Marián Zouhar

It is sometimes claimed that intuitions are an indispensable part of the evidential support provided for, or against, philosophical theses concerning a wide rangeof topics. This view is ingeniously argued for by George Bealer. His approach is based on a close connection between the modal nature of philosophy and theindispensability of intuitions as sources of modally-oriented evidence. This paper is aimed at a critical assessment of this approach. It is claimed that philosophy,though being modal at bottom, need not rely on (modal) intuitions as sources of evidence. In particular, it is shown (i) that at least some of Bealer’s crucial philosophical arguments do not rest on intuitions as evidence and (ii) that one may find modal philosophical claims of considerable importance that do not require modal intuitions for support. As a result, (modal) intuitions need not be considered indispensable for gaining philosophical knowledge, even when philosophy is understood along Bealer’s lines.

Th e present paper examines three kinds of theories concerning the rigidity of general terms—extensionalist, essentialist and intensionalist theories. It is argued that both essentialist and intensionalist theories cannot deal successfully with a number of problems and that the notions of rigidity they propose for general terms lack suffi cient explanatory power. A version of the extensionalist theory, supplemented with a hierarchy of intensions, is defended. Th e theory has surprising consequences, e.g., that ‘tiger’ and some other natural kind terms are, contrary to the widespread opinion, non-rigid

According to S. Kripke, an expression is rigid provided it refers to the same object in all possible worlds in which the object exists. On the other hand, H. Putnam claims that an expression is rigid provided it refers to the same object in all possible worlds in which it refers to anything at all. The paper shows that the two notions of rigidity are not equivalent because Putnam's rigidity is much broader than Kripke's; unlike Putnam's rigidity, Kripke's is interwoven with essentialism; and identity statements between rigid designators in Putnam's sense need not be necessarily true.

The paper deals with the understanding of proper names. Though the theme goes across various disciplines – e.g. semantics, epistemology, psychology – the paper examines only selected semantic and cognitive aspects of the problem. The question runs: How should we comprehend the thesis of understanding a proper name as knowing what the name refers to? What kind of knowledge is involved here? The question is posed within the direct reference theory framework enriched by the notion of singular proposition and the compositionality principle. The distinction between an expression and an utterance of it is accepted and the original question is split up accordingly. As for expressions , to understand a proper name is to grasp a meaning axiom along the lines of D. Davidson and J. McDowell. As for utterances of expressions, to understand an utterance of a proper name is to know a piece of information concerning the referent of the name; ideally, it is a fact that can be expressed by an identity statement claiming that the referent of the name under discussion is identical with the individual about which the speaker has a mental file at her disposal

Cieľom state je navrhnúť systematickú a vyčerpávajúcu klasifikáciu definícií. Táto klasifikácia vychádza z typológie, ktorú vypracoval Richard Robinson vo svojej knihe o definíciách, no v rôznych aspektoch ju ďalej dopracováva. Nová klasifikácia je založená na dvoch kritériách, a to kritériu predmetnosti a kritériu ilokučnej sily. Podľa kritéria predmetnosti možno definovať výrazy, pojmy, resp. objekty ; podľa kritéria ilokučnej sily možno zase rozlíšiť definície, ktoré opisujú existujúci systém, a definície, ktoré transformujú daný systém na nový systém. Napokon sa podľa týchto dvoch kritérií vyhodnocujú niektoré známe druhy definícií.

The paper mainly deals with the problem of reference of proper names. Unlike definite descriptions, proper names in themselves possess no exact necessary and sufficient conditions for making successful performance of reference. This is the consequence of the fact that proper names just name their bearers and do not describe them. It is argued that Frege’s theory violates this fact, and therefore can be taken only as a view about the meaning of proper names, not as a theory of reference. Two conceptions of Strawson designed to solve the problem are mentioned – the cluster description theory and the communication chain theory. The second one is refused immediately, as unrealistic view on referential behaviour of proper names. Then Searle’s version of cluster description theory, more elaborate one than Strawson’s, is analyzed. However, it is shown that this conception is unsatisfactory as well, because either it invokes Kripke’s and Donnellan’s objections against any description theory or its explanation of reference of proper names is circular