Singular Propositions (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeSingular PropositionsFirst published Sat Jul 19, 1997; substantive revision Tue Dec 11, 2007Singular propositions (also called ‘Russellianpropositions’) are propositions that are about a particularindividual in virtue of having that individual as a directconstituent. (This characterization assumes a structured viewof propositions — see propositions: structured — which we shall assume throughout this essay.) Allegedexamples of singular propositions are the propositions that Mont Blancis more than 4,000 meters high, that Socrates was wise, and that she[pointing to someone] lives in New York. Singular propositions are tobe contrasted with general propositions andparticularized propositions. The former are propositions thatare not about any particular item and the latter are propositions thatare about particulars or individuals but do not contain thoseindividuals as constituents. Examples of the former are thepropositions that most Americans favor a tax cut and that some musicis great; examples of the latter are the propositions that theinventor of bifocals was bald and that the tallest spy is a man. Asingular proposition is directly about an object whereas aparticularized proposition is indirectly about an object invirtue of that object satisfying the condition that is a constituentof the proposition — in our cases, the conditions being a uniqueinventor of bifocals and being a tallest spy.The acceptance or rejection of singular propositions lies at thecenter of many issues in semantics, the philosophy of language andmind, and metaphysics. In this essay, we shall look at some of thearguments for singular propositions, discuss problems theirexistence gives rise to, and show how singular propositions are relatedto certain questions in metaphysics.1. Fregeanism and Russellianism2. Reasons for Singular Propositions: The modal argument3. Reasons for Singular Propositions: The argument from indexicals and demonstratives4. Reasons for Singular Propositions: The reduplication argument5. Modal Problems for Singular Propositions6. Temporal Problems for Singular PropositionsBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. Fregeanism and Russellianism Assuming a propositionalist semantics — according to which sentences(in context) are assigned propositions as contents which are theprimary bearers of truth values and the objects of the propositionalattitudes like believing, hoping, and saying — there are, roughlyspeaking, two kinds of theories in the philosophy of language and manyversions of these theories. (We shall assume propositionalism withoutargument. We make this assumption knowing that many philosophers haveserious doubts about the existence of propositions. However, ourcurrent purpose is to ask whether there are any positive reasons thatcan be given in favor of singular propositions even grantingthat there are propositions.) There are the Fregean theories thatemploy some version of Frege's distinction between sense and referenceand the Russellian theories that eschew this distinction. IfFregeanism is true, all thought about concrete individuals isindirect, mediated by senses that are independent of thoseindividuals. (Some maintain that Frege recognized only de resenses — senses whose existence and identity is dependent upon theirreference — as the senses of proper names, in which case he would not havesubscribed to a Fregean theory, as characterized above. The Supplement: Evans on Fregehas a short further discussion.) The easiest way to get a grip on thisis to think of senses as purely qualitative satisfactionconditions. Such a condition determines an object in virtue of thequalities it instantiates. According to Russellianism, on the otherhand, we can think about an individual directly; we can have a thoughtabout an individual by having that individual as an immediateconstituent of the thought. Thus for Frege objects are notconstituents of propositions. Propositions are composed of senses, butnot the objects themselves, and the senses are individuatedindependently of any individual. If Fregeanism is true, then there areno singular propositions. If Russellianism is true, on the other hand,then singular propositions play a crucial role in the semantics ofnatural languages and a complete theory of the mind and itsthoughts.Before discussing the reasons for and against singular propositionsdirectly, we shall discuss the theories of Frege and Russell. The hopeis that such a discussion will provide a context for the more specificissues concerning the existence of singular propositions. Gottlob Frege famously distinguished between anexpression's reference and its sense. (The classic source is (Frege1892/1948). The distinction was first introduced a year earlier in(Frege 1891). It is commonly thought, and Frege asserts as much, thatthe sense-reference distinction was not present in (Frege 1879/1967). Butthis early work does contain a seeming anticipation of thedistinction, as well as the same argument from the opening paragraphsof (1892/1948) against the metalinguistic solution promoted in(1879/1967), which is extremely puzzling.) We shall focus on propernames like ‘Socrates’. (Frege maintained that thesense-reference distinction applied to all classes of expressions,including sentences. The reference of a sentence is a truth value andits sense a thought.) The reference of the name ‘MarkTwain’ is the man Mark Twain himself, while its sense is a modeof presentation or way of thinking of that object.Frege argued for the distinctness of sense from reference asfollows. Suppose, for reductio, that the sole semantic value of thename ‘Mark Twain’ were its reference. Then, as the name‘Samuel Clemens’ is coreferential, the two names would beidentical in their semantic values. But then, given a plausibleassumption of compositionality, the sentences ‘Mark Twain was afamous American author’ and ‘Samuel Clemens was a famousAmerican author’ would also be semantically identical. But thisis counterintuitive. It seems that fully competent speakers canbelieve what the one expresses without believing what the otherexpresses. (Imagine someone who has had an American literature class,having read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, in whichbiographical facts were withheld. Our agent will then accept the onesentence and reject the other.) If this is so, then the two sentencesexpress different propositions. And if they express differentpropositions, there must be some semantically relevant differencebetween the names ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘SamuelClemens’. As their references do not differ, sense is distinctfrom reference.An expression's sense is intended to capture its cognitivevalue. The above argument is intended to show that differentcoreferential proper names can present the same object in differentways and it can be a cognitive achievement to come to learn that theobject presented in these different ways is one and thesame. Reference alone, Frege persuasively argued, cannot capturecognitive value. Capturing the cognitive significance of an expressionis a primary role senses played in Frege's system. But they alsoplayed several other roles as well: They were the primary bearers oftruth values, the indirect references of sentences and hence theobjects denoted by that clauses like ‘that Frege denied theexistence of singular propositions’, and the objects ofpropositional attitudes, most importantly. These roles give rise tothe following theses concerning the individuation of senses.Truth If two sentences have different truth values, then they have different senses.Accept If two sentences are such that it is possible for a competent speakerto reflectively and sincerely accept the one and not the other, thenthey have different senses.Attitude For any pair of sentences, s1 ands2, and propositional attitude verb Vs, ifit is consistent for  a Vs that s1 to be true and a Vs that s2 to be false, then s1and s2 have different senses. Implicit in Frege's case for the sense-reference distinction is astrong case that singular propositions are not the semantic contentsof natural language sentences and are not the objects of thepropositional attitudes. Singular propositions are too coarse-grainedto account for what a competent speaker understands in virtue ofgrasping the meaning of a sentence. But the content of a sentence is,intuitively, what an agent grasps when she understands a sentence andwhat she believes when she accepts it. Frege concluded that singularpropositions are ill-suited for the purposes of semantics andpsychology. (For further discussion,see the entry Frege.) Bertrand Russell's philosophies of language andthought are importantly different from Frege's. (Russell held manydistinct views. We focus here on the Russell roughly from 1905 through1912.) First, Russell held what we can call an acquaintance-basedtheory, according to which some thought about individuals is direct,in the sense of involving singular propositions involving those veryindividuals. Second, whereas Frege introduced senses to help solve thepuzzles discussed above, Russell employed logical analysis and histheory of definite descriptions. We take each point in turn.Russell maintained that an agent must be acquainted with everyconstituent of a thought that she is in a position to entertain. Callthis the Acquaintance Principle. (The principle makes anappearance in (Russell 1905), but the view behind the principle isworked out in (Russell 1910; 1912).) Russell thought that we areacquainted only with our occurrent sense data and universals (and hesometimes included the self, when he wasn't feeling skeptical ofawareness of the self as an entity). So, Russell maintained that theonly singular propositions we can grasp are ones with these items asconstituents.We can trace the fundamental source of Russell's restrictivism aboutacquaintance to the claim that one is acquainted only with that forwhich misidentification is rationally impossible. If it is possiblefor one to be presented with o twice over andrationally not realize it as the same object, then one is notacquainted with o; one's thoughts abouto are, in that case, indirect. This line of reasoningrelies on the Fregean claim that identity confusions are to beexplained in terms of differences in thought constituents. Our Englishstudent's confusion regarding Mark Twain is thus to be explained interms of different thoughts and hence different thought constituentscorresponding to the different ways of thinking about the man MarkTwain associated with the expressions ‘Mark Twain’ and‘Samuel Clemens’. Neo-Russellians are