From Giorgione-sentences to simple sentences

Abstract

As Quine (1953) taught us, from (1) and (2) we cannot infer (3): (1) Giorgione was so-called because of his size (2) Giorgione was Barbarelli (3) Barbarelli was so-called because of his size. Why? In this paper I discuss and dismiss two possible answers. The first answer (section 1) rests on the view that in a sentence like (1)—a Giorgione-sentence—the name ‘Giorgione’ plays a dual role, i.e. it is both used and mentioned, and, since it is mentioned, it cannot be substituted salva veritate by the coreferential name ‘Barbarelli’. The second answer (section 2) dismisses the dual role of the name. It proposes the view that the name ‘Giorgione’ is picked out by the pronoun ‘so’ working like a demonstrative. In section 3 I present a plausible Perry-inspired account—i.e. I take on board Perry's distinction between an utterance's referential truth conditions and its reflexive truth conditions—which enables us to solve Frege-inspired puzzles concerning cognitive significance. Finally, in section 4, I discuss and defend the view that in a Giorgione-sentence ‘so’ works as an anaphoric pronoun coindexed with the name ‘Giorgione’. This anaphoric link and coindexation, though, appears at a reflexive level. This solution rests on the view that at the surface level the name is merely used while at the reflexive level, it is mentioned. 1 1 The picture I propose is neutral vis-à-vis any particular theory of quotation. For my argument to work, it is sufficient that the NPs appear within quotation marks at the cognitive level. I also show how the account proposed elegantly deals with so-called simple sentences of the form “Clark Kent, unlike Superman, can’t fly”, “Superman is stronger/more successful/…than Clark Kent”. In these sentences, codesignative NPs do not seem to be substitutable salva veritate. As in Giorgione-sentences, it is shown that their apparent non-substitutability is best dealt with at the reflexive level. The picture I’ll end up proposing endorses the welcome consequence that in Giorgione-sentences, unlike in simple sentences, codesignative names cannot be replaced salva veritate. Yet in simple sentences the intuitions concerning their alleged non-substitutivity are dealt with at the reflexive level. Thus, these intuitions force us neither to invoke special modes of presentation entering the proposition expressed nor to enrich our ontology and claim that coreferential names can refer to different entities in various contexts.