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For Nanna, Þórdís, and Styrmir
Preface

Philosophy often starts with puzzles. Perhaps this is because philosophers,
more than other theorists, disagree about which questions are worth asking
rather than about which answer is the best one. Puzzles can be posed as
questions for almost anyone, for they tend not to presuppose much about
where exactly the solution will come from; the solution may consist in
mere conceptual clarification or analysis, but it could also require scientific
understanding of some complicated empirical phenomenon.
Partly for this reason, I believe that puzzles about reference—Frege’s puz-
zle, Twin-Earth puzzles, etc.—fall far short of providing serious constraints
on the construction of plausible theories of the phenomena at issue. Better to
state a question clearly and in such a way that most will recognize the task of
constructing an answer as both feasible and worth our time. I have set myself
the task of developing a theory of the speech act of referring, considered as a
component part of human pragmatic competence. More specifically, I think
of pragmatic competence in terms of speakers’ mature capacity to perform
speech acts with a suite of intentions and other mental states. To explain
capacities of this kind, I propose, requires the postulation of various mental
and cognitive mechanisms with specific functions.
This mechanistic perspective is crucial, both methodologically and sub-
stantially, to the theory of reference on offer here. For one thing, this
perspective justifies the reinterpretation and eventual dissolution of the
various puzzles which have occupied philosophers for so long. Certainly,
the puzzles are windows into some cognitive reality and can help us identify
the phenomenon of interest, but the theory is, first and foremost, a theory
of the cognitive states and mechanisms which give rise to the puzzles. Every
mechanism has some function and, so, will also have characteristic ways
of breaking down. Once the mechanism and its function are identified,
traditional puzzles wither away as manifestations of mere dysfunction.
More importantly, however, this perspective offers a whole new picture
of the philosopher’s explanatory task. Typically, theories of reference are
supposed to capture—in some curious sense—every single phenomenon we
would ordinarily call reference. But this procedure is suspect in multiple
ways. ‘Reference’ is, in the mouths of philosophers, a term of art and we fool
x preface
ourselves by thinking that we simply picked this piece of language up off

the street. We are not automatically in the possession of a unified category,
a proper object of theoretical explanation or attention. Mechanisms tie our

feet to the ground. Strictly, then, I will not propose a theory of reference
but, rather, a theory of so-called referential competence, understood as a
sophisticated human capacity waiting to be assigned its proper place in a
family of related cognitive mechanisms and abilities.
In light of these remarks it is ironical, but hardly surprising, that Chapter
1 is about traditional philosophical puzzles. For convenience, I will provide
a rough guide to the book. The detailed story about mechanisms, functions,
and how these notions ought to be implemented in a theory of referential
competence does not appear until Chapter 5. Those who are impatient after
reading the Introduction and Chapter 1 may want to fast forward to Chapter
5 and continue from there, reading the rest later perhaps. The Introduction
summarizes some of the main arguments and claims of the book and
Chapter 1 sets forth the theory in a somewhat programmatic fashion, with an
emphasis on philosophical puzzles. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 develop theories or
perspectives on confusion, implicit attitudes, and communicative intentions,
respectively. These are all essential to the overall picture, but some readers
may be happy to acquiesce in the conclusions as they are stated in the
Introduction, if only for the sake of argument (or time). Having cleared the
ground, as it were, Chapters 6 and 7 spell out the details of the theory itself,
which I call ‘edenic intentionalism.’ Chapter 8 provides further support by
placing the theory in the context of a few influential cases or examples from
the history of the philosophy of language and mind. I have tried to make each
chapter as self-contained as possible, so they can all be profitably studied on
their own. Thus there are a number of cross-references to other chapters but
I have tried to keep repetition to a minimum.
I started writing the book in earnest in 2019. Since then I have received
comments and suggestions from many of my colleagues, for which I am
very grateful. Dan Harris read the manuscript at various stages and our
conversations about the material have always been lively and fruitful. I
am also indebted to three anonymous readers for Oxford University Press,
whose extensive and engaging comments provoked a flurry of revisions,
additions, changes, and pangs of doubt. I would like to thank my editor, Peter
Momtchiloff, whose guidance has been pivotal. I have benefited from con-
versations and questions from many colleagues, friends, and mentors. I am
preface xi
sorry if I am forgetting someone, but I would like to thank Eliot Michaelson,

Tom Hodgson, Finnur Dellsén, Stephen Neale, Michael Devitt, Mikael
Karlsson, Alex Radulescu, Rachel Sterken, Hrafn Ásgeirsson, François

Recanati, Dan Sperber, Deirdre Wilson, Nausicaa Pouscoulous, Nat Hansen,
Dominic Alford-Duguid, Maria Baghramian, Robert Stainton, Brian Ball,
David Papineau, Andreas Stokke, David Rosenthal, Gary Ostertag, Ísak
Andri Ólafsson, Mark Bowker, Matheus Valente, and Indrek Reiland.
Since I started working at University College Dublin in 2015 my won-
derful colleagues there have supported me in all sorts of ways, making it
possible to write this book. Part of my time was supported by a Postdoctoral
Fellowship from the Irish Research Council (grant no. GOIPD/2016/186).
I have also had the good fortune of being affiliated with the University
of Iceland at the same time, through generous funding from the Icelandic
Research Fund (grant no. 163132).
Many of the chapters in this book are based on journal articles I have
published in the last few years or so. I am grateful to the editors and
anonymous referees for their guidance and often meticulous reviews. I would
also like to thank the publishers and editors for their permission to reuse the
following.
‘Frege’s Puzzle Is about Identity After All,’ Philosophy and Phenomenologi-
cal Research, (2019) 99(3):628–643, ©Wiley. Parts of this paper are absorbed
by Chapter 1, especially pp. 628–632.
‘Confusion Is Corruptive Belief in False Identity,’ Canadian Journal of
Philosophy, (2016) 17(3):351–382, ©Taylor & Francis. Chapter 2 is an exten-
sively rewritten version of this paper. Section 3 of Chapter 7 is also based on
the final parts.
‘The Edenic Theory of Reference,’ Inquiry, (2019) 62(3):267–299, © Taylor
& Francis. Torn into pieces and rewritten, this paper is spread across Chap-
ters 6 and 7, while its influence can be discerned elsewhere too.
Other papers of mine have anticipated many of the lines of thought in this
book, without being directly incorporated. ‘Silencing without Convention,’
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, (2019) 100(2):573–598, is thus related to
Chapter 3. ‘Referential Intentions: A Response to Buchanan and Peet,’ Aus-
tralasian Journal of Philosophy, (2018) 96(3):610–615, provides an additional
case study to Chapter 8. Finally, ‘A Gricean Theory of Malaprops,’ Mind and
Language, (2017) 32(4):446–462, contains some of the background for the
discussion of mechanistic malfunction in Chapter 5.
xii preface
I continue to be amazed by my wife who, what with the wobbliness of

