Hi All,

I've been lurking on this list ever since Chet signed me up several months ago. I write software for a living, know some ancient Greek, and am a WG amateur.

As Chet has already suggested, the Clark Kent/Superman discussion could, I think, have been lifted from the pages of Gottlob Frege. Kent and Superman  clearly share the same "reference" or object. Frege would say that it is their "sense" that differs. 

I'm not sure I fully understand what Frege means by "sense", but he speaks of it as containing the "mode of presentation" that allows us to determine the reference. 

Cordially,

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chet A. Creider" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, September 26, 2005 7:04 am
Subject: Re: [WG] Clark Kent

> I don't think the distinction between Clark Kent and Superman has 
> anythingto do with pictures and the paralles (e.g. with Ringo 
> Starr) that you draw.
> Rather, both CK and S-man are complete individuals in nearly all 
> respects(one of course is not ordinary).  They each have a full 
> set of social roles
> which are almost entirely distinct.  Their identity as individuals 
> has to
> come via some special statement which in effect says that the 
> individualrealizing the set of concepts, etc. which is S-man _is_ 
> the individual
> realizing the set of concepts, etc. which is CK.  I.e. the 
> referents of
> the two senses are the same.
> 
> Is this similar to the problem philosophers of language deal with in
> connection with the identity of the morning star and the evening star
> (which have the same referent)?
> 
> Chet
> 
> Ong n Mon, 26 Sep 2005, Richard Hudson wrote:
> 
> > And:
> >
> > And Rosta wrote:
> >
> >> Following on from my last post, about types & tokens, I wonder 
> how WG would 
> >> handle Clark Kent and Superman. Clark is Superman; Superman is 
> Clark; they 
> >> have the same identity. But they have different properties, and 
> are not 
> >> merely two different names for the same thing (e.g. if you drew 
> a picture 
> >> of Clark Kent it would look different from a picture of 
> Superman). It's not 
> >> enough to say "Clark isa Clark-Superman. Superman isa Clark-
> Superman", 
> >> since Superman isa superhero and Spiderman isa superhero, but 
> Superman and 
> >> Spiderman don't have the same identity; Superman is not Spiderman.
> >> 
> >> As you might have inferred, the Clark/Superman case strikes me 
> as analogous 
> >> to cases where there are multiple tokens of the same type. And 
> hence the 
> >> type/token distinction is not the same as Isa.
> >
> > *## I don't think this has anything to do with types and tokens. 
> Rather, it 
> > strikes me to belong with pictures and other ways of 
> representing things. 
> > Clark represents Superman, just as this picture on my desk 
> represents my 
> > wife. Remember Ringo Star seeing himself at Madame Tussaud's? 
> Our practical 
> > notions of identity are rather loose, and include representation 
> as a 
> > particular kind of pseudo-identity. E.g. we can say that this 
> picture is my 
> > wife without committing ourselves to the conclusion that I'm 
> married to a 
> > picture!*
> >
> >> 
> >> --And.
> >> 
> >> 
> >
> > -- 
> > Richard Hudson, FBA,
> > Emeritus Professor of Linguistics,
> > University College London
> > www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
> >
>