Alberto Voltolini

Within the general framework of the theory of direct reference, there is no agreement as to whether unactualised possible objects (from now on, possibilia) can be referred to by means of directly referential singular terms (from now on, DR terms). While some have maintained that such a direct reference can be established e.g. via some fixing-reference description (Kaplan, Salmon, and perhaps Kripke himself), others have denied any such possibility. In what follows, I will scrutinise such denials by attempting at the same time to provide some counterarguments to them. Indeed, I believe that possibilia can be referred to directly, primarily if the appropriate fixing-reference description is provided.

In this paper, I will focus on the basic form of intentionality, reference intentionality (from now on, RI), the property an intentional state has of being ‘directed upon’ a certain object, its intentional object. I will try to prove that (as Husserl, Wittgenstein and others originally envisaged) RI is not only a state - intentional object relation, but it also is an internal, i.e., a necessary, relation between that state and that object, at least in the sense that the state could not exist if it not were so related to the object. The strategy of the paper will be the following. First, I will claim that RI has to be conceived in internal-relational terms, no matter which position one takes on its putative right-hand members, intentional objects. Second, I will claim that this conception fits both ways in which intentional states are nowadays ordinarily conceived, i.e., the externalist and the internalist way. For on the one hand, the best form of externalism, metaphysical externalism, entails a conception of RI as an internal relation. On the other hand, if one is an internalist, she either has to directly stick again to that conception or, insofar as she ontologically is an eliminativist about RI, this ontological position leaves untouched the conception of RI as an internal relation. I stress that this conception yields an understanding of RI. My analysis is indeed meant to be a metaphysical scrutiny of RI, that is, an investigation on the nature of such a property, provided that that there is any. As such, therefore, this scrutiny is independent of the further, ontological, question of whether there is such a property as RI.1 If it turned out that there is no such a thing as RI, this scrutiny will turn out to be a mere investigation in the mere concept of RI. As a result, my analysis is compatible with an eliminativist stance on RI, holding that there is no such property. For such a stance precisely is an ontological, not a metaphysical, position on RI.

In this paper, we first set out three requirements that each e-theory – a theory whose task is to explain data – must fulfill in order to be one such good theory: i) an ontological requirement, i.e. adequate simplicity, ii) a methodological requirement, i.e. plurality of research procedures, iii) an epistemological requirement, i.e. compatibility with the best available epistemical procedures. Moreover, we will claim that from the metaphilosophical point of view, unlike scientific naturalism on the one hand and supernaturalism on the other, liberal naturalism is the only philosophical approach capable of fulfilling all such requirements.

According to Crane’s schematicity thesis (ST) about intentional objects, intentionalia have no particular metaphysical nature qua thought-of entities; moreover, the real metaphysical nature of intentionalia is various, insofar as it is settled independently of the fact that intentionalia are targets of one’s thought. As I will point out, ST has the ontological consequence that the intentionalia that really belong to the general inventory of what there is, the overall domain, are those that fall under a good metaphysical kind, i.e., a kind such that its members figure (for independent reasons) in such an inventory. Negatively put, if there are no things of a certain metaphysical kind, thoughts about things of that kind are not really committed to such things. Pace Crane, however, this does not mean that the intentionalia that are really there are only those that exist. For existence, qua first-order property, is no metaphysical kind. Thus, there may really be intentionalia that do not exist, provided that they belong to good metaphysical kinds.

An attempt is first made to clarify why Stephen Schiffer may legitimately claim that his noncompositional account of meaning differs from other non-compositional semantic doctrines such as the hidden-indexical theory of propositional attitudes. Subsequently, however, doubt is cast upon Schiffer's main contention that, as far as language of thought is concerned, a compositional supervenience theory can adequately satisfy all the desiderata a compositional meaning theory is traditionally called upon for. This doubt basically depends on the fact that, once a physical property is assigned by the compositional supervenience theory to the relevant nominal constituent of a Mentalese attitude report as the basic element on which the physical property assigned to the whole report depends, such a property precisely plays the role of a mode of presentation of the referent of that constituent. Finally, the following dilemma is arisen: in order to account for the meaning of attitude reports either the dismissal of modes of presentation or the rejection of compositionality is to be given up.

In this paper I want to hold that contextualism – the position according to which wide context, i.e., the concrete situation of discourse, may well have the semantic role of assigning truth-conditions to sentences – may well accommodate (along with some nowadays established theses about the semantics of proper names) three data about fiction, namely, the facts that as far as discourse involving fiction is concerned, i) sentences about nothing are meaningful ii) they may be true in fiction iii) yet they may also be true in reality. Moreover, I also want to hold that such a contextualist accommodation does not depend on endorsing a realist stance about fictional entities, although such a stance gives the best truth-conditional explanation for such data, in particular iii).

