Frege, Tichý
and the U.S. President

Frege thought that a definite description like "the U.S. president" is a good means to refer to a particular man, for it expresses a descriptive determiner which (in suitable circumstances) picks out just one man. Russell suggested that descriptions should not be regarded as referring expressions at all: the proper logical analysis of the sentence

(1) The U.S. president is a democrat

should analyze "the U.S. president" away by means of predicates, quantifiers, variables and logical connectives. Pavel Tichý argues that a descriptive phrase is a genuine referring expression, but its referent is the descriptive determiner itself rather than the entity picked out by it. So "the U.S. president" does not stand for a man but for the concept of being the U.S. president: and "the man who occupies the office of the U.S. president" does not, as one might expect, stand for a man but rather for the concept of being the man who...; after Frege's famous claim that "the concept of a horse" does not stand for a concept (Begriff) this should not be found too extravagant.

Nobody will probably deny that the phrase "the present U.S. president", when uttered now, relates the utterer to Clinton, and Tichý's theory can account for this very simply: Clinton just happens to be the man picked out by the descriptive determiner referred to by the phrase. But he is not the referent of the phrase and, since Tichý wants to keep direct correspondence between the notions of reference and aboutness, a sentence like (1) cannot be used to say anything about Clinton. This should not be regarded as a mere terminological shift but rather as the only way out of the absurdities to which the Fregean account inevitably leads. Tichý displays these absurdities in a way which should be sufficient to release the rest of the philosophical community (more precisely, 99 per cent of it, according to Tichý's guess) from the Fregean dogma, although the widespread resistance to rational arguments makes him rather skeptical [TICHY 1992, 1-2]. But this is still too modest an estimation of the mess: I am afraid that not only most philosophers but even most people with quite respectable professions would insist that the sentence (1), as uttered now, says something about Bill Clinton; surprisingly enough, most of these people have probably never heard about Frege. This indicates some deep deviation for which Frege is not directly responsible.

I shall pay some attention to this regrettable phenomenon in part (I) of this paper - but shall not put too much weight on it. To be honest, I would be happy to have a theoretical notion of reference or aboutness which corresponds as much as possible to our ordinary use of phrases like "X said so and so about Y": but, I agree, it must not lead to absurdities. I would say that the Fregean or Strawsonian account of descriptions (a simple version of which will be sketched in part (II)), meets the former condition better than its rivals: but Tichý (and others) have argued that it does not meet the latter. Still, with the first condition satisfied one is tempted to defend the doctrine, however prominent the critics are. I cannot resist the temptation, as the reader will see in part (III): there I shall try to show that at least some of Tichý's arguments against Frege are not fatal.¹

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I Conversation exercise

Mary: (2) The man who plaid saxophone at the party invited me for a drink.

John: (3) Are you speaking about the U.S. president?

Mary: (4) Yes, about Clinton.

I would say that the sequence of (2), (3), (4) constitutes a nice (or at least not defective) dialogue: but this presupposes that I admit (on the level on which the conversation takes place) that "the man who played saxophone at the party", "the U.S.president" and "Clinton" may be used to speak about the same person. If I decided to apply here Tichý's notion of aboutness (I am not suggesting that Tichý would encourage me to do so), I would have to refuse John's question as pointless and recommend to Mary the following reply: "How could I be speaking about the U.S. president when I was saying 'the man who played saxophone at the party'"? I suspect that this replica would be regarded as strange unless there were reasons to believe that Mary believed that the saxophonist was not the U.S. president: then the reply would be regarded as based on a false presupposition.

This is not to deny that Tichý's account can be practically useful in ordinary communication. Let us imagine the following conversation:

Koťátko (hoping that Clinton is in the White House):

(5) The U.S. president cannot play saxophone.

Clinton (surprisingly present in Koťátko's flat):

(6) You have said about me that I cannot play saxophone?

I would find my position hopeless. But Tichý could (I guess he would not) recommend the following defence: "Be quiet, Bill: the only thing I was speaking about was the concept of the U.S. president." This would not be, even from Tichý's point of view, too good excuse, for although I have not said anything at all about Clinton, I have, according to Tichý, succeeded to predicate to Clinton that he was drunk. But I would at least put Clinton to shame for asking silly questions. The problem is that, our conversational practices being as they are, I would rather succeed to stultify myself.