less restrictive about the objects ofacquaintance, including extra-mental particulars in this class. DavidKaplan's pioneering work (Kaplan 1977/1989) is typically the startingpoint, although Russell himself started out with such a position,maintaining, for example, that Mount Blanc itself is a constituent ofthe thought that Mount Blanc has snowfields. Neo-Russellians must denythe Fregean claim that whenever misidentification is rationallypossible, there is a difference in thought constituents. They mightstill agree with Fregean intuitions about the truth and falsity ofpropositional attitude ascribing sentences — agreeing, for example,that ‘Peter believes that Mark Twain was a famous Americanauthor’ is true while ‘Peter believes that Samuel Clemenswas a famous American author’ is false — but insist that thisdoes not require a difference at the level of thought constituents,following, for example, Mark Crimmins and John Perry (Crimmins andPerry 1989) or Mark Richard (Richard 1990). Such neo-Russellians claimthat the truth or falsity of a belief attitude ascribing sentenceinvolves more than just the agent of the report having among herbeliefs the proposition expressed by the sentence embedded in thereporting sentence. Alternatively, the neo-Russellian might also denythe Fregean intuitions about the truth and falsity of propositionalattitude ascribing sentences, following, for example, Nathan Salmon(Salmon 1986) in accounting for those intuitions in nonsemanticterms. Either way, however, given that misidentification ofextra-mental particulars is obviously possible, the permissive theoryof acquaintance requires denying what we above called the Fregeanattitude towards misidentification; not all cases of misidentificationinvolve differences in thought constituents.We have seen how Russell's adherence to the Acquaintance Principletogether with his adoption of a Fregean attitude towardsmisidentification led him to deny that we can think directly aboutextra-mental particulars. Russell admitted that there is anextra-mental reality filled with extra-mental particulars that we canand do think about. Like Frege, all such thought, Russell insisted, isindirect. But Russell did not follow Frege in introducing senses asthe mediators between individuals in the world and our thought aboutthem. Rather, Russell appealed to logical analysis through his theoryof descriptions. For Russell, all thought about extra-mentalparticulars is descriptive. By (Russell 1910), the canonical form suchthought took is something like the following: The thing thatcaused THIS [demonstratively referring to one's occurrent sensedatum] is such-and-such. We can work up to this by seeing howRussell contrasts three thoughts about Bismarck to the effect that heunified Germany (1910, 114-17). First, assuming acquaintance with theself, there is Bismarck's thought about himself. This thought issingular with respect to Bismarck. The proposition involved in thisthought is the singular proposition that Bismarck unifiedGermany. “But if a person who knew Bismarck made a judgmentabout him, the case is different. What this person was acquainted withwere certain sense data which he connected (rightly, we will suppose)with Bismarck's body” (114). No human but Bismarck can graspthis singular proposition. Consider, then, someone — say,Wilhelm II — who has perceived Bismarck. On Russell's view,Wilhelm's thought can be represented as follows, where BOB is thesense datum Wilhelm has in virtue of his perception of Bismarck. <[the x: x has a body that is the cause of BOB] x unified Germany> This proposition is particularized with respect to the externalobject Bismarck, but direct and thus singular with respect to theoccurrent sense datum being demonstratively referred to. Finally,contrast this judgment with someone who has never perceived Bismarckbut has only heard about him indirectly. Such agents cannot relateBismarck directly to their sense data because, unlike Wilhelm, none oftheir sense data are caused by Bismarck's body. Hence, they musteither think of him purely qualitatively — as, say, the firstChancellor of the German Empire, treating the German Empireas if it were a purely qualitative condition — or more indirectly, asthe person written about in the books causing these sense data,thought standing in front of the books that are the source of theagents' thoughts about Bismarck. For Russell, sense data are the direct objects of thought in terms ofwhich we think about extra-mental reality under descriptions relating,typically causally, those bits of reality to the directly referred tosense data. (It is worth noting that the basic idea does not requireRussell's theory of perception. For example, John Searle has a similarview according to which we think immediately about experiences, whichare not analyzed in terms of the mind's being presented with sensedata. We then think of extra-mental objects as the causes of such andsuch occurrent experiences. See (Searle 1983).) For Russell, whilethere are thoughts about particulars that are wholly qualitative andwholly general, the paradigm form our thought about external realitytakes is ultimately grounded in acquaintance, albeit acquaintance withsense data as opposed to extra-mental reality itself. This is in starkcontrast to the canonical form such thought takes in Frege's system,in which there is no direct reference to any individuals, includingsense data, and all thought is entirely indirect. (For further discussion,see the entries Bertrand Russell, knowledge by acquaintance vs. description, and descriptions.)Russell rejected Frege's senses and attempted to solve the problemsthat they were introduced to solve by logical analysis and scopedistinctions. The result was that propositions expressed by sentencessuch as ‘The inventor of bifocals was bald’ did not havesenses as constituents. However, they did not have objects asconstituents either. Roughly speaking, Russell had propositionalfunctions — functions from objects to propositions — inplace of senses. Yet at the bottom level such a view seems to requiresingular propositions. These are the basic or atomic propositions uponwhich the complex propositions are built. Frege's atomic propositionsare composed of senses while Russell's require individuals.David Kaplan (Kaplan 1975a) has argued that the essential differencebetween Frege's and Russell's theories of language and thought isnothing more nor less than the acceptance of singular propositions. Ifwe were to add singular propositions to Frege's theory then with somemodifications we could reduce Frege's view to Russell's view. Hence,if Kaplan is correct and there are singular propositions as well, thenwe need not introduce the complexities of a Fregean theory of senseand we can focus our semantical attention on the simpler Russelliantheories. There are propositionalist views that are neither whollyFregean nor Russellian in their acceptance of singularpropositions. For example, the views of Evans and the manyneo-Fregeans that have followed him to varying degrees do not fit intoeither camp, as they admit a sense-reference distinction, denying thatthe content of the thought that Bismarck unified Germany, for example,is void of any modes of presentation of Bismarck, and yet do not thinkof senses as object-independent, wholly qualitative conditions.2. Reasons for Singular Propositions: The modal argument The first argument in favor of singular propositions we shall examineis based on Saul Kripke's modal argument (Kripke 1970/1980). Kripkepresented the argument as an argument that proper names like‘Nixon’ are not synonymous with ordinary definitedescriptions like ‘the first US president fromCalifornia’, rather than an argument for singular propositions,the existence of which he never endorsed in print. David Kaplan(Kaplan 1977/1989, 512-13), however, used the argument to concludethat demonstratives are directly referential expressions and hence areused to express singular propositions. The argument can be presentedas follows. Suppose that David is standing at a table with two men; Charles on hisleft and Paul on his right. Paul lives in New Jersey and Charles livesin Illinois. David points to the person on his right and utterssentence (1) below at time t.(1) He lives in New Jersey. David has expressed a proposition that we can labelp that is about Paul. Suppose pweren't a singular proposition. Then p does not havePaul as a constituent, but is about Paul in another way. We then needto find some descriptive proposition with which to identifyp. Consider the propositions expressed by thefollowing sentences. (2) The person on David's right (at t) lives inNew Jersey. (3) The person David demonstrated at t lives in New Jersey. Both of these propositions are about Paul indirectly, in virtue ofthe (contingent) properties he has (namely, being to David's right at t and being demonstrated at t by David,respectively). Now consider a counterfactual circumstance in whichPaul and Charles have switched places but in which everything elseabout them remained the same, consistent with this switch, and inparticular, in which Paul still lived in New Jersey and Charles inIllinois. In such a case, intuitively, p would betrue while the propositions expressed by (2) and (3) would be false,in which case the former is distinct from either of the latter.It is important to be clear that we are asking what the truth value ofthe proposition expressed by David's utterance of (1) (i.e.,p) and the propositions expressed by (2) and (3)would be in the described counterfactual circumstance. We arenot asking what proposition David would have expressed byuttering (1) in the counterfactual circumstance. It is true thatdifferent propositions would have been expressed by (1) in differentcircumstances of utterance or different contexts. Paul canutter (1) pointing to Charles or Charles can utter (1) pointing toDavid. In these different contexts different propositions will beexpressed, which may well have different truth values. Our claim isthat the proposition expressed by David's actual utterance of (1) has,in the described counterfactual circumstance, a different truth valuethan the propositions expressed by (2) and (3). Since p differs in truth value in the describedcounterfactual circumstance from the propositions expressed by (2) and(3), it follows that p is distinct from thepropositions expressed by (2) and (3). This is because it is an axiomof propositional theory that if p =p*, then p and p*have the same truth value in all counterfactual circumstances, aspropositions are the objects that are true or false in counterfactualcircumstances and so one and the same proposition cannot both be trueand not true in a given counterfactual circumstance. Theseconsiderations suggest that the proposition expressed by David'sutterance of (1) is about Paul directly and hence thatp is a singular proposition. This is because anyproposition that is about Paul indirectly, in virtue of qualities thathe contingently instantiates, will give rise to a similar argument.We shall consider two responses to the modal argument. The firstinvolves a denial of the above axiom of propositionalism. MichaelDummett (1991) and Jason Stanley (1997a/b; 2002) have developed thisresponse by denying that propositions are the bearers of modalproperties. Dummett distinguishes senses from what he callsingredient senses. Senses give the contents of expressions,are the bearers of truth and falsity, and are the objects of theattitudes. Ingredient senses, on the other hand, are the bearers ofmodal properties like being necessarily or contingently true or falseand being true or false at a world. Because propositions are not thebearers of modal properties, Dummett and Stanley can accept that (1)is true with respect to our counterfactual situation while (2) and (3)are false even though the proposition expressed by (1) is the same asthe proposition expressed by either (2) or (3). (It may be possible toget the same results without denying that propositions are the bearersof modal properties by offering a nonstandard semantics of modaladverbs like ‘necessarily’ and ‘contingently’according to which they ascribe properties — the property of beingtrue in every/some world, say — to propositions but are sensitive tomore than just the proposition they operate on. One model for this isthe way ‘so-called’ functions in a sentence like‘Superman is so-called for his super powers’. To ourknowledge such a theory has yet to be worked out in detail, but wehave no doubt that it could be.)The second response involves finding a property Paul essentially has,where an individual has a property essentially just in case,necessarily, if that object exists, then it has that property) andthat, necessarily, only Paul has. (Following (Plantinga 1974), callsuch a property an individual essence of Paul.) The propertybeing on David's right is not an individual essence of Paul,as Paul might have existed without having had it and Charles mighthave had it instead. But it is easy to turn such contingent propertiesinto necessary ones by rigidifiying them. (See (Plantinga1978).) Paul essentially has the property of actually beingon David's right. For any world w, Paul has thatrigidified property in w just in case in the actualworld Paul has the (contingent) property of being on David'sright. And, if Paul is the only person to have that property in theactual world, then the rigidified property is not only an essentialproperty of Paul but also an individual essence of Paul. Such aproperty “tracks” Paul across every possibleworld. Consider then the propositions expressed by (4) and (5). (4) The person actually on David's right (at t) lives inNew Jersey. (5) The person actually David demonstrated at t lives in New Jersey. As far as the modal argument goes, these propositions can beidentified with p, as, for every worldw, they have exactly the same truth value inw as p intuitively does. We do not claim that either response is ultimatelysatisfying. Indeed, we are satisfied by neither. But their presencedoes show that the modal argument fails to bring out the essentialproblems with descriptivism and the fundamental need for singularpropositions. The following two arguments for singular propositions doa better job on this front.3. Reasons for Singular Propositions: The argument from indexicals and demonstratives David Kaplan (Kaplan 1977/1989) and John Perry (Perry 1977; 1979;1980a/b; 2001) argue that an adequate theory of indexicality requiressingular propositions. An indexical is an expression whose content isnot fixed by linguistic meaning alone but requires extra-linguisticcontextual supplementation. Take, for example, the sentence ‘Iam happy’, considered in isolation from any particular utteranceor specifications of who is uttering it at what time. The question ofwhether or not it is true is hardly sensible. That question makessense only when we either consider an utterance of the sentence orprovide the specification of at least an agent as speaker. (We arehere refusing to decide the issue whether it is utterances ofsentences that are the primary bearers of semantic values or sentencesin context. For present purposes, the choice is irrelevant.) BothKaplan and Perry argue that a Fregean account of indexical expressionslike ‘I’, ‘today’, and ‘here’ anddemonstrative expressions like ‘he’, ‘this’,and ‘there’ is inadequate. In this section we shall focuson the arguments of the classic (Perry 1977). Perry argues against the Fregean claim that there is a single entity— sense — that answers to the three principles of senseindividuation presented in section 1. He argues that thisidentification leads to several problems when applied toindexicals. Perry argues that one kind of entity answers toAccept and a distinct entity kind of entity answersto Truth and Attitude. Moregenerally, Perry argues that an adequate account of indexicals anddemonstratives in thought and language requires that we have oneentity serving as cognitive values and a distinct entity serving asthe contents of thoughts and sentences and bearers of truth value. Themistake of the Fregean is to think that there is a single item thatcan do all of the work. It is this mistake that is ultimately behindthe following arguments against Fregeanism. Consider the following sentence. (6) George quit his job today. (6) doesn't express a complete proposition on its own because‘today’ does not have a complete sense on its own. Supposethat George held exactly one job, which he quit on 1 Aug 2000. (6) isthen true as uttered on 1 Aug 2000 and false as uttered on any otherday. Perry considers three Fregean accounts of the sense expressed bya use of ‘today’ in (6) and argues that they allfail. The first identifies the the sense of ‘today’ withits role or character; the second identifies it with an equivalenceclass of ordinary Fregean senses; and the third involves looking tothe beliefs of the speaker for its sense. We begin with the first, according to which the sense of a use of‘today’ is its role. This account, in effect, denies that‘today’ is an indexical. This is because the role of anexpression is the rule that takes one from a particular utterance ofthe expression to its content on that use, which is the same acrossall uses. An expression's role is related to its linguisticmeaning. The role of ‘today’ is a rule that takes one froma given use to the day of that use; the role of ‘I’ is arule that takes one from a given use to the speaker of that use. So,if the sense of ‘today’ were its role, the same thoughtwould be expressed by every utterances of (6), regardless of the dayof occurrence. But, as we have seen, different utterances of (6) havedifferent truth values. But then, by Truth, thoseutterances express different thoughts. Furthermore, the accountviolates Accept, as it is possible to rationally takedifferential attitudes towards different utterances of (6). The senseof a use of ‘today’ is not its role.According to the second Fregean account, the sense of a use of anindexical like ‘today’ is the class of referentiallyequivalent ordinary Fregean senses. The equivalence class of thoughtsfor an utterance of (6) on 1 Aug 2000 is the class of thoughtscomposed of the (incomplete) sense of ‘George quit hisjob’ and any completing sense that determines 1 Aug2000. Referential equivalence classes function much like singularpropositions, in that they do not place any restrictions on the way inwhich the agent conceives of the referent of the thought. This makesthem poor candidates for accounting for the cognitive value of asentence, as they lead to violations ofAccept. Consider the following case, derived from acase of Perry's. Suppose that you are sitting in a large harbor cityand see the bow of a ship, with the name ‘Enterprise’clearly in view, sticking out behind a building. You also see thestern of a ship, with no name, sticking out behind another buildingtwo blocks away. The water view is obstructed by buildings for theintervening two blocks. You might then accept your companion'sutterance of the sentence ‘This is the Enterprise’,pointing at the bow of the ship, but reject her utterance of thesentence ‘This is the Enterprise’, pointing at the sternof the ship. Associated with both utterances is the same equivalenceclass of Fregean senses, as both uses of ‘this’ refer tothe same ship. But, because you competently accept the one and not theother, by Accept, different senses are expressed. Weget the same results for (6) by considering someone who is confusedabout what day it is. They might then accept an utterance of (6) on 1August 2000 while rejecting an utterance of ‘George quit his jobon 1 August 2000’, without a change of mind and despite the factthat the same equivalence class is associated with both. If the senseof a use of ‘today’ is intended to capture that use'scognitive significance, as it clearly should on a Fregean account, weshould reject this second account.The failings of the first two accounts as plausible Fregean accountsof (6) are fairly evident. The third Fregean account turns to theattitudes of the speaker to determine the sense of a given use of anindexical. Perry presents the key idea as follows. To understand a demonstrative, is to be able to supply a sense for iton each occasion, which determines as reference the value thedemonstrative has on that occasion…. [W]e can say that for eachperson the sense of the demonstrative ‘today’ for thatperson on a given day is just the sense of one of the descriptionsD (or some combination of all the descriptions) such that onthat day he believes [‘Today is D’].(Perry 1977, 11-12) Perry requires that the descriptions D should benonindexical. Perry then presents three arguments against thissuggestion. (Kaplan presents similar arguments against what he callsthe Fregean theory of demonstratives in (Kaplan 1977/1989).)The first objection is the irrelevancy of beliefobjection. Believing that you live in the medieval age andpossessing accurate descriptive information of the medieval age doesnot make your uses of ‘today’ about 1 August 1204, eventhough that is the date the best fits your conception of the date ofyour utterance. Your uses of ‘today’ are about whateverday they occur on, whatever descriptions you identify with thatday. But if the sense of a use of a ‘today’ weredetermined by the beliefs of the speaker, and if sense determinesreference, then it would seem that your utterance should be about1204. So, the beliefs of the speaker are irrelevant to the day anutterance of ‘today’ is about. This objection works the best with “automatic” or“pure” indexicals like ‘today’ and‘I’ rather than “non-automatic” indexicals or“true” demonstratives like ‘she’ and‘this’ which require an associated demonstration to referin context. This is because the reference of a use of a truedemonstrative is at least arguably determined in part by the speaker'sbeliefs and audience-directed intentions, whereas the reference of apure indexical is settled by objective, attitude-independent factorsof the occasion of utterance, like who is speaking when andwhere. (There is, however, a debate about whether or not speakerbeliefs and intentions are relevant even to true demonstratives. See(Bach 1992), (Bertolet 1993), and (Reimer 1991a/b; 1992) for furtherdiscussion.)We noted above that Perry assumes that the descriptive beliefs thatdetermine the sense of a use of ‘today’ themselves are notindexical. Lifting this ban removes some of the sting from theirrelevancy of belief objection. For consider the agent's belief thatshe would express by saying, ‘‘Today is the day of thisvery utterance’’. Whereas the purely qualitativedescriptive conditions a speaker believes the day of her speechsatisfies may well be about a different day than the day referred toby her use of ‘today’, it is much less clear that theabove descriptive condition is satisfied by the wrong day. (It is alsoharder to imagine a nonproblematic case where the agent is confusedabout whether or not the day referred to by her use of‘today’ satisfies this description, as she may be confusedabout whether or not it satisfies some purely qualitativedescription.) But there are at least two problems with the Fregeanappealing to such descriptions. The first is that it is far from clearthat ordinary agents actually have such beliefs when they competentlyutter a sentence like (6). It is also questionable whether allspeakers who competently use ‘today’ have the concepts ofan utterance. If they do not, then they are in a position to believe what is expressedby an utterance of ‘Today is fine’ without believing whatis expressed by an utterance of ‘The day of this utterance isfine’. Second, even if they did, the same question of the senseof the use of ‘this’ would arise once again, with all ofthe problems Perry raises for the sense of (6). There is no room, inFrege's system, for irreducibly indexical thoughts, as Frege is clearthat thoughts are true or false absolutely, which anirreducibly indexical thought could not be (just as the sentence‘I am happy’ is not itself true or falseabsolutely). Insofar as the Fregean claims that truth is an absoluteproperty of thoughts, she must explicate the indexicality of languageand judgments using only nonindexical propositions or thoughts. (Itis, however, an intriguing possibility for the Fregean to give up thisclaim and treat the truth or falsity of a thought (as opposed to asentence) as being relative to a sequence of parameters like a person,place, time, etc.. Then the Fregean could claim that the thoughtexpressed by an utterance of (6) is itself irreducibly indexical andis only true or false relative to an assignment of parameters. We donot know of such a form of Fregean theory that has been worked out indetail.)Perry's second objection is the nonnecessity of beliefobjection. This objection turns on the fact that ignorance ofunique qualitative properties of what day it is is not a barrier toreferring to that day with one's use of ‘today’. Considerthe case of Rip Van Winkle. “When he awakes on October 20, 1823,and says with conviction ‘Today is October 20, 1803,’ thefact that he is sure he is right does not make him right, as it wouldif the thought expressed were determined by the sense he associatedwith ‘today’” (Perry 1977, 12). (The case of Rip Van Winkle isvery rich. For further discussion, see (Evans 1981/1985), (Kaplan1977/1989, 538), and Perry 1997).) Van Winkle need not have a correctconception of the day of utterance to be talking and thinking aboutthat day with his use of ‘today’. It suffices to simply belocated on that day and say, ‘‘Today isfine,’’ knowing the general rule of how uses of‘today’ function. A similar point can be made about‘I’, using a case of a person suffering from completeamnesia, who intuitively still speaks of herself when she says,‘‘I am here’’, despite lacking true beliefs ofidentifying biographical information, and ‘here’, using acase of a person who is lost. As was the case with Perry's firstobjection, however, the nonnecessity of belief objection is lesspersuasive with true demonstratives, where some kind of correctconception of the intended reference is arguably needed to demonstrateit. In his response to Perry, Gareth Evans (Evans 1981/1985) claims thatretaining indexical beliefs across changes in circumstance requireskeeping track of the objects the beliefs are about. So, for example,to believe the same thing today that I believed yesterday when Iuttered (yesterday) the sentence ‘Today is fine’ requiresmore than simply competently uttering today the sentence‘Yesterday was fine’. I must in addition, Evans claims,have been keeping track of the day and so properly registered thechange in day. This makes belief necessary for retention of indexicalbeliefs, even with beliefs expressed by sentences with pureindexicals. As Van Winkle does not successfully track the twenty someyears between his falling asleep and waking up, he does not retain thetemporally indexical beliefs he had the night he fell asleep. Evans isless clear, however, that a proper conception of the day is necessaryfor formation (as opposed to retention) of atemporally indexical belief, which is what Perry's second objectiondenies. Furthermore, the tracking condition has strangeconsequences. Losing track of time isn't something that is alwaysinternally accessible. So, there can be pairs of cases where“everything is all the same” as far as the agents of thecases can discern and yet in one case the agent has lost track of timeand so has lost the temporal beliefs she once had and in the other shehas not. This is counterintuitive, especially if belief contents areintended to capture how the agent conceives the world, as they are forsomeone who takes a principle like Accept toindividuate thoughts.Perry's third and final objection is the nonsufficiency ofbelief. Consider the case of Hume and Heimson. Heimson believesthat he is Hume. But Heimson isn't just crazy (although he is crazy);he is also well informed about every aspect of Hume's life. Still,Hume says something true when he utters the sentence ‘I wrotethe Treatise’ and Heimson says something false. If so,then, by Truth, they say different things, despitethe similarity in their qualitative descriptive beliefs. Even thoughHeimson's descriptive beliefs about who he is best fit Hume, still hisself-thoughts are about Heimson and not Hume. The Fregean cannot,Perry claims, account for this.Perry assumes that Fregean thoughts are generally accessible, as theyare entirely composed of logical operations and purely qualitativeconditions. But then the thought Hume grasps when he thinks to himself‘‘I wrote the Treatise’’ is a thoughtavailable for Heimson to grasp as well. (This assumption of generalaccessibility is at odds with what Frege says in his late work (Frege1918/1956), where he claims that “everyone is presented tohimself in a particular and primitive way, in which he is presented tono-one else” (298). In his discussion of Dr. Lauben, Fregedenies that all thoughts are generally accessible and that the thoughtDr. Lauben grasps when he thinks to himself, ‘‘I amcold,’’ for example, is a thought that can beexpressed by any sentence with a proper name. It is important torealize that this limited accessibility thesis Frege held in laterwork is distinct from the view alluded to above according to which athought is irreducibly indexical. The former view is consistent withDr. Lauben's thought being absolutely true or false, whereas thelatter view is not.) Frege did not always hold this limitedaccessibility view, however. In an earlier, unpublished work intendedas a logic textbook he writes:In this case [the sentence ‘Iam cold’] the mere words do not contain the entire sense; wehave in addition to take into account who utters it. There are manycases like this in which the spoken words have to be supplemented bythe speaker's gesture and expression, and the accompanyingcircumstances. The word ‘I’ simply designates a differentperson in the mouths of different people. It is not necessary that theperson who feels cold should give utterance to the thought that hefeels cold. Another person can do this by using a name to designatethe one who feels cold. (Frege 1914, 134-5) Frege here seems to be claiming that the thought you have when yousay to yourself, ‘‘I am cold,’’ is a thoughtsomeone else can express by pointing at you and saying,‘‘S/he is cold,’’ which is exactly what Fregedenied in (1918/1958). Furthermore, although Frege only posits privatesenses only for ‘I’, the worries that drove him to thisview can be raised with other indexicals like ‘here’,‘today’, and ‘now’. It becomes less and lessplausible to posit context-bound senses for each place, day, andmoment. In any event, the move to such perspective-bound thoughts hasnot been generally accepted, even by followers of Frege.) Anygenerally accessible thought, Perry argues, will violateAccept. For suppose that there were a purelyqualitative descriptive condition F that Humeassociates with his use of ‘I’ and that gives its sense;say, the condition expressed by the expression ‘the author ofthe argument against the rationality of induction’. It wouldseem that, insofar as Hume forgot (or never knew) that he himself isuniquely F but retained his ability to think ofhimself with the expression ‘I’, it is possible for him tocompetently, reflectively, and sincerely accept the sentence ‘Iwrote the Treatise’ while not accepting ‘The Fwrote the Treatise’. No such purely qualitative, generallyaccessible proposition, Perry concludes, is equivalent in cognitivesignificance to Hume's thought that he himself wrote theTreatise. But Fregeanism entails that there is such athought. So Fregeanism is false.So far we have focused on Perry's case against Fregean accounts ofindexicals in thought and language. Let's move briefly to Perry'spositive, anti-Fregean view of indexicality. Perry's views have gonethrough important and often drastic changes from his early views in(1977; 1979) to his later views in (2001), which we shall not try tosort out here. A broadly similar view is also presented in (Kaplan1977/1989), where Kaplan distinguishes content and character, claimingthat the latter captures the cognitive significance of an expressionand the former is the bearer of truth value and the object of thepropositional attitudes, often being a singular proposition. Perryinitially (1977) distinguished “thoughts” and“senses,” but later (1979; 1980a/b) made the samedistinction in terms of belief contents and belief states. (Perry alsoinitially identified the “thought” associated with anexpression with its role, which is proven false by cases like theEnterprise case discussed above. If an expression's role is identified with its linguistic meaning, then the twooccurrences of ‘this’ surely have the same role. Thetwo utterances of ‘this’ have distinct associateddemonstrations, but demonstrations are not part of linguistic meaning.) The core idea behind this broad kind of account,however, is that an adequate account of indexicality in thought andlanguage involves two distinct items, one that is roughlycharacterized by Truth and Attitude— propositions — and the other that is roughlycharacterized by Accept and is intended to capturethe “cognitive significance” of an expression and throughwhich propositions are grasped. The former is, in the case ofindexical beliefs, a singular proposition. This distinction, Perryclaims, is the key to solving the problems with self-locating beliefsthat we have discussed above; it is the Fregean's identification ofthe items that answer to Accept andTruth and Attitude that leads to theproblems surveyed above.Let's apply the view to the case of Heimson. What, on Perry's view,distinguishes Hume from Heimson? Both Hume and Heimson are in the samefirst-person belief state when they say to themselves,‘‘I wrote the Treatise.’’Furthermore, the belief content Hume has when he is in that beliefstate — namely, the singular proposition that Hume wrote theTreatise — is a belief content readily available for Heimsonto entertain as well. However, only Hume can grasp that belief contentby entering a first-person belief state. When Heimson enters afirst-person belief state, he grasps a different singular propositionthat Heimson wrote the Treatise and when Heimson grasps thatsingular proposition that Hume wrote the Treatise, it is invirtue of being in some kind of third-person belief state. Perry isthus able to account for the similarities between Heimson and Hume(they are in the same belief state) and what is distinctive of Hume(only he grasps the singular proposition that Hume wrote theTreatise when in a first-person belief state).Belief states are important because they are involved in explaining,predicting, and rationalizing behavior. Perry provides a host ofmemorable cases that make this point. Here's one. Consider two peoplewho both utter to themselves the sentence ‘I am being attackedby a bear’. Perry plausibly claims that, all other things beingequal, both people will act in similar ways. There is a commonexplanation of both of their behaviors only by appeal to their beliefstates, as they each apprehend distinct propositions. To think thatthey apprehend the same proposition fails to do justice to theintuition that the one has a thought about himself and the other has athought about herself. Furthermore, if one were to grasp the singularproposition concerning herself that she is being attacked by a bear,but not in a first-person way (say, in virtue of seeing her reflectionin a mirror with the reflection of a bear sneaking up withoutrealizing that the person being seen is herself), she would not act inthe same way. Explanation, prediction, and rationalization are allsensitive to belief states. To quote Perry on this point: [I]n virtue of being in a belief state in a certain environment, webelieve a certain object. Because the same object can be believed indifferent ways, from different environments or “points ofview,” classifying people by objects believed is not alwaysparticularly useful…. Consider the sentence ‘There is ahungry lion coming towards me’. Now consider the contextsrelative to which this sentence is true. They all consist of personsand times such that the person is being approached by a hungry lion atthat time. It is a good idea for all of these people to run like crazy[presumably, at that time or at least shortly thereafter]. In a sensethey do not need to know what they believe. Even if they haveforgotten who they are and lost track of time, they know enough torun. (In another sense, they do know what they believe even then.)Most of these people will not believe the same thing. But each of themwill believe in something that provides them with good reason torun. (Perry 1980a, 323) But belief states are not contents; they are not true or false andthey are, intuitively, not what we say when we utter a sentence,etc. (as, for example, you say something about you when you utter thesentence ‘I am happy’). We must thus also recognize beliefcontents as distinct elements. (For further discussion of the issuesraised in this section, see the entries indexicals and propositional attitude reports.)4. Reasons for Singular Propositions: The reduplication argument Peter Strawson's reduplication argument, in (Strawson 1959, 20-22),can be construed as a powerful argument for singular propositions,even if that is not how Strawson himself intended theargument. What Strawson employs the argument to support is thatdemonstrative identification is fundamental to our ability toidentify and hence refer to, in speech and thought, objects in theworld. Strawson distinguishes demonstrative identification anddescriptive identification. Demonstrative identification ofo is enabled by one's being able to sensiblydiscriminate o from other objects. So one candemonstratively identify only that which one has perceived. But onecan think about and hence identify far more that just that with whichone has perceived. Such items are descriptively identified. Objectsone identifies demonstratively are directly identified and notidentified in virtue of their satisfies qualities by which the agentconceives the object. (This distinction should be reminiscent ofRussell's distinction between thought by acquaintance and thought bydescription. We shall return below to a comparison of Russell andStrawson.) Strawson's notion of demonstrative identification is thusclosely related to the notions of direct reference and singularpropositions.A reduplication universe is one in which the same set of qualities aredistributed in the same pattern across two regions. There are bothtemporal and spatial versions of reduplication. We shall focus on thespatial version, as Strawson does. If our universe were areduplication universe then, in some other region of the universe,there are qualitatively identical objects to those in our immediatesurroundings. In particular, we can suppose that, for everythinginside one's light cones, there is in some far off region of theuniverse outside one's light cone a qualitative twin of that thing,including oneself. Strawson's claim is that, in such a universe, allidentification, including descriptive identification, is grounded indemonstrative identification and so demonstrative identification is adistinctive and fundamental form of identification. If all thoughtwere purely qualitative, as we have described the Fregean view to be,then, according to Strawson, there would be no determinate thoughtabout any particulars in the reduplication universe, which isimplausible.Suppose that Sally is standing in front of Bill, thinking that he hasa stain on his shirt. In another region of the universe there is aqualitatively identical set of circumstances. So, there is Sally*, whois just like Sally, standing in front of Bill*, who is just like Bill,thinking that he has a stain on his shirt. For any purely qualitativecondition Bill satisfies, Bill* satisfies it too. Nonetheless it seemshighly intuitive that Sally is thinking about Bill and not Bill* (andSally* is thinking about Bill* and not Bill); after all, it is Billand not Bill* that she is standing in front of and who is the obvioussource of her judgment. But suppose that all forms of identificationare fundamentally descriptive identification, so that identifyingan object requires qualitatively discerning it from all others. Then,as Sally cannot discern Bill from Bill* in wholly qualitative terms,her thought is not determinately about Bill rather than Bill*. So shemust be able to identify Bill in some other way, in virtue of herperceptual contact with Bill rather than Bill*. It is even moreimplausible, we think, when one considers Sally's thought aboutherself. Isn't it just completely obvious that Sally is thinking ofherself and not Sally* when she says to herself, ‘‘I amhungry’’? But if her thought about herself were in termsof purely qualitative conditions, then she would be unable to thinkdeterminately of herself instead of Sally*. So, she must be capable ofan alternative form of thought and identification that is distinctfrom and does not presuppose descriptive identification. Call thisform of identification demonstrative identification. We haveargued that it is distinct from and does not depend upon descriptiveidentification.The argument we have presented above presupposes that Sally and Sally*and Bill and Bill* are numerically distinct but qualitativelyindiscernible pairs of objects. Although many philosophers find thisto be a genuine possibility, thanks in large part to Max Black (Black1952) and Robert Adams (Adams 1979), there is a long tradition thatfinds such situations deeply problematic, as they find plausible theidentity of indiscernibles (PII), according to which, for any objectsx and y, if, for every quality F,x is F if and only if y is F(i.e., if x and y are qualitatively indiscernible),then x=y. But the argument can be developed in sucha way that it does not presuppose the falsity of PII. Let there be some quality that Bill and Bill* lacks. Then the distinctness ofBill from Bill* is consistent with PII. But now let Sally (and thusSally*) be unaware of Bill's (and Bill*'s) instantiating thatquality. As long as Bill and Bill* are qualitatively indiscernibleas far as Sally is concerned and yet intuitively Sally isthinking of Bill and not Bill*, the above argument for theirreducibility of demonstrative identification to descriptiveidentification goes through.So far we have argued that demonstrative identification is notreducible to descriptive identification. But Strawson makes thestronger claim that, in the reduplication universe, descriptiveidentification depends on demonstrative