academic life and seeming obscurity of my preoccupations, is still supportive
and understanding. Thanks to Nanna, and to Þórdís and Styrmir, for keeping

my mind steady and free from philosophy at least some of the time.
EGU
Reykjavík
24 August 2021
. . . and the boon twins Art and Con, aged thirty-seven years, who
measured in height when in their stockinged feet three feet and
four inches and who weighed in weight when stripped to the buff
seventy-one pounds all bone and sinew and between whom the
resemblance was so marked in every way that even those (and
they were many) who knew and loved them most would call Art
Con when they meant Art, and Con Art when they meant Con,
at least as often as, if not more often than, they called Art Art
when they meant Art, and Con Con when they meant Con.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Introduction

We can talk about the things we think about. We can also think about what-
ever others have told us about. In having a thought about a particular object,
we exercise our cognitive competence. In speaking about the object, we
exercise our expressive competence. Thought is one of the mental attitudes
we can bear to a content; belief, desire, and intention being some of the
others. It is a good working hypothesis that to believe something, say, that Joe
is cooking, is to have a mental representation of Joe cooking and to believe
what the representation represents. The belief is a state, a mental state whose
content involves Joe, because the belief is true or false depending on what
Joe is up to.
To talk about Joe is not a mental state but an action. It is an element in
some speech act or other. Among other things, we can say, ask, and request
something which involves Joe. To say that Joe is cooking the speaker must
refer to Joe. How exactly do speakers do this? One simple answer is that they
already have the cognitive competence to mentally represent Joe and, then,
they utter something with the intention of making someone think about
Joe. This is deceptively simple, because we have already reached a level of
cognitive sophistication and development which may not be available to any
other organism (e.g., Sievers and Thibault 2016). Even more, we normally do
not refer to things in isolation, but do so in the course of performing some
speech act. For example, if I tell you that Joe is cooking, it is plausible to
assume that part of my intention is to make you believe that Joe is cooking
and, to do so, I must intend to produce some evidence for you that the belief
is about Joe and not, say, Joanne. So, I might point to Joe, utter ‘Joe,’ or ‘he,’
and so on.
How should we describe and explain this complex and distinctively
human capacity? That is to say, the capacity to produce signals to refer
so effortlessly to almost anything, even things that are far away in space and
time, or mere figments of our imaginations?
In this book, I develop an intentionalist theory of reference, according
to which speakers’ so-called referential intentions determine or constitute
what they refer to on a given occasion of utterance. On this view, referential
Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference. Elmar Unnsteinsson, Oxford University Press.
© Elmar Unnsteinsson 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192865137.003.0001
2 ntro ct on
intentions are only one part of the speaker’s communicati e intention. The act
of referring is merely one part of a speech act intended to produce an attitude
in an addressee, whose content involves the referent. The mature capacity

to perform speech acts with a referential intention is a crucial component
of speakers’ pragmatic competence. It is a component of their complex
capacity for utterance production. Normally, speakers will also have the
interpretive or receptive competence to understand speech acts of this kind.
In order to explain pragmatic competence, we need to develop a theory of the
mental mechanisms whose normal or proper operation is responsible for its
characteristic effects. If the mechanisms involved in referential competence
perform their proper function, exercising the competence on a particular
occasion ought to result in an utterance which can direct the audience’s
attention to the intended referent.
We will get to all that later. The basic motivation behind this book,
however, is to answer the question, ‘What determines the referent of a
referring expression on a given occasion of utterance?’ And the answer I put
forward is, most simply, that the speaker refers to exactly what the speaker
intends to refer to. So, for example, if I utter ‘Joe is cooking’ or ‘He is cooking’
intending to refer to Joe by uttering ‘Joe’ or ‘he,’ Joe is the individual to which
I actually refer.
Although the answer is simple, antecedently plausible, and easily accom-
modated by an influential perspective on meaning and speech acts, namely
Gricean pragmatics, it faces very significant challenges. The major challenge
can be stated as follows. Speakers are often, sometimes only momentarily,
confused about the identity of the objects to which they intend to refer but
still, even in such cases, it seems perfectly possible that they can successfully
refer to one object rather than another. I may think that the keys in my
hand are my own when they are not, and so I am confused, but it seems
like I could still refer to the keys by uttering some referring expression, like
a demonstrative. Thus, the thought continues, reference occurs despite any
internal conflict or confusion in the intention and so it must be determined
by something else.
To my mind, this problem has not received the attention it deserves
from philosophers so far. Yet, it turns out, the time is ripe for a sustained
and detailed examination. In their different corners, different theorists have
been preoccupied with confusion, implicit attitudes, reference, speech acts,
and mechanistic explanations of cognitive capacities. I argue that various
insights and instructive dead ends, when extracted from different parts of
conf s on an propos t ona att t es 3
the literature, can be combined to solve the problem of identity confusion

for an intentionalist theory of reference. And, of course, this provides much-
needed illumination on other problems at the same time.