The Fregean account of descriptions provides a notion of reference which perfectly corresponds to these examples of the ordinary use of "about". Moreover, it enables us to preserve the "naive" account of predication: in the subject-predicate sentences the predicate is used to say something about (to ascribe something to) the entity the sentence speaks about. Tichý has to say that this is so only in sentences like

(7) The U.S. president is electible

where the predicate applies to the referent of the description, namely to the concept of the U.S. president. But it is not so in sentences like:

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(1) The U.S. president is a democrat

where, the referent being again the concept, the predicate applies to the person, if any, picked out (in the time of the utterance) by that concept.²

Needless to repeat, Tichý would hardly feel tempted to interfere with the ordinary conversation in the way I have described. Not only he but most authors dealing with descriptions would probably insist that they need not care about our ordinary use of the word "about" (in phrases like "X said so and so about Y") when they try to say something about the nature of aboutness (or reference) in itself. I cannot claim that such an ambition makes clear sense to me; but also cannot a priori exclude that any theory of descriptions which follows the ordinary practices in using the word "about" in the way I have suggested inevitably leads to absurd results. This is what Tichý claims to have shown and we shall soon discuss some of his arguments. But let me first briefly summarize the position I would like to advocate.

II What are the descriptions for

(a) Sometimes we want to say something about some individual and neither know its name nor are able to point to it; or we for some reason do not want to use any of these means. Then we may still identify for the audience the individual we want to speak about by specifying some properties which are in the time of the utterance uniquely satisfied by it. It seems natural to acknowledge this role of descriptions by admitting that they can be used to refer to individuals. The referent is that individual which satisfies the description in the time of its utterance.

(b) Definite description is then a referential expression, but just in that sense that it can be used to refer, not in the sense that it in itself has a referent: the latter can, in this account, be said only about its utterances. Then also a sentence-type with a description as a referential term cannot be said to be about anything: this can be said just about its utterances. (So the sentence (1) surely does not mention Clinton, but its utterance can, under suitable circumstances.) The same holds with respect to the truth-value. These points have been made most explicitly in [Strawson 1950].

(c) Although in this account "the U.S.president", "the man who played saxophone at the party" and "Bill Clinton" have, in particular circumstances, the same referent, they identify the referent in different ways and this in itself makes a difference to the claims made by means of sentences including these expressions. This is, indeed, the principle of the famous solution of "Frege's Puzzle" (cf. [Frege 1892]): but let me put the point in non-Fregean terms. Let us distinguish two ways of the individuation of a claim made by an utterance of a sentence. Firstly, the claim may be identified in terms of its conceptual content, i.e. in terms of what is grasped by anybody who understands the sentence uttered (this amounts to the identification of Kaplan's "sentence character", cf. [KAPLAN 1989]): let me call this "identification de dicto". Secondly, it may be identified by the specification of the entity it is about and of what is asserted about it: let this be called

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"identification de re". So, claims made by the utterances of (1) in l99O and in 1994 are identical de dicto but not de re, while the claims made now by the utterances of (1) and of

(8) Clinton is a democrat

are identical de re but not de dicto. The claims made now by two utterances of (8) are identical both de dicto and de re: in such a case I will simply say that the claims are identical. In this account, it makes good sense to say that somebody may understand the claim made now by the utterance of (1) as well as the claim made now by the utterance of (8) and not to know that they are about the same person. In such a case he grasps both claims de dicto (he grasps the sentence characters). But in virtue of this he also grasps them - each of them separately - de re. He knows that the first claim is about the person who (in the time of the utterance) occupies the post of the U.S. president (a perfect means of identifying a person!) and the second about a person named Clinton (quite good too, provided that all Clintons but one are eliminated by some other factor). What he does not know is just that both means of identification pick out the same person. Hence X is not in a position to see the de re identity of both claims. That's why he can quite rationally assent to one of them and to reject the other one. (This, according to the Fregean criterion, shows that in both utterances two different thoughts are expressed. Cf. [EVANS 1982, 18 ff].)

Analogically, we can distinguish claim reports de re (individuating de re the claim they ascribe to somebody) from reports de dicto (individuating de dicto the claim, i.e. reproducing its conceptual content).