A new theory of identity statements is put forward which appeals to a basic distinction between two notions of identity, i.e. strict and loose identity. The former is the traditional necessary relation of an object with the object itself, whereas the latter is a contingent relation of reduction of some (at least two) possible unactual objects to a possible actual object. By appealing to strict identity, one can maintain that some tokenings of identity sentences express a semantic content which is both knowable apriori only and a necessary proposition. By appealing to loose identity instead, one can maintain that other tokenings of identity sentences express a semantic content which is both knowable a posteriori only and a contingent proposition.

Along with a well-honoured tradition, we will accept that intentionality is at least a property a thought holds necessarily, i.e., in all possible worlds that contain it; more specifically, a necessary relation, namely the relation of existential dependence of the thought on its intentional object. Yet we will first of all try to show that intentionality is more than that. For we will claim that intentionality is an essential property of the thought, namely a property whose predication to the thought is true in virtue of the identity, or nature, of such a thought. More particularly, for us intentionality will again be a relation, yet a relation of ontological dependence of the thought on its intentional object; specifically, the relation for the thought of being constituted by its object. Moreover, we will try to show that if intentionality is such a constitutive relation for the thought that has it, certain metaphysical consequences ensue. First, an objectual thought, a thought whose content basically consists in its intentional object, is nothing but that object in a certain cogitative modality, or, which is the same, as playing a certain motivational role for the subject entertaining the thought itself (at a certain time). Second, if an objectual thought is nothing but an intentional object in a cogitative modality, such a thought, not only as a type, but also as a token, is an abstract entity. More specifically, an objectual thought-type, an abstract object par excellence, is indeed instantiated by objectual thought-tokens which are again abstract particulars, yet of a specific kind: namely, tropes of a relational sort depending for their existence on their bearers (and possibly also on their temporal location).

In this paper, I will defend the claim that there are three existence properties: the second-order property of being instantiated, a substantive first-order property (or better a group of such properties) and a formal, hence universal, first-order property. I will first try to show what these properties are and why we need all of them for ontological purposes. Moreover, I will try to show why a Meinong-like option that positively endorses both the former and the latter first-order property is the correct view in ontology. Finally, I will add some methodological remarks as to why this debate has to be articulated from the point of view of reality, i.e., by speaking of properties, rather than from the point of view of language, i.e., by speaking of predicates (for such properties).

One is often told that sentences expressing or reporting mental states endowed with intentionality—the feature of being “directed upon” an object that some mental states possess—contain contexts that both prevent those sentences to be existentially generalized and are filled by referentially opaque occurrences of singular terms. Failure of existential generalization and referential opacity have been traditionally said to be the basic characterizations of intentionality from a linguistic point of view. I will call those contexts directional contexts. In what follows, I will argue that this traditional conception is incorrect. First, the above characterizations do not provide both necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for directional contexts. Appearances notwithstanding, these characterizations are not the adequate linguistic counterparts of two elements folk-psychologically featuring intentionality, namely existence-independence and the possible apparent aspectual character of the intentional object, the target of a mental state endowed with intentionality. Indeed, they do not retain the prima facie ontological commitment to intentional objects the above elements contain. I will replace failure of existential generalization and referential opacity with other linguistic factors, namely success of mere existentially unloaded particular quantification and pseudo-opacity. I will contend that they provide both necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for directional contexts, and claim that these factors are the adequate counterparts of the above folk-psychological elements, precisely because they retain the prima facie ontological commitment to intentionalia those elements possess.

In a recent paper, Anthony Everett has mounted a very serious attack against realism with respect to fictional entities. According to Everett, ficta raise deep logico-ontological worries, for they violate some basic logical laws and are problematically indeterminate with respect to both their existence and identity. Since an antirealist account for sentences apparently committing us to ficta is available, no such committment is really needed. In this paper I will try to show, first, that the antirealist account Everett proposes for those sentences is not convincing. Moreover, by relying on the Meinongians’ distinctions between i) predicative and propositional negation and ii) either modes of predication or kinds of property, I will argue that the logico-ontological problems Everett arises against ficta can be solved. Finally, I will try to show that both the ‘modes of predication’- and the ‘kinds of property’- distinctions (especially the first one) are not so problematic as Everett holds.

