Naming and Believing

226 Pages·1987·11.101 MB·English

by  G. W. Fitch (auth.)

NAMING AND BELIEVING
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
IN PHILOSOPHY
Editors:
WILFRID SELLARS, University of Pittsburgh
KEITH LEHRER, University of Arizona
Board of Consulting Editors:
JON ATHAN BENNETT, Syracuse University
ALLAN GIBBARD, University of Michigan
ROBERT STALNAKER, Cornell University
ROBERT G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University
VOLUME 36
G. W. FITCH
Department of Philosophy,
Arizona State University
NAMING AND
BELIEVING
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
A MEMBER OFTHE KLUWER ,. ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER / TOKYO
libraI'} of CongrtsS Cltlloging in Publication Dltl
Fitch, G. W.
Naming and beli(ving.
(Philosophical studi(s stries in philosophy; v. 27)
Bibliography: p.
Includes Index.
I. Onomasiology. 2. Ref(r(nc( (Philosophy) 3. Proposition
(Logic) 4. Belief and doubt. S. !kmantics (Philosophy)
I. Titl(. [I. !kries.
P32S.S.0SSFS8 1986 412 86- 20308
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-8169-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-3737-6
001: 10.107/978-94-009-3737-6
Publish((j by D. R(idel Publishing Company,
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© 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hard cover 1st edition 1987
No part of th( mat(rial protected by this copyright notic( may be reproduced or
utiliz(d in any form or by any m(ans. electronic or mechanical
including photocopying. recording or by any information storag( and
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To my parents,
Lowell and Jane Fitch
with whom I have had more arguments than anyone else.
CONTENTS
PREFACE IX
INTRODUCTION
I. The Problem
2. Beginning Assumptions 7
I DESCRIPTIONS 14
I. Indeterminate Descriptions 14
2. The Referential/Attributive Distinction 25
2 NAMES AND INDEXICALS 42
I. Rigid Designators 42
2. Names and Essences 52
3. Indexicals 58
4. The Meaning of Names 67
3 SINGULAR PROPOSITIONS 78
1. Propositional Roles 78
2. Propositions and Worlds 82
3. Propositions and Times 88
4. Possible Worlds 91
viii CONTENTS
4 BELIEVING 102
I. Problems with Belief 102
2. Direct and Indirect Attribution 121
3. Two Aspects of Believing 131
4. A Solution to Frege's Problem 143
5 EMPTY NAMES, SEMANTICS, AND THE A PRIORI 153
I. Truth Conditions and Propositions 153
2. Empty Names and Beliefs 161
3. Necessary A Posteriori Truths 169
4. Conclusions 181
APPENDIX 183
1. Formal Description 183
2. Remarks 190
NOTES 193
REFERENCES 206
INDEX 211
PREFACE
The relationship between thought, language, and the world
is an intimate one. When we have an idea or thought about the
world and we wish to express that idea or thought to others we
utter a sentence or make a statement. If the statement correctly
describes the world then it is true. Moreover, it seems as
though our ability to have more complex or sophisticated
thoughts about the world increases as the complexity of our
language or our ability to use the language increases.
Understanding the complex relationship between language,
thought, and the world is one of the central aims of philosophy.
This book is an attempt to increase our understanding of this
complex relationship by focusing on certain philosophical issues
that arise from our ability to refer to objects in the world
though the use of language. In particular, it is an attempt to
solve the puzzles of reference and belief that Frege and Russell
presented within the context of a theory of direct reference for
proper names.
I began working on this book in the Fall of 1980 when I
was preparing a seminar on recent developments in the
philosophy of language at Western Washington University w.hile I
was on a sabbatical leave fellowship from Arizona State
University. I had become interested in the relationship between
naming and believing since the time I was first introduced to
Saul Kripke's arguments against the descriptive theory of names
when I was a graduate student at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst. What bothered me about Kripke's
views was that as an argument a.gainst the Russell and Frege
theories of reference for proper names they were for the most
part convincing, yet as an explanation of the puzzles that
motIvated Frege and Russell to adopt their theories in the first
place, they seemed unsatisfactory. K ripke never claimed to be
providing an account of the puzzles that motivated Russell and
Frege, he was pointing out the mistakes in their theories and
offering an alternative account of how reference took place for
proper names. Still, for those of us who found the problems that
Russell and Frege raised to be genuine problems, there remained
the question of how to accommodate those problems while
mainta-ining a Kripke-like picture of reference. My goal then_ was
