Anotace
Consider the following argument:
All ancient Greek philosophers are dead.
Aristotle is an ancient Greek philosopher.
Therefore, Aristotle is dead.
This argument is valid only if the two instances of the name ‘Aristotle’ refer to the same individual. If, for example, the first instance refers to the famous Greek philosopher but the second instance refers to my cat, then this argument is invalid because its premises are true and its conclusion is false. This example highlights one important role of proper names in our reasoning: that of reference. Some think that, in addition to the reference relation, proper names also have a sense or meaning. I questioned the validity of the above argument by suggesting distinct references of the two instances of ‘Aristotle’, and I did this by means of two different descriptions: “the famous Greek philosopher” and “my cat”. Thus, one might think that these two descriptions constitute part of two different senses of the name ‘Aristotle’. In this course we will examine some prominent theories concerning the sense and reference of proper names.
Prerequisites: Classical Logic I recommended.
Sample reading:
Chisholm, R., 1981, The First Person: An Essay On Reference and Intentionality. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
Donnellan, K., 1972, “Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions”, in D. Davidson and G. Harman, eds., Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 356–79.
Duží, M., Jespersen, B. and Materna, P., 2010, Procedural semantics for hyperintensional logic: foundations and applications of transparent intensional logic (Vol. 17). Springer Science & Business Media.
Frege, G., 1952, “On Sense and Reference”, in P. Geach and M. Black, eds., Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 56–79.
Kaplan, D.,1975, How to Russell a Frege-Church. The Journal of Philosophy, 72(19), 716-729.
Kripke, S., 1980, Naming and Necessity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Plantinga, A., 1978, “The Boethian Compromise”. American Philosophical Quarterly, 15(2), 129-138.
Strawson, P. 1950, “On Referring”. Mind, 59 (235): 320-344.
Searle, J., 1969, Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Russell, B. 1905, “On Denoting”. Mind, 14: 479–493.