Indistinguishable Senses

Abstract

Fregeanism and Relationism are competing families of solutions to Frege's Puzzle, and by extension, competing theories of propositional representation. My aim is to clarify what is at stake between them by characterizing and evaluating a Relationist argument. Relationists claim that it is cognitively possible for distinct token propositional attitudes to be, in a sense, qualitatively indistinguishable: to differ in no intrinsic representational features. The idea of an ‘intrinsic representational feature’ is not, however, made especially clear in the argument. I clarify it here and, having done so, offer reason to doubt the argument. This will put us in a position to draw some lessons about the relation between object‐directed and representation‐internal aspects of cognitive significance.

Frege Cases and Bad Psychological Laws

“…We leave discussion of this to Almotahari and Gray (manuscript). 27 The significance of this distinction (between MOPs that have a 'direct' impact on cognitive significance and those whose impact is mediated by their effect on coordination) for the plausibility of Fregeanism is discussed in Aidan Gray (2020;manuscript). this idea has been developed, though not exactly in these terms.…”