The “Cicero”/“Cicero” Puzzling Case

Abstract

AbstractThis paper aims to solve the following twofold problem. Suppose that a rational speaker, Ralph, mistakenly takes (for some reason) the Roman orator Cicero and the World War II German spy Cicero to be the same individual. By sincerely uttering the sentence “Cicero is an orator and a spy”, (a) does Ralph use the name “Cicero” of the Roman orator or the name “Cicero” of the German spy or another name of the genus “Cicero”? And (b) which Cicero does Ralph refer to: the Roman orator, the German spy, both of them or neither of them? After drawing a distinction between the notion of mistaking one individual for another (exemplified by Kripke's “Jones”/“Smith” case and Putnam's “water”/“water” case) and the notion of wrongly taking two individuals to be one and the same individual (exemplified by the “Cicero”/“Cicero” case under discussion), I will defend the following solution to the last puzzling case: Ralph inadvertently creates an abstract individual playing the role of “fusion” or “amalgam” of the two Ciceros and also inadvertently creates a new name “Cicero” referring to such an individual.