No matter how is the account characterized in (a) - (c) related to Frege's actual position, it is based on what Tichý calls "Frege's Thesis". This is the thesis that a descriptive phrase can refer to (or can be used to speak about) the entity satisfying the description.³ So I will be perhaps allowed to call the position, I am presenting here, for short, Fregean. Now it is time to confront it with Tichý's arguments.

III Tichý's arguments

A The syllogism behind

The first point should not be perhaps presented as an objection at all. Tichý's followers like to stress that to get from a sentence like (1) any information about particular individual, a syllogism with an additional premise is needed. For example:

(i) The U.S. president is a democrat.

(ii) Clinton is the U.S. president.

(iii) Clinton is a democrat.

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The holder of the Fregean thesis will say that this nicely displays the "mechanism" owing to which (1) says (when uttered now) something about Clinton. The "intermediary" premise (ii) makes explicit the contribution of external reality to this achievement: it just specifies what we mean by "things being as they are" when saying that things being as they are, (1) says about Clinton that he is a democrat. It is precisely our thesis that "the U.S. president" refers through such a mediation: so the polemics has not yet started.

According to many authors, this position has a consequence which should be avoided: it makes the identification of the claim made by the utterance of (1) dependent on the state of the world (in addition to its dependence on the time of the utterance). Needless to add, this dependence could concern only the de re identification of the claim. What could it then mean? Obviously it cannot mean that to identify the claim one has to know the name of the present U.S. president, or to be able to point to him, or to have any other means of identifying him over and above the description "the U.S. president" itself. The description is perfectly sufficient provided that you know the time of the utterance (which you must know in order to identify the claim even if you are a Tichian): when reproducing the claim, you just use the description as related to that time and that is enough. This enterprise fails only if no claim has been made by the utterance of (1), which happens when "the U.S. president" does not pick out any person. Many authors feel uncomfortable about the idea that it depends on the state of the world whether a claim (something with a truth value) is made by an utterance of a sentence like (1).⁴ But I will not comment this attitude here, since Tichý does not share it. His theory has precisely the same controversial consequence: no object picked out by the descriptive determiner - no truth value.

B Lack of generality

One objection is that the Fregean account makes it impossible to regard the referential function of any particular description and the truth conditions of a sentence which includes it as determined by a general principle: rather, we are left with principles ad hoc for each particular world/time.⁵ As far as I can see, the objection lacks any ground. Consider the following principle: "The (contemporary) U.S. president" refers with respect to the actual world, whenever uttered, to that man (if any) who happens to be in the actual world at the time of the utterance the U.S. president. And with respect to any possible world W and any time t, "the U.S. president" refers to that person (if any) who is the U.S.president in W at t. And for any W, t, the sentence

(1) The U.S. president is a democrat

is true in W at t if and only if there is just one person who happens to be the U.S. president in W at t and that person is a democrat. This certainly defines a class of world/times. These principles are, I would say, perfectly general. The role of external facts (related to particular world/times) in determining the reference is here specified in a quite general and also exhaustive way: nothing is left underdetermined (so that no additional ad hoc principles are required). So, once the world/time is fixed, the referent of "the U.S. president" (if any) is fixed and so is fixed the person (if any) whose being or not being a democrat makes (1) true or

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false. Then, if I know that Clinton is at present that person, I can say that in the actual world at present the truth of (1) depends on whether Clinton is a democrat or not: this is just one particular instance of the general principle determining the truth conditions of (1). This, of course, does not mean that the name "Clinton" enters in any relevant way into the truth conditions of (1). I have just used it to identify the individual in question: but "the husband of the most ambitious American lady", "that man at the bar", etc. could do the same job under suitable circumstances (under those circumstances in which they picked out Clinton). When correctly specifying the state of affairs which would make (1) now true, I cannot (things being as they are) avoid speaking about Clinton, although I need not know that he is called "Clinton".

In Tichý' s story about truth-conditions Clinton plays exactly the same role, no matter that the concept of American president rather than Clinton is regarded as the referent of the description. If it is Clinton who is picked out by the concept now in the actual world, it is him whose party membership is relevant.⁶

C Cognitive import and triviality

Let us consider with Tichý the following example:

(11) The U.S. president is white.

Tichý has a couple of questions for those who believe that "the U.S. president" refers, things being as they are, to Clinton. Here is how he prepares the ground for them:

(a) "It would be absurd for anyone who takes this view to maintain that the sentence nevertheless asserts nothing about Clinton. Surely there is a little point in referring to a man if one has nothing to say about him."

