Frege: Sinn

The debate over whether the basic principles of Frege's philosophy of semantics committed him to the hierarchy of indirect senses is adjudicated. It is demonstrated by means of a simple device that Frege was indeed committed to the hierarchy.

In §8 of hisBegriffsschrift(1879), Gottlob Frege discusses issues related to identity. Frege begins his most famous essay,“On Sense and Denotation”(1892),published 13 years later, by criticizing the view advocated in §8. He returns to theseissues in the concluding paragraph. Controversies continue over these importantpassages. We offer an interpretation and discuss some alternatives. We defend thatin theBegriffsschrift,Frege does not hold that identity is a relation between signs.§8 of theBegriffsschriftis motivated by the conflict between two differentcriteria for sameness of conceptual content of sentences. (...) To resolve that conflict,Frege introduces‘≡’in §8 and, thus, circumstances with names as constituents. Tothe same end, in“On Sense and Denotation,”Frege introduces senses andThoughts and abandons both ‘≡’ and circumstances. He solves what we call theCo-instantiation problem, and disregards, but does not solve, the Name problem. (shrink)

This paper argues against the claim that Frege is committed to an infinite hierarchy of senses. Carnap and Kripke, along with many others, argue the contrary; I expose where all such arguments go astray. Invariably these arguments assume (without citation) that Frege holds that sense and reference are always distinct. This is the fulcrum upon which the hierarchy is hoisted. The counter to this assumption is based on two important but neglected passages. The locution ‘indirect sense’ has no ontological significance (...) for Frege. It was just a ‘short expression’ (his term) to indicate that the customary relation between sign, sense, and reference is suspended in what he called the exception case of indirect context. Once the hierarchy is abandoned, the alleged problem of just what indirect sense is, as well as questions as to why Frege said so little about it and why he did not examine iterative indirect contexts are resolved. Of course, with no hierarchy, Davidson’s “unlearnability argument” turns out to be a non-starter. Some objections to my interpretation are considered and answered. Additionally, comparisons to Dummett’s one-level view of sense, which is similar to mine are made, as well as to some two-level views (Parsons and Skiba). (shrink)

In several passages, Frege suggests that successful communication requires that speaker and audience understand the uttered words and sentences to have the same sense. On the other hand, Frege concedes that, in many ordinary cases, variation in sense is tolerable. In a recent article in this journal, Michaelson and Textor (2023) offer a new interpretation of Frege on the tolerability of sense variation according to which variation in sense is tolerable when the conversation aims at joint action, but not when (...) the conversation aims at joint thought. We maintain, contra Michaelson and Textor, that whether sense variation is tolerable does not depend on the conversational purpose, whether it be theoretical or practical. Rather, whether sense variation is tolerable depends instead on the conversational background. This picture offers what we take to be a more plausible reconstruction of Frege’s own view. (shrink)

Modes of Presentation analyses a collection of problems, known as 'Frege's puzzle', resulting from how thinkers and speakers have a limited perspective on reference in thought and language. Heck argues that these puzzles have much to teach us both about the foundations of cognition and the nature of linguistic communication.

Frege famously claimed that variations in the sense of a proper name can sometimes be ‘tolerated’. In this paper, we offer a novel explanation of this puzzling claim. Frege, we argue, follows Trendelenburg in holding that we think in language—sometimes individually and sometimes together. Variations in sense can be tolerated in just those cases where we are using language to coordinate our actions but are not engaged in thinking together about an issue.

In this article, I first analyze and assess the epistemological and semantic status of canonical value-range equations in the formal language of Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. I subsequently scrutinize the relation between (a) his informal, metalinguistic stipulation in Grundgesetze I, Section 3, and (b) its formal counterpart, which is Basic Law V. One point I argue for is that the stipulation in Section 3 was designed not only to fix the references of value-range names, but that it was probably also (...) intended to play a regulative role with an eye to Basic Law V. I further intend to shed new light on the status of Frege’s identification of the truth-values with their unit classes in Grundgesetze I, Section 10 and determine its place and importance in his overall logicist project. In a subsequent section, I first discuss the hypothetical extendability of the logical system of Grundgesetze. In what follows, I analyze the incompleteness of that system—were it not inconsistent and hence trivially complete—by focusing on the role of the definite description operator and the axiom governing it (= Basic Law VI) as well as on the role of the application operator. The latter is defined by means of the former. I further comment on the redundancy of an axiom that could be designed to supplement Basic Law VI by incorporating the second clause of Frege’s two-part elucidation of the description operator. I argue that although it seems likely that Basic Law VI could have been shown to be dispensable in Grundgesetze, Frege would probably have been reluctant to dispense with it, despite his commitment to axiomatic parsimony. In my view, the reason is that he considers it essential that every primitive function-name of his formal language be governed and grounded by a basic law that is tailored to the nature and the role of the primitive name occurring at a key point in the law. Toward the end of the article, I propose solutions to two problems with Frege’s use of “=” in the concept-script sentences that result from his definitions involving the replacement of the double stroke of definition with the judgment-stroke. I conclude the article with a summary of the main results that I have achieved. (shrink)

