THE COGNITIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF AND WHAT IS SAID BY DEMONSTRATIVE AND INDEXICAL SENTENCES

Abstract

<p>Frege did not develop an analysis of the sense of demonstrative or indexical expressions. It is possible, though, to understand Frege's analysis of thoughts as providing a set of constraints on the sense of all expressions, including demonstratives and indexicals. It will be shown that, for Frege, the sense of a demonstrative/indexical expression "α", must conform with the following four constraints:</p> <p>(FS 1) The sense of "α" is a mode of presentation of a reference.</p> <p>(FS 2) The sense of "α" must be a determinant of the cognitive significance of a rational person's understanding of the sentence "α is Φ".</p> <p>(FS 3) The sense of "α", along with the senses of the other constituent expressions of the sentence "α is Φ", which expresses a thought, must determine a fixed truth value.</p> <p>(FS 4) The sense of "α" is a determinant of the objective content of what is said by someone uttering "α is Φ" as well as the objective judgeable content of "α is Φ"</p> <p>In this paper, I will attempt to investigate whether there is anything which demonstratives/indexicals possess which conforms with these constraints.</p> <p>I will attempt to show that demonstratives/indexicals possess something which may be characterized as modes of presentation of reference, which are determinants of cognitive significance, as well as determinants of fixed truth values. To this end, I will develop an account of the cognitive significance of a rational person's understanding of demonstrative/indexical sentences. I will also attempt to show that a demonstrative/indexical possesses something which may be characterized as a mode of presentation of reference, and which, with qualification, is a determinant of the objective content of what is said by someone uttering a sentence containing the demonstrative/indexical as a constituent expression.</p> <p>We will see that as a result of my investigation of demonstrative/indexical expressions, we must distinguish four non-identical types of contents which can be possessed by indexical/demonstrative utterances, i.e., cognitive significance, "grasped content", "re-expressible content" and linguistic meaning.</p>