(b) What then (11) says about the man? "The only conceivable answer seems to be that it ascribes to him the property of being white."

(c) "But then the assertive content of (11) would be no different from that of

(l2) Bill Clinton is white." [TICHY MAN, 29].

I have two points to make here. The first is that (c) follows from (a) and (b) only if "the assertive content" is individuated purely de re (in the sense explained in part II). But this is just not Frege's assertive content, which amounts to the proposition (Gedanke) expressed. The full blooded reproduction of the Fregean assertive content cannot reduce the contribution of referring expressions to it to their reference but must be sensitive to their sense: and this obviously differs in (11) and (12). If you wish to restrict your use

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of "assertoric content" to the de re reading then you will indeed obtain (c), but it will be hardly too big achievement in your polemics with Frege, since you simply do not account for his position.

The second point is that what is said in (a)-(c), while apparently not creating real problems for Frege, opens a problem for everybody who accepts Tichý's account of descriptions but wants to regard proper names as expressions referring to individuals. If the last claim in (a) is obvious (as I think it is), so must be the corresponding claim: "There is little point in referring to a concept if one has nothing to say about it". Then, proceeding with Tichý to (b), we must ask what (11) says according to him about the concept of the U.S. president. Obviously not that it is white, but rather that it is occupied by somebody white [TICHY 1978]. This, according to Tichý's formulations in (b), should entitle us to say that (11) ascribes to the concept of the U.S. president the property of being occupied by somebody who is white. Tichý also (quite naturally) requires that the predicate refers to what it is used to ascribe to something⁷. But the predicate "white" can be hardly generally interpreted as referring to the property of being occupied by somebody (or something) white: this would imply a plainly absurd analysis of (12), provided that you interpret "Clinton" as referring to particular man. (Needless to add, the same problem appears if you replace "Clinton" by "he"). The only way out seems to be to regard "white" as a different predicate in (11) and (12): but this way is hardly open to somebody who is so ironical as Tichý when criticizing other authors for their allegedly ad hoc (as opposed to general) accounts of expression meanings.⁸

After the considerations we have summarized in (a)-(c) Tichý raises his questions: here are they together with replies which I find quite obvious:

Question: (11) and (12) in Fregean reading "mention the same man and ascribe the same property to him. How can this be squared with the obvious fact that the two sentences express two logically independent facts?" [TICHY MAN, 29].

Reply: Very easily. The very fact that both sentences (as used now) speak about the same entity is, in the Fregean account, indeed an empirical fact: remember that the thesis which you want to challenge is just that the referent of the description is whatever (or whoever) happens, as a matter of empirical fact, to satisfy it when it is used. So the Fregean approach does not at all imply that there is some a priori connection between the truth values of both sentences: just things being as they are, (11) and (12) (as used now) cannot but be both true or both false.

Question: How can the claim that (11) and (12) mention the same man and ascribe the same entity to him "be squared with the fact that (11) conveys factual information about the American presidential office - implying as it does that the office has a white incumbent -while (12) does no such things?" [TICHY MAN, 29].

Reply: Quite trivially. In Frege's account, both sentences, although they happen to speak (when used now) about the same person, differ in the way in which the person is identified (differ in the "mode of presentation" of that person). In the first case the person is identified as a (unique) holder of certain office:

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no wonder then that the sentence has implications concerning that office. In the second case it is simply not so.

D What is known a priori

Challenge: "It is natural to think that it is an a priori matter, as regards a factually non-trivial sentence, to determine what particular factual claim it makes, and an a posteriori matter to determine whether that claim is true. It is interesting to note that if Frege's Thesis were right then things would be exactly the other way around." [TICHY MAN, 29].

(a) "On the one hand, more often than not speakers would not know what they are talking about. A detective, who says 'Mrs Smith's murderer is white', names, according to the thesis, a particular person and ascribes whiteness to that person. Yet, unless he has already cracked the case, he has no idea which particular person it is. The detective thus does not know what particular factual claim he has himself made." [TICHY MAN, 29].