Confusion and Propositional Attitudes
Traditionally, many philosophers have thought that the success or failure of

a theory of reference hinges on its ability to solve Gottlob Frege’s puzzles
about identity and attitude ascription. In this book I argue, rather, that these
puzzles are merely the symptoms of a dysfunctional referential competence.
More specifically, the real interest of the puzzles derives from their con-
nection to a specific type of mental state, namely, the state of confusion. In
Chapter 1 I explain this connection in detail and give a preview of how my
theory—called ‘edenic’ intentionalism—proposes to dissolve Frege’s puzzle
about identity.
In the latter half of Chapter 1 I turn to the issue of attitude ascriptions. In
my view, philosophers are still under the spell of Frege’s Curse, spawned
by his notion that modes of presentation would solve both the puzzle
about identity and the puzzle about the non-substitutivity of coreferring
expressions in various opaque contexts. This has encouraged the belief
that whatever solves one of the puzzles must also be the key to the
other. I think not. I show that the distinction between representational
states and representational acts is sufficient to solve the latter puzzle.
This distinction is partly grounded in a methodological commitment—the
State/Act Pr nc p e—which separates questions about representational
states from questions about various contentful actions, like making a
judgment or producing speech acts, or dispositions to perform such. The
principle will play a pivotal role in the rest of the book.
In Chapter 2, the focus turns on the the mental state of identity confusion
as such. Some theorists—Ruth Millikan and Joseph Camp chief among
them—assume or argue that confusion consists in having garbled concepts,
and that this state cannot be reduced to any particular belief-state. Against
this, I develop and argue for the Be ef Mo e of identity confusion. On
this Mo e , confusion consists in believing falsely that two objects are one
or believing falsely that one object is two. For some time, theorists have
complained that this is impossible because, at least when two objects are
mentally combined as one, the thinker will not have the conceptual resources
4 ntro ct on
necessary to represent the belief that the one thing is identical to the other
thing. Impossible, because if they have two distinct concepts they are not
really confused.

I show in some detail why this is an overreaction. Basically, the belief in
question can be an implicit attitude. In Chapter 2, I develop this point by
arguing for so-called local interpretationism. This is not the radical instru-
mentalism about mental representation familiar from Daniel Dennett, for
the view is compatible with realism and the language of thought hypothesis.
Still, I argue that, as theorists, we are compelled to attribute false identity
beliefs to individuals, even when the individuals are in principle unable
to represent those specific beliefs in thought. How could this be coherent?
For industrial-strength realists about propositional attitudes, the implicit
belief is posited as a structural, procedural, or an emergent property of
the thinker’s total belief-state. It is still best thought of as a belief, I argue.
Assuming that there is a language of thought, the Mentalese counterpart
of the false sentence ‘x is identical to y’ is not stored in the thinker’s belief
box, but there is a set of sentences—explicit representations—in the belief
box whose organization constitutes the belief in question (see, especially,
Fodor 1987: 21–26). Those who are not as wedded to realism about mental
representation have an even easier time accommodating the point, of course.
In Chapter 3, I develop this argument further by showing that implicit
beliefs about the identity or distinctness of objects can be independently
motivated as part of a family of belief-like states with similar features.
I argue that many theorists already assume a distinction between represen-
tational acts and representational states which can be spelled out in terms
of intentional control. The act of representing myself as a p-believer is under
more direct control than the corresponding representational state of actually
believing p. Furthermore, theories of self-deception, bias, and insincerity
tend to assume that this distinction is an important part of these phenomena.
For example, being self-deceived that p normally involves a state of believing
p while lacking some disposition to so represent oneself, to oneself or others.
If the question comes up, I may clutter my mind with other thoughts for
example. Kent Bach (1981) is a classic statement of a view of self-deception
which fits this picture nicely.
The major burden of Chapter 3, however, is to argue for the possibility
of profoundly or strongly implicit attitude states. In cases of self-deception,
plausibly, what the thinker lacks is a disposition to self-represent in a certain
way. The self-deceived bald man can be disposed to ascribe baldness to
others, or to himself in counterfactual situations. But some attitudes are
enta ec an s s an t e act of referr n 5
profoundly implicit in the sense that the thinker lacks the very capacity to
perform some types of self-representational acts. This is paradoxical because
we still, I argue, want to ascribe attitudes involving such concepts to the

thinker. Identity confusion is, precisely, supposed to be an example of such
a state. I argue, in Chapter 3, that there are plenty of other examples of
this general sort, even if this does not amount to a full theory of implicit
attitudes as such. I try to make this point more intuitive by introducing
cases where this particular discrepancy between representational states and
representational acts seems to play an important role.
Mental Mechanisms and the Act of Referring
In Chapters 4 to 6, I develop the intentionalist theory of speaker meaning

and speaker reference, independently of the problem of confusion. First, in
Chapter 4, I argue that to explain human acts of meaning we must postulate,
minimally, the intention to produce cognitive effects in minded creatures
(artificial minds included). This thesis has been rejected, most powerfully,
by various theorists who see a much stronger link—sometimes verging on
identity—between natural languages and thought. Grouping these thinkers
together as ‘expressionists,’ they are inclined to suppose that our utterances
can give direct expression to our thoughts, needing no assistance from
intention-like mental states. As Wilfrid Sellars (e.g., 1969) sometimes puts
it, uttering a sentence which means that p may simply be an act of thinking
out loud that p. And such acts receive no aid from intentions to mean
or communicate that p. Other theorists—conventionalists and normativists
in particular—have sometimes mounted a very similar challenge to inten-
tionalism. This is the challenge of easy meanings. To keep the discussion
tractable, I focus on the challenge as it is posed by expressionists, assuming
that my response can be modified to fit other frameworks. Here I follow
the classification of theories of speech acts into five families in Harris,
Fogal and Moss (2018); conventionalism, intentionalism, functionalism,
expressionism, and normativism. Ultimately, the theory on offer in this book
will combine elements of Millikanian functionalism with intentionalism.
The argument against the expressionist is fairly straightforward. I try
to show that to express a thought is to perform a sophisticated inten-
tional action directed at achieving some end. Intentional actions are best
explained by postulating intention-like states and, further, expressive acts are
only ever directed at entities with actual or artificial minds. It follows that
6 ntro ct on
speakers intend to have effects on minded entities. Now, certainly, they