identification. To get thisstronger claim consider some object that Sally has never perceived butcan intuitively think about — say, Bill's mother. Strawsonclaims that considering this case proves false the claim “thatwhere the particular to be identified cannot be directly located[i.e., cannot be demonstratively identified because it cannot beperceptually discriminated], its identification must rest ultimatelyon description in purely general [i.e., qualitative] terms”(Strawson 1959, 21). Bill's mother (call her Morgan) isqualitatively indiscernible from Bill*'s mother. So Sally is unable todistinguish in purely qualitative terms Morgan from every other objectin the universe. But intuitively she can nonetheless think of her,even though she cannot demonstratively identify her. This is becauseSally can demonstratively identify Bill and thus have thoughtsdeterminately about Bill as opposed to his qualitative twin Bill* andthen think of Morgan under the descriptive condition Bill'smother. As Bill is directly given, this is a condition thatMorgan and not her qualitative twin Morgan* satisfies. Thus Sally'sability to descriptively identify objects in the universe isultimately grounded in her ability to demonstrative identify somestock of objects, identifying other objects in virtue of the uniquerelations they bear to members of that stock. Strawson argues that thegeneral way of relating objects one has not perceived to thosedemonstratively identified is by way of spatio-temporalrelations. (See (1959, 22) in particular, but much of the discussionthat follows in chapter 1 is aimed at establishing the Kantian claimthat spatio-temporal relations are the privileged set of relations forenabling identification of particulars.)Let's grant that to have a thought determinately about an individualin a reduplication universe requires possessing an irreducible,fundamental form of demonstrative identification. What bearing, then,does that fact have on thought about individuals in nonreduplicationuniverses and in particular thought about individuals in our universe,which we take, rightly we can suppose, to be a nonreduplicationuniverse. Although Strawson does not argue in this way, the followingline seems compelling. Grant that our universe is in fact not areduplication universe. But it is metaphysically possible that it wereand had it been, then it would have been all the same to us. (Recall,we have supposed that the reduplication is outside one's light cone.)In particular, intuitively, our thought would not have taken adifferent form than it actually has merely with the addition of aqualitative copy of the happenings in our universe. But theconsiderations above show that, had we been living in a reduplicationuniverse, then demonstrative identification would have been irreducible andfundamental. But then it is also actually irreducible and fundamental,even though we do not actually live in a reduplication universe, as itcould have been that we did live in a reduplication universe and it isimplausible that that fact alone would affect the structure of ourthoughts about the individuals around us.We shall end this section by briefly comparing Strawson's view withRussell's and the contemporary neo-Russellian's views. We have seen that,for Russell, like Strawson, demonstrative identification plays a crucial role, in the form of acquaintance. But unlike Strawson, Russelldenies that we demonstratively identify physical objects. Still,Russell can deliver the intuitively correct results that Sally'sthoughts are determinately about Bill and not Bill*, even though sheis not, on Russell's view, able to demonstratively identify Bill. Thisis because Sally can demonstratively identify her sense data that arecaused by Bill and not Bill*. On Russell's view, Sally descriptivelyidentifies even Bill, but the descriptive condition she employscontains direct reference to her occurrent sense data. She is thusable to form a descriptive (although not purely qualitative) conditionthat Bill satisfies and Bill* does not.Both Strawson and Russell think that thought about particulars isultimately grounded on direct reference. But they disagree about whatwe can directly refer to, Strawson claiming that it includes perceivedobjects in the external world and Russell claiming that it onlyincludes mental particulars. It is important to note, however, that asfar as the reduplication argument is concerned, this difference is notof consequence. As long as there is some stock of individuals that arethought of directly and not in terms of purely qualitative conditionsthat can serve as the anchors in terms of which the qualitativelyindiscernible objects can then be discerned, the intuition that Sallyis thinking determinately of Bill and not Bill* is respected.Strawson maintains that an agent can demonstratively identify onlyobjects that she has perceived. Neo-Russellians typically go a stepfurther, claiming that an agent can think directly about objects shehas not perceived in virtue of standing in the appropriatecommunicative chains. So, even though you have never perceived Plato,we will safely suppose, you can nevertheless think directly aboutPlato in virtue of your standing in a communicative chain thatultimately traces back to perceptions (on the part of other agents inthe communicative chain) of Plato. (The best presentation of this viewis by Kent Bach (Bach 1994, chapter 2).) Some neo-Russellians go evenfurther and maintain that there needn't be any perceptual contact atall with an object to think about it directly. (See, for example,David Kaplan (Kaplan 1975b), who maintains that the dthat-operator cantransform any designating expression into a directly referential term,competence with which enables an agent to think about the designationof the original term directly. Hence, Le Verrier was able to thinkabout Neptune directly despite the lack of perceptual contact with theplanet (we will suppose) in virtue of his competence with theexpression ‘dthat[the cause of the perturbations in Uranus'sorbit]’. See also (Jeshion 2002) for a similar view, in that shetoo thinks perceptual contact with an object is not necessary forthinking of that object directly, although she does not appeal toKaplan's dthat-operator.We thus have a spectrum of views that agree that there is directreference to individual in thought and language but disagree about therange of this form of reference, with Russell's very restrictive viewof direct reference, according to which an agent can only thinkdirectly about her occurrent sense data, to the very liberal view ofdirect reference held by Kaplan and Jeshion, according to whichobjects that have never been perceived can be thought aboutdirectly. All of these views respect the intuition that Sally'sthoughts are determinately about Bill and not Bill*. Thus, while thereduplication argument makes a very powerful case that there issome direct reference and hence that singular proposition arenecessary for an adequate account of reference to individuals inthought and language, it does not settle the further issue of how muchof our thought is direct and involves the grasping of singularpropositions and what is thought by description. That is, while thereduplication argument might settle that there are singular propositions,we must appeal to different considerations, like those involved in theargument from indexicals and demonstratives, to resolve the furtherissue of what individuals can be constituents of singular propositionsand under what conditions.5. Modal Problems for Singular Propositions We have seen some reasons for thinking that there are singularpropositions and that an adequate semantics of natural language andaccount of the contents of propositional attitudes must employthem. But singular propositions also give rise to a number ofimportant problems, beside those concerning propositional attitudesand apparent substitution failures already discussed. We shall endthis essay by discussing two related problems: Modal problems andtemporal problems. These problems will lead us to connect singularpropositions to several important issues in metaphysics.Consider the following proposition. (7) George Bush does not exist. While (7) is false, it might have been true. (The number designatesthe proposition as opposed to the sentence, as before.) That is, it is possiblytrue. But suppose (7) is a singular proposition, involving GeorgeBush as a constituent. Then there are problems, given the followingtwo principles. (P1) Necessarily, for all propositions p, hadp been true, then p would haveexisted. (P2) Necessarily, if (7) were true, then George would not have existed. Both principles are highly plausible. (P1) is plausible becausebeing true is a property and there must be something that hasa property in order for that property to be instantiated. So, had itbeen that a given proposition were true, then there must have beensomething — namely, that proposition — that had the property ofbeing true. (P2) is even more plausible, as it simply states theintuitive truth conditions of the truth of (7), being an instance ofthe propositional equivalent of the Tarski truth-schema s istrue iff s. But these principles can seem to entail that,if (7) is a singular proposition, then it is not possibly true. Forsuppose it were a singular proposition and were true. Then there is aworld w in which (7) is true. By (P1), (7) exists inp (for otherwise it wouldn't be true inw). But then all of its constituents exists inw as well, as a complex does not exist in a worldunless all of its constituents exist in that world. But then GeorgeBush exists in w. So, by (P2), (7) is not true inw, which contradicts our original assumption that itis true in w. So, either (7) is not a singularproposition or it is not possibly true.The basic structure of this argument derives from Alvin Plantinga'sargument (Plantinga 1983) against what he callsexistentialism, the thesis that all individual essences aredependent upon the individuals that instantiate them. TimothyWilliamson (Williamson 2001) has recently used the same basicprinciples, together with the assumption of existentialism, to arguethat necessarily everything necessarily exists. Plantinga himself doesnot conclude that (7) is not a singular proposition. Rather, heconcludes that a singular proposition about o canexist even though o does not exist. (See inparticular (Plantinga 1983, 8-9), where he argues that the notion ofconstituency is too confused to allow us to conclude that theconstituent of a singular proposition must exist in a world for thatproposition to exist in that world.) Plantinga also argues that theproperty being identical to o can exist withouto, even