TY - GEN
T1 - What do proper names refer to? The simple sentence puzzle and identity statements
AU - Sakai, Tomohiro
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank Daisuke Bekki (Ochanomizu University/JST CREST/National Institute of Informatics), who kindly gave me the opportunity to present this paper at LENLS 12, held at Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, on November 15–17 2015. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25370437.
Publisher Copyright:
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The purpose of this paper is to solve the simple sentence puzzle about proper names. (1) Superman leaps more tall buildings than Clark Kent. (2) Superman = Clark Kent. (3) Superman leaps more tall buildings than Superman. Even when (1) and (2) are true, (3) is false. It will be shown that this is not a real puzzle, because (i) (1) and (3) do not express singular propositions, and (ii) the identity statement in (2) only concerns singular propositions. In (1) and (3), the proper names refer to aspects of an individual at the level of explicature, while identity statements of the form X = Y mean that Y can be substituted for X salva veritate, only in singular propositions about X /Y. Given this difference in reference between (1)/(3) and (2), the conjunction of (1) and (2) does not entail (3), in accordance with our intuition.
AB - The purpose of this paper is to solve the simple sentence puzzle about proper names. (1) Superman leaps more tall buildings than Clark Kent. (2) Superman = Clark Kent. (3) Superman leaps more tall buildings than Superman. Even when (1) and (2) are true, (3) is false. It will be shown that this is not a real puzzle, because (i) (1) and (3) do not express singular propositions, and (ii) the identity statement in (2) only concerns singular propositions. In (1) and (3), the proper names refer to aspects of an individual at the level of explicature, while identity statements of the form X = Y mean that Y can be substituted for X salva veritate, only in singular propositions about X /Y. Given this difference in reference between (1)/(3) and (2), the conjunction of (1) and (2) does not entail (3), in accordance with our intuition.
KW - Identity statement
KW - Proposition about aspects
KW - Simple sentence puzzle
KW - Singular proposition
KW - Substitution
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-50953-2_2
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-50953-2_2
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85018377086
SN - 9783319509525
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 15
EP - 26
BT - New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence - JSAI-isAI 2015 Workshops, LENLS, JURISIN, AAA, HAT-MASH, TSDAA, ASD-HR, and SKL, Revised Selected Papers
A2 - Otake, Mihoko
A2 - Satoh, Ken
A2 - Kurahashi, Setsuya
A2 - Ota, Yuiko
A2 - Bekki, Daisuke
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 7th JSAI International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, JSAI-isAI 2015
Y2 - 16 November 2015 through 18 November 2015
ER -