Fictionalism and the informativeness of identity |
| |
Authors: | Frederick Kroon |
| |
Institution: | (1) University of Auckland, New Zealand |
| |
Abstract: | Identity claims often look nonsensical because they apparently declaredistinct things to be identical. I argue that this appearance is notjust an artefact of grammar. We should be fictionalists about such claims,seeing them against the background of speakers' pretense that their wordssecure reference to a plurality of objects that are then declared to beidentical from within the pretense. I argue that it is the resultinginterpretative tension – arising from the fact that two things cannever be identical – that allows us to understand the real point ofsuch statements. This view also offers a new solution to Fege's puzzleof the informativeness of identity statements. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |