The Background Theory 17

Oh well, maybe my telling you that Jackson was a painter and Pollock
was a painter didn’t fix the same senses for both names after all. I won’t
pursue that because, when it comes to senses, who can prove what fixes
what? But it hardly matters since, on reflection, what’s going on doesn’t
seem to have to do with meaning. Rather, the governing principle is a piece
of logical syntax: If ‘a’ and ‘b’ are different names, then the inference from
‘Fa’ to ‘Fb’ is never conceptually necessary.11 (It’s even OK to wonder
whether Jackson is Jackson, if the two ‘Jacksons’ are supposed to be
tokens of different but homonymous name types.) It looks like the moral
of this story about Jackson and Pollock is the same as the moral of
Mates’s story about bachelors and unmarried men. Frege’s substitution
test doesn’t identify senses. Correspondingly, if it is stipulated that MOPs
are whatever substitution salve veritate turns on, then MOPs have to be
sliced a good bit thinner than senses. Individuating MOPs is more like
individuating forms of words than it is like individuating meanings.
I take these sorts of considerations very seriously. They will return full
strength at the end of Chapter 2.
—What’s wrong with 5.3: This takes a little longer to say, but here is the
short form. Your having n MOPs for water explains why you have n ways
of thinking about water only on the assumption that there is exactly one way
to grasp each MOP.12 The question thus arises what, if anything, is
supposed to legitimize this assumption. As far as I can tell, unless you’re
prepared to give up 5.3, the only answer a Fregean theory allows you is:
sheer stipulation.
Terminological digression (I’m sorry to have to ask you to split these
hairs, but this is a part of the wood where it is very easy to get lost): I use
‘entertaining’ and ‘grasping’ a MOP (/concept) interchangeably. Entertaining/
grasping a MOP doesn’t, of course, mean thinking about the MOP;
The Background Theory 17
uniqueness of reference. If you mean by “Jackson” the horse that bit John, and you mean
by “Pollock” the horse that bit John, you can’t coherently wonder whether Jackson is the
same horse as Pollock.
By the way, I have the damnedest sense of déjà vu about the argument in the text; I
simply can’t remember whether I read it somewhere or made it up. If it was you I snitched
it from, Dear Reader, please do let me know.
11 More precisely: it’s never conceptually necessary unless either the inference from Fa
to a = b or the inference from Fb to a = b is itself conceptually necessary. (For example, let
Fa be: ‘a has the property of being identical to b’.)
12 Or, if there is more than one way to grasp a MOP, then all of the different ways of
doing so must correspond to the same way of thinking its referent. I won’t pursue this
option in the text; suffice it that doing so wouldn’t help with the problem that I’m raising.
Suppose that there is more than one way to grasp a MOP; and suppose that a certain MOP
is a mode of presentation of Moe. Then if, as Frege requires, there is a MOP corresponding
to each way of thinking a referent, all the ways of grasping the Moe-MOP must be the
same way of thinking of Moe. I claim that, precisely because 5.3 is in force, Frege’s theory
has no way to ensure that this is so.
there are as many ways of thinking about a MOP as there are of thinking
about a rock or a number. That is, innumerably many; one for each mode
of presentation of the MOP. Rather, MOPs are supposed to be the vehicles
of thought, and entertaining a MOP means using it to present to thought
whatever the MOP is a mode of presentation of; it’s thinking with the
MOP, not thinking about it. End digression. My point is that if there is
more than one way to grasp a MOP, then ‘grasping a water-MOP is a way
of thinking about water’ and ‘Smith has only one water-MOP’ does not
entail that Smith has only one way of thinking about water.
So, then, what ensures that there is only one way to grasp a MOP? Since
Frege thinks that MOPs are senses and that sense determines reference
(concepts with the same sense must be coextensive) he holds, in effect, that
MOP identity and concept identity come to the same thing. So my
question can be put just in terms of the latter: that one has as many ways
of thinking of a referent as one has concepts of the referent depends on
there being just one way to entertain each concept. What, beside
stipulation, guarantees this?
