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Consider the true sentences ‘Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman’ and ‘Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan’. What, according to Frege, is the important difference between them? Why does he think that this difference poses a problem for Naive Semantics? How does his theory s€10,46
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Consider the true sentences ‘Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman’ and ‘Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan’. What, according to Frege, is the important difference between them? Why does he think that this difference poses a problem for Naive Semantics? How does his theory s
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The Nature of Meaning - BA Philosophy
Instelling
The University Of Nottingham (UON)
Essay of 5 pages for the course The Nature of Meaning - BA Philosophy at UON
Consider the true sentences ‘Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman’ and ‘Bob Dylan is
Bob Dylan’. What, according to Frege, is the important difference between them?
Why does he think that this difference poses a problem for Naive Semantics? How
does his theory solve this problem? What do you think of Frege’s views on this
issue?
At the outset of this essay I will provide a detailed summary of Naive and Fregean
Semantics. Thereafter, I will explain how the Naive Semanticist would interpret the true
sentences ‘Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan’ and ‘Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman’. According to
Frege there is an important difference between these two sentences; namely the cognitive
value which they express. This distinction cannot be accounted for at the level of reference,
thus posing a challenge for the Naive Semanticist to solve. Frege provides a general account
for this difference in terms of the sense that these propositions express. I will critically
assess the Fregean position and conclude that the problem of cognitive value can be
captured without the notion of sense, and is done so by Russell. I will appeal to a semantic
equivalent of Occam’s razor to demonstrate the methodological virtue of Russell’s theory.
The principle of compositionality states that the meaning of an expression is determined by
1) the meaning of its parts and 2) its grammatical structure. [Kemp 2013: 18] The meaning
of a sentence is the proposition it expresses. It is what one understands when they
understand a sentence, or the belief one forms when they believe a sentence to be true.
[Predelli 2014: Lecture 2] The components of a sentence belong to different syntactic
categories, and these categories correspond to different semantic functions. [Kemp 2013: 1]
For the Naive Semanticist the semantic contribution of an expression is reference. Both
predicates and singular terms refer, but differ with respect to what they refer to. Singular
terms refer to objects. Conversely, predicates refer to properties. Therefore for the Naive
Semanticist the relation between expressions and extra linguistic things is a direct primitive
relation; reference. [Predelli 2014: Lecture 2]
The expression ‘Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan’ is of the form a = a. It contains two tokens of the
singular term ‘Bob Dylan’ and the ‘is’ of identity. The expression ‘Bob Dylan is Robert
, Zimmerman’ is of the form a = b, where the constants a and b represent ‘Bob Dylan’ and
‘Robert Zimmerman’ respectively. ‘Bob Dylan’ and ‘Robert Zimmerman’ are co-referential.
For the Naive Semanticist because meaning is reference, and ‘Bob Dylan’ and ‘Robert
Zimmerman’ have the same referent, then the propositions expressed by the identity claims
above are indistinguishable.
Frege formulated serious objections to Naive Semantics; namely to the principle that the
meaning of a sentence is determined by the referent of the singular terms it contains. This
core Naive Semantic principle generates counterintuitive results in a number of cases. In
particular with identity claims that contain co-referential terms. Consider the following
argument:
P1. The Proper names ‘Bob Dylan’ and ‘Robert Zimmerman’ are co-referential
P2. If the meaning of a singular term is determined by its referent then ‘Bob Dylan is Bob
Dylan’ and ‘Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman’ express the same proposition.
P3. ‘Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan’ and ‘Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman’ do not express the same
proposition.
C. Therefore the meaning of a singular term is not determined by its referent.
A proposition is supposed to be the object of propositional attitudes such as belief.
However, one could reasonably believe the proposition that Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan without
believing the proposition that Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman. If one could believe the
former without believing the latter then they cannot express the same proposition. The
former is a triviality, knowable a priori. It is a tautological claim that is necessarily true in
virtue of its logical structure. It is a claim that doesn’t extend our knowledge. Conversely,
the latter is not a trivial claim, but rather a claim that is informative that cannot be known
simply by inspection. It is claim that requires some sort of empirical investigation to know
that the birth name of the person named ‘Bob Dylan’ was ‘Robert Zimmerman’. [Kemp
2013: 18] Premises one and two are true by stipulation and therefore need no defence. The
defence of premise three above generates the Result that Frege is after; the falsity of Naive
Semantics. Therefore, we can positively affirm that the meaning of a singular term is not
determined by its referent.
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