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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Russell's Principia argument that descriptions such as 'the author of Waverly' have no meaning in isolation relies on a flawed assumption

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The Principia argument assumes that an expression can only possess one kind of meaning
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    • 2.If an expression can only possess one kind of meaning, then sameness of meaning must be either sameness of intension or sameness of denotation
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    • 3.This assumption is not obviously correct and is open to challenge
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Frege's distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung shows that expressions have both a sense (mode of presentation) and a reference, which are irreducibly distinct semantic dimensions.
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    • 2.Definite descriptions like 'the author of Waverley' possess a determinate Sinn even when their Bedeutung is disputed or unknown, demonstrating meaning independent of denotation.
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    • 3.Russell's theory collapses Fregean sense into denotation, thereby presupposing the very monistic semantic framework that Jones's distinction between identity of meaning and identity of denotation was designed to refute.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.E.E. Constance Jones argued that the proposition expressed by 'Scott is the author of Waverley' is genuinely informative, which requires that 'Scott' and 'the author of Waverley' differ in cognitive meaning despite co-referring.
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    • 2.Russell's contextual elimination of descriptions in Principia cannot account for the epistemic asymmetry between knowing who Scott is and knowing that Scott wrote Waverley, a gap that requires irreducible intensional content.
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    • 3.If descriptions had meaning only in propositional context as Russell insists, substitution of co-denoting terms would preserve all semantic value, yet such substitutions demonstrably alter informational and cognitive content.
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