I want to discuss a puzzle for a view called Ways-Millianism. I’ll do it in two parts. In this post I’m going to briefly present a Frege Puzzle for Millianism and the Ways-Millianism response. The puzzle I want to discuss relies on understanding how the Ways-Millian responds to Frege Puzzles.
If you’re already familiar with this stuff, then you might want to just wait for the next post.
Frege Puzzles and Ways-Millianism
Millianism is the view that the semantic content of a proper name is its referent. This view faces certain problems that are called Frege Puzzles. Consider the following two sentences:
(A) Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn.
(B) Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn.
If Millianism is correct, then (A) and (B) express the same proposition. That seems problematic. It seems obvious that (A) and (B) do not express the same proposition.
While it might be easy to resist the intuition that simple sentences like (A) and (B) do not express the same proposition, the problem seems worse when we consider sentences, like the following, that contain propositional attitude verbs.
(C) Sarah believes that Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn.
(D) Sarah believes that Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn.
While one might simply insist that (A) and (B) express the same proposition, it seems that (C) and (D) clearly express different propositions. Surely, (C) and (D) could differ in truth value. If (C) and (D) could differ in truth value, then they do not express the same proposition. If (C) and (D) do not express the same proposition, then neither do (A) and (B). Millians have a problem.
A nice way to solve this problem is to invoke ways of believing. The solution takes belief to be a mediated relation. The belief relation is still a relation between a person and a proposition; however, persons believe propositions via some way of believing. A person believes a proposition in virtue of standing in some psychological relation to some third thing.
One theory of what ways are holds that ways are sentence-like mental representations. According to this theory, people believe propositions in virtue of standing in some relation to these representations. Let’s call this relation that a person bears to the sentence-like mental representation the accepting relation. So a person believes a proposition P by accepting a sentence-like mental representation that semantically expresses P.
Call the combination of this metaphysics of belief with Millianism, Ways-Millianism. Ways-Millianism can explain why we have the intuition that (C) and (D) could differ in truth value. Consider Sarah again. She could believe Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn by accepting the mentalese sentence ‘Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn.’ However, she could fail to accept the mental sentence ‘Samuel Clemens is the author of Huckleberry Finn.’ We could say that Sarah believes Mark Twain is the author of Huckleberry Finn–—in the
Have you ever seen the skit with Will Ferrell about holiday songs? Each one ends with him pounding his fists on the table and saying, “F this, I’m leaving!” It’s pretty good. What do you philosophers do when somebody does that? As in:
“Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain are the same person. Thus, both (A) and (B) are of equal truth. F This, I’m Leaving!”
But seriously, how can you claim that there are different levels of truth between two statements that are both true?
Hey Maury,
I take it by different levels of truth, you’re referring to my statement that
“we might have the intuition that (C) and (D) could differ in truth value”
First: You’re right that (A) and (B) are both true, but there is a strong inclination to think that (C) and (D) are not both true. So you’re claim that both statements are true is obvious when applied if you were talking about (A) and (B). It’s not obvious if you were talking about (C) and (D). Which are the two statements that people have the intuition concerning the difference in truth value.
Second: You’re right that Sam Clemens and Mark Twain are the same person. Philosophers want you to recognize this. But we’re then supposed to have the strong intuition that the sentences (A) and (B) don’t mean the EXACT same thing. There’s something slightly different about the meanings. Moral of the story is supposed to be that that there is more to the meaning of “Sam Clemens” and “Mark Twain” than the guy.
One major candidate is that part of the meaning of a proper name isn’t JUST the thing referred to, but also some property that YOU the speaker associate with that name.
at face value ways millianism seems a lot like frege’s solution but rather than ‘samuel clemens’ having a different sense than ‘mark twain’ the entire sentence kind of has its own sense/’way’. or is this a horrible misunderstanding of ways millianism?
In many ways (no pun intended) it’s very similar to Frege’s solution. Some have referred to ways-millianism as a neo-fregean view.
The main difference between the traditional fregean view and the millian view has to do with what the semantic content of a proper name/sentence is. For Frege the semantic content is still some kind of descriptive content.