Indeed, at first we really want to demand something stronger: co-referring expressions should not just be everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate, but salva veritate as well! Most of us eventually abandon this stronger demand when we are confronted with the stubborn intensionality of natural language, but still, intensionality does not seem to do anything to threaten the minimal salva congruitate requirement. What is more, (RP) initially appears to be a truism. Footnote 4 Nonetheless, (RP) is clearly the driving force behind these easy arguments it transforms difficult philosophical questions about co-reference into easy grammatical questions about intersubstitutability. For example, Easy Argument 1 presumes that if ‘ \((\ \ )\) is a horse’ refers to a property, then that property can also be referred to by a singular term, and that presumption can be challenged. Of course, that is not all that these arguments rely upon. These easy arguments crucially rely upon the Reference Principle:Ĭo-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. So ‘that the show will be funny’ does not refer to a proposition in ‘Sharon hopes that the show will be funny’, and thus the propositional attitude of hoping, at least, is not a relation to a proposition. But again, these expressions are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate: ‘Sharon hopes that the show will be funny’ is a grammatical sentence, but ‘Sharon hopes the proposition that the show will be funny’ is not. And in that case, ‘that the show will be funny’ must co-refer with ‘the proposition that the show will be funny’. If this sentence says that Sharon bears the relation of hoping to the proposition that the show will be funny, then ‘that the show will be funny’ must surely refer to that proposition. Footnote 1Īre propositional attitudes relations to propositions? Take the sentence ‘Sharon hopes that the show will be funny’. So ‘ \((\ \ )\) is a horse’ does not co-refer with ‘the property of being a horse’, and thus ‘ \((\ \ )\) is a horse’ does not refer to a property. (In other words, if two expressions co-refer then substituting the one for the other can never turn a grammatical sentence into an ungrammatical one.) ‘ \((\ \ )\) is a horse’ and ‘the property of being a horse’ are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate: ‘Shergar is a horse’ is a grammatical sentence, but ‘Shergar the property of being a horse’ is not. But co-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. And in that case, ‘ \((\ \ )\) is a horse’ and ‘the property of being a horse’ must co-refer. Here are two examples of a shortcut that some philosophers have tried:ĭo predicates refer to properties? Well, if the predicate ‘ \((\ \ )\) is a horse’ refers to a property, then it must surely refer to the property of being a horse. It is always tempting to look for shortcuts in philosophy, for easy answers to difficult questions. I end by arguing that my new version of (RP) cannot be used to settle metaphysical debates quite as easily as some philosophers would like. Along the way I touch on the following topics: the relation between argument forms and their natural language instances the reification of sense the difference between terms and predicates and the relation between reference and disquotation. In this paper, I introduce a new notion of substitution, and then develop and argue for a version of (RP) that is immune to these counterexamples. However, when we understand ‘substitution’ in the simplest and most straightforward way, (RP) is no truism in fact, natural languages are full of counterexamples to the principle. For example, it has been suggested that all we need to do to show that the predicate ‘( ) is a horse’ does not refer to a property is point out that ‘( ) is a horse’ and ‘the property of being a horse’ are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. This has led a number of philosophers to think that we can use (RP) to make short work of certain longstanding metaphysical debates. On first glance, (RP) looks like a truism, but a truism with some bite: (RP) transforms difficult philosophical questions about co-reference into easy grammatical questions about substitutability. The Reference Principle (RP) states that co-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate.
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