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Constitutional Necessity and Epistemic Possibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

W.R. Carter  and
Richard I. Nagel
W.R. Carter
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University at Raleigh
Richard I. Nagel
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University at Raleigh
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Extract

By an incomplete sentence we shall understand a declarative sentence that can be used, without variation in its meaning, to make different statements in different contexts. Although the point deserves supporting argument, which we will not provide, sentences whose grammatical subjects are indexical expressions or demonstratives are obvious, plausible examples of incomplete sentences. Uttered in one context the sentence ‘He is ill’ may be used to make one statement, for example, that George is ill, while in another context the very same sentence may be used to make a quite different statement, for example, that Paul is ill.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , September 1982 , pp. 579 - 590
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1982

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was read at a philosophy of language symposium at the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in San Francisco in 1976. The commentator was Diana Ackerman. A particular contribution to her is acknowledged below. We are most grateful to Professor Ackerman, our colleague Harold Levin, and a referee for this Journal for helpful comments.

References

1 The notion of an incomplete sentence employed in our discussion owes to Richard Cartwright's paper ‘Propositions', in R.J. Butler, ed., Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1962). His definition appears on page 97; relevant discussion can be found on pages 93-98.

2 Again we follow Cartwright in regarding the statement made by a suitable utterance as what is said (stated or asserted) on a particular occasion.

3 Throughout we use ‘a’ as a syntactic variable over the designating expressions of English and’ ϕ’ as a variable over predicate expressions. The corners''’ and“’ indicate the operation of quasi-quotation as developed by Quine, W.V. in Mathematical Logic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1940).Google Scholar ‘>’ and'<' enclose expressions that mention sentences. The resulting expressions designate the statement one would make, in a suitably specified context, by uttering the sentence mentioned between the angles.

4 Cf. E.J. Lemmon's ‘Sentences, Statements, and Propositions; in Williams, B. and Montefiore, A. eds., British Analytical Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press 1966) 94-5Google Scholar

5 Cf. ‘Propositions; 103

6 For a recent statement of the traditional view see Ayer, A.J. The Central Questions of Philosophy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1973).Google Scholar

7 In ‘Naming and Necessity; in Davidson, D. and Harman, G. eds. Semantics of Natural Language (Boston: D. Reidel 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Identity and Necessity; in Munitz, M. ed., Identity and Individuation (New York: New York University Press 1971)Google Scholar

8 This is the standard interpretation of Kripke's position. For example, see Sousa's, R.B. De ‘Kripke on Naming and Necessity,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 3 (1973-74).Google Scholar

9 ‘Naming and Necessity,’ 270

10 Though the objection is trifling, it is not without interest. Given that

‘α is ϕ → ▭ α is ϕ’

designates sentences that would be asserted by a TNT theorist, then the objection amounts to the correct observation that [▭ ∼ α is ϕ] cannot represent the epistemic possibility that the predicate designated by ϕ is not true of the object designated by α. This is so since if ⌜α is ϕ → ▭ α is ϕ⌝ is true and ⌜▭ ∼ α is ϕ⌝ is true, it follows that ⌜α is ϕ ⌝is false. The observation thus motivates the need for an analysis of epistemic possibility.

11 Cf. Gail Stine's ‘Essentialism, Possible Worlds, and Propositional Attitudes,’ The Philosophical Review, 84 (1973) 473·5

12 An earlier version of (9) was shown to be defective by Professor Ackerman at the San Francisco meetings. In her comments, she kindly repaired the defect and we have, with her permission, incorporated the revision here.

13 The term ‘semi-rigid designator’ may suggest that there is a continuum of degrees of latitude of application varying with the amount of knowledge we have of the designated object and such that rigid designators are at the uppermost point of that continuum. This is misleading, however, since semi-rigid designators always designate objects in possible worlds that have all the properties the object designate in the actual world is known to have.

14 Cf. ‘Naming and Necessity,’ 209, 277ff, and 321-9

15 Schwartz, Stephen P. ‘Natural Kinds and Nominal Kinds,’ Mind, 89 (1980) 184.Google Scholar See also Putnam's, ‘Meaning and Reference,’ The Journal of Philosophy, 70 (1973) 709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Stine's thesis in ‘Essentialism, Possible Worlds, and Propositional Attitudes’ is that the doctrine of essentialism is ‘incompatible’ with a possible world semantics for statements of the form ‘a knows that b is F’ (472). Unless our proposal here works out, we suspect that Stine is right.