In a very recent paper (2010), Dominic McIver Lopes has claimed that pictures perceptually ground demonstrative reference to depicted objects. If as I think Lopes is right, this has important consequences for the debate on the semantics/pragmatics divide. For one can exploit Lopes' claim in order to provide one more argument in favour of the well-known contextualist thesis that wide context has not only both a pre- and a post-semantic role, but also a semantic role – to put it in Perry's (1997) terms.

In ontology, realism and anti-realism may be taken as opposite attitudes towards entities of different kinds, so that one may turn out to be a realist with respect to certain entities, and an anti-realist with respect to others. In this book, the editors focus on this controversy concerning social entities in general and fictional entities in particular, the latter often being considered nowadays as kinds of social entities. More specifically, fictionalists (those who maintain that we only make-believe that there are entities of a certain kind) and creationists (those who believe that entities of a certain kind are the products of human activity) present themselves as the champions of the anti-realist and the realist stance, respectively, regarding the above entities. By evaluating the pros and cons of both these positions, this book intends to focus new light on a longstanding debate.

In this paper, I will first of all claim that once one takes proper names as indexicals of a particular sort, indexinames for short, one may account for some tensions that affect our desiderata regarding the use of such names in sentences directly or indirectly involving fiction. According to my proposal, a proper name “N.N.” is an indexical whose character is roughly expressed by the description “the individual called ‘N.N.’ (in context)”, where this description means “the individual one’s interlocutor’s attention is called to by means of ‘N.N.’ (in context)”. This character is a partial function that maps narrow contexts onto referents. Such contexts are enriched narrow contexts, for they also include an ‘acquisition’ parameter, i.e., a parameter filled by a naming practice constituted by a dubbing, which consists in calling via the name one’s interlocutor’s attention to something (if any), and usually also by a certain transmission chain. I will also claim that such a proposal works independently of one’s ontological stance on fictional entities, that is, independently of whether one believes either that there are or that there are no such entities. Moreover, I will claim that such a proposal is better than similar indexicalist proposals such as the one put forward by Tiedke (2011), Finally, I will try to show how this proposal can deal with some objections one may raise against an indexicalist treatment of proper names.

In (1959), Carnap famously attacked Heidegger for having constructed an insane metaphysics based on a misconception of both the logical form and the semantics of ordinary language. In what follows, it will be argued that, once one appropriately (i.e., in a Russellian fashion) reads Heidegger’s famous sentence that should paradigmatically exemplify such a misconception, i.e., “the nothing nothings”, there is nothing either logically or semantically wrong with it. The real controversy as to how that sentence has to be evaluated—not as to its meaning but as to its truth—lies at the metaphysico- ontological level. For in order for the sentence to be true one has to endorse an ontology of impossibilia and Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles.

In his (2001a) and in some related papers, Tim Crane has maintained that intentional objects are schematic entities, in the sense that, insofar as being an intentional object is not a genuine metaphysical category, qua objects of thought intentional objects have no particular nature. This approach to intentionalia is the metaphysical counterpart of the later Husserl's ontological approach to the same entities, according to which qua objects of thought intentionalia are indifferent to existence. But to buy a metaphysically deflationary approach does not mean to buy an ontologically deflationary approach, according to which we have to accept all the intentional objects there apparently are. Being metaphysically deflationary on intentionalia rather means that from the ontological point of view one must really allow only for those intentionalia for which one is entitled to say that there are such things; typically, for which an ontological proof is available. From metaphysical schematism plus conditional, or partial, ontological committment to intentionalia, further interesting consequences follow. First, this theoretical combination allows one to deal with the ‘too-many entities’ problem (may one fail to accept an ontological proof for an entity of a given kind if she thinks that the entity we would have to be committed to is an entity of another kind?). Second, it allows one to deal with the ‘genuinely true report’ problem (how is it that if we exercise mindreading with respect to a somehow deluded person, we want our reports to come out as really, not merely fictionally, true?)

There is definitely a family resemblance between what contemporary contextualism maintains in philosophy of language and some of the claims about meaning put forward by the later Wittgenstein. Yet the main contextualist thesis, namely that linguistic meaning undermines truth-conditions, was not defended by Wittgenstein. If a claim in this regard can be retrieved in Wittgenstein despite his manifest antitheoretical attitude, it is instead that truth-conditions trivially supervene on linguistic meaning. There is, however, another Wittgensteinian claim that truly has a contextualist flavour, namely that linguistic meaning is itself wide-contextual. To be sure, this claim does not lead to the eliminativist/intentionalist conception of linguistic meaning that radical contextualists have recently developed. Rather, it goes together with a robust conception of linguistic meaning as intrinsically normative. Yet it may explain why Wittgenstein is taken to be a forerunner of contemporary contextualism.

