Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

A Weird ‘Fregean’ Ontological Argument

London Ed asks:

Which step of the argument below do you disagree with?

a) If a sentence containing a proper name is meaningful, then the proper name is meaningful, i.e. it designates.

This is a standard assumption about compositionality.

BV: I have a  problem right here. I accept the compositionality of meaning. But a proper name can have meaning without designating anything.  As I see it, meaning splits into sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung).  And I don't see any need to distinguish between reference and designation. So there can be a proper name that has meaning (sense) without designating anything. 'Vulcan' (the planet) is an example.   Here is another:

'Kepler died in misery.'  The sentence is meaningful; hence, by compositionality, 'Kepler' is meaningful.  Now assume that presentism is true and that only present items exist. Then Kepler does not exist.  (Of course he does not exist now; the presentist implication is that he does not exist at all.)  If Kepler does not exist at all, then he cannot now be referred to or designated.  But when I now assertively utter 'Kepler died in misery,' I assert a proposition that is true now and is therefore meaningful now. It follows that the meaning of 'Kepler' is not exhausted by its designatum.  'Kepler' is not a mere Millian tag.  There may be Millian tags, but ordinary proper names are not such. 

Now London Ed is, I think, a presentist. If so, he ought to be open to the above argument.

b) If the proper name does not designate, the sentence containing it is not meaningful (contraposition).

BV: That is the case only if the meaning of a name = its referent, the thing designated.  That cannot be. Consider 'Vulcan does not exist.' It's true, hence meaningful. So 'Vulcan' has a meaning, by compositionality. If so, and if meaning = referent, then 'Vulcan' does not have meaning. Contradiction. Ergo, a proper name can have meaning without designating anything.  Negative existentials are a real problem for Millian theories of names.

c) If ‘God does not exist’ is true, then ‘God’ does not designate.

BV: No doubt.

d) If ‘God does not exist’ is true, then ‘God does not exist’ is meaningless.

BV: That is the case only on the assumption that the meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference, i.e., that the meaning of a name just is its designatum.  The assumption is false.

e) ‘God does not exist’ is not meaningless. (it is something debated over many centuries, no firm conclusion so far)

BV: That's right!

f) ‘God does not exist’ is meaningful, but not true (d and e above)

BV: That follows, but (d) is false.

g) ‘God does exist’ is true (excluded middle)

 BV: Valid move, but again (d) is false. So argument unsound.

h) Therefore God exists (disquotation)

BV: Valid inference, but again unsound.

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Bill Vallicella

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5 responses to “A Weird ‘Fregean’ Ontological Argument”

  1. The Bad Ostrich Avatar
    The Bad Ostrich

    Clearly agree on the direct reference thing. Absurdities result if the meaning of a name is its bearer.
    But this is a question of Frege exegesis. What does Frege mean by saying that the negation of ‘Kepler died in misery’ isn’t ‘Kepler did not die in misery, or the name ‘Kepler’ ist bedeutungslos’. How do we translate his German here?
    As you must know, there is a big scholarly debate about this. That is why in the third edition they replaced (nearly) every occurrence of ‘reference’ with ‘meaning’. So the title of Frege’s essay is now ‘On Sense and Meaning’.
    There are at least five reasons why it should be ‘meaning’ not ‘reference’, here is one for the Kepler example. Why on earth does Frege say that we can’t express the negation as the disjunction ‘Kepler did not die in misery, or the name ‘Kepler’ ist bedeutungslos’?. Surely if the external and accidential relation of reference was intended, that’s exactly how we would express it. Either Kepler died in misery or Kepler did not exist. (Let’s put aside the red herring of presentism for now). If ‘Bedeutung’ simply means reference, then ‘Kepler does not exist’ means the same as ‘‘Kepler’ has no referent, and Frege should have no problem with expressing the negation that way. So why does he say we cannot express it that way?
    The only reason I can think of is that ‘Bedeutung’ means exactly what it means in German, namely the thing signified, the meaning of ‘Kepler’. Then of course we cannot express the negation that way.

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  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    The most general meaning of Bedeutung is semantic value. The semantic value of a Satz is its Wahrheitswert. The semantic value of an Eigenname is its Gegenstand. The semantic value of a Begriffswort is a Begriff.
    In each case there is a difference between sense and reference, Sinn and Bedutung.
    The Sinn of a Satz is a Gedanke. The Sinn of an Eigenname is the proper name’s sense or Sinn, which is not a Gedanke (proposition, thought) but a constituent thereof. The Sinn of a Begriffswort is the sense of the concept word.
    Bedeutungslos: A sentence is bedeutungslos if it has no truth value. A proper name is bedeutungslos if there is no Gegenstand to which it refers. Thus ‘Vulcan’ is bedutungslos, but obviously it has meaning because it has Sinn. A concept word is beduetungslos if there is no Funktion to which it refers.
    Alles klar?
    So in the case of an ordinary proper name such as ‘Kepler,’ the name is bedeutunglos if there is nothing to which it refers. So Bedeutung is correctly translated as reference assuming ‘reference’ means what ‘referent’ means.
    When I assert that Kepler died in misery, I presuppose that ‘Kepler’ refers to something; but that my use of this name has this presupposition is no part of the Sinn of the Satz I assertively utter. That’s Frege’s point. Now suppose you assert a falsehood: you assert that Kepler did not die in misery. You too are presupposing that ‘Kepler’ has a referent. So the negation of the Gedanke or proposition *Kepler died in misery* is *Kepler did not die in misery,” NOT *Kepler did not die in misery or the name ‘Kepler’ is bedeutungslos.* We are arguing about whether a man who we both believe existed died in misery or not. The presupposition we are both making is external to the content (proposition) we are arguing about.
    The point is that a singular proposition like *Kepler died in misery* does not entail the proposition *Kepler exists.* Therefore *Kepler did not die in misery* is not the disjunction *Kepler did not die in misery or Kepler did not exist.*
    What am I missing?

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  3. The Bad Ostrich Avatar
    The Bad Ostrich

    >>The Sinn of a Satz is a Gedanke.
    However you are ignoring the places where he speaks of ‘mock thoughts’ in the case of empty names and fiction. The mountain you have to climb is chapter 1 of Evans’ The Varieties of Reference. Have you read that? If not, there is a gap in your education, sorry!

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  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    I read Evans a long time ago and the book is in my library (but my library is so big I am having trouble locating it.) In any case we are not concerned with fiction. ‘Kepler died in misery’ is not a fictional sentence.
    More on presupposition later.

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  5. The Bad Ostrich Avatar
    The Bad Ostrich

    >> ‘Kepler died in misery’ is not a fictional sentence.
    Correct. But you need to read and understand Evans in order to grasp the significance of the mock vs genuine distinction.

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