카플란은 고유 이름과 지표사 같은 단칭어들을 분석하면서 프레게의 뜻 이론이 한계를 갖는다고 비판하였다. 그러나 필자는 두 가지 점에서 프레게가 카플란의 비판을 피할 수 있다고 주장한다. 먼저 카플란은 단칭어들이 대상을 직접 지시한다고 주장할 뿐, 프레게가 정보를 제공하는 동일성 진술을 설명할 목적으로 뜻 이론을 도입한 이유는 무시한다. 카플란은 또한 독창적인 지표사 분석을 통해 프레게식의 뜻 이론이 지표사를 포함하는 문장을 취급할 수 없다고 주장하지만, 필자는 프레게의 뜻 이론과 필자가 제안한 확장된 맥락의 원리에 의해 지표사를 포함하는 문장을 취급할 수 있다고 주장한다. 이를 보이기 위해 (...) 먼저 프레게의 뜻 이론과 이 이론을 기반으로 하는 가능 세계 의미론을 살핀 다음 프레게에 대한 카플란의 비판이 어떤 형태로 진행되는지 구체적으로 살펴보겠다. Kaplan criticized Frege’s theory of sense as having limitations while analyzing singular terms such as proper names and indexicals. However, I argue that Frege can avoid Kaplan’s criticism in two ways. First, Kaplan only claims that singular words refer directly to objects, but ignores the reason why Frege introduced the theory of meaning for the purpose of explaining informative identity statements. Kaplan also argues, through an original analysis of indexicals, that Frege’s theory of meaning cannot handle sentences containing indexicals. I argue that Frege’s own theory of meaning and the expended principle of context proposed in this paper can handle sentences containing indexicals. To show this, we will first look at Frege’s theory of meaning and possible world semantics based on this theory, and then look specifically at the form in which Kaplan’s criticism of Frege progresses. (shrink)

We draw attention to a series of implicit assumptions that have structured the debate about Frege’s Puzzle. Once these assumptions are made explicit, we rely on them to show that if one focuses exclusively on the issues raised by Frege cases, then one obtains a powerful consideration against a fine-grained conception of propositional-attitude content. In light of this consideration, a form of Russellianism about content becomes viable.

Goodman and Lederman (2020) argue that the traditional Fregean strategy for preserving the validity of Leibniz’s Law of substitution fails when confronted with apparent counterexamples involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs. We argue, on the contrary, that the Fregean strategy succeeds and that Goodman and Lederman’s argument misfires.

The traditional distinction between Millian and Fregean theories of names presupposes that what Mill calls ‘connotation’ lines up with what Frege calls ‘sense.’ This presupposition is false. Mill’s talk of connotation is an attempt to bring into view the line of thought that crystallizes in Frege’s distinction between concept and object. This latter is the semantic dualism of my title.

Frege continues by explaining what bothered him in the Begriffsschrift, and motivated his treatment of identity in that work.2 He goes on to criticize that account. By the end of the paragraph, he has introduced his key concept of sinn, abandonning not only the Begriffsschrift account of identity, but its basical semantical framework. In the Begriffsschrift Frege’s main semantic concept was content [Inhalt ]. Already in the Begriffsschrift, he is struggling with this concept. In §3 he..

In this paper I will discuss Dummett’s interpretation of Frege’s “On sense and reference” that takes place in his Frege: Philosophy of Language, where he attributes a notion of meaning to Frege that is not explicit on the text of “On sense and reference”. I believe that this attribution is incompatible with what Frege is really saying in the article and with the partition of the notion that Dummett himself exposes.