though he strongly suggests that he viewsthis property as being constructed by λ-abstraction from thethe proposition that o is identical too. Plantinga would have been much better served, webelieve, by denying that there are singular propositions aboutcontingent existents, on the grounds that if there were, propositionslike (7) would not be possibly true, which is counterintuitive. Hecould say either that there are primitive properties that arestipulated to be individual essences but that can exist unexemplified(rather than accepting, as he does, that o'sindividual essence is the property being identical too) or that an individual essence of an object isthe rigidification of a condition that it uniquely satisfies (see thediscussion of Plantinga's response to the modal argument above insection 2). It is then George Bush's individual essence, rather thanBush himself, that is the constituent of (7) and that is expressed bythe name ‘George Bush’. If Bush's individual essence werea constituent of (7) and so (7) were not a singular proposition, then,as Bush's individual essence can exist unexemplified and without Bush,we do not violate (P1) and (P2) by claiming that there are worlds inwhich (7) is true.There are different replies to Plantinga's argument one can makedepending on the metaphysical position one takes with respect tomodality. If one is a possibilist, like David Lewis (Lewis 1986), thenone makes a distinction between something's being actual andsomething's existing, as what is actual is but a small proper subsetof what exists, according to the possibilist. Then what exists in aworld does not exhaust what exists simpliciter. Bush is around toserve as a constituent of a proposition, even with respect to worldsin which he does not exist, because he exists in some worlds. Thepossibilist can thus claim that the truth of (P1) does not entailthat, if p is true in w, thenp exists in w; rather, it onlyentails that w exists.Matters are more difficult if one is an actualist, claiming thateverything is actual. Then, if one accepts the existence of singularpropositions, one has two options. First, one might deny thatpropositions like (7) are possibly true, accepting that necessarilyeverything necessarily exists, as Bernard Linsky and Edward Zalta(Linsky and Zalta 1994) and Williamson (Williamson 2001) do. Thisposition is only as plausible as the explanation that is offered ofthe intuitive contingency of ordinary objects like Bush. If existenceis claimed to be a necessary property, then some contingent propertymust be offered in its place that can be used to explain the intuitionthat (7) might have been true. Linsky and Zalta claim that beingconcrete is a contingent property. They claim that Bush mighthave been nonconcrete and that, when we consider a world in which heis nonconcrete, we (wrongly) conclude that he does not existthere. Although the virtues of this view are many, not the least ofwhich is the simple and straightforward modal logic it validates, weare very reluctant to accept that concreteness is a contingentproperty. Second, if one insists that propositions like (7) aresingular propositions that are possibly true, then one must claim that(7) is true even at worlds in which it does not exist, thus denying(P1). (Robert Adams (Adams 1981), Harry Deutsch (Deutsch 1994), KitFine (Fine 1977; 1985), Greg Fitch (Fitch 1996), and Chris Menzel(Menzel 1991; 1993) all develop different versions of this response.)As an analogy consider John's assertion ‘‘It is possible Ido not exist.’’ John can describe or represent acircumstance or world where John does not exist. So, too, (7) canrepresent a circumstance or world where (7) does not exist. For (7) tobe possibly true is for (7) to represent a circumstance or world thatcould obtain. It is not required that (7) be a part of the world orcircumstance that (7) represents any more than it is required thatJohn be a part of the world that he describes with his assertions.None of the solutions are without problems. Plantinga's own solutionrequires mysterious entities — individual essences that could existunexemplified and thus that are individuated independently of theindividuals that instantiate them. Linsky and Zalta's solution runscontrary to the robust intuition that what individuals there happen tobe is a contingent matter and requires that ordinary existents couldexist as nonconcrete objects. And the final solution seems to requirea distinction between how matters stand in a possible world or fromthe perspective of that possible world and how matters stand at thatworld and it also requires complicating one's quantified modallogic. (For a more detailed discussion of the issues raised in thissection, see the entry actualism.)6. Temporal Problems for Singular Propositions The second problem with singular propositions that we will consideralso concerns the fundamental problem of combining so-called abstractobjects (such as propositions) with ordinary individuals. The modalproblem arises because of the intuition that ordinary individualsmight not have existed, while propositions are often taken to existnecessarily. The temporal problem we shall consider in this sectionarises because ordinary individuals change over time, including cominginto and going out of existence. Propositions, on the other hand, areusually taken to be eternal objects — things that do not change overtime.Consider the following proposition. (8) Socrates exists. Does (8) exist? Socrates is long gone; he no longer exists. But if(8) does not exist how can it be false, as it evidently is? Moreover,if (8) does exist then exactly what age is the constituent of (8)? 21?37? It seems a bit absurd to say that the age of a constituent of aproposition is thus and so, yet if Socrates himself is a constituentof (7), then he must be a certain age. No human person exists withoutbeing a certain age. (Note several things: First, these questions arise regardless of the truth value of the proposition; if it is true, the same questions arise. Second, and relatedly, these questions do not depend upon the particular predicate being used; if we had instead ascribed the property of wisdom to Socrates, the same questions arise. Finally, adding a past-tense also seems to not help with this particular problem, as we are still left wondering what entity besides the no longer existent Socrates fills the subject slot.)We raised two issues with (8). The first issue is similar to the modalproblem discussed in the previous section. The second issue also has amodal analog, as follows. Bush in fact has two arms, but he might havehad only one. But then if Bush himself is a constituent of the proposition that Bushhas two arms, then he must either have exactly two arms or exactly onearm, it would seem, as no human person exists without having a certainnumber of arms. But neither answer seems satisfying. As we shall spellout below, this issue is closely related to the problems of change andaccidents, in general, and David Lewis's (Lewis 1986, chapter 4)problems of temporary and accidental intrinsics more specifically.The reply that one makes to the temporal objections is like the replythat one makes to the alethic modal objection in that it depends onone's metaphysical views concerning time and individuals. We beginwith the first issue and then turn to the second.The temporal analog of possibilism is eternalism, according towhich what exists at a time is but a small proper subset of whatexists simpliciter. (Works that defend eternalism include (Heller1990), (Lewis 1986), (Mellor 1981; 1998), (Quine 1963), (Sider 1997;2001), (Smart 1955), and (Williams 1951).) The eternalist can maintainthat although Socrates does not exist presently, he does existsimpliciter and so he is available to be the constituent of thesingular proposition (8), even at times at which he does not exist.Presentism is the temporal analog of actualism. Presentists maintainthat everything is present; entities like Socrates, that do notpresently exist, simply do not exist at all. (Works that defendpresentism include (Crisp 2002; 2005; 2007a/b), (Hinchliff 1988;1996), (Markosian 2003), (Prior 1959, 1962, 1965, 1970, 1977), and(Zimmerman 1996; 1998a/b).) Presentists have a harder row to hoe inaccounting for the apparent falsity of (8). In the previous section weoutlined three actualist solutions to the problems the intuitive truthof (7) raise. There are temporal analogs of each of those threesolutions that can be applied to the the case at hand. First, just asPlantinga distinguished an individual from its individual essence,claiming that the latter can exist unexemplified and henceindependently of the former, employing an object's individual essenceas a constituent of the possibly true singular negative existential,so too a presentist might appeal to such individual essences. Thepresentist could then claim that (8) is not a singular propositioncontaining Socrates himself as a constituent, as there is no suchentity, but rather a proposition with Socrates's individual essence asa constituent. (8)'s falsity and existence is then perfectly compatiblewith Socrates's nonexistence. Second, the presentistmight deny that Socrates does not exist, maintaining that he hasinstead become a nonconcrete but existent object, taking the temporalanalog of the view held by Linsky and Zalta. Then, although (8) is true, a related proposition concerning Socrates's concreteness is false. (It is worth pausing tonotice how implausible it is to maintain that a concrete objectbecomes nonconcrete or that a nonconcrete objectbecomes concrete.) Third, one could appeal to the temporalanalog of the Adams, et. al. view, distinguishing how matters stand ina time and how they stand at a time. It is, however, questionable thatthis distinction will enable much progress in offering a presentistaccount of the falsity of (8), as we still face the problem ofexplaining what proposition it is, exactly, that is false at thepresent time given that Socrates is nowhere, according to thepresentist, to be found. Finally, there is a fourth presentist solutionworth discussing, which also has a modal analog. One might insistthat, although Socrates does not exist, Socrates is nonetheless aconstituent of reality, in the range of the most unrestricted ofquantifiers, and available as a constituent of singularpropositions. This is because there are entities that do notexist. This form of Meinongian presentism has been defended by MarkHinchliff (Hinchliff 1988; 1996). Many, however, find the distinctionbetween being and existing obscure and the Meinongian metaphysicsrather incredible. (For further discussion of eternalism and presentism,see the entries