Brain Hammer

The following comment of mine got somewhat buried in the thread on “A poll about ‘about’” so I bring it up again here:

My main current interest in ‘about’ is whether there is a principled difference between two ways of describing the following case:

The case: Eve is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Adam thinks that Eve has a fever of 103 degrees Fahrenheit. In short, Eve does not have a fever. Adam thinks, falsely that Eve has a fever. Eve is in a certain temperature state, and it is not the state that Adam thinks it is.

The ways of description:

Way 1: Adam has a thought about Eve and not a thought about a state of Eve.

Way 2: Adam has a thought about a state of Eve.

Why I care about this: Aside from the fact that it’s obviously intrinsically interesting, there’s also the fact that it’s relevant to recent discussions around here concerning Higher Order Thought theories of consciousness, in particular, discussions concerning whether false HOT’s are ever about inexistent things (such as inexistent states) or always about existing things (such as the person having the thought).
 

  

Fig. 1. This caption is not about a movie about ‘about’.

 

 

Brain Hammer readers are hereby invited to weigh in on the following questions. I’ll put my own answers plus meta-questions in the comments.

1. Jombie thinks that George W. Bush is a mammal. What is Jombie thinking about?

(a) George W. Bush

(b) George W. Bush being a mammal

(c) Nothing

(d) None of the above

2. Jombie thinks that some animals are furry. What is Jombie thinking about?

(a) Some animals

(b) Some animals being furry

(c) Nothing

(d) None of the above

3. Jombie thinks that no animals are feathered. What is Jombie thinking about?

(a) No animals

(b) No animals being feathered

(c) Nothing

(d) None of the above

4. Jombie thinks that Krypton is made of kryptonite. What is Jombie thinking about?

(a) Krypton

(b) Krypton being made of kryptonite.

(c) Nothing

(d) None of the above

Fig 1. Jombie. (Third eye installed by Ray Gunn, photo by Pete Mandik.)

“Kripke, Devitt, Bach” by Richard Brown, CUNY Graduate Center.

ABSTRACT: It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which Kripke’s notion of ridged designation has changed the way we do philosophy. Kripke himself has been reluctant to give a theoretical account of rigid designation, preferring instead to talk in terms of a ‘better picture’ which comports with intuition, but it seems reasonably clear that he intends this to be a semantic property that some words have (like names and natural kind terms) and that others lack (like definite descriptions). This ‘better picture’ has been developed rigorously by Michael Devitt into a theory. Going against this mainstream is a kind of philosophy which has its roots in the Strawson-Russell debate and sees Strawson as making valuable contributions to the philosophy of language. One of these being that reference is something that people do, not words. Philosophers on this side of the fence argue that it is a mistake to think that words have the property of referring to things in the world. People use words to refer; the words themselves do not do any referring. On this view there will be no such semantic property as rigidity. I introduce the pragmatic property of frigidity as a contrast to rigidity. Today this position is defended by Kent Bach. He has attacked Kripke’s notion of rigid designation, calling it an illusion, and more recently Michael Devitt’s defense of a referential meaning for definite descriptions. I examine Bach, Devitt and Kripke’s accounts to show that some of the debate between them is merely terminological, owing to each using a specialized vocabulary that makes the issue seem substantive. I try to separate the merely verbal issues from the substantive one and then try to provide an answer to this substantive question which vindicates frigidity.

[Link to full text of article]

[Link to further info on PMS WIPS]