This article presents and compares Frege’s and Husserl’s conceptions of sense, also taking into account their 1891 and 1906 correspondence. It is argued that while the similarities between their views speak in favour of a Fregean interpretation of Husserl’s notion of noematic sense, there are also important differences. With regard to the latter, it is argued that Husserl’s view yields a more general criterion of propositional difference and also provides a more detailed conception of the use of indexicals and non-descriptive (...) singular terms, and of their reference. In this context, Husserl’s conceptions of constitution and genetic constitution analysis, respectively, are invoked and interpreted in terms of the epistemic notion of processing mental files or individual “concepts”. (shrink)

As part of his attack on Frege’s ‘myth’ that senses reside in the third realm, Dummett alleges that Frege’s view that all objects are selbständig is an underlying mistake, since some objects depend upon others. Whatever the merits of Dummett’s other arguments against Frege’s conception of sense, this objection fails. First, Frege’s view that senses are third-realm entities is not traceable to his view that all objects are selbständig. Second, while Frege recognizes that there are objects that are dependent upon (...) other objects, he does not take this to compromise the Selbständigkeit of any objects. Thus, Frege’s doctrine that objects are selbständig does not make the claim of absolute independence that Dummett appears to have taken it to make. Nevertheless, in order to make a good case against Frege based on the dependency of senses, Dummett need only establish his claim that senses depend upon expressions: appeal to an absolute conception of independence is unnece... (shrink)

Frege seems committed to the thesis that the senses of the fundamental notions of arithmetic remain stable and are stably grasped by thinkers throughout history. Fully competent practitioners grasp those senses clearly and distinctly, while uncertain practitioners see them, the very same senses, “as if through a mist”. There is thus a common object of the understanding apprehended to a greater or lesser degree by thinkers of diverging conceptual competence. Frege takes the thesis to be a condition for the possibility (...) of the rational intelligibility of mathematical practice. I argue however that the idea that senses could be grasped as a matter of degree is in tension with the constitutive theses that Frege held with regard to sense. Given those theses, there can in fact be no such thing as misty grasp of sense, since any uncertainty as to the logical features of a given sense will entail that one is getting hold of a different sense or of no sense at all. I consider various ways of resolving the tension and conclude that Frege’s thesis cannot be defended if we take it to be a thesis about our competence with concepts. This leaves unresolved what I call the problem of normative guidance, that is, the problem of explaining how the fundamental notions of logic and arithmetic can provide inferential guidance to thinkers. (shrink)

In his book The Things We Mean, Stephen Schiffer advances a subtle defence of what he calls the ‘face-value’ analysis of attributions of belief and reports of speech. Under this analysis, ‘Harold believes that there is life on Venus’ expresses a relation between Harold and a certain abstract object, the proposition that there is life on Venus. The present essay first proposes an improvement to Schiffer’s ‘pleonastic’ theory of propositions. It then challenges the face-value analysis. There will be such things (...) as propositions only if they possess conditions of identity and distinctness. By analyzing Frege’s theory of propositions (Gedanken), I argue that such conditions may be found for the special case of beliefs and sayings advanced as premises and conclusions of deductive arguments. These conditions, however, are not applicable to most ordinary beliefs and sayings. Ordinary attributions and reports, then, do not place thinkers and speakers in relations to propositions. A bonus is exposure of the fallacy in the Putnam-Taschek objection to Frege’s theory of sense and reference. (shrink)

Resumo Os sentidos para Frege são reais e objectivos, mas não são nem objectos nem funções. Eles são reais por causa da sua objectividade e por serem referências em contextos oblíquos. E, mesmo assim, eles não são objectos: eles não têm o modo de ser dos objectos – entidades identificáveis auto-subsistentes independentes – nem são funções. Assim, a ontologia de Frege inclui ainda uma outra categoria ontológica, a do sentido, que tem o seu próprio modo especial de ser. Entre as (...) suas características encontra-se: a sua intencionalidade, a sua sobreveniência na referência, a compreensibilidade pela mente humana e a limitação pela linguagem. Assim, os sentidos cruzam as distinções ontológicas simples, como a mental / material. Palavras-chave : Frege, funções, objectividade, objectos, platonismo, referência, sentidoFregean senses are real and objective, but neither objects nor functions. They are real because of their objectivity and their being references in oblique contexts. And yet they are not objects: they don’t have the mode of being of objects − independent self-subsistent identifiable entities − neither are they functions. Thus, Frege’s ontology includes another ontological category, that of sense, having its own special mode of being. Among its further characteristics are its intentionality, its supervenience on reference, its being graspable by the human mind and constrained by language. Thus, it crosses simple ontological distinctions like the mental / material one. Keywords : Frege, sense, reference, objects, function, objectivity, platonism. (shrink)

Fregeans follow Frege in accepting informativeness and substitution failure as reliable criteria for the existence of senses as objects of thought. In this paper I show that if we accept this, we must also accept the existence of an infinite hierarchy of senses as objects of thought. This is a bad result since it turns Fregeanism into a doctrine according to which object-related thoughts either have an infinite number of objects as contents or none at all. This shows, against the (...) Fregean, that senses cannot themselves be constituents of thought. Los fregeanos aceptan, siguiendo a Frege, que los criterios de informatividad y falla de sustitución son guías confiables de la existencia de sentidos como objetos del pensamiento. En este artículo muestro que si aceptamos esta tesis también debemos aceptar la existencia de una jerarquía infinita de sentidos como objetos del pensamiento. Esta es una mala consecuencia pues convierte al fregeanismo en una doctrina según la cual los pensamientos dirigidos a objetos o bien tienen un número infinito de objetos como contenido o ninguno. Esto muestra, contra los fregeanos, que los sentidos no pueden ellos mismos ser objeto del pensamiento. (shrink)

While it is highly controversial whether Frege's criterion of sameness and difference for sense is true, it is relatively uncontroversial that that principle is inconsistent with Millian–Russellian views of content. I argue that this should not be uncontroversial. The reason is that it is surprisingly difficult to come up with an interpretation of Frege's criterion which implies anything substantial about the sameness or difference of content of anything.

Frege’s distinction between sense (Sinn) and meaning (Bedeutung) is his most influential contribution to philosophy, however central it was to his own projects, and however he may have conceived its importance. Philosophers of language influenced by, or reacting against the distinction, and historians of philosophy commenting on it, have all contributed to the voluminous literature surrounding it.1 Nonetheless in this essay I hope to shed new light on the distinction by considering it in the context of the development of Frege’s (...) thought, and connecting it more intimately than is usually done with Frege’s interests in logic, especially his views on judgment, truth and inference, which were central to his own projects as he conceived them. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Chateaubriand’s notion of senses. His notions retains the spirit of the original Fregean notion, but differ from it in some fundamental ways. I compare both notions, especially concerning the issue of indirect reference, and also concerning their explanatory power in epistemic matters. Finally, I raise some worries concerning the semantic role played by Chateaubriand’s senses, as well as the notion of judgment that his notion of thoughts seems to imply.Neste artigo, discuto a noção de sentido (...) de Chateaubriand. Sua noção retém o espírito da noção Fregeana original, mas difere da mesma em alguns aspectos fundamentais. Eu comparo ambas as noções, especialmente no que diz respeito à questão da referência indireta, e também no que concerne ao seu poder explicativo em questões epistêmicas. Por fim, levanto algumas preocupações sobre o papel semântico desempenhado pelos sentidos de Chateaubriand, bem como a forma dos juízos que a sua noção de pensamento implica. (shrink)

In this paper I present an abstract theory of senses, thoughts, and truth, inspired by ideas of Frege. "Inspired" because for the most part I shall not pretend to interpret Frege in a literal sense, but, rather, develop some of his ideas in ways that seem to me to preserve important aspects of them. Senses are characterized as identifying properties; i.e., roughly, as properties that apply, in virtue of their logical structure, to exactly one thing, if they apply to anything (...) at all. When Frege's analysis of sentences in terms of function and arguments is combined with his analysis of quantification as higher-order predication, all sentences (formal and informal) can be analyzed in various ways as a function (predicate) applied to one or more arguments. This allows for an abstract characterization of thoughts as senses that combine other senses in a uniform way, and whose truth derives from their instantiation by corresponding items of reality. (shrink)

Michael Beaney has argued that Frege’s characterization of the senses of names as modes of presentation early in “On Sense and Reference” is problematic, but the problem disappears if we use the notion of modes of determination as that was deployed in the Begriffsschrift to characterize senses. It is argued that there is no philosophically interesting difference between the two notions, and no problem posed by modes of presentation that would be resolved by appeal to modes of determination.

