Frege’s Puzzle and Nature of Semantic Facts

Frege noted that sentences that differ from each other only by the substitution of coreferential proper names can differ in their role in rational linguistic activity. For example, “Robert Zimmerman is Bob Dylan” can be used to make an informative assertion; “Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan” cannot. Examples like this show that coreferential names can fail to be ‘logically integrated’, in that their being coreferential can be irrelevant to the rational features of sentences containing them. 

The traditional response to this has been to posit a difference in meaning between coreferential names. In this talk, expanding on recent work by Kit Fine, Aidan Gray will explore a different strategy. Perhaps Frege’s Puzzle teaches us something fundamental about the nature of semantic facts: that the semantic facts themselves can fail to be logically integrated. He will use this idea to explain how recent ‘Relationist’ solutions to Frege’s Puzzle provide a genuinely novel approach to the puzzle.

Aidan Gray is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests are in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and linguistics. Most of his work focuses on proper names, reference, and issues surrounding Frege's Puzzle.