sometimes intend to have effects only on their own mind and, in some such
cases, the description just offered may seem convoluted. But even a rudimen-

tary look at the recent flurry of work on inner speech in empirical psychology
and cognitive science suggests a different perspective. One major contribu-
tion from that work is a set of distinctions, for example between self-directed
speech and merely imagined speech, and between inner speech and private
speech (which can be ‘out loud’). It is eminently plausible, in light of this, to
argue that intentionalism is literally true about self-directed speech, that is,
that we can intend to produce propositional attitudes in ourselves as well as
others by uttering something. And then we can divide and conquer. Imag-
ined speech is a different beast and will have various functions which are less
direct—facilitating memory, fostering creativity, managing and controlling
emotional states, designing utterances for later use in communication—and
plausibly co-opted or derived from the communicative function. Expres-
sionism, at least, appears to lack any explanatory advantage here.
The result, anyway, is supposed to be that the theory proposed by expres-
sionists, when placed inside a fuller account of intentional action and goal-
directed human activity, simply collapses into an inchoate intentionalist
theory. That is, the basic act of theoretical interest is that of speakers uttering
something to have cognitive effects on minded creatures. To perform an act
of expressing a thought requires the same basic cognitive architecture. I take
this as evidence that the intentionalist architecture is the best place to start
looking for a job description for the act of referring, especially if the response
can be generalized to other objections of the same stripe. As we shall see,
according to edenic intentionalism, the job of reference is to participate in
singular acts of meaning.
In Chapter 5, I turn to foundational questions about explanation in cog-
nitive science. Borrowing and combining tools and ideas from the so-called
‘New Mechanism’ literature and work on biological functions, I propose a
novel way in which to understand intentionalism as an explanatory theory.
Very roughly, intentionalism about meaning postulates a set of cognitive
capacities, specified in terms of interactions between information-bearing
mental states. The most basic capacity, for purposes of explanation, is the
capacity to perform speech acts with a suite of audience-directed intentions.
I call this capacity ‘pragmatic competence.’ Pragmatic competence has the
characteristic or proper function of producing a particular phenomenon
or effect, namely individual instances of mind-directed speech acts. To
explain pragmatic competence and its proper function, we must posit mental
e en c ntent ona s 7
mechanisms whose normal operation is causally responsible for the effect

in question.
My notion of mental mechanism is based on work by William Bechtel

(2007) and Carl Craver (2007). I argue that this notion should be combined
with the notion of function as developed by Karen Neander (2017) and
others. These two traditions are usually thought to be in tension with one
another, since the former is usually accompanied by instrumentalism or
perspectivalism about functions; but the two are in fact closer than some
may think. The usefulness, however, of incorporating these notions into
intentionalist theories of meaning should be abundantly clear. We can
now see precisely what it means to say that pragmatic competence has a
communicative function and define referential competence directly in those
terms. This shows how the enterprise is reductionist, for example.
In the latter half of the chapter, I explain how the mechanism for referen-
tial competence can be decomposed into component operations and states,
by looking at characteristic ways in which the mechanism may break down.
Making some assumption about the function of language is necessary here,
but I do not pretend to have proven that communication is that function.
Yet, I take the fruitfulness of this hypothesis, especially in finding plausible
things to say about reference, to be evidence in its favor. In particular, in
5.3.3 I argue that the mechanistic perspective provides the best available
description of the sense in which beliefs constrain the speaker’s intentions
(sometimes called ‘Humpty Dumpty’ constraints). This will provide the
crucial analogy to develop a constraint—based on confused beliefs about
identity or distinctness—on speech acts of referring.
Thus the mechanistic perspective on explanation is crucial to the devel-
opment of edenic intentionalism as a theory of reference which can dissolve
Fregean puzzles while, at the same time, finding a natural place for acts
of referring within a hierarchy of human cognitive mechanisms. Referring
can now be understood in terms of its functional contribution to and
participation in a set of speech acts performed by pragmatically competent
speakers. In Chapter 6, I define referential competence as such within this
new framework, addressing a number of important objections.
Edenic Intentionalism
At this stage, the ground has been cleared for an account of the relationship
between confusion and reference, resulting in the so-called edenic theory.
8 ntro ct on
Schematically, the idea is that the speech act of referring singularly to an

object has a particular function, namely the function of giving someone
optimal evidence for a referential intention. The mental state of confusion

constrains speech acts of this type in the sense that it disrupts this function,
making it so that, in principle, confused acts of referring cannot perform
their proper function. For the purposes of semantics and pragmatics, I
argue, this is sufficient reason to refrain from assigning any referent to
speech acts of this kind, or to the confused singular terms contained in
the utterance.
Another way to look at this is as follows. It is part of speakers’ pragmatic
competence to acquire cognitive sensitivity to the ‘edenic maxim.’ According
to this maxim, speakers ought to try to refer singularly only when they can do
so without being confused about the object to which they intend to refer. This
is similar to the Humpty Dumpty constraint mentioned before, which can be
understood as saying that speakers ought not to intend to mean something
by uttering something which they know the audience cannot possibly grasp.
Importantly, however, both maxims or constraints are true in virtue of facts
about the characteristic function of the cognitive mechanism underlying
pragmatic competence. Edenic intentionalism is explained and defended in
detail in Chapter 7.
Finally, in Chapter 8, I introduce the label ‘confusion-driven methodol-
ogy’ for the common method of appealing to cases with confused speakers to
reach substantial metasemantic conclusions. I argue, by going through two
specific examples from the literature, that this method is problematic. The
point is not to argue against the so-called method of cases, which is anyway
much too general to be a stable target of criticism. The point, rather, is that
cases where speakers are confused, as this state is understood in the Be ef
Mo e , are particularly unreliable and misleading.
I show this by comparing my two case studies—Kripke’s example of
Smith or Jones raking leaves, and Reimer’s case of the mistaken keys—to
examples of near-confusion. This is instructive because, it turns out, there
are many arguments in the philosophical literature which look like they
are based on confusion cases but, on examination, the speaker in question
is merely ill-informed. So, for example, Putnam’s well-known case of the
speaker who doesn’t know the difference between elms and beeches, is not
confusion-driven, for the speaker still doesn’t confuse elms and beeches. The
same thought applies to Donnellan’s argument for a distinction between
attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions. I conclude that these
arguments are not contradicted by the theory of reference proposed in
e en c ntent ona s 9
this book. More generally, however, I take the conclusion to be indirect

