Abstract:Call a semantics for singular terms extensionalist if it embraces (1) and classical if it
Call a semantics adequate if it distinguishes material identity (the identity of
- The meaning of a singular term is exhausted by its reference.
- The reference of a singular term is an entity that is logically simple.
a and b) and formal identity (the identity of a and a).
Frege reacts to the inadequacy of classical extensionalist semantics by
rejecting (1).This he does without a sideways glance at (2), whose background ontology he implicitly accepts.
In contrast, my account of the difference between material and formal identity replaces that background ontology, the so-called ontology of individuals (
van Heijenoort'sterm), with an ontology whose ground-level objects are ontologically differentiated and logically complex. The semantics I urge for singular terms, while extensionalist* in the sense of (1), is thus a non-classical semantics in which singular terms take structured individuals, or complexes (as I will say), as their referents. For, unlike the logically simple units of the ontology of individuals, complexes keep (true) 'a = b'and 'a = a'apart.
- 0. Introduction
- 1. The Problem of Identity
- 2. Extensions as Meanings: Chronicle of an Exile Foretold
- 3. Sense and Reference
- 4. The Word Well-Lost
- 5. Identity as Oneness in Substance
- 6. New Foundations From Old
- 7. Bringing It All Home
- 8. Dead Meat
- Appendix One: Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens
- Appendix Two: Theory P
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Copyright© 1999, William J. Greenberg, all rights reserved.