■

• Linda Wetzel　　“Dummett's Criteria for Singular Terms,”　in: Mind, vol. 99, no. 394, 1990

最初のページから一部引用してみよう。引用文中に付されている註は省いて記す。さて「一体なぜ (フレーゲアンである限り) 単称名のクラスの範囲を形式的に定めることが、重要だと考えられるのだろうか？」

Why should it be thought important (to a Fregean at any rate) to delimit formally the class of singular terms? If Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright are correct, then as Wright puts it, for Frege ‘the notion of an object is posterior in the order of explanation to that of a singular term’. That is, syntax is, in a sense, ‘prior to’ ontology; to determine what there is, determine first what the syntax is. The objects are simply the referents of the singular terms, and the functions are the referents of the predicates. Predicates can be defined in terms of singular terms and sentences as follows: a predicate is what remains when one or more singular terms has been removed from a sentence. (We assume that we have some means for determining what a sentence is.) Hence everything hinges on the singular terms. On Dummett's understanding of Frege, then, it is crucial to the Fregean programme to characterize the class of singular terms. Besides, the idea that the singular terms might be a guide to what there is has much to recommend it, Quine notwithstanding.

本論文では Dummett さんが提示した基準では単称名を delimit できず、また Wright さんによる手直しによっても、うまくいかないと主張しておられるようである。