Michael Beaney has argued that Frege’s characterization of the senses of names as modes of presentation early in “On Sense and Reference” is problematic, but the problem disappears if we use the notion of modes of determination as that was deployed in the Begriffsschrift to characterize senses. It is argued that there is no philosophically interesting difference between the two notions, and no problem posed by modes of presentation that would be resolved by appeal to modes of determination.

How many senses can a given name have, with its reference held fixed? One, more than one? One answer that most would agree to is that sense is unique for each utterance of a name, that is, that a name can have no more than one sense on any given occasion. But is sense unique in any stronger sense than this? The answer that is typically attributed to Frege is that there is not, that, as Tyler Burge puts it, 1 (...) Frege “treats proper names as having different senses while applying to the same person.” There are a number of possibilities for the locus of this multiplicity of sense; the following remark by Ruth Marcus indicates the possibilities: “the sense of a term is whatever is grasped or understood by a speaker on a particular occasion of use and may vary from occasion to occasion as well as from speaker to speaker.”2 Of the views canvassed by Marcus, we can draw out a more conservative one, and one more extreme. On the more conservative view, Frege is holding that sense may vary from speaker to speaker; on the more extreme view, Frege holds not only this, but that sense may vary from context to context. Endorsements of the two views are not hard to find. For example, typical sorts of endorsement of the conservative view are found in Harold Noonan’s remark that “different senses [are] associated with the name ‘Aris-. (shrink)

In his recent book, "The Metaphysicians of Meaning" (2000), Gideon Makin argues that in the so-called "Gray's Elegy" argument (the GEA) in "On Denoting", Russell provides decisive arguments against not only his own theory of denoting concepts but also Frege's theory of sense. I argue that by failing to recognize fundamental differences between the two theories, Makin fails to recognize that the GEA has less force against Frege's theory than against Russell's own earlier theory. While I agree with many aspects (...) of Makin's interpretation of the GEA, I differ with him regarding some significant details and present an interpretation according to which the GEA emerges as simpler, stronger, and more integrated. (shrink)

In this paper I present what I take to be the best argument for the introduction of the semantic category of sense. This argument, or a version of it, can be extracted from Frege’s renowned ‘On Sense and Reference’, but has not been properly understood or appreciated. I begin by discussing the Russellian objections to other versions of the argument attributed to Frege, in order to expound the argument which fends off such objections.

Many philosophers still countenance senses or meanings in the broadly Fregean vein. However, it is difficult to posit the existence of senses without positing quite a lot of them, including at least one presenting every entity in existence. I discuss a number of Cantorian paradoxes that seem to result from an overly large metaphysics of senses, and various possible solutions. Certain more deflationary and nontraditional understanding of senses, and to what extent they fare better in solving the problems, are also (...) discussed. In the end, it is concluded that one must divide senses into various ramified-orders in order to avoid antinomy, but that the philosophical justification of such orders is, as yet, still somewhat problematic. (shrink)

The main objective of this paper is to examine how theories of truth and reference that are in a broad sense Fregean in character are threatened by antinomies; in particular by the Epimenides paradox and versions of the so-called Russell-Myhill antinomy, an intensional analogue of Russell’s more well-known paradox for extensions. Frege’s ontology of propositions and senses has recently received renewed interest in connection with minimalist theories that take propositions (thoughts) and senses (concepts) as the primary bearers of truth and (...) reference. In this paper, I will present a rigorous version of Frege’s theory of sense and denotation and show that it leads to antinomies. I am also going to discuss ways of modifying Frege’s semantical and ontological framework in order to avoid the paradoxes. In this connection, I explore the possibility of giving up the Fregean assumption of a universal domain of absolutely all objects, containing in addition to extensional objects also abstract intensional ones like propositions and singular concepts. I outline a cumulative hierarchy of Fregean propositions and senses, in analogy with Gödel’s hierarchy of constructible sets. In this hierarchy, there is no domain of all objects. Instead, every domain of objects is extendible with new objects that, on pain of contradiction, cannot belong to the given domain. According to this approach, there is no domain containing absolutely all propositions or absolutely all senses. (shrink)

