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THE PHONE BOOTH PUZZLE

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Jespersen B.

Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu

2006

vol. 13

issue 4

411-439

In 1997 paper Jennifer Saul adduces various examples of the simple sentences in which the substitution of one co-referential singular term for another appears to be invalid. The author addresses the question of whether anti-substitution is 'logically' justified by examining the validity and soundness of a substitution of the co-referential singular terms in three simple-sentence arguments each exhibiting a different logical structure. The result is twofold. First, all three arguments are valid, provided 'Leibniz's Law' is valid with respect to the simple sentences (something Saul herself does not doubt). Thus, as far as these arguments are concerned, there is no logical problem with a substitution in the simple sentences. Second, two of the arguments cannot be 'sound', because their respective sets of the premises are inconsistent. Thus, it would be logically irrational to commit oneself to all the premises of the respective arguments. To the extent that the origin of Saul's puzzles is in logic (rather than pragmatics, say), the author suggests , tentatively, that substitution may appear to be invalid because the issues of validity and soundness have not been kept separate. The author then considers in depth Saul's first sentence, 'Clark Kent enters a phone booth and Superman exits'. Obviously, two-way substitution is trivially valid, if the expressions are co-referential semantically (and not just grammatically) the proper names, the conclusion being but a rephrasing of the premise. However, the author argues that a non-trivial semantic analysis of this sentence should take account of the diachronicity of Clark Kent's entrance and Superman's exit while preserving the internal link between being Superman and being Clark Kent. The author proposes the following. 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' refer to two distinct individual concepts. 'Superman is Clark Kent' then no longer expresses the self-identity of an individual bearing two names, but that two named concepts are held together by the requisite relation: wherever and whenever someone falls under the concept of Superman the same individual also falls under the Clark Kent concept, whereas there are exceptions to the converse. This semantic analysis always validates the substitution of 'Clark Kent' for 'Superman', but validates the substitution of 'Superman' for 'Clark Kent' only if the additional condition is met that somebody should fall under the Superman concept when Clark Kent enters. The analysis is accompanied by a device of extensionalisation from the individual concepts to the individuals and two rules of a predication.

POINTS OF VIEW FROM THE LOGICAL PERSPECTIVE (II)

51%

Duzi M., Jespersen B., Materna P.

Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu

2007

vol. 14

issue 1

5-31

In this abstract also the 1st part of the paper (publ. ibid. nr 3(2006) pp. 277-305) is covered. The authors offer a 'logical explication' of the frequently used, but rather vague, notion of 'point of view'. They show that the concept of point of view prevents certain paradoxes from arising. A point of view is a means of a 'partial' characterisation of something. Thus nothing is a 'P' and at the same time a non-'P (simpliciter)', because it is a 'P' only relative to some point of view and a non-'P' from another point of view. But there is a major, complicating factor involved in applying a logical method that is supposed to provide a formal and rigorous counterpart of the intuitively understood notion: 'point of view' is a homonymous expression, and so there is not just one meaning that would explain points of view. Yet the authors propose a common scheme of the logical type of the entities denoted by the term 'point of view'. It is an empirical 'function': when applied to the viewed object in question, it results in a (set of) evaluating 'proposition(s)' about the object. If there is an agent applying the criterion, the result is the agent's 'attitude' to the respective object. In Part I the authors first adduce and analyse various examples of typical cases of applying a point of view to prevent paradox. These cases are examined according to the type of the viewed object: a) the viewed object is an individual and b) the viewed object is a property or an office. In Part II they then show that the method described in Part I can be applied also to the analyses of the agents' attitudes. The authors explain how an agent can believe of something that it is a 'P' and at the same time a non-'P': the agent applies the different viewpoint criteria to the viewed object. The inversion of perspective consisting in the perspective shifting from the believer on to the reporter in the case of attitudes 'de re', and from the reporter to the believer in the case of attitudes 'de dicto', is also analyzed. The authors show that there is no smooth logical traffic back and forth between such attitudes unless some additional assumptions are added, and prove that they are not equivalent. By way of conclusion, the authors explicate the notion of 'conceptual' point of view and analyze the cases of viewpoints given by a conceptual distinction. Finally the authors show, that the proposed scheme of the type of point of view can be preserved, this time, however, in its extensional version.

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2 Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu

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1 2006

2 Jespersen B.

1 Duzi M.

1 Materna P.

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THE PHONE BOOTH PUZZLE

POINTS OF VIEW FROM THE LOGICAL PERSPECTIVE (II)