suffices to notice that in arguing that the use of a name expresses the reflexive property that the bearer carry that names, Bach’s position is easily accounted for in adopting the pluri-propositionalist model I defended. For, the reflexive property is subsumed under the reflexive content of the utterance.
Actually, Frege’s claims is that if an utterance like (10), “Tully is Cicero”, is analyzed (cf. Frege’s Begriffsschrift) as “‘Tully’ and ‘Cicero’ are coreferential” we lose the subject matter. If, on the other hand, we analyze it as “Cicero is (also) called ‘Tully’” the subject matter would be Tully, not ‘Tully’. What we are talking about is Tully, the subject matter, carrying the name ‘Cicero’. An understanding along these lines is more consonant with the pluri-propositionalist framework I presented in which the mentioned name appears in the reflexive truth-conditions of the utterance. For a detailed interpretation of Frege’s “conflicting” account to the theory of identity he proposed in “Sinn und Bedeutung” and in the Begriffshrift along these line see Corazza and Korta (2015).
If we characterize this phenomenon as a kind of focus-direction, we can recognize that on top of the grammatical (words order) form of the utterance, other pragmatic clues can enter the scene, such as e.g., the tone of the voice, the background information, the stress, etc. These should be understood as a pragmatic phenomena that pertain to a general theory of communication and, as such, do not affect the semantics (and logical form) of the utterance.
The solution proposed here bears resemblances the one proposed by Korta (2013) and (Korta and Perry 2011; ch. 11). Korta and Korta and Perry propose the maxim of reference: “Chose your way of referring according to the cognitive fix you want your hearer to get on the reference, to facilitate the inference or implicatures”. Following this suggestion, in answering to the question “Who is Cicero?” one could reply: “He [pointing to a picture of Cicero] is Cicero” or “Cicero is Tully”. In the first answer the speaker conveys a demonstrative cognitive fix and said that the indicated individual is Cicero; in such a case the audience can fix (and thus have a cognitive fix) on the indicated individual and comes to know that he is Cicero. In the second answer the speaker, in assuming that the questioner has a notion of Cicero, conveys that Cicero is also called ‘Tully’. The intermediate reflexive contents (15) and (16) I proposed attempt to capture the communicative intentions involved in these speech acts and characterize how communicators process utterances like these.
The view that names contribute in directing the focus toward the official or reflexive contents of the utterance, could also be spelled out in appealing to Frege’s context principle, viz. that it is only in the context of a sentence that a word has meaning and, therefore, that any inquiry about names can be made only as names qua constituents of sentences used to express thoughts. Therefore, from a pragmatic and communicative viewpoint, given that names ought to be understood as constituents of a whole (a sentence), it should not come to big of as a surprise if a tokened name in a given utterance can (pragmatically) contribute in directing the interpretative focus on distinct contents the utterance come equipped with.
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Acknowledgements
For comments on a previous version of this paper I would like to thank Christopher Genovesi, David Matheson, Ernesto Perini, John Perry, María de Ponte, Stefano Predelli, Marco Ruffino, Ludovic Soutif, as well as the audience of the IV Conference of the Brazilian Society for Analytic Philosophy at the University of Campinas (July 5–July 8, 2016) where a draft of the paper has been presented. Many thanks also to an anonymous referee form this journal for their valuable comments and suggestions. Research for this paper has been partly supported by a grant from the Spanish Minister: FFI2015-63719-P (MINECO/FEDER) and the Basque Government (IT1032-16).
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Corazza, E. Names, identity, and predication. Philos Stud 175, 2631–2647 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0975-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0975-5