evidence for the edenic theory itself, because confusion seems to be the
major culprit; confusion is what makes the relevant arguments unreliable,

probably because confusion is what disrupts the characteristic cognitive
function of an act of referring.
1
ttitud cri tion nd r ur

The founding document of the philosophy of language is Frege’s paper on
the distinction between sense and reference. This is both a blessing and a
curse. Frege presents a puzzle about identity—although current orthodoxy
would have it that the puzzle has virtually nothing to do with identity—and
another about attitude ascriptions. For Frege, as for observing members of
the Fregean Order, his solution to the first puzzle must somehow unlock
the second as well. Singular terms have senses which can explain variations
in cognitive value, for identity statements and more, and in truth value, for
attitude ascriptions and more. Frege’s Blessing is his discovery of the puzzles
but his Curse is the thought that sense is key to both. This encouraged the
idea that solving either is to solve, or almost to solve, the other. But as I argue
in this chapter, this is a mistake.
First, I show that Frege’s puzzle about identity is really about identity,
despite repeated claims and arguments to the contrary. More precisely, the
puzzle cannot be motivated unless it is relativized to a thinker or speaker
who has false beliefs about the identity or distinctness of objects. I argue,
further, that to solve or dissolve the puzzle all one needs is a theory of the
relevant mental state and of speaker reference which will together explain
the phenomena in question. So-called ‘edenic intentionalism’—the theory
I develop throughout this book, is one such theory.
Then I argue that a basic distinction between representational states and
representational acts, which is developed in detail in Chapters 2 and 3,
affords the necessary means to address Frege’s point about attitude ascrip-
tions. As a response to Frege, however, this is really an old idea in a new
guise, not so very different from Quine’s (1956) well-known distinction
between relational and notional belief. Very roughly, acts of ascribing atti-
tudes with attitude verbs like ‘believes’ or ‘hopes’ are ambiguous. Sometimes
one is speaking about the state and its relations to external objects and
sometimes about the content or character of the thinker’s possible acts
of self-representation. Often, of course, the two become intermingled in
various ways.
. ap ea o t ent t 11
Finally, I address the issue of interrogative attitudes—wondering, asking,

inquiring—directed at questions or propositions about object identity or
distinctness. Even a rudimentary introduction to the edenic theory, like

the one provided in this chapter, will raise flags on this topic. But I show
that confusion, far from making thinkers incapable of wondering whether
two objects are identical, is among the possible motivations for the relevant
interrogative attitude. In the next chapter, I start the process of filling out
various promissory notes interspersed throughout this more programmatic
discussion.
A Pu le a out Identit
What exactly does Frege’s first puzzle have to do with identity or identity
statements? Interestingly, according to what Joan Weiner (1997: 269) calls
‘the standard interpretation,’ there is not supposed to be any connection at
all between the two. Michael Dummett held, in his ‘What is a Theory of
Meaning?’, first published in 1975, that the puzzle can be formulated in terms
of any ‘atomic statement’ (Dummett 1993: 24, 86). Richard Mendelsohn
(1982: 281–282, 2005: 30) presents a more detailed argument for this claim,
which has been repeated or endorsed by many philosophers since. In his
book on the puzzle, Nathan Salmon (1986: 12) argues that the puzzle has
virtually nothing to do with identity. His thought is, roughly, that since the
puzzle can easily be stated without any appeal to identity statements it follows
that it is really about something else, namely the cognitive significance of
referring expressions as such. Recently, Peter Hanks (2015: 126–128) has
restated the argument.
The standard interpretation of the puzzle, however, is wrong. I will argue
that any statement of the puzzle makes essential reference to statements or
beliefs involving the identity relation. It makes essential reference to what
I will call the Be ef Mo e of the mental state of identity confusion in
Chapter 2. The claim is not that Frege had a theory of identity confusion.
Rather, the model identifies the nature of the mental state speakers will
be in when Frege’s puzzle—and other similar puzzles—will apply to them.
Frege himself took the puzzle to be about why true, coreferential identity
Others have argued for a similar conclusion on exegetical grounds, see Weiner (1997) and
Beaney (1996: ch. 6).
12 att t e ascr pt ons an fre e’s c rse
statements seem to differ so dramatically in their cognitive effects, and I

