Evans on Scheingedanke
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31977/grirfi.v19i2.1141Keywords:
Philosophy of language;Ttheories of reference; Singular thoughts; Evans; Frege; Epistemology.Abstract
Gareth Evans has proposed, in The Varieties of Reference, a theory of singular propositions which embody both Frege’s speculations about sense (Sinn) and Russell’s propositional object-dependence structure. For this purpose, he maintained that propositions containing empty singular terms, i.e., whose putatively denoted objects are non-existent, do not express any thoughts of this type. In this situation, someone who utters a sentence that contains an empty singular term can only express an apparent thought (Scheingedanke). Evans’ interpretation of Frege was criticized in works of philosophers such as Bell (1990), Geirsson (2002) and Sainsbury (2002). In this article, I aim to continue this debate and review the objections against Evan’s argument regarding the concept of Scheingedanke. I maintain that, though the work of these critics is based on a careful reading of Frege, it is not enough to dismiss Evan’s thesis. Instead, I claim that his theory would be better appreciated in an epistemic, not purely exegetical, sphere. This appears to me to be closer to the author’s intended approach regarding the theory of singular thoughts.
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