In recent works, Chomsky has once more endorsed a computational view of rulefollowing, whereby to follow a rule is to operate certain computations on a subject’s mental representations. As is well known, this picture does not conform to what we may call the grammatical conception of rule-following outlined by Wittgenstein, whereby an elucidation of the concept of rule-following is aimed at by isolating grammatical statements regarding the phrase ‘to follow a rule’. As a result, Chomskyan and Wittgensteinian treatments of topics immediately connected with rule-following, namely linguistic competence and understanding, are utterly different from one another. There are two possible stances that computationalists like Chomsky may adopt with regard to the discrepancy between the two aforementioned modes of dealing with rule-following, namely a conciliatory and a non-conciliatory attitude. According to the former attitude, grammatical remarks on and computationallyoriented theories of rule-following investigate one and the same topic although admittedly at different levels, namely a conceptual and an empirical one. According to the latter attitude, grammatical remarks are just a preliminary step in the investigation of rule-following which scientific advancement, presently represented by computationally-oriented theories on this matter, is well entitled to put aside. In what follows, however, I will try to show that both stances are problematic. The conciliatory attitude simply does not work, for it hardly copes with the fact that the concept of rule-following does not supervene, even weakly, on the property of rule-following, namely the property instantiated in the mental/cerebral phenomena that computationally-oriented theories of rule-following study. To take the contrary attitude, on the other hand, is to end up with another disappointing result, namely that the computational treatment of rule-following ultimately deals with something different from that which we wished to gain knowledge of when we began our inquiry into rule-following..

There is a list of desiderata that any good metaphysics of fictional entities should be able to fulfill. These desiderata are: 1) the nonexistence of fictional entities; 2) the causal inefficacy of suchentities;3)the incompleteness of such entities;4)the created character of such entities; 5) the actual possession by ficta of the narrated properties; 6) the unrevisable ascription to ficta of such properties; and 7) the necessary possession by ficta of such properties. (Im)possibilist metaphysics uncontroversially satisfy 1) and 2); Neo-Meinongian metaphysics satisfy 1), 2), 3), 5), 6), and 7); artefactualist or creationist metaphysics uncontroversially satisfy 1), 2), 3), and 4). Another metaphysics is needed in order to satisfy all such desiderata. In this chapter Idevelop such a metaphysics, claiming that a Syncretistic metaphysics that combines Neo-Meinongianism with Artefactualism achieves this purpose. According to Syncretism, ficta are hybrid entities individuated in terms of both a certain makebelieve narrative process and the set of properties that one such narration mobilizes. Toward the end of the chapter I consider some possible criticisms to this approach: its non-intuitiveness; ficta’s unnecessary proliferation; and troubles with creationism of any sort.

In H-N. Castañeda's ontology, a fundamental Fregean distinction is drawn between unsaturated and saturated entities, the former corresponding to predicative aspects of reality, the latter to individuals, that is, to items which can be referred to by means of singular terms1. Within saturated entities, Castañeda attempts to distinguish between abstract and concrete individuals. Sets and Platonic Forms of the F-ness-type are the typical examples of the former category2. As to the latter category instead, concrete individual guises represent both the bottom layer in a hypothetical ontological hierarchy of individuals which has Platonic Forms at its top, and the first step in the psychological process of world cognition, which moves from the most concrete object to the most abstract3. Among concrete individual guises, moreover, Castañeda draws a further ontological distinction between possible and impossible guises, according to the different behavior guises display with respect to the possibility of existing4. Both kinds of guises, however, share that feature which enables to qualify them as guises, i.e. that of being bundles of properties. Every guise is indeed constituted out of (a certain set of) properties, or better predicative aspects5. The predication to a guise of one of its constitutive properties is taken by Castañeda as the primary sense of predication. He calls it Meinongian, or internal, predication (in symbols: "a(F)", where "a" stands for a guise and "F" for one of its constitutive properties)6. For Castañeda, moreover, the main linguistic tool by means of which a guise is denoted is a definite description, insofar as such a description clearly reveals the properties which a guise internally possesses7. Thus, we can say that "the F- er is F" is a typical expression of an internal predication of a property F to the guise denoted by the definite description "the F". If we take "F" as a metavariable for properties, we can say that the above formulation corresponds to what Routley has called the Characterization Postulate8. Now what we want to scrutinize in this paper is, first, whether the following four theses of Castañeda's Guise Theory are really compatible..