agree.
It should be noted, before presenting the arguments, that the conclusion

will be that posing the puzzle essentially involves statements or beliefs about
the identity of objects. Some might object that, on a charitable reading, the
standard interpretation only says that statements of identity are unnecessary.
But insisting on the importance of this distinction in the very formulation
of the puzzle begs the question. As is well known, it can also be stated in
terms of an individual’s beliefs or other contentful mental states, and the
argument developed here in favor of the standard interpretation can just as
easily be given in terms of beliefs. The actual source of the puzzle, even when
stated without explicit mention of identity, could very well be some implicit
assumption involving identity confusion, or potential statements about iden-
tity that are made salient in the context. And this is exactly what I will argue.
Indeed, if the standard interpretation is taken to be, merely, that no actual
statement involving explicit reference to the identity relation need be coun-
tenanced, it would be trivial, not warranting its considerable prominence in
some of the works cited earlier and those influenced by the argument in
question. Most importantly, however, such an interpretation, even if true,
would not warrant the widespread assumption that solving the puzzle—as
opposed to rejecting some intuitions underlying its formulation—calls for a
completely general theory of the reference or content of singular terms. A
rough analogy would be to say that since the Liar paradox can be stated with
‘I am lying now’ it is not a paradox about truth and, thus, that it must be
about something more general, like predication.
Now, let ‘P’ be the proposition that Frege’s puzzle is not essentially a puzzle
about identity. Being essentially about identity is shorthand for: referring
essentially to some potential statement or belief involving the identity of
objects. The argument for P, then, proceeds as follows. Intuitively, there is
a semantic difference between (1) and (2).
(1) Tully is an orator if Cicero is.
(2) Cicero is an orator if Cicero is.
Obviously, I believe that there are good reasons to develop such a theory, the only point
here is that Frege’s puzzle doesn’t provide one in the way most have assumed.
My formulation here is intended to be neutral on the question of the proper bearers of
semantic difference. The reader is free to think of (1) and (2) as sentence types, dated utterances,
propositions, statements, or something else.
It seems, however, that (1) and (2) attribute the same property to the same
individual. Both are true if and only if that individual x—the one named both
‘Tully’ and ‘Cicero’—has the property of being an x such that x is an orator if x

is. If so, what explains the semantic difference between the two? This is Frege’s
puzzle and, since there is no mention of identity in (1) or (2), it follows that P
is true. The puzzle can, it seems, be stated with any dyadic relation one cares
to think of. It can even be stated using only monadic sentences with distinct
but coreferring singular terms. Kit Fine (2007: 52) calls this the monadic
version of the puzzle and seems implicitly to endorse the argument for P. For
what explains the apparent semantic difference between (3) and (4), given
that they have identical truth conditions?
(3) Tully is an orator.

(4) Cicero is an orator.
Thus, P seems unassailable. And it is only natural, on this basis, to hold that
the puzzle arises simply by considering the different semantic properties of
coreferring singular terms like ‘Tully’ and ‘Cicero’. And, so, extant solutions
to the puzzle either deny the intuition that there is such a difference, or
they involve the claim that the semantic content of a name is not simply its
referent; perhaps it’s a Fregean sense of some sort.
Yet, P is demonstrably false. To start, note that many theorists would agree
that the puzzle as stated so far is not well motivated. We need to know, more
precisely, in what sense there appeared to be a semantic difference in the
first place. Usually, the missing link is provided by claiming that (1) and (2)—
and (3) and (4)—convey different information to someone who understands
both sentences (e.g., Fine 2007: 34). I assume here that something along
these lines is necessary for a full statement of the puzzle. Furthermore, most
theorists take the notions of ‘conveying different information’ or having
‘different cognitive effects’ to be epistemic, calling for relativization to an
epistemic agent.
So, we need to specify the minimal conditions for being an epistemic
agent S such that (1) and (2) have different cognitive effects on S even when
S understands both. A natural suggestion is that the condition will have
something to do with S’s epistemic access to the identity or distinctness
cognitive effects on S if and only if S is ignorant of the fact that Cicero =

of Cicero/Tully. Consider the hypothesis that (1) and (2) have different
Tully. Proving the hypothesis would show that the puzzle essentially involves
identity. There are, then, two relevant epistemic states for S.
(A) S believes truly that Cicero = Tully.

(B) S lacks the true belief that Cicero = Tully.

If we assume that belief is closed under logical consequence it follows that,
in state (A), (1) and (2) will have exactly the same cognitive effect on S,
namely, one will be trivial or uninformative just in case the other is. To
illustrate, consider an example of two names or name-like expressions which
are generally known to be coreferential, like ‘John F. Kennedy’ and ‘JFK’.
(5) and (6) will, generally, have exactly the same cognitive effect.
(5) JFK was Catholic if John F. Kennedy was.
(6) John F. Kennedy was Catholic if John F. Kennedy was.
people are aware that John F. Kennedy = JFK. Therefore, Frege’s puzzle does
And the same would apply in the monadic case. This is because, generally,
not arise for S in epistemic state (A).

Now, consider epistemic state (B), which will qualify as confusion on
the Be ef Mo e , as we shall see later. This kind of ignorance comes in
many stripes but, here, there are three variants that require consideration.
First, S’s ignorance may be due to the fact that S is unfamiliar with the
practice of using ‘Cicero’ or ‘Tully’ or both. Others have convincingly argued
that the puzzle does not arise in a case of this sort, so I will not repeat
the argument here (Salmon 1986: 60). Secondly, S’s ignorance may consist
in cognitive indifference or suspension of judgment about the identity of
Cicero/Tully. Here, (1) and (2) will potentially have different cognitive effects
on S. Presumably, S will consider (2) trivially true but believe neither that
(1) is true nor that it is false. In the monadic version of the puzzle, similarly,
(3) and (4) would potentially have different cognitive effects on S if S
suspends judgment. We cannot, however, predict that (3) and (4) would
necessarily occasion, for S, different judgments of truth value. What we can
say, still, is that, in virtue of the confused state (B), it is not necessary that
S will accept (3) as true if and only if S accepts (4) as true and, thus, they
are potentially different in their cognitive effects. But in state (A) the strict
biconditional will hold: necessarily, S accepts (3) iff S accepts (4). This is to
Those who are inclined to think that the acronym and the full name are, in fact, one and
the same expression, only written differently, should be reminded that ‘scuba’ is—or was?—
also an acronym. The two expressions are certainly susceptible to Frege’s puzzle as traditionally
conceived.
say that the antecedent and consequent must have the same truth condition
and not merely the same truth value.
that Cicero = Tully in virtue of ha ing the false belief that Cicero ≠ Tully.
Finally, S’s ignorance may consist in the fact that S lacks the true belief

