The Seminars of Philosophy of Perception, Mind, and Language
The Seminars of Perception, Mind, and Language (former Seminars of Philosophy of Language and Mind) take place every year since 2001 at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Milan. The meetings aim at being an opportunity for people working in analytic philosophy to debate the latest directions of research.
The meetings are structured as a 45-50 minutes presentation, followed by an extensive discussion time. They are open to anyone interested in the topic, especially undergraduate and Ph.D. students. The language of the talks is either Italian or English.
Giulia Felappi (King's College, London)
June 23 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Identity, 'that'-clauses and the allegedly face-value account
Abstract:
Complement clauses introduced by a ‘that’, which typically occur in sentences like
Olga believes that Cicero is smart
Olga’s reason is that Cicero is smart
It is true that Cicero is smart
It is possible that Cicero is smart
The proposition that Cicero is smart is true,
are usually called ‘that’-clauses. It is no exaggeration to say that for the past two thousand years or so we mostly all took for granted that ‘that’-clauses are singular terms. The traditional theory is also taken to be the face-value theory, i.e. the theory supposed to be in accordance with how things intuitively look.
In this paper, I will deal with what I take to be the strongest reason to reject the face-value theory, which is the datum that ‘that’-clauses simply do not behave like singular terms in identity statements. I will start by briefly discussing different strategies to resist the face-value theory that have been put forward in the literature and show why they do not seem either good or conclusive. Then I will present the stronger case of identity statements and what I will call the argument from identity to the effect that ‘that’-clauses are not singular terms. I will show that none of the possible attempts at resisting the argument seems promising. Still, the outcome will not be that the face-value theory is definitely false. The general conclusion will be that the theory does not have the special status of the face-value theory.