Fregean de re thoughts

Authors

  • Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves The University of Texas at Austin

Keywords:

De re thought, Gottlob Frege, Gareth Evans, John McDowell.

Abstract

This papers aims at clarifying some misunderstandings that seem to block an adequate account of de re thoughts within the Fregean framework. It is usually assumed that Fregean senses cannot be de re, or dependent upon objects. Contrary to this assumption, Gareth Evans and John McDowell have claimed that Fregean de re senses are not just possible, but in fact the most promising alternative for accounting for de re thoughts. The reasons blocking this alternative can be traced back to Russellian considerations that contaminated the interpretation of Frege. This contaminated understanding is first detected in Tyler Burge’s distinction between de dicto and de re, then connected to the motivations behind David Kaplan’s notion of character, and finally found in John Searle’s descriptivist account. The difficulty in understanding de re thoughts is, roughly speaking, a side effect of the misunderstanding of the boundaries separating internal and external elements of thoughts, as well as the distinction between mental content and means of representation.

Author Biography

Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves, The University of Texas at Austin

Philosophy Department Philosophy of Mind and Language

References

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KRIPKE, Saul. Naming and necessity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980.

MCDOWELL, John. De re senses. In: Meaning, knowledge, and reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998a. (Published originally in 1984).

MCDOWELL, John. Singular thought and the extent of inner space. In: Meaning, knowledge, and reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998b. (Published originally in 1986).

MCDOWELL, John. Intentionality de re. In: Meaning, knowledge, and reality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998c. (Published originally in 1991).

SEARLE, John R. Intentionality: an essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Published

2014-07-06

Issue

Section

Artigos