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RE: Proper Names, Definite Descriptions, and Scope
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Koush:
1) I'm not sure about your point about clarity. It's just that certain
ambiguities can be resolved by giving proper names scope. Your other point is
well taken, having scope does not mean that Russell was right. But it should be
noticed that the direct reference approach (i.e. the view held by Kripke,
Putnam, Salmon, Donnellan, Soames, Braun etc) can *not* cope with this
phenomenon. Also, if you agree that proper names have scope, then what theory
would you propose instead of Russells? It seems to be the best (and only)
candidate theory to me.
2) I don't understand, you say Donnellan introduced a false dichotomy but you
agree with it? Then surely you don't believe its false. I personally regard
referential uses of DD's as a pragmatic phenomenon. Perhaps the same could be
said for proper names, after all there certainly seem to be certain utterances
where the direct reference theorist seems to model what the speaker wants to say
more accurately (its just that most of the time they don't get the truth
conditions right).
3) The reason I *can't* translate those last sentences into English is because
English is syntactically impervious to the scope distinction. Besides it is
virtually in English apart from the variables to indicate the scope distinction,
how close do you want it? I can sympathise with your sentiment of not using
logic unless you actually need to, but, honestly, that's not even logic, and
there is nothing there that someone who's done the philosophy of language, some
linguistics or a minimal amount of logic couldn't work out for themselves.
However, if the actual problem is that I'm being unclear outside of the
formalism, what I *can* do is just elaborate a bit more what the scope
ambiguities allegedly account for.
In the first case imagine the following concerning Lois Lane:
a) Lois Lane thinks Clark Kent is shorter than Superman
She thinks this even though its clearly false (they're the same person). To Lois
Clark is a weedy reporter and Superman is a superhero. So in this context a) is
true.
Now imagine that Clark Kent needs to do some undercover journalism. Lois notices
him walking down the corridor in full disguise (looking very tall), and not
realising who he is makes the following judgement.
b) Superman is shorter than that guy.
Now, suppose I am reporting Lois's observation to some people who happen to know
the guy walking down the corridor was Clark Kent. To convey Lois's belief I
could say:
c) Lois Lane thinks that Superman is shorter than Clark Kent
Since Lois isn't holding any inconsistent views c) entails that a) is false. So
in one context a) is true, and the other a) is false. My explanation of this is
that the English sentence a) expresses two different propositions. One in which
'Clark Kent' is in the scope of Lois's belief and the other in which it is
outside (in both cases we assume that 'Superman' is within the scope). We can
represent it as follows:
a1) [Lois believes that (Clark Kent x)(Superman y)[x is not taller than y]]
a2) (Clark Kent x)[Lois believes that (Superman y)[x is not taller than y]]
Right. The second problem was with
d) Father Christmas has a beard
It might be thought that this is false after running through the set of bearded
things to discover FC absent. But then consider:
e) Father Christmas doesn't have a beard.
Similarly running through the non bearded things Father Christmas doesn't
appear. So e) must be false. But on second considerations, e) is the negation of
d), d) is false therefore e) is true. So is e) true or false? Again I claim that
e) can be taken to express two propositions. One in which the negation takes the
widest scope (the one which is the negation of d)) and one in which it takes
shorter scope.
e1) ¬(Father Christmas x)¬Beard(x)
e2) (Father Christmas x)¬Beard(x)
e1) is true, it is the negation of d) which is false. e2) is false since Father
Christmas does not exist to be nonbearded. However, when translated into English
both are translated into the sentence e). Hence the confusion over whether it is
true or false.
Finally my point about names and quantifiers seemingly being of the same
category, but I think that didn't need further explaining?
Hope that helped,
Andrew
>
> Dear All,
>
> Andrew,
>
> some initial thoughts,
>
> 1. restricting the scope of proper names is important for purposes of
> clarity. however i do not see how this fact is an argument in favor of
> Russell's quantificational analysis of proper names. to restrict the scope
> is not necessarily to quantify. a person could endorse your suggestion of
> scope restriction and still deny that proper names are abbreviated definite
> descriptions.
>
> 2. often people debating this issue set up (what I believe to be) a false
> dichotomy. Donnallian argued that there are descriptive and attributive uses
> of proper names. i agree. the challenge in my view is determining a
> principle, whereby we can distinguish how a proper name is/should be used in
> a given context, be it a definite description or as a referential
> expression. A principle is needed to avoid arbitrariness
>
> 3. once again, even without the symbols the logic was lost on me. (I can
> only apologize and ask you to be patient) im not 100% with you are saying
> here:
>
> a) (Rudy Sanchez x)[Lois believes that (Clark Kent y)[x is not taller than
> y]].
>
> b) (Father Christmas x)¬Beard(x)
> ¬(Father Christmas x)Beard(x)
>
> Could you translate that into English?
>
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--
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900
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