Of course, the same reasoning as in the second variant applies here too.
(1) and (2) will have different cognitive effects on S, in particular, (2) could be
considered trivially true while (1) is considered either true or false or neither.
The treatment of the monadic version is also similar to before. We are unable
to predict that S assigns different truth values to (3) and (4) but, in virtue of
being in state (B), it is not necessary that S will accept one as true if and only
if S accepts the other as true. This explains their potentially different effects
across different possible worlds. Once S is in state (A), however, the strict
biconditional is predicted to hold.
It seems, then, that we have identified a condition on thinkers which
must obtain in a full statement of Frege’s puzzle. Assuming (A) and (B) to
be exhaustive of S’s relevant states of belief with respect to the identity of
Cicero/Tully, we can say that the puzzle arises if and only if S is not in state
(A). So, the puzzle only arises if the speaker is confused. Again, we have to
wait until Chapter 2 to elaborate on the state of confusion as such. But it
should be clear that this argument works with any dyadic predicate in place
of the conditional in (1) and (2) and, so, it is completely general. It is only
prudent to conclude that P is false; Frege’s puzzle has everything to do with
identity. It only arises in cases where the thinker has a false belief about the
identity of the object in question. In a possible world where all facts about
identity are self-evident and a priori, no one would ever worry about solving
this puzzle. One could worry, however, in a world where only conditionals
are known a priori.
If this argument is correct it is deeply misleading to say that the puzzle has
virtually nothing to do with identity. Yes, on the surface it can be stated in
terms of the cognitive difference between sentences or utterances in which
identity is not mentioned. But the puzzle is still essentially about identity in
that it arises in virtue of aspects of the mental state of someone who happens
to be ignorant, in the relevant respect, about the identity of an object. The
puzzle arises in virtue of the mental state of identity confusion.
On the standard story, the puzzle is about the semantic or cognitive
contribution of singular terms in larger expressions. Names appear to con-
tribute different information even if they are, clearly, coreferential. More-
over, Frege’s second puzzle seems to show that substitution of coreferring
expressions in attitude contexts gives rise to differences in truth value. On the
standard picture, and this is what I called Frege’s Curse before, both puzzles
give rise to one question: What do singular terms contribute to semantic
content, in any context, which is different from a mere referent? And this is

where Frege, and others, have found a need for dual-component semantics
which distinguishes sense or meaning from reference; the former being the
semantic or cognitive contribution of a singular term. But any such solution,
of course, remains controversial.
Frege said it was about: In virtue of what does ‘a = b’ seem to differ in

At the most basic level, however, Frege’s first puzzle is about exactly what
cognitive significance from ‘a = a’ when ‘a’ and ‘b’ corefer? Positing senses
as the cognitive contributions of any term like ‘a’ and ‘b,’ in any context, does
indeed count as a possible solution to this problem. Even more, it counts as
a possible solution to the second puzzle as well, as Frege himself argued. But
it is important to realize, in light of the argument so far, that the first puzzle
allows for a much more limited approach, which focuses on the peculiarities
of identity as such. This is where edenic intentionalism comes in.
issol ing rege
In this section I will spell out how edenic intentionalism is supposed to

dissolve Frege’s first puzzle. What follows is not a solution to the puzzle in
any ordinary sense, because I will not argue that the theory’s way of handling
the puzzle is strong evidence in its favor. If I were to take the puzzle at
face value and offer a straight solution—arguably what Frege himself tried
to do by postulating senses—the resulting theory would indeed acquire
some epistemic support. But I do not think we should take the puzzle at
face value.
Many formulations of Frege’s first puzzle take seriously the need to rel-
ativize the problem to a speaker and a hearer. Someone makes an identity
statement directed at a particular audience. This is better but it is important
to notice that the speaker is really a theatrical device and can be eliminated
completely. That should be a surprise if what the puzzle requires is a semantic
theory of singular terms. How could that be true if no one needs to utter a
singular term? Here is the real puzzle, derived from Frege, which motivates
some theorists: Why exactly is there a difference in how a thinker who
believes falsely that a is not b—or lacks the corresponding true belief—
updates her beliefs upon coming to know that a is b on the one hand, and
upon coming to know that a is a on the other?
. sso n fre e 17
The solution to this puzzle, however, is contained in the Be ef Mo e

of identity confusion to be developed later. Roughly, if we are allowed to
deal in mental representations and some measure of reinterpretation, we

at least have the tools to describe what happens when Lois, say, learns that
Superman is Clark Kent. Her mental representations—mental files, as some
would say—are linked, merged, or somehow connected. She learns that her
past mental representations as of Superman were also as of Clark Kent,
and vice versa. If we assume that there are singular elements that somehow
participate in mental representations, her switch is well represented as a
switch from employing one set of elements to employing another set. To
simplify, I will propose to describe the differences in terms of the ‘language’
of the confused speaker and the ‘language’ of the theorist. Removing the
confusion is to start employing parts of the language of the theorist. The same
moral can be drawn for cases where someone is confused in the sense that
they take two things—e.g., identical twins—to be one, but, of course, Frege
himself was not concerned with those. My own theory on this point is not
really original, for it is based on developments in the literature on mental
files (esp. Grice 1969b, Millikan 2000, Lawlor 2001, Recanati 2012). I will
argue, however, that networks of files should be explained in terms of beliefs
and mental representations, which goes against some of that literature.
If we eliminate the speaker, but still want the puzzle to have something
directly to do with assertions or statements, we are left with some paradoxical
results. The confused speaker, Lois for instance, would not assert sincerely
that Superman is Clark Kent unless she were not confused any more. Simi-
larly, if I am confused about the twins Art and Con, I would not assert that
Art is not Con unless I had already become privy to the truth. Lois and I
might certainly wonder about these things, a topic I will address later, but we
certainly would not assert or state any such thing sincerely. But this means
that the speaker for which it would be cognitively significant would not,
or at least not while being sincere, produce the relevant identity statement.
Generally, this is not very paradoxical, for speakers tend not to assert what
they do not believe. But it is paradoxical in this particular instance, because
we are trying to find out what the singular terms in question mean, precisely
for someone who would not make those particular statements. Furthermore,
we want to know what those terms mean, for that speaker, in exactly those
kinds of statements she would not be able to produce sincerely.
Perhaps this does not seem paradoxical to everyone. But it does force
an interpretationist-driven methodology upon us. Assume, pretheoretically,
that we want to know what some linguistic expression e means for some
speaker/hearer S. Assume, also, that we are particularly interested to know

