Abstract
This paper attempts to investigate whether we could in any meaningful way say of predicate expressions (whether monadic or relational) that they refer and, if they refer, what their reference could be. In semantics based on model theory (e.g., of Carnap’s state-descriptions or Hintikka’s model-sets), there are entities to which predicate expressions correspond (Carnap’s attributes, Hintikka’s predicates). What kind of entities are they?
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Notes
Vide e.g. ‘Quantification and the Picture Theory of Language’, The Monist53 (1969) and reprinted in Logic, Language-Games and Information; ‘Language Games’ in Essays on Wittgenstein in Honour of G. H. von Wright, Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 28, nos. 1–3, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1976.
The fullest discussion on this point is given by Peter Long in ‘Are Predicates and Relational Expressions Incomplete?’, Philosophical Review 78 (1969). Also discussed on pp. 37–40 of G. E. M. Anscombe, Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Hutchinson & Co., London, 1959
in Hidé Ishiguro, ‘Use and Reference of Names’ in Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, P. Winch (ed.), Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1969. Each gives a different account of elementary propositions with only one name.
Terence Parsons has criticised in Philosophical Review 79 (1970) what I believe is a correct view expounded by Peter Long in ‘Are Predicates and Relational Expressions Incomplete?’, Philosophical Review 78 (1969), and has concluded wrongly that there is a symmetry between the role of predicate and the name in the subject place.
‘Concept and Object’, in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, P. T. Geach and M. Black (eds.), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1960, p. 45.
Notebooks 1914–1916, p. 61.
E.g. Hilary Putnam, ‘The Meaning of Meaning’, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975, p. 218.
Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language, Duckworth, London, 1973, p. 219.
Jaakko Hintikka and Merrill Provence, ‘Wittgenstein on Privacy and Publicity’ (p. 5 of typescript).
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© 1979 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Ishiguro, H. (1979). Subjects, Predicates, Isomorphic Representation, and Language Games. In: Saarinen, E., Hilpinen, R., Niiniluoto, I., Hintikka, M.P. (eds) Essays in Honour of Jaakko Hintikka. Synthese Library, vol 124. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9860-5_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9860-5_21
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