Reply: It would be interesting to know what does it according to Tichý mean for the detective "to know which particular person it is". If somebody, like Frege, regards definite descriptions as means of identification of individuals (even the best possible means, indeed), it is natural for him to say that the detective, when using the phrase "Mrs Smith's murderer" and understanding it, knows very well whom he is speaking about: about Mrs Smith's murderer. (This has been stressed in the part (A).) Quite another point is that the detective in Tichý's story still asks "who is Mrs Smith's murderer": this does not mean that "Mrs Smith's murderer" is not a perfect identification but just that the detective (for practical reasons connected with his job, I guess) would like to have also another one, most probably one which will help to arrest the person. Perhaps he would be happy to have the proper name. But remember that for Frege a name is a disguised description. Hence we remain in the same category: just the descriptive content will change. Of course, also a name can be, again for practical reasons, found unsatisfactory, so that one can still ask: "Mr Jones, yes, but who it is ?" And the same may be the case with deictic identification: I can be able to point to a person but still ask who it is - for example when I wish to have some identification less bound to my momentary perceptive situation and more suitable for being communicated to other people. In short, I do not see, unlike many authors, any reason to regard generally (i.e. without respect to particular cognitive or communicative purpose) one kind of identification more valuable than others.

(b) "On the other hand, it can be shown that, if the (Fregean) thesis were right, any fact could be knowable a priori." Since the argument for this claim has been given in one of the previous volumes of this journal [TICHY 1992], I shall not reproduce it here: let me just briefly summarize its principle. The trick consists in defining a property P in such a way that it must be uniquely satisfied by one of two objects, A or B (arbitrarily chosen and fixed in the definition). Which one of them it is depends, owing to the construction

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of the definition of P, on whether some (arbitrarily chosen and fixed in the definition of P) factual statement S is true or not. Let us say that S is true, and that this implies that A is the P. Now comes the crucial point: it is an a priori truth that

(i) the P is a P.

According to Tichý, Frege's Thesis implies that if A is the only bearer of P, "A" is substitutable for "the P" and so we obtain

(ii) A is a P.

This in turn (as a consequence of the definition of P) logically entails that S is true. Hence if S is true, it is entailed by an a priori known statement (i) and so must be also knowable a priori. And analogically for S's being false.

An important presupposition of the argument is the a priori knowability of (i). This requires, I would say, the following qualification. What is a priori knowable is the general principle that whatever uniquely bears some property, bears that property: let me put it so that we a priori know de dicto that (i) is true. But we do not a priori know about any entity which happens to be the only bearer of P that it is a bearer of P, since we do not a priori know about any entity that it is the only bearer of P. So the a priori knowability of (i) does not equip us with any a priori knowledge de re. In our particular case we know that if A is the unique bearer of P, it is a bearer of P, and analogically for B. But we do not a priori know whether it is A or B what uniquely bears the property P (and hence is picked out by "the P") and so even if A happens to be the P, we do not a priori know the truth of (ii) in virtue of (i).

Now, the substitution of "A" for "the P" preserves the de re identity of the statement (i) and its truth value (provided that A is the only bearer of P), but not its de dicto identity: so the (de dicto) a priori knowability of (i) is not transferred on the result of the substitution (ii). So, although (ii) within Tichý's construction entails S, this cannot endow S with a priori knowability. Hence the Frege's Thesis cannot serve in this way to intermediate the catastrophe desired by Tichý.

But one can argue simpler: (i) implies S only provided that the substitution leading from (i) to (ii) salva veritate is possible. But it is possible only if A is the P, which we by no means know a priori. In Tichý's argument it follows from S's being true. So the substitution leading from (i) to (ii) is justified by S's being true. Then unless we already presuppose what is to be proved, namely that the truth of S is knowable a priori, we are not justified to conclude that S's being entailed by (ii) implies its a priori knowability: for an a priori knowledge surely cannot depend on an a posteriori knowledge.

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E Identity statements and more interesting cases

Consider following examples:

(12) Clinton is the U.S. president.

(13) Clinton is Clinton.

What is, according to the Frege's thesis, the relevant relation between (12) and (13), provided that we analyze (12) as an identity statement? Just that when they are uttered now (things being as they are) the claims made are identical de re. This does not justify free interchangeability of "the U.S. president" and "Clinton" in (12) and (13). The only substitution justified is in de re reports or de re reproductions. It would be incorrect to claim without this qualification that, according to Frege, (12) and (13) say (when uttered now) the same: such claim would simply ignore the famous solution of Frege's Puzzle⁹. But it would be even absurd to continue in the following way: since (12) collapses to (13), it should be regarded as a tautology - which shows that Frege's thesis is untenable. Even if we took (12) as saying (if uttered now, things being as they are) the same as (13), it would not turn (12) into a sentence which is true whenever uttered with respect to all possible world/times: for (12) says, by supposition, the same as (13) just with respect to those possible world/times in which Clinton happens to be the U.S. president. This condition amounts to the truth condition of (12): so it is, indeed, trivial to say that in all these cases the claims made by utterances of (12) are true. Needless to add, this does not imply that we know the truth of those claims a priori, for we do not know a priori when is this condition fulfilled.

