- The accounts of Frege and Russell about proper names. What do they have in common? What are their differences?
Consider the following two sentences: - Cicero was a Roman orator - Tully was a Roman orator Given that "Cicero" and "Tully" are two names of a single person, do the sentences express the same proposition? What's Frege's view? And Russell's?
Consider the following sentence: - The king of the Basque Country is not bald. What would Frege, Russell and Strawson say about it? Uttered today, is it true? Or false? What is its meaning?
- Olentzero did not bring me any present. Is this sentence true or false? What would Frege say? And Russell?
- Hesperus is Phosphorus. Is this statement analytic or synthetic? Necessary or contingent? Knowable a priori or a posteriori? What would Frege say? And Kripke?
- The president of USA in 2015 might not have been the president of the USA in 2015. Is this statement true or false? what would Kripke say?
Consider the following sentence: - Obama might not have been Obama. Is this statement true or false? What would Kripke say?
Performatives
According to Austin, what's an utterance of the following sentence, a statement or a performative?
“This bull is dangerous”
What's the problem with the following sentence?
“The cat is on the mat, but I don't believe it is."
How does Austin explain it?
Austin says that his distinction between statements and performatives actually dissolves. Which are his reasons for this?
Implicatures
How does Grice explain the use of tautologies in communication? What is said when a tautology is uttered? What is conveyed? How? Give an example.
What is the difference between particularized and generalized conversational implicatures? Give examples of each category. Which are the relevant ones regarding the discussion between formalists and informalists? Why?
Frege (1892), “On Sense and Reference”
In the case of an actual proper name such as "Aristotle" opinions as to the sense may differ. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Anybody who does this will attach another sense to the sentence "Aristotle was born in Stagira" than will a man who takes as the sense of the name: the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira. So long as the reference remains the same, such variations of sense may be tolerated, although they are to be avoided in the theoretical structure of a demonstrative science and ought not to occur in a perfect language.
[An entire declarative sentence] contains a thought. Is this thought, now, to be regarded as its sense or its reference? Let us assume for the time being that the sentence has reference. If we now replace one word of the sentence by another having the same reference, but a different sense, this can have no bearing upon the reference of the sentence.
Strawson (1950), “On Referring”
Consider again the sentence, “The king of France is wise,” and the true and false things Russell says about it. (…) What are the false things which Russell would say about the sentence? They are: (1) That anyone now uttering it would be making a true assertion or a false assertion. (2) That part of what he would be asserting would be that there at present existed one and only one king of France.
Donnellan (1966), “Reference and definite descriptions”
I do not fail to refer merely because my audience does not correctly pick out what I am referring to. I can be referring to a particular man when I use the description “the man drinking a martini,” even though the people to whom I speak fail to pick out the right person or any person at all. Nor, as we ha stressed, do I fail to refer when nothing fits the description. But perhaps I fail to refer in some extreme circumstances, when there is nothing that I am willing to pick out as that to which I referred.
My main point, here, however, has to do with Linsky’s view that because the presupposition is not satisfied, the statement is neither true nor false. This seems to me possibly correct if the definite description is thought of as being used attributively (depending upon whether we go with Strawson or Russell). But when we consider it as used referentially, this categorical assertion is no longer clearly correct. For the man the speaker referred to may indeed be kind to the spinster; the speaker may have said something true about that man. Now the difficulty is in the notion of “the statement.”
Kripke (1971), “Naming and Necessity”
(…) if “Moses” means the same as “the man who did such and such” then to say that Moses did not exist is to sat that the man who did such and such did not exist, that is, that no one person did such and such. If, on the other hand, “Moses” is not synomymous with any description, then even if its reference is in some sense determined by a description, statements containing the name cannot in general be analyzed by replacing the name by a description, though they can be materially equivalent to statements containing a description.
4.461. Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that the say nothing. A tautology has no truth-conditions, since it is unconditionally true: and a contradiction is true on no condition. Tautologies and contradictions lack sense.
Tarski (1944), “The semantic conception of truth and the foundations of semantics”
The problem of the definition of truth obtains a precise meaning and can be solved in a rigorous way only for those languages whose structure has been exactly specified. For other languages ---thus, for all natural, “spoken” languages--- the meaning of the problem is more or less vague, and its solution can have only an approximate character. Roughly speaking, the approximation consists in replacing a natural language (or a portion of it in which we are interested) by one whose structure is exactly specified, and which diverges from the given language “as little as possible.”
Grice (1957), “Meaning”
For consider now, say, frowning. If I frown spontaneously, in the ordinary course of events, someone looking at me may well treat the frown as a natural sign of displeasure. But if I frown deliberately (to convey my displeasure), an onlooker may be expected, provided he recognizes my intention, still to conclude that I am displeased. Ought we not then to say, since it could not be expected to make any difference to the onlooker's reaction whether he regards my frown as spontaneous or as intended to be informative, that my frown (deliberate) does not mean(NN) anything?
Austin (1961), “Performative utterances”
... suppose that somebody sticks up a notice "This bull is dangerous", or simply "Dangerous bull", or simply "Bull". Does this necessarily differ from sticking up a notice, appropriately signed, saying "You are hereby warned that this bull is dangerous"? It seems that the simple notice "Bull" can do just the same job as the more elaborate formula. Of course the difference is that if we just stick up "Bull" it would not be quite clear that it is a warning; it might be there just for interest or information, like "Wallaby" on the cage at the zoo, or "Ancient Monument". No doubt we should know from the nature of the case that it was a warning, but it would not be explicit.
Grice (1967), “Logic and conversation”
On the general question of the place in philosophy of the reformation of natural language, I shall, in this essay, have nothing to say. I shall confine myself to the dispute in its relation to the alleged divergences. I have, moreover, no intention of entering the fray on behalf of either contestant. I wish, rather, to maintain that the common assumption of the contestants that the divergences do in fact exist is (broadly speaking) a common mistake, and that the mistake arises from inadequate attention to the nature and importance of the conditions governing conversation.
