PHIL 415 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Definite Description, Propositional Attitude, Atomism
12 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Frege
Concept – Prof Magal uses this term but the proper linguistic description is “predicate”
Name versus definite descriptions
Definite description – mean to pick out a unique object
EX: Chinese and Russian don’t have definite descriptions
“The” is meant to be understood as a unique thing that one is talking about
The concept table refers to all and only tables
The concept dog refers to all and only dogs
However, species boundaries have to be fuzzy and imprecise
We’re assuming that everything has clear-cut boundaries like in math and logic
However, this is a problem
Going from sense to reference
Propositions → The true/the false
The sense is the proposition
The reference is the true and the false
Here, the true and the false become logical objects
We’re only accounting for a very narrow range of propositions of things we might say
Scientists at the time wanted to do make it so that philosophy is a servant of science
A conceptual service center for science
We use the terms propositional attitude
EX: belief
Anything that appears after “that” is a propositional attitude
EX: I believe that the door is closed
We want to preserve truth-value in doing logic
A truth-value is normally determined by the referent
We can switch different names for the same object without changing the truth-value.
So long as we’re still talking about the same object, then the names can be changed
Subordinate clauses:
Normally the reference of a proposition is either true or false
However, when the proposition is opaque the sense of the proposition becomes its
referent
When you preserve someone else’s’ speech you want to preserve the sense, rather than
the reference especially if they don’t know the language well enough
What can you swap in and out without changing the truth-value? Synonyms
When you put in synonyms, you don’t change the sense
You also don’t change the reference
What the problem is and what the solution is (Frege)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Concept prof magal uses this term but the proper linguistic description is predicate . Definite description mean to pick out a unique object. Ex: chinese and russian don"t have definite descriptions. The is meant to be understood as a unique thing that one is talking about. The concept table refers to all and only tables. The concept dog refers to all and only dogs. However, species boundaries have to be fuzzy and imprecise. We"re assuming that everything has clear-cut boundaries like in math and logic. The reference is the true and the false. Here, the true and the false become logical objects. We"re only accounting for a very narrow range of propositions of things we might say. Scientists at the time wanted to do make it so that philosophy is a servant of science. Anything that appears after that is a propositional attitude. Ex: i believe that the door is closed. We want to preserve truth-value in doing logic.