IX
x PREFACE
to provide an account of reference and belief that is consistent
with the insights of Russell, Frege, Kripke, Kaplan, and others,
and this book is the result.
There is a great deal of philosophic literature related to
the issues of naming and believing and more is being produced
all the time. It was not feasible for me to take into account all
the different views expressed by those who are working on
these topics even for all of those works with which I am
familiar, not to mentioned those I have somehow overlooked. I
have included a discussion of those views that had the greatest
influence on my own thinking about these matters, either
positive or negative. In so doing, I do not mean to imply that
the work of those that I have not included is less important
than the work of those that I did include. As I now look over
the book I realize that I could improve the book here and there
by adding a discussion of an article or paper or book that has
recently appeared. Moreover, I now see a number of issues and
questions that are left unresolved or unanswered in the book
that further discussion might help to resolve. However, since
this process seems almost endless to me, I leave these
discussions for future work.
I would like to thank the Canadian Journal of Philosophy
for their permission to reprint parts of my paper "Indeterminate
Descriptions" that appeared in Vol. XIV, Number 2, June 1984
for Chapter I of the present book; Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research for their permission to reprint parts
of my paper "Two Aspects of Belief" that appeared in Vol. XL V,
Number I, September 1984 for sections of Chapters 2 and 5; and
Nofls for their permission to reprint parts of my paper "On the
Logic of Belief" that appeared in Vol. XIX, Number 2, June 1985
for sections of Chapters 2, 5 and the Appendix.
I would like to thank my many colleagues and friends,
particularly those at Western Washington University and Arizona
State University, for their comments on various drafts of the
present material. I am especially grateful to Robert C. Sleigh, Jr.
and Jeffrie G. Murphy for their help and support and I would
like to thank Ed Gettier for the coffee shop hours we spent
doing philosophy. I would also like to thank Tom Downing, Keith
Lehrer and James Tomberlin for their support. Finally, lowe a
special debt of gratitude to Ted Guleserian, for the many hours
we spent arguing the pro's and con's of almost every issue
discussed in this book and to Nancy Tribbensee, for her support
and the many hours we spent not discussing philosophy.
INTRODUCTION
I. The Problem
In the 1960's and 1970's a number of philosophers began
questioning the accepted theory of meaning for proper names
and indexicals (i.e., words such as 'I' and 'now'). The traditional
theories of meaning and reference could be divided into two
major groups; versions of Bertrand Russell's theory of language
and versions of Gottlob Frege's theory of language. While there
are major differences between Russell's and Frege's views, both
agreed that the meaning of ordinary proper names (e.g., 'John
Smith') is determined by definite descriptions (e.g., 'the first
person to land on the Moon'). Frege distinguished between what
he called the sense of an expression and the referent of an
expression. The referent of a proper name is the object that we
use the name to talk about. The referent of the name 'Richard
Nixon' is the man Richard Nixon. In addition to the object that
the name refers to there is the sense of the name. Frege says
"besides that to which the sign refers, which may be called the
reference of the sign, [there is] also what I should like to call
the sense of the sign, wherein the mode of presentation is
contained."! The sense of a proper name is given by the sense
of some associated definite description. Thus. for example. the
sense of the name 'Ben Franklin' might be the sense of the
description 'the inventor of bifocals.' On Frege's view one
determines the reference of a name by determining the sense of
the name which in turn characterizes an object. For example, if
the sense of the name 'Ben Franklin' is the sense of 'the
I
inventor of bifocals,' then we can determine the referent of the
name by finding out who invented bifocals. Frege's theory of
reference for names can be called an 'indirect theory of
reference,' since the referent of a name is determined via an
intermediary namely the sense of the name.
Although Russell also thought that the meaning (in some
sense of meaning) of a name is determined by a definite
description, he rejected Frege's distinction between sense and
reference.2 For a number of reasons, some of which are
linguistic and some of which are epistemological, Russell held
that in most uses of ordinary proper names we should view
names as truncated descriptions.3 Thus, for example, the