The identity of linguistic expressions and the paradox of analysis

Abstract

over this grammatical form I am not committing myself to a phenomenological theory of "intentional reference" of mental acts, like conceiving and believing, to independent Platonic objects, like universals and propositions. I It is true that in Meaning and Necessity Carnap constructs a semantical language in which senses, or what Camap calls "intensions," are not named, as in the ideal semantic language proposed by those who, following Frege, use the "method of the name-relation." Thus, in Carnap's system we would not require special names for the individual concepts Scott and Author of Waverley in order to say that the individual concepts are different, although the individuals are identical. But in order to discuss the difference between intensions and extensions Camap requires the distinction between L-designation and F-designation in his semantical meta-language. And it seems to me that if one wanted to talk about the converse domain of the relation of L-designation, one would still have to use something like names of senses. ' Obviously, the question whether logically proper names are fictitious, like atomic propositions to be found only in artificial languages, is irrelevant to my argument. 6 Strictly speaking, since what " 'A' " is meant to name is a type, not just the individual token that is visibly quoted, its nominatum, being a universal, can be neither seen nor heard. But this difficulty can be solved by the following analysis of "'A'" names 'A': " 'A' " names the token visibly quoted, and any token of the same type as " 'A'" names the token of the same type as 'A.' 'Such a deduction presupposes, of course, the logical equivalence of "0(x)F(x)" and "1OF(a). OF(b) . . iOF(n)," where a . . . n constitute the range of the individual variable. 7Cf. W. V. Quine, "The Problem of Interpreting Modal Logic," Journal of Symbolic Logic, 12:43-48 (June 1947). 8Cf. F. B. Fitch, "The Problem of the Morming Star and the Evening Star," Philosophy of Science, 16:137-41 (April 1949).