Problema de Frege, valor cognitivo e referência direta

Author(s)

Filipe Martone

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2015-08-28

Examining board members

Marco Ruffino; Ludovic Soutif; Emiliano Boccardi

• Advisor: Lucas Angioni; Marco Ruffino

Abstract

Should we deal with Frege¿s Puzzle on semantic grounds? Is the cognitive value of language an aspect of meaning? Frege himself assumed an affirmative answer to those questions, and so did many direct reference theorists, such as David Kaplan and John Perry. Even though they defend a theory that is anti-Fregean by nature, they share the view that it is semantics¿ business to account for Frege¿s Puzzle and cognitive value. There are two traditional ways to do so in referentialist semantics. One is via character and the other via reflexive content. My aim in this dissertation is to argue that both fail. To do that, I first examine what exactly Frege¿s Puzzle is, and if what traditionally goes under the name of "Frege¿s Puzzle" really corresponds to the puzzle that Frege himself formulated. I then examine how the solutions to the puzzle in terms of character and reflexive content are supposed to work for indexicals, where they are most appealing, and for proper names. I argue that there is no version of these solutions that is able to account for all the relevant phenomena. I conclude that, if this is the case, then we have serious reasons to suspect that Frege¿s Puzzle should not be explained by semantics, and that cognitive value is not an aspect of meaning as it is often supposed (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/22364-4 - Semantics and cognitive value
• Grantee: Filipe Martone de Faria
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master