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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Russell's argument that 'the author of Waverley' lacks meaning is invalid because it equivocates on two senses of 'meaning'.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.'The author of Waverley' and 'Scott' cannot have the same intension (connotation).
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    • 2.'The author of Waverley' and 'Scott' must have the same denotation.
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    • 3.From the premises that two expressions differ in intension but share a denotation, it does not follow that either expression lacks meaning entirely.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Frege's distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung shows that meaning has at least two irreducible dimensions: sense and reference.
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    • 2.Russell's argument against definite descriptions having 'meaning' targets only referential meaning, silently ignoring descriptive cognitive content.
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    • 3.An argument that eliminates meaning by attending to only one semantic dimension while ignoring another commits the fallacy of equivocation on 'meaning'.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.E.E.C. Jones argued that identity statements like 'Scott is the author of Waverley' are genuinely informative, which presupposes both terms carry distinct cognitive meaning.
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    • 2.If 'the author of Waverley' lacked meaning entirely, the sentence 'Scott is the author of Waverley' would be either trivially analytic or meaningless, yet it is demonstrably synthetic and informative.
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    • 3.Russell's elimination of descriptive phrases via contextual definition preserves truth conditions but cannot account for the epistemic difference Jones identifies, confirming his target sense of 'meaning' is selectively narrow.
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