It can be surely said about identity statements that if they are true, they state identity of an entity with itself: tautological are then those identity statements which exhibit in their logical form that they are doing just this. But non-tautological identity statements like (12) do more: they say that an entity identified in one way is identical with an entity identified in another way. That's why their cognitive import is not preserved by de re paraphrases reducing them to tautologies.

If regarding descriptions as referring to individuals really resulted in the collapse of (12) to (13), the same would hold for

(14) This man is Clinton.

Provided that we analyze (14) as an identity statement and that we take the deictic expression "this man", uttered with a pointing gesture, as referring to the man picked out by the gesture, it is obvious that if (12) collapses to (13), then (14) must collapse to (13), too. And analogically for:

(15) Bolingbroke is Henry IV.

If both names refer to the same person (as we are told by Shakespeare) and if coreferentiality of referring expressions in (12) makes it to collapse to (13) (as we are told by Tichý), then (15) must collapse to:

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(16) Bolingbroke is Bolingbroke.

Needless to add, similar remarks like about (12) can be made about

(17) The husband of the most ambitious U.S. lady is the U.S. president.

But perhaps some other sentences give a better chance to embarrass Frege. Let us consider this one:

(18) Perot wants to be the U.S. president.

According to Tichý, Frege's thesis compels us to regard (l8), when uttered now, as saying the same as

(19) Perot wants to be Clinton,

which is (supposed by Tichý to be) absurd. In Frege's account, (l8) and (19) do not say the same (they express different thoughts), which has been stressed enough above. But one can weaken the first part of Tichý's point by saying that, according to the Fregean account, (18), as uttered now, implies (19), or, alternatively, that (19) is a good de re paraphrase of the statement made by the utterance of (18). An obvious reply is that this, indeed, corresponds to one of intuitively quite natural readings of (18). Imagine that after (18) has been uttered, somebody asks "Why?" and receives the reply (a): "Because he loves Mrs. Clinton (and believes that she desperately loves Clinton)." And alternatively, imagine that the reply is (b): "Because he loves power (and believes that he deserves it more than Clinton)." The reply (a) makes most natural that reading of (18), according to which "the U.S. president" has been used to refer to Clinton; while (b) rather indicates that it has been used to refer to the office, or that "to be the U.S. president" specifies certain property. In the first case (18) is used to say that Perot wants to become Clinton, in the second case that he wants to occupy the office of the U.S. president (or wants to have the property of being the U.S. president). The latter reading can be, in terms of possible worlds, put as follows: Perot wants that the actual world is one of those worlds in which Perot is the U.S. president. Why should Fregeans feel committed to maintain that "the U.S. president", used here to specify the set of possible worlds preferred by Perot, refers to what is picked out by it in the actual world? The Fregean thesis is just that if the definite description is used with respect to a fixed world/time, it refers to the entity (if any) which uniquely satisfies it. Once we relate "the U.S. president", as occurring in (18), to the actual world/time, we get the first reading, which can be in terms of possible worlds put as follows: Perot wants the actual world to be one of those worlds in which Perot is identical with the person who occupies in the actual world (at the time of the utterance) the post of the U.S. president. (This, of course, admits among the preferred worlds also those in which that person is not the U.S. president.) Notice that in this reading of (18) "the U.S. president", as occurring there, is interpreted as a rigid designator (but not a la Tichý): namely, as used with respect to all possible worlds to pick out the individual which in the actual world happens to be in the time of the utterance the U.S. president. The sentence (18) is clearly ambiguous and any account imposing a uniform analysis on it is arrogant to language. From the

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adherents of Frege's thesis this requires to admit that "the U.S. president" is not in all its occurrences used to refer to individuals: but this is what they anyway must admit with respect to other cases, like (5). Tichý, as already mentioned, preserves here unambiguity of the descriptive phrase but on pain of admitting ambiguity of another kind: predicate once applies to the referent of the subject-expression (concept) and once not (c.f. part (II) above).