Michael Dummett has advanced, very influentially, the view that Frege means truth conditions by his notion of thought (Gedanke). My aim in this paper is to argue that Dummett and others are mistaken in this claim. First, Frege's aversion of the correspondence theory of truth does not square well with Dummett's claim. Secondly, and more importantly, Grundgesetze I, §32, is the only place where Frege even appears to be talking about truth conditions in connection with his notion of thought -- (...) and even there, I shall show, he does not really identify thoughts with truth conditions, but states only the triviality that a statement such as, say, 'Leibniz is a philosopher' expresses the thought that Leibniz is a philosopher. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: L'objectif de cet article est essentiellement négatif. Suivant en cela Dummett, j'introduis deux manières attrayantes d'interpréter le Sinn original de Frege, que j'appelle respectivement la doctrine du sens privé et la doctrine du sens public. Je montre que ces conceptions ne peuvent être utilisées dans le traitement frégéen de l'oratio obliqua. Il faut donc abandonner soit l'interprétation du Sinn par Dummett, soit le traitement frégéen de l'oratio obliqua.

Purporting to show how Frege's contributions to philosophy of language and philosophical logic were developed with the aim of furthering his logicist programme, the author construes him as more systematic than is often recognized. Centrally, the notion of sense as espoused in Frege's monumental articles of the Nineties had only an ostensible justification as an account of the informativeness of a posteriori identity statements. In fact its rationale was to help articulate the thesis that arithmetical truth is analytic, since, it (...) is maintained, to sustain such a thesis the two sides of the identities at the heart of the logicist reconstruction must be shown to have the same sense. Yet the notion of sense required for the analyticity thesis was not, and could not have been, successfully deployed on behalf of Frege's logicism. For Frege also held that many arithmetical propositions, including, apparently, identities, are informative. But no proposition can be at once informative and analytic. Although systematic, Frege's work harbored a crucial internal tension. (shrink)

Saul Kripke's puzzle about belief demonstrates the lack of soundness of the traditional argument for the Fregean fundamental principle that the sentences 'S believes that a is F' and 'S believes that b is F' can differ in truth value even if a = b. This principle is a crucial premise in the traditional Fregean argument for the existence of semantically relevant senses, individuative elements of beliefs that are sensitive to our varying conceptions of what the beliefs are about. Joseph (...) Owens has offered a new argument for this fundamental principle, one that is not subject to Kripke's criticisms. I argue that even though Owens' argument avoids Kripke's criticisms, it has other flaws. (shrink)

Frege's doctrine that the demonstrative ‘I’ has a private, incommunicable sense creates tension within his theory of meaning. Fregean sense is supposed to be something objective, which exists independently of its being cognized by anyone. And the notion of a private sense corresponding to primitive aspects of an individual of which only he can be awaredoes violence both to Frege's theory of sense as well as to our notionof language as something essentially intersubjective. John Perry has arguedthat Frege was led (...) to the doctrine of private senses in spite of his beliefin the objectivity of sense through his attempt to solve a problem which indexicals posed for his theory. And while philosophers have argued about whether the notion of a private sense is in fact problematic for Frege, they have tended to share Perry's assumption about its origin. (shrink)

In this investigation into Frege's philosophical views as a whole, the central focus is on his notion of sense, the conception that has proved most influential in the development of analytical philosophy, and around which the main problems of interpretation revolve.

A widely held view about Fregean Sense has it that the determination of a sign's referent by the sign's sense is achieved viasatisfaction: the sense specifies a condition (or set of conditions) and the referent is that entity, if any, which uniquely satisfies that (set of) condition(s). This is usually held in conjunction with the claim that the sense is existentially and qualitatively independent of the referent: if the referent did not exist, or did not uniquely satisfy the sense, the (...) sense would still exist and would still specify the same condition(s) that it actually does (and might determine a different referent than its actual one). Proponents of this view give several reasons for holding it. I describe these reasons and argue that they are not convincing. More generally, I try to show that the notion of satisfaction has no useful application within Frege's system. I then suggest an alternative account of the determination of a referent by a sense that I think is truer to Frege and more illuminating. Compared to the satisfaction view, my account construes determination as a more naturalistic and epistemically real relation between speakers and things in the world. (shrink)