Modality, Reference and Sense An Essay in the Philosophy of Language

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The book points to a new logic of singular designators based upon a close analysis of work in the area by contemporary philosophers of language. The philosophers range from Frege, Russell, Quine, Strawson and Dummett to Kripke, Hintikka, Plantinga, Kaplan, Donnellan, Searle and Burge. It is generally taken for granted that proper names are rigid designators, having no meaning content, which explains their intranslatability into other languages. However, they do have their modes of presentation that must constitute their sense. There is little room for contradiction here in admitting that proper names have a sense which does not amount to meaning. One of the advantages of this position is that it blocks the emergence of the Kripkean puzzle about belief by accepting different belief contents corresponding to a variation in the senses of the names involved. 'Is Kripke's distinction be- tween rigid and non-rigid designators finally valid?' the author asks, questioning the corollaries that are supposed to follow from the distinction, viz., that proper names do not have descriptive backing, and that there are contingent a priori truths. He draws our attention to predicative occurrences of proper names, in the modal context, matching corresponding occurrences of definite descriptions. His explanation of contingency, where proper names or definite descriptions are involved, is innovatively straight, simple and broad-based, at par with situations having ordinary predicates.

Parts of the book have taken a final shape in response to comments by Strawson, Dummett and Burge.

Sitansu S. Chakravarti, a Ph.D. from Syracuse University, New York, was formerly Visiting Professor at the Departments of Philosophy at Rajasthan University, Jaipur, and Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. He has taught at colleges and universities in India as well as in North America. Dr. Chakravarti has published in the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, The Journal of Indian Philosophy and the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research. At present he is working on a project on the philosophy of the Mahabharata.

In the early seventies, I had started working on the topics contained in the book, based primarily on the inspiration, and insights, of Pranab Kumar Sen, my former teacher at Jadavpur University. I feel myself privileged that he had agreed to write a foreword for the book, a task he could not perform due to rapidly failing health leading to untimely death. I am indebted to Stewart Thau and Tom Mckay, with whom I studied philosophy at Syracuse University, for the many comments and criticisms made. Parts of chapter 1. II were presented at the Friday Seminar, Calcutta in 1997. I am thankful to Ranjan Mukherjee for taking his time to read an updated edition of the presentation, and for lending me much-needed support. Versions of chapter 4. IV were presented at the Academic Centre of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Lucknow in 1994, the Friday Seminar in Calcutta in 1995 and the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan in 1996. Several such versions, in the form of papers, were commented upon by Peter Strawson, Michael Dummett, Shefali Moitra, Madhabendra Nath Mitra and Amita Chatterjee. I am thankful to them all. Special thanks are due to Strawson and Dummett for their comments also on a couple of other papers that have been incorporated into this book. I cannot but convey my sense of satisfaction in the fact that the former expressed his agreement with some of the major points made, which find place in chapter 3, and chapter 4. I of the book. I was also fortunate in having some brief comments from William Alston expressing his 'basic agreement' with my ideas relating to Kripke. I am indebted to Tyler Burge for his feedback on his views pertaining to the points mentioned in chapter 5. III in the book.

Singular designators pose problems in the modal context. Coreferential designators are not intersubstitutable always in their de dicto occurrence. The solution that I have proposed, taking a lead from Strawson, is that coreferential designators fail in intersubsitutivity in the modal context in so far as they do not contribute the same designative way to a speech act. This happens when a term has a predicative, rather than a designative use.

Kripke has drawn a distinction between rigid and non-rigid designator. I have tried to argue that the distinction does not hold between singular designators, in as much as the with referential multiplicity to borrow Hintikka's expression, is hardly a singular designator at all. Once the distinction vanishes, a solution to the problem pertaining to the failure of substitutivity of coreferential expressions cannot be attempted with its help. We start questioning at this point Kripke's examples of contingent a priori truths, and have a fresh look into the Searle-Strawsonian thesis of reference with proper names with a backing of descriptions. Kripke himself admits that this distinction does not get him very far. Proper names in their de dicto occurrence in belief contexts lead to situations of puzzles he is unable to solve. The puzzles generate only when proper names are denied any sense altogether, non-connotative as they are, a situation guaranteed by the considerations leading to the distinction.

There is, however, a difference between proper names and definite descriptions in that the latter have descriptive contents, whereas the former do not.