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RE: Proper Names, Definite Descriptions, and Scope
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Oops slight mistake there, e1) should have been:
e1) ¬(Father Christmas x)Beard(x)
I put in an extra ¬ before Beard.
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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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> >
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>
> --
> Andrew Bacon
> Lady Margaret Hall
> 07830048336
> http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900
>
>
>
>
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--
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900
Browse or search the BUPS-DIS archives, or unsubscribe from the mailing list at: http://www.bups.org/mailinglist.shtml