Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh, Robert Hanna and Panaetius

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5 ideas

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 5. Fregean Semantics
Fregeans can't agree on what 'senses' are [Cappelen/Dever]
     Full Idea: There is little agreement among Fregeans about what senses are.
     From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 04.5)
     A reaction: I don't take this to be sufficient grounds for dismissing Fregean senses. When we look into the workings of the linguistic mind, there seems little prospect of clarity or agreement.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 8. Possible Worlds Semantics
Possible worlds accounts of content are notoriously coarse-grained [Cappelen/Dever]
     Full Idea: Possible worlds accounts of content are notoriously coarse-grained. They fail to distinguish between logical or mathematical truths, ..between metaphysical equivalences, ..between coreferentials, ..and between indexicals and non-indexicals.
     From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 05.5)
     A reaction: [A nice summary, very compressed]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 9. Indexical Semantics
Indexicals are just non-constant in meaning, and don't involve any special concepts [Cappelen/Dever]
     Full Idea: Once the non-constant characters of expressions has been characterised, there is no further need for additional devices like 'first-person concepts' or 'demonstrative concepts'.
     From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.7)
     A reaction: This seems to me to be a wonderfully liberating attack on this issue. There is a kind of creepy mysticism that has been allowed to accrue around indexicals, and it's nonsense.
Fregeans say 'I' differs in reference, so it must also differ in sense [Cappelen/Dever]
     Full Idea: Fregeans tend to treat as a fundamental tenet that sense determines reference; same sense, same reference. From that it follow trivially that indexicals don't have the same sense: different uses of 'I' have different referents, so sense must differ.
     From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 04.6)
     A reaction: Interesting. Since it seems implausible that 'I' is profoundly different when two people use it, this seems to be a strong argument against Frege's distinction. But I rather like Frege's distinction, while being sceptical about 'I', so I'm baffled....
All indexicals can be expressed non-indexically [Cappelen/Dever]
     Full Idea: Whatever can be expressed indexically could be expressed by non-indexical means.
     From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 08.1)
     A reaction: This is the best summary of the thesis of their book. Indexicality in non-essential.