Perhaps the following analogy (actually quite close, I think) will help to
make the situation clear. There are lots of cases where things other, and
less problematic, than Fregean senses might reasonably be described as
‘modes of presentation’; viz. as being used to present the object of a
thought to the thought that it’s the object of. Consider, for example, using
a diagram of a triangle in geometrical reasoning about triangles. It seems
natural, harmless, maybe even illuminating, to say that one sometimes
reasons about triangles via such a diagram; and that the course of the
reasoning may well be affected (e.g. facilitated) by choosing to do so. In a
pretty untendentious sense, the diagram functions to present triangles (or
triangularity) to thought; OK so far.
But notice a crucial difference between a diagram that functions as a
mode of presentation and a Fregean sense that does: in the former case,
there’s more—lots more—than one kind of object that the diagram can be
used to present. The very same diagram can represent now triangles, now
equilateral triangles, now closed figures at large, now three-sided figures at
large . . . etc. depending on what intentional relation the reasoner bears to
it; depending, if you like, on how the reasoner entertains it. In this sort of
case, then, lots of concepts correspond to the same mode of presentation.
Or, putting it the other way round, what corresponds to the reasoner’s
concept is not the mode of presentation per se, but the mode of presentation
together with how it is entertained.
A diagram can be used in all sorts of ways to present things to thought,
but a Fregean sense can’t be on pain of senses failing to individuate concepts;
which is, after all, what they were invoked for in the first place. So,
18 Philosophical Introduction
question: what stops senses from behaving like diagrams? What guarantees
that each sense can serve in only one way to present an object to a thought?
I think that, on the Frege architecture with 5.3 in force, nothing prevents
this except brute stipulation.
As far as I know, the standard discussions have pretty generally failed
to recognize that Frege’s architecture has this problem, so let me try once
more to make clear just what the problem is. It’s because there is more
than one way to think about a referent that Frege needs to invoke MOPs
to individuate concepts; referents can’t individuate concepts because lots
of different concepts can have the same referent. Fine. But Frege holds
that MOPs can individuate concepts; that’s what MOPs are for. So he
mustn’t allow that different MOPs can correspond to the same concept,
nor may he allow that a MOP can correspond to a concept in more than one
way. If he did, then each way of entertaining the MOP would
(presumably) correspond to a different way of thinking the referent, and
hence (presumably) to a different concept of the referent.Whereas MOPs
are supposed to correspond to concepts one-to-one.
So, the question that I’m wanting to commend to you is: what, if
anything, supports the prohibition against proliferating ways of grasping
MOPs? Frege’s story can’t be: ‘There is only one way of thinking a referent
corresponding to each mode of presentation of the referent because there
is only one way of entertaining each mode of presentation of a referent;
and there is only one way of entertaining each mode of presentation of a
referent because I say that’s all there is.’ Frege needs something that can
both present referents to thought and individuate thoughts; in effect, he
needs a kind of MOP that is guaranteed to have only one handle. He can’t,
however, get one just by wanting it; he has to explain how there could be
such things. And 5.3 is in his way.
I think that if MOPs can individuate concepts and referents can’t, that
must be because MOPs are mental objects and referents aren’t. Mental
objects are ipso facto available to be proximal causes of mental processes;
and it’s plausible that at least some mental objects are distinguished by
the kinds of mental processes that they cause; i.e. they are functionally
distinguished.13 Suppose that MOPs are in fact so distinguished. Then it’s
hardly surprising that there is only one way a mind can entertain each
MOP: since, on this ontological assumption, functionally equivalent
MOPs are ipso facto identical, the question ‘Which MOP are you
The Background Theory 19
13 This doesn’t, please notice, commit me to holding that the individuation of thought
content is functional. Roughly, that depends on whether Frege is right that whatever can
distinguish coextensive concepts is ipso facto the sense of the concepts; i.e. it depends on
assuming 5.1. Which, however, I don’t; see above.