Let us now consider in this light another example:

(2O) In some world, the U.S. president is not a Democrat. [TICHY PAP, PART 4]¹⁰

Tichý asks Fregeans who does "the U.S. president" stand for here. Well, imagine that (2O) is uttered as a reply to one of the following questions:

(a) Is the U.S. president really as intimately bound with the Democratic party as his wife says, so that he could not exist without being a Democrat ?

(b) Is it possible for somebody who is not a Democrat to occupy the post of the U.S. president ?

In the reply to (a), the phrase "the U.S. president" is used as a rigid designator in the sense specified above and the sentence is used to say that there is a world in which the person who in the actual world/time happens to occupy the post of the U.S. president (i.e. Clinton) is not a Democrat. In reply to (b) the sentence is used to say that there is a world in which the person who in that world occupies the office of the U.S. president is not a Democrat. Since no world is fixed here, the Fregean thesis does not commit us to insist that "the U.S. president" is used to refer to particular individual. A natural thing to say here is that it is not used to refer at all: it is used to specify the class of possible worlds about which the utterer claims that it is not empty. But it is equally compatible with the intuitive notion of aboutness to say that the phrase is here used to refer to the office of the U.S. president. Then we can interpret the difference between both uses of (2O) as a difference in reference. Tichý will have to put it again as a difference in predication: he will have to say that in the case (a) the predicate "is a Democrat" applies to what is picked out by the concept referred to by "the U.S. president", while in the case (b) it applies to that concept itself. But then we face again the problem of the kind noticed in C (with respect to sentences (11) and (12): the predicate in the case (a) and (b) cannot be the same. In the case (b) it should be understood as specifying the property of being occupied by a Democrat while in the case (a) this reading would be absurd. (The same point could have been made above with respect to (18).)

Another sentence which, according to Tichý, should put Fregeans to troubles is:

(21) John contemplates the morning star and fishes on it. [TICHY 1992, 7]

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Here it is most natural to think of "the morning star" and "it" as co-referential, which cannot be the case if we, following Frege's account of indirect contexts, regard "the morning star" in its occurrence in (21) as referring to the sense which "the morning star" has in direct contexts. But the acceptance of Frege's thesis does not commit us to Frege's account of indirect contexts. In part (II) we have distinguished de re and de dicto claim reports and, obviously, the same can be done for beliefs reports. So

(22) John contemplates the morning star,

if interpreted as a de dicto belief report, is true if it correctly reproduces the content of John's belief (the belief must include a descriptive element corresponding to "the morning star"). On the other side, this use of (22) does not commit the reporter to the existence of the morning star. In the de re reading it goes the other way round: the use of (22) commits the reporter to the existence of the morning star and to its being the entity picked out by some element in John's belief: but it is irrelevant to the truth of the report whether the intentional content of this element corresponds to the description "the morning star" or not. Now, it is surely most natural to interpret the first sentence of (21) as a de re belief report, because the second part definitely commits the utterer to the existence of the morning star. In this reading "it" and "the morning star" are used to refer to the same thing, as we have wished.

But even for those who insist on the Fregean account of indirect contexts there is a way how to cope with (21). They can claim that the function of "it" in (21) does not require that it is used to refer to the same entity as "the morning star": it is sufficient that their referential functions are related in certain way. From their point of view, it is obvious what the relation is: "it" is used to refer to the entity picked out by the descriptive identifier referred to by "the morning star" in this occurrence. This construction is, I would say, less natural than the previous account treating both expressions as correferential. But Tichý should not complain too much about this: for it is no more natural to claim, as he must, that the predicates in (21) apply to two different entities: "contemplates" to the ordered couple [John, the concept referred to by "the morning star"], while "fishes on" to [John, the entity picked out by the concept referred to by "the morning star"]. A natural account of the unity of (21) should, I would say, take both predicates as applying to the same entity.

