tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post5799201380994312473..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Decomposing Descriptive ContentRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-8852972854232393442008-02-01T13:14:00.000-05:002008-02-01T13:14:00.000-05:00djc - thanks! I guess you're right about the gener...djc - thanks! I guess you're right about the generality of the puzzle; I just found it easier to spell out assuming descriptivism. "i and -i" is a neat example. I'll need to look into Fine's stuff.<BR/><BR/>Alex - See my follow-up post: <A HREF="http://www.philosophyetc.net/2008/02/logic-of-indeterminacy.html" REL="nofollow">The Logic of Indeterminacy</A>.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-18010613748644217852008-02-01T08:40:00.000-05:002008-02-01T08:40:00.000-05:00Interesting. I don't think the puzzle has much to...Interesting. I don't think the puzzle has much to do with descriptivism, though. The worry arises equally for theories according to which meaning is reference. The referential semantic value of the two terms is presumably the same (divided between the two individuals), but the truth-value of the two sentences is different.<BR/><BR/>Of course it's easy to see what's going on once we supervaluate: each precisification behaves compositionally, but the precisification of the terms must be constrained so that each term has different referent on each precisification. This constraint doesn't supervene on the divided reference (or intension) of each term alone, hence the worry for compositionality of the supervaluation as a whole. One could get around this by allowing relations such as difference of reference into semantic value, as on Kit Fine's semantic relationism (but of course this goes beyond standard referentialism and descriptivism).<BR/><BR/>Incidentally the same issue arises with i and -i, the two square roots of -1.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-88784131510055199342008-02-01T04:51:00.000-05:002008-02-01T04:51:00.000-05:00(I'm not entirely up on this stuff, so please excu...(I'm not entirely up on this stuff, so please excuse me if I employ some terms the wrong way; hopefully my point will be clear nonetheless)<BR/><BR/>"no[thing] could fix the reference of my term 'Bob' (or 'Mirror-Bob') as referring to the one person rather than the other"<BR/><BR/>"although it is indeterminate which of the two people each of these terms denotes, it is determinate that they denote numerically distinct people. (Either 'Bob' denotes the one guy and 'Mirror-Bob' the other, or vice versa."<BR/><BR/>This is the move that lost me. I took the first paragraph as stating that each term had a non-determinate referent. But the second claims that they do have some determinate referent, but it's indeterminate which it is.<BR/><BR/>Those claims sound contradictory to me, and it also sounds as though the first is by far more plausible. But if that's true then 2a can be true - it states that each of two indeterminate names is indeterminate between the same referents.<BR/><BR/>(Though does it also make 1 and 1a false? You can't state of an indeterminate entity that it is human, though I suspect that I've misunderstood here)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com