Identity, doxastic co-indexation, and Frege’s puzzle

Abstract

Abstract I will argue that Frege’s puzzle arises only in taking into consideration the cognizer’s viewpoint. Although this sounds trivial, it triggers some important consequences. In particular, Frege’s puzzle has nothing to do with the notion of identity. For, the puzzle rests on whether the speaker/hearer (or writer/reader) conceives the names flanking the identity-sign to be co-referential or not (independently of whether they are de facto co-referential). I will show how Frege’s attempted solution in the Begriffsschrift can be rescued and how this may not conflict with the solution Frege proposes in introducing the sense/reference distinction. To do so, though, we should recognize that Frege worked with different (and somewhat conflicting) notions of content and that he assumed that only a single content expressed by an utterance should encompass all the information conveyed by a statement. In questioning this assumption Frege’s puzzle or a Frege-inspired puzzle can be addressed and understood from a different perspective.