spacetime: being and becoming in modern physics and time. For discussion of Meinongianism, see nonexistent objects).)Above we raised a second set of questions concerning (8). If (8) is asingular proposition with Socrates the man as a constituent, then whatstate does Socrates exist in? Consider the following proposition. (Weswitch to a proposition concerning a presently existing object so as to avoidthe issues discussed above.) (9) Bush is age 61. Intuitively, (9) is true in August 2007 and false in, say, August1998. (Not everyone agrees that the truth of a proposition,as opposed to a tensed sentence, varies across time. We shall returnto this briefly below.) Suppose (9) is a singular proposition withBush as a constituent. Well, we should ask: How old is thatconstituent? No answer seems to satisfy. By the law of excludedmiddle, either it satisfies the condition ‘x is age61’ or it doesn't. But if it does, then it seems a littlestrange to think of (9) as being false, which it is in 1998. If itdoesn't, then it seems a little strange to think of (9) as being true,which it is in August 2007. And it is also strange to think of that(9) itself as changing in its constituents across time. But then whatdo we say about the fact that (9) seems to change its truth valueprecisely because Bush changes his age?How one deals with these questions depends on one's metaphysical viewsof the nature of persistence through time and change. Broadlyspeaking, there are two realist views of change: There are views thattake persisting objects as primitive, maintaining that they are“wholly present” (see (Crisp and Smith 2005) for aninteresting attempt to articulate this notion) at each time at whichthey exist. and there are views that reduce persisting objects to morefundamental, momentary objects. The first view is calledendurantism or three-dimensionalism, versions ofwhich are defended in (Chisholm 1976), (Forbes 1987), (Geach 1966;1967), (Haslanger 1985; 1989a/b; 2003), (Hinchliff 1988; 1996),(Johnston 1983; 1987), (Lowe 1987; 1988; 1998), (Mellor 1981; 1998),(Thomson 1983), (van Inwagen 1990; 2000), (Wiggins 1968; 1980; 2001),and (Zimmerman 1996; 1998a/b), among others. (There are importantdifferences between the versions of endurantism these defended inthese works, related to whether or not “tense is takenseriously”, presentism is accepted or rejected, whether or notseemingly monadic properties like being age 61 are treated asrelations between individuals and times, and whether or not theinstantiation relation between individuals and properties is claimedto obtain only relative to a time. We cannot attempt to sort thesedifferences out here, although we shall say something about thembelow.) The second view is called perdurantism,four-dimensionalism, or the doctrine of temporalparts, versions of which are defended in (Armstrong 1980),(Heller 1990), (Jubien 1993), (Lewis 1971; 1976; 1986; 1988), (Quine1960; 1963), (Robinson 1982), (Russell 1927), (Smart 1955; 1972),(Taylor 1955), and (Williams 1951), among others. (See the entries identity over time and temporal parts for further discussion.)Perdurantists maintain that a persisting object is a sum ofmomentarily existing temporal parts, where the momentary temporalparts are the fundamental entities in the ontology. A persistingobject like Socrates persists through an interval of time, on thisview, by having numerically distinct temporal parts existing at everymoment in that interval. And a persisting object like Bush changesfrom t to t′ by having numerically distinct temporalparts existing at t and t′ that have differentproperties. The perdurantist has an easy answer to our question. Theobject that is a constituent of a proposition is a complete object inthat all the temporal stages or parts of the object in question areinvolved. So part of Bush is 52 and part is 61, but the entity (thepersisting object Bush) that is a constituent of (9) is the sum of allthese parts.On the other hand, if one is an endurantist, then matters become morecomplex. Endurantists either eschew the notion of temporal partsaltogether or think that they are ontologically-dependent entities —dependent on persisting objects and moments, much as Aristotle thoughtthat accidental unities are dependent on substances and theirqualities. They thus cannot appeal to a single object (theperdurantist's collection of temporal parts) that has all of theproperties a persisting object ever has.There are several options available to the endurantist. First, onemight hold that at each time, t, at which Bush existed thereis a singular proposition involving Bush and t, but deny thatthere is a proposition (like (9)) that is independent of a time. Onecould then question our assumption above that propositions like (9)change their truth value. There are, instead, distinct propositionslike the following. (We assume, for simplicity, that a month is theshortest interval of time.) (9August 1998) Bush is age 61 in 1998. (9August 2007) Bush is age 61 in 2007. These propositions are not time neutral and hence if they are evertrue/false, they are always true/false. (9August 1998)isn't just false in August 1998; it is also false in August2007. Proponents of this view are likely to think that differentutterances of the sentence ‘Bush is age 61’ expressdifferent propositions, depending on the time at which they occur. Anutterance of that sentence in August 2007 expresses the proposition(9August 2007) and a different utterance of that samesentence in August 1998 expresses the distinct proposition(9August 1998). A proponent of such a view might then findit natural to claim that the constituent of a proposition like(9August 2007) is Bush, in whatever state he is in inAugust 2007. In general, the constituent of a singular proposition isin the state that it is in in the time with which the proposition issaturated with.A close cousin to perdurantism is the stage view, proponents of whichinclude Katherine Hawley (Hawley 2001) and Theodore Sider (Sider 1996;1997; 2000; 2001), according to which the subject of a temporalpredication like (9) is an momentary individual — the temporal partthat perdurantists claim is a proper part of the persistingobject. So, whereas a perdurantist claims that a name like‘Bush’ designates a sum of temporal parts, the proponentof the stage view maintains that it designates a single temporalpart. A past-tensed predication like ‘x was governor ofTexas’ is true of that entity just in case there is an earliertemporal part that bears the counterpart-relation to that entity thatsatisfies the condition is ‘x is governor ofTexas’ (and similarly for future-tensed predications). The stagetheorist who accepts singular propositions is likely to accept a viewlike the one considered above, where different propositions, withdifferent temporal parts as constituents and different times, areexpressed by different utterances of the sentence ‘Bush is age61’.Our question has been: If Bush is a constituent of (9), then whatstate is Bush in or what qualities does he have? The question is supposed tohave bite because Bush has different qualities at differenttimes. But there is a dimension to our question that we have yet tobring out: Namely, what is the individual Bush? There are at least twoviews. According to the first, the bundle theory, Bush is a bundle ofproperties. According to the second, the substratum theory, Bush issomething distinct from his properties in which his propertiesinhere. If one accepts the bundle theory, then our question getstraction, as we now must ask which qualities are in the bundle thatthe individual is identified with. And if the object undergoes achange in quality F, then we must choose, it wouldseem, between F and its contrary as a member of thatbundle. But if one accepts the substratum theory, then the questiondissolves. If Bush himself is a bare particular, himself independentof his qualities, then we have an easy answer to our question. We cansay that the constituent of (9) is the bare particular Bush whohimself is independent of all his qualities. This view is consistentwith endurantism and the assumption that (9) is a temporally neutralproposition that changes its truth value across time. The issuesbetween the bundle theory and the substratum theory are many andcomplex. (See the entry substance for further discussion.)Many find the substratum view implausible. But the endurantist mightdistinguish the temporary properties (i.e., the properties an objecthas at some times and not at others) from the nontemporary orpermanent properties, claiming that the constituent of a singularproposition is clothed only in its nontemporary properties, claimingthat, while not a bare particular, the individual that is aconstituent of (9) is clad only in its nontemporary properties. A moresatisfying version of this view will distinguish accidental propertiesfrom necessary properties, as there are accidental nontemporaryproperties, like the location of one's birth. (For example, if Sue wasborn in Provo, Utah, then it is always the case that she was born inProvo, Utah; that property does not change. But it is still the casethat Sue might have been born elsewhere, as her mother could have beenlocated elsewhere at the time of her birth. So, Sue's location ofbirth is nontemporary but accidental.) The same issues regardingsingular propositions and the temporary properties of the constituentsof those propositions arise regarding singular proposition and theaccidental properties of those constituents. So, claiming that theindividuals that are constituents of singular propositions areindependent of their accidental properties but involve their essencesprovides a unifying account of both the modal and temporal versions ofour second question from above.In summary, when we ask how an object that no longer exists can be aconstituent of a proposition, we need to consider the variousmetaphysical views concerning ordinary individuals and theirrelationship to time. If we can think of (or refer to) Socrates eventhough Socrates does not exist, then Socrates can be a constituent ofa proposition though Socrates does not exist. What then shall we sayof the proposition that Socrates exists? Does it exist or not? 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Fitch's original, solely authoredentry is available in the SEP Archives, and can be accessed at theURL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/propositions-singular/>. (Seethe version history.) Thanks to Penelope Mackie for extremely helpful editorial advice. Copyright © 2007 byGreg Fitch<gfitch@plato.stanford.edu>Michael Nelson<mnelson@ucr.edu> |
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