Abstract
Robert Stalnaker has argued that rigidified descriptivism faces several problems and is, therefore, unattractive. Philip Pettit thinks that these problems can be avoided and proposes a solution: mixed causal descriptivism. Our aim is to critically examine this solution. We proceed in three steps: in a first step, we take a look at Stalnaker’s objections against rigidified descriptivism. In a second step, we show what Pettit’s proposed solution, his “story in ten stages”, consists in. In a third step, we critically examine Pettit’s approach. Since, on the one hand, Pettit illustrates his approach by telling a story about the term “blue” and, on the other hand, we are not fully satisfied with his approach, the subtitle of our paper is “Feeling Blue”.
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Notes
- 1.
This is the example Frege gave in 1892 already (cf. 2002, fn. 2). Pettit gives it, too, cf. DRA, 324f.
- 2.
That is what Stalnaker calls “the generalized Kaplan interpretation”, Stalnaker 2004, 309ff. Cf. DRA, 326.
- 3.
There is a problem lurking behind this formulation, namely the well-known qua problem. We do not have space to deal with this problem in detail here, but it should be mentioned that two of the authors of the present paper, Jan G. Michel and Amrei Bahr, have proposed a solution to the qua problem elsewhere (cf. Bahr, Michel, Voltz 2013).
- 4.
And Daniel Stoljar joins him in this.
- 5.
By the way, “ostensive” in “that ostensive” is redundant.
References
Bahr, A., J.G. Michel, and M. Voltz. 2013. Refining Kitcher’s semantics for kind terms, or: Cleaning up the mess. In Philip Kitcher: Pragmatic naturalism, ed. M.I. Kaiser and A. Seide, 91–109. Frankfurt: Ontos.
Frege, G. 2002. Über Sinn und Bedeutung. In Funktion – Begriff – Bedeutung, ed. Mark Textor, 23–46. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Originally published in 1892.
Kripke, Saul A. 1980. Naming and necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Stalnaker, Robert. 2004. Assertion revisited: On the interpretation of two-dimensional modal semantics. Philosophical Studies 118: 299–322.
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Bahr, A., Hüsing, B., Michel, J.G. (2016). Pettit’s Mixed Causal Descriptivism: Feeling Blue. In: Derpmann, S., Schweikard, D. (eds) Philip Pettit: Five Themes from his Work. Münster Lectures in Philosophy, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26103-4_3
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