what e means for S when it occurs in a set of assertions of sentences. Now,
if happens to be defined in such a way that it follows that S believes none of

what S would assert by making the assertions in , we are in effect assuming
that S’s interpretation of someone else’s assertion containing e gives us the
meaning of e for S. But hearers can easily assign wrong interpretations to the
utterances of others. More importantly, we will simply not be investigating
how e features in S’s own production of assertive utterances. But this aspect
can be crucial. If we lift this artificial restriction and, assuming that was
a set of identity statements where e is one of two coreferring expressions,
we would have to consider unconfused (or ‘edenic’) utterances of sentences
like ‘a is identical to b,’ for example ‘John F. Kennedy is JFK.’ But there is no
special puzzle about what this sentence means for the unconfused speaker.
It means the very same thing as ‘JFK is JFK.’
One might think there must still be a way to pose Frege’s first puzzle as
a puzzle about what a speaker means by making a statement about identity.
Obviously, it seems, Lois can think, believe, and express the truth that Clark
Kent is identical to Clark Kent. Moreover, it seems like she must believe
something true, because Clark is indeed identical to Clark. Still, there is an
undeniable difference between what she thus believes and what she would
come to believe if Lex Luthor were to tell her that Clark is Superman. But
if we assume Millianism about proper names these sentences express the
same proposition (more on Millianism in Chapter 2). So, how come the first
sentence fails to give rise to the same change in beliefs as the second?
Now, finally, I will start wheeling in edenic intentionalism. It is part of this
theory that Lois, if she is indeed confused in virtue of believing that Clark
Kent is not Superman, fails properly to perform the speech act of referring
to Clark/Superman by uttering ‘Clark Kent.’ So, she strictly speaking fails
to say anything true if she says that Clark is identical to Clark. This is
definitely counterintuitive. But as soon as an unconfused hearer interprets
or translates the sentence in terms of that very same string of words in ’s
own idiolect, the sentence will express a truth for . would then not be
saying of an object, such that it is not self-identical, that it is self-identical.
But this is what Lois would have to mean, on the edenic theory. Consider
also someone who confuses identical twins, Art and Con, a state I will call
‘combinatory’ confusion in this book. She calls both of them ‘Bart.’ Does she
express a truth when she says that Bart is identical to Bart? Sure, it sounds
like something that must be true but, putting our theory-hats on, we should
be allowed to simply skip the question and move on.
. sso n fre e 19
In the twin-case it is apparent that, or so I will argue, if we want to attribute

the false belief that Art is Con, we have to be using two representational
devices which are not direct translations of anything in the speaker’s mind

or mouth. So, for convenience, we can say that the speaker believes that Artt
is Cont in the theorist’s language and that ‘Bartc ’ is part of the speaker’s own
confused language. Even if ‘Artt ’ does not directly translate any single device,
it is the best thing we have got considering the circumstances. The same
strategy should be applied to the Fregean case. Because of her confusion,
what Lois really utters is ‘Clarkc is identical to Clarkc ’ and, as theorists, we
do not want to introduce ‘Clarkc ’ into the metalanguage. Neither do we
want to introduce indexicals or curse words into the metalanguage even
if the object language, the confused language in our case, contains such
expressions. Otherwise we need to refer to ourselves, curse, and suffer from
identity confusion merely when giving the semantics of such expressions.
On the edenic theory no confused act of referring is assigned a referent
and, so, even in the context of a simple subject-predicate sentence, like
‘Clark Kent can fly,’ the theorist refrains from assigning an official referent
to the utterance. As before, however, it will be true that non-confused inter-
preters will tend to translate the sentence uttered automatically into their
own idiolect, in which it could be uttered to express an object-dependent
proposition. The difference will thus go unnoticed. This can be compared to
automatic repairs at the phonetic level. Hearers might, for example, take the
speaker to have uttered ‘obtuse’ when ‘abstruse’ was the actual word coming
out of her mouth (the example is borrowed from Reimer 2004: 322). Further,
this might very well have been a malapropism; the speaker’s intention was to
utter ‘obtuse.’
But what does the difference between the two names, one in the c-
language and the other in the t-language, consist in? According to edenic
intentionalism, the difference is simply that when the c-speaker utters the
name—‘Clark’ let’s say—she intends to refer to Clark and she intends not to
refer to Superman, in virtue of not knowing that Clark and Superman are
identical. This is not a feature of the name in the t-language.
In a paper on which parts of this chapter are based, I argued that confused
speakers presuppose false beliefs about identity or distinctness in uttering the
proper names in question (Unnsteinsson 2019a). For example, if two distinct
names of John F. Kennedy are salient in the context, the other being ‘JFK,’ a
speaker who utters,
(7) John F. Kennedy was presidential,

will presuppose either that John F. Kennedy is identical to JFK or that they
are distinct. If the speaker is confused, she presupposes the latter, which is
false. If correct, this is rather interesting, because it opens the door to an

argument to the effect that confusion gives rise to pragmatic incompetence in
virtue of false presuppositions. This was the line I pushed in the paper already
mentioned. However, even if we have diagnostics for presuppositions, I don’t
think presuppositions are necessarily well understood. The argument I gave
shows, at most, that beliefs about identity are relevant to the determination of
the speaker’s referential intention on the occasion of utterance. But even this
claim must build in assumptions about the contextual salience of particular