IV Concluding remark

I do not claim to have shown that the Fregean (or the Strawsonian) account of descriptions is sound, while Tichý's is not: in fact, I have only said little about both. All I have tried to show is that the Frege's Thesis can survive some of Tichý's arguments. When doing this I have pointed to some features of the general notion of reference or aboutness which I connect with the Frege's Thesis. But I have not discussed that notion as such, i.e. as a kind of a general philosophical position. Perhaps it can be put as the thesis that one of the ways in which language or thought can be about external objects is based on its ability to identify those objects via stating general, conceptually determined conditions and that the aboutness

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established in this way is, in principle, neither parasitic upon, nor in any sense weaker than, the aboutness based on direct experience. It is a special power of human thought and language (in contrast to the pre-human forms of intellect and communication) that its aboutness can be so emancipated from any direct perceptual contact with objects and hence also from the ego-centric perspective to which such contacts are essentially bound.¹¹ But the claim that the aboutness of thought and language in some cases goes via conceptual identification should not be perverted into the claim that in those cases the conceptual identifier itself, rather than the thing identified, is to be regarded as the object of the thought or utterance, i.e. as that entity the thought or utterance is about. This is, I would say, the philosophical background of my inability to accept Tichý's theory of descriptions.

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Notes

1. Some of Tichý's challenges to Frege's account of descriptions appear in the clearest and sharpest form in texts which have not been yet published: or at least I have found them there. I take the liberty of reacting to them in this paper and hope to be forgiven by the author. In particular, I have in mind [TICHY PAP] and [TICHY MAN].

2. Tichý insists that sentences cannot be ambiguous in this respect, since the reading is always determined by the type of predicate: "predicates ascribable to characters are, as a rule, not ascribable to individuals and vice versa" [TICHY 1978]. But what about predicates like "has been just mentioned" or "is indispensable" ? Some problems with this view on predication will be mentioned later, in part (III C and E).

3. In [TICHY MAN, 26] it is characterized as "the thesis that an expression whose meaning can be represented by a determiner is not a name of the determiner itself but rather of the object, if any, determined by it".

4. This was, indeed, one of Russell's motives for excluding descriptions from the class of referring expressions, as they are presented in [RUSSELL 1905]. This argument is often evaluated as the most serious one: cf. e.g. [EVANS 1985, 52] or [NEALE 1990, Ch.2].

5. This is how I understand [TICHY PAP, PART 5].

6. Cf. [TICHY 1978, 7]: "Thus in a verification procedure of a de re sentence the character plays a somewhat limited role: it is only used to pick out the individual which bears it. Once this is done, the character is set aside and one works solely with that individual." Among the sentences including descriptions, de re sentences are in the article specified as those in which the predicate applies to the individual bearing the character (concept) referred to by the description, rather than to the character itself.

7. His argument against Frege's account of predicates in [TICHY MAN, 27] is based on this requirement.

8. Cf. his criticism of Kripke [TICHY PAP, Ch.5].

9. Tichý makes such claim e.g. in [TICHY PAP, 6].

10. I am replacing "Republican" in Tichý's example by "Democrat", to account for changes in political situation.

11. This is not to say that the aboutness of thought or language can have a "purely" conceptual basis: our conceptual apparatus itself and its functions, including the one just mentioned, are, in rather complicated ways but essentially, related to experience.

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Reference

[EVANS 1982] G.Evans, The Varieties of Reference, Oxford UP

[FREGE 1892] G.Frege, Über Sinn und Bedeutung, Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, NF 100, p. 25-50; reprinted in: G.Frege, Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung, Göttingen 1966

[KAPLAN 1989] D.Kaplan, Demonstratives: An Essay on Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics and Epistemology of Demonstratives and Other Indexicals, in: J.Almong, J.Perry, H.Wettstein (eds.), Themes from Kaplan, Oxford UP

[NEALE 1990] S.Neale, Descriptions, M.I.T.

[RUSSELL 1905] B.Russell, On Denoting, Mind 14, reprinted in: R.C.Marsch (ed.), Logic and Knowledge, London 1956

[STRAWSON 1950] P.F.Strawson, On Referring, Mind 59, reprinted in: P.F.Strawson, Logico-Linguistic Papers, London 1971

[TICHY 1978] P. Tichý, De Dicto and De Re, Philosophia, Vol.8, No 1

[TICHY 1992] P. Tichý, Sinn & Bedeutung Reconsidered, From the Logical Point of View, Vol.I, No 2

[TICHY PAP] P. Tichý, The Myth of Non-Rigid Designators, paper presented at the symposium Sense and Reference, Karlovy Vary 1992

[TICHY MAN] P. Tichý, manuscript

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