Is ‘a = a’ Apriori?
Abstract
There are two theses associated with Frege’s puzzle of informative identity, namely,
(1) there are informative and noninformative identities, and (2) identities of the
form ‘a = b’ are informative, while those of the form ‘a = a’ are not. It will be
argued that (2) is false. ‘a = a’ and ‘a = b’ may be equally informative. This will
be shown to lead to a problem different from the problem of informativity: a sense
will be unable to determine the reference of a name.
Keywords
philosophy; 20th century philosophy; Frege's puzzle; informative identity; name; sense; reference; type; token
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