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    The informativeness of 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' is fully ... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Two co-referential names can differ in content

    The informativeness of 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' is fully explained by epistemic differences in how agents acquire names, requiring no difference in semantic content between the names themselves.

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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Names are fundamentally tools for reference acquisition; their cognitive role depends on causal-historical chains, not intrinsic semantic properties.
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    • 2.The informativeness of 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' vanishes once agents recognize both names track the same object, confirming epistemic differences suffice.
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    • 3.Attributing distinct semantic contents to coreferential names multiplies entities beyond necessity without explaining the name's utility or cognitive distinctness.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Semantic content must explain why 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' informs us while 'Hesperus is Hesperus' does not—pure epistemic differences cannot do this alone.
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    • 2.If names lacked distinct semantic contents, rational agents with identical referential knowledge but different name acquisition methods would be semantically identical.
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    • 3.The truth conditions of ascriptions like 'Smith believes Hesperus rises' differ from 'Smith believes Phosphorus rises,' suggesting the names carry distinct semantic content.
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    Key Terms

    Epistemic
    "Epistemic" relates to knowledge—how we know things, what counts as knowledge, and whether we can trust what we believe to be true. It comes from the Greek word for knowledge and is used to describe questions about the reliability and validity of our beliefs and understanding. For example, "epistemic humility" means acknowledging the limits of what you can actually know for certain.
    Hesperus and Phosphorus(as a historical philosophical reference)
    Two ancient names for the same celestial object (the planet Venus), used as a famous philosophical example because people didn't realize they referred to the same thing.
    Reference (or referring)(as related to what names mean versus how we discover them)
    What a name or word points to or picks out in the world; for example, the name 'Aristotle' refers to the actual philosopher who lived in ancient Greece.
    informativeness(Floridi's distinction between informativeness and strongly semantic information)
    A property of statements distinct from strongly semantic information; a statement's degree of informativeness is independent of its truth value and tracks how much useful content it conveys
    semantic content(Cappelen and Lepore's literalist/minimalist framework)
    Propositions determined solely by conventions of meaning, precisification, disambiguation, and reference fixing — not by pragmatic inference.

    Connections

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    Philosophy of Language1 linked

    Related

    Attributing distinct semantic contents to coreferential names multiplies entitie...If names lacked distinct semantic contents, rational agents with identical refer...Names are fundamentally tools for reference acquisition; their cognitive role de...Semantic content must explain why 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' informs us while 'Hes...

    Details

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    The informativeness of 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' vanishes once agents recognize b...The truth conditions of ascriptions like 'Smith believes Hesperus rises' differ ...Two co-referential names can differ in content