Cognition and recognition

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-235
Author(s):  
Nathan Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
The Other ◽  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Kit Fine ◽  
Strict Criterion ◽  
Frege's Puzzle ◽  
Multiple Occurrence ◽  
Semantic Relationism

Abstract Expressions are synonymous if they have the same semantic content. Complex expressions are synonymously isomorphic in Alonzo Church’s sense if one is obtainable from the other by a sequence of alphabetic changes of bound variables or replacements of component expressions by syntactically simple synonyms. Synonymous isomorphism provides a very strict criterion for synonymy of sentences. Several eminent philosophers of language hold that synonymous isomorphism is not strict enough. These philosophers hold that ‘Greeks prefer Greeks’ and ‘Greeks prefer Hellenes’ express different propositions even if they are synonymously isomorphic. They hold that the very recurrence (multiple occurrence) of ‘Greeks’ contributes to the proposition expressed something that indicates the very recurrence in question. Kit Fine argues that this thesis, which he labels semantic relationism calls for a radically new conception of semantics. I have argued that the relevant phenomenon is wholly pragmatic, entirely non-semantic. Here I supplement the case with a new argument. No cognition without recognition—or almost none. With this observation, standard Millianism has sufficient resources to confront Frege’s puzzle and related problems without injecting pragmatic phenomena where they do not belong.

Two Versions of Millianism

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Attitude Ascriptions ◽  
Systematic Assessment ◽  
Frege's Puzzle ◽  
Semantic Relationism ◽  
Attitude Verbs

This chapter offers a systematic assessment of Kit Fine’s Semantic Relationism (2007), in which he presents a “relational” version of Millianism (about names and related expressions). It compares this version of Millianism with the standard nonrelational version. It focuses on their different responses to two aspects of Frege’s puzzle—one involving the cognitive, assertive, and conversational contents of uses of nonhyperintensional sentences; the other involving the propositions expressed by attitude ascriptions. Regarding the first aspect of the puzzle, the chapter argues that the two versions of Millianism give comparable and largely correct results. Regarding the second, it shows that relational Millianism faces counterexamples that are easily handled by nonrelational Millianism, when both are combined with a reasonable semantics for attitude verbs.

Kripke on Epistemic and Metaphysical Possibility

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Soames
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Singular Proposition ◽  
Metaphysical Possibility ◽  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Frege's Puzzle ◽  
Necessary A Posteriori ◽  
Errors And Confusions

This chapter discusses Saul Kripke’s treatment of the necessary a posteriori and concomitant distinction between epistemic and metaphysical possibility. It extracts the enduring lessons of his treatment of these matters and disentangles them from errors and confusions that mar some of his most important discussions. It argues that there are two Kripkean routes to the necessary a posteriori—one correct and philosophically far-reaching; the other incorrect, philosophically misleading, and the source of damaging errors that persist to this day. It connects two false principles involved in the second, unsuccessful, route to the necessary a posteriori with the plausible and potentially correct idea that believing a singular proposition that o is F always involves also believing a richer more descriptively informative proposition in which some further property plays a role in the agent’s thoughts about o. It explains why this idea will not save the failed second route to the necessary a posteriori and suggests that it may help reconcile Kripke’s insights with the lessons of Frege’s puzzle.

scholarly journals Does Semantic Relationism Solve Frege’s Puzzle?

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Pickel ◽  
Brian Rabern
Keyword(s):  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Frege's Puzzle ◽  
Semantic Relationism

scholarly journals Frege’s Puzzle and Cognitive Relationism: An Essay on Mental Files and Coordination

Disputatio ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (56) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Paolo Bonardi
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Semantic Relation ◽  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Mental Files ◽  
Frege's Puzzle ◽  
Modes Of Presentation

AbstractThis paper will critically examine two solutions to Frege’s puzzle: the Millian-Russellian solution proposed by Salmon and Braun, which invokes non-semantic modes of presentation (guises, ways of believing or the like); and Fine’s relationalist solution, which appeals to semantic coordination. Special attention will be devoted to discussing the conception of modes of presentation as mental files and to elucidating the nature of coordination. A third solution to Frege’s puzzle will be explored which, like Salmon’s and Braun’s, adopts the Millian-Russellian semantics but, like Fine’s, involves coordination instead of modes of presentation; however, coordination will not be conceived as a semantic relation but as a cognitive and subjective relation, which provides no contribution to semantic content. This novel Millian-Russellian account involving cognitive coordination will be labelled cognitive relationism.

Comments on Gary Ostertag’s “Fine on Frege’s Puzzle”

2020 ◽  
pp. 485-490
Author(s):  
Kit Fine
Keyword(s):  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Frege's Puzzle ◽  
Semantic Relationism

Gary Ostertag’s chapter is an intriguing and probing investigation into the concept of coordination, or de jure co-reference, in which he is concerned not only to criticize the views on coordination which I presented in “Semantic Relationism” (SR) but also to develop a view of his own, one in which coordination is not a feature of what we say, but of how we say it....

A Dual Act Analysis of Slurs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Camp
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conventional Implicature ◽  
Clear Cases ◽  
Perlocutionary Effect ◽  
Communicative Role

Slurs are incendiary terms—many deny that sentences containing them can ever be true. And utterances where they occur embedded within normally “quarantining” contexts, like conditionals and indirect reports, can still seem offensive. At the same time, others find that sentences containing slurs can be true; and there are clear cases where embedding does inoculate a speaker from the slur’s offensiveness. This chapter argues that four standard accounts of the “other” element that differentiates slurs from their more neutral counterparts—semantic content, perlocutionary effect, presupposition, and conventional implicature—all fail to account for this puzzling mixture of intuitions. Instead, it proposes that slurs make two distinct, coordinated contributions to a sentence’s conventional communicative role.

scholarly journals A Puzzle about Logical Analysis

Philosophia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Rinner
Keyword(s):  
Complete Solution ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Logical Analysis ◽  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Frege's Puzzle ◽  
Belief Ascriptions

AbstractIn this paper, I will present a puzzle for logical analyses, such as Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions and Recanati’s analysis of ‘that’-clauses. I will argue that together with Kripke’s disquotational principles connecting sincere assent and belief such non-trivial logical analyses lead to contradictions. Following this, I will compare the puzzle about logical analysis with Frege’s puzzle about belief ascriptions. We will see that although the two puzzles do have similarities, the solutions to Frege’s puzzle cannot be applied mutatis mutandis to the puzzle about logical analysis. Hence, to say it with Kripke, the main thesis of this paper is that the puzzle is a puzzle. A complete solution to the puzzle promises a better understanding of both logical analyses and belief ascriptions.

Frege's Puzzle.

1987 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Forbes ◽  
Nathan Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Frege’S Puzzle ◽  
Frege's Puzzle

Nina Simone as Poet and Orchestrator

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-147
Author(s):  
Marcus R. Pyle
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Content ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Nina Simone

How do you fashion an identity in a society that, at every turn, tries to snuff you out? In this article, I address Nina Simone's praxis of renaming and reinvention to demonstrate strategies of resistance. To this point, I analyze the musico-poetic setting of Nina Simone’s songs “Images” (1964) and “Four Women” (1965) to argue that her artistic musical choices sonically orchestrate varying issues of Black female subjectivity, identity, and self-making. In Simone’s songs, she refuses to discount the materiality of the Black body; instead, she envelops the Black body with signifiance and significance. The sonic bearers of semantic content become extensions of the Self—transmutable and heterodox. The compositional and poetic subtleties in these songs claim that the gaze of the Other can potentiate exteriority and freedom—what I term the “exo(p)tic.”

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