Full text
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| Author(s): |
Matheus Valente
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas |
| Defense date: | 2016-04-07 |
| Examining board members: |
Marco Ruffino;
Ludovic Soutif;
Eros Stefano Corazza
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| Advisor: | Marco Ruffino |
| Abstract | |
This dissertation is composed by three chapters which, albeit dealing with distinct particular issues in the philosophy of language and mind, share the underlying assumption that the concept of de jure coreference must be at the forefront of theorizing about singular thought and representation. In chapter 2, I will try to rehabilitate Frege¿s (1948) master argument for the existence of Senses in face of the accusation of circularity recently posed by Glezakos (2009). I will argue that the differences of cognitive value between sentences, such as "Cicero is Cicero" and "Cicero is Tully", boil down to the occurrence (or lack thereby) of the relation of de jure coreference between their referential tokens. Since, as I will show, the acknowledgement of that relation does not presuppose any substantial semantic theory, it may logically be used to ground the introduction of Senses. Chapter 3 assesses whether the introduction of Senses is successful in explaining de jure coreference in view of the fact that the latter was claimed to be a non-transitive relation (Fine 2007, Pinillos 2011), as opposed to the relation of sameness of Sense. We will argue that the postulation of Senses can ground a relation that is non-transitive, since Senses can instantiate relations more fine-grained than mere identity or difference, e.g. having a part in common. Finally, the last chapter contains a discussion about singular content in diachronic scenarios involving indexical expressions. I will claim that theories rescinding from factivity, i.e. the claim that identity of content entails coreference, stand in no better footing than theories that rescind from transparency, i.e. the claim that identity of content is knowable a priori. Since we have explicit reasons to maintain these two claims, we might need to adopt a theory such as Recanati¿s (2012, 2015, forthcoming), according to which the relation between diachronic indexical tokens is usually weaker than identity of content, but stronger than mere distinctness of content. However, I will claim that Recanati is wrong about some important details, more particularly, about whether there can ever be proper identity of content between memory representations and the representations which they are a memory of. My final point is that, if my arguments are sound, we may need to distinguish the relation of identity of modes of presentation from cognitive value, the former being more fine-grained than the latter (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 14/04701-6 - Causation, dispositions and metaphysical necessity: a study on the modality of causal/dispositional events |
| Grantee: | Matheus Valente Leite |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Master |