[FOM] Simmons' denotation paradoxes

[Hartley Slater]

Now (FOM Digest, Vol 2 issue 20) Sandy Hodges asks me to analyse a fourth case:

Peter Abelard makes the two utterances only:
    "17."
    "The sum of the numbers referred to attributively by Heloise,
               in her utterances about which there is no choice
                 as to whether they are attributive or not."
and Heloise says only:
    "62."
   "The sum of the numbers referred to attributively by Master Abelard,
               in his utterances about which there is no choice
                 as to whether they are attributive or not."

But what is the novelty?  If the two 'sum' expressions are 
attributive, and there was no choice as to whether they were 
attributive or not, then we would get the same two, non-satisfiable, 
simultaneous equations in two variables as arose in the last two 
cases I analysed before.  Hence the two 'sum' expressions are not 
both attributive with no choice about them being attributive.  But 
that still allows them, even both, to be attributive by choice, and 
then to refer to 62 and 17 respectively.


-- 
Barry Hartley Slater
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Philosophy, School of Humanities
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley WA 6009, Australia
Ph: (08) 9380 1246 (W), 9386 4812 (H)
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Url: http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/PhilosWWW/Staff/slater.html