outline 1.0
Much of what I'd proposed in outline 0.2 was discarded based on the meeting of 10 March 2006. I've been forming another outline based on what remained and what was discussed. One thing that wasn't discussed (which is no guarantee that it won't be on 21 March 2006 -- Ludwig said we'll talk about the outline again and my exposition of Kit Fine's second chapter) was the possibility of 'c-names'.
Ludwig proposed that any description name d is directly referring, in the context of a theory of meaning based on an interpretive truth theory, and has enough associated conceptual content such that a competent user of the name knows all the modally relevant properties had by the individual so named. So, if I'm competent with d, for any context ψ, in which the sentence ψ(d) is true, I understand ψ(d) and I can tell if ψ(d) is analytic. It's interesting to note that there are contexts in which description names appear which are true, but not analytic. For instance, '32 is the value of the air pressure in psi in my left rear tire' is true, yet not analytic. Description names include numerals, street names ('SW 43rd Street' has all the descriptive content we need to determine where it is, relative to other streets, yet it doesn't seem to be a definite description because it is directly referring) and names for individuals based on complicated kinship relations (I must track down the original Gareth Evans paper where this came from). Maybe there are more. (A brief aside: it seems that if street names are description names that the "wrong" conceptual content might be associated with them -- it certainly seems possible that a city could have been laid out so that NW 1st Street is north of NW 2nd Street, for instance. The street names would still be directly referring, but their names wouldn't "tell" us how to find them.)
Given this story about description names, it seems possible that there could be singular terms that were directly referring with associated conceptual content but which lack enough associated conceptual content to be called description names. I'll call these things 'c-names' For instance, say 'c' picks out a chemical compound, and unbeknownst to a person who is competent with c, that which is picked out by c is exactly the product of chemical reaction process P (the result is normally called 'c*'). It's necessary (analytic) that the result of process P is c, but one competent with the names 'c', 'c*' and 'P' wouldn't know that. I think what the example gets at is that there may be a statement that is analytic 'c = c*', but empirical investigation may be required to know that the statement is analytic. Could we say that the conceptual associated with the c-name increases as we learn (a posteriori) analytic sentences in which the names appear? Interestingly, conceptual content increases but the name doesn't change. Is one who is competent with the name before the recent empirical discovery of the certain property really competent? In other words, do empirical discoveries about that which the name denotes change what's required for competence with the name? There's definitely something to investigate for the difference in c-names for entities for which the type/token distinction doesn't apply c.f. numerals versus chemical compounds. On the view put forward by Koslicki in the proper semantic analysis of sentences containing mass terms like 'water is H2O', there are no names. It's unclear whether description names could ever name anything for which the type / token distinction made sense.
One might think that we could use this sort of semantic analysis for any term which picked out an individual which could properly be said to be a token of a particular type, and so claim that to those things which are tokens only predicates are appropriate and so reserve c-names only for those individuals for which the type / token distinction doesn't apply. I'm not sure if there's anything here, but it might be worth pursuing. In Ludwig's paper, he hints that the modally relevant properties may result from the ways we must think about individuals and it seems that this result should apply only to types, being that the way we must think about a certain individual results from the type of thing that individual is. Not really sure what to say about this at the present. I hope to get clear on this issue in subsequent posts.
Another thing of note is that it seems that we do need names for properties, too. If we wish to make claims about necessary relations between properties and then provide a deflationary explanation of the locution 'it is necessary' as we did with individuals and properties, then it seems that we must have names for properties. What would these names be like? To maintain the analogy with description names for individuals, we'd have to claim that the names were directly referring, yet involving enough conceptual content to provide one competent in the use of the name with knowledge of all the modally relevant properties associated with the predicate so picked out. Being competent with a description name for a property is a bit like possessing a concept and being competent with the predicate that expresses that concept, except that being competent with a description name for a property requires much more than simply possessing a concept. Being competent with a description name for a property 'dp' involves understanding φ(dp), for an arbitrary context φ() for which φ(dp) is true, and being able to say whether φ(dp) is analytic. This seems to be a much higher burden than simply possessing concepts; indeed it seems unacceptable outside very basic sentences like 'the property of being red has the property of being the property of being red'. In light of this, perhaps we should eschew leaning of the existence of description names for properties.
posted by Jesse Butler @ 8:04 AM
1 Comments:
C-names and description names are similar in that they are directly referring and involve associated conceptual content -- it's just that description names have so much content that possessing the name affords a user knowledge of all the properties that are modally relevant to the object so referred to. There may be an interesting analogy with description names / c-names and being (minimally) competent with a predicate that expresses a concept and still not possessing the concept / possessing the concept. For instance, one might be (minimally) competent with the predicate 'is water' such that one could say (rightly) of the stuff in the lakes and rivers around here that it's water, yet also claim (wrongly) that XYZ which is identical to water in each of its superficial characteristics is also water. In this case, one would be "competent" with the predicate 'is water' yet not have the concept of water. (Assuming, of course, a certain view of what concept possession came to.) Now, being in this epistemic situation is a bit like possessing a c-name which is not a description name and actually possessing the concept of water is like possessing a description name. If we take 'φ( )' to be the context '____ is F', c to be a c-name , and d to be a description name, then on this tack, there are three possibilities: (1) if a cognizer possesses the concept of F, then if 'φ(d)' is true, then it is true of necessity (i.e. true analytically) and the cognizer knows this; (2) if a cognizer is minimally competent with the predicate 'is F', but does not possess the concept of F, then 'φ(d)', if true, is so analytically, but the cognizer won't necessarily know this if 'φ(d)' is false, then it will be so analytically, but the cognizer won't necessarily know this either; (3) If the cognizer possesses the c-name c and is minimally competent with the predicate 'is F', regardless of whether the cognizer possesses the concept of F, 'φ(c)' may or may not be true analytically, and (depending on what the exact conceptual content associated with c is,) may or may not even seem to be true or false to the cognizer. Now, regardless of the cognizers conceptual repertoire, could it be the case that 'φ(c)' is true as a matter of meaning alone? There's not really a question about the context 'φ( )' (if we buy the story about concept possession), the question has rather to do with c. And I believe the question is this: given that the conceptual content associated with c is not enough to determine the modally relevant properties had by the object so named, can it be that the name picks out a unique referent? I guess there are two possibilities -- either the c-name c is such that it cannot come to have enough associated conceptual content to become a description name or it can. We need to consider both options. First, if it cannot, then it seems that there's something about the name such that it is incapable of "taking on" enough conceptual content such that it can determine all the modally relevant properties. If we can tell a sort of parallel story to that told about predicates and concepts (in which determining whether a c-name applies to an individual is like having a concept) then it seems that c might not uniquely determine a referent. As "good" as we get with the name (the more and more conceptual content we come to associate with the name), we can't be guaranteed, just because we possess it that we'll pick out a referent uniquely with that name. In the latter case, the answer seems to be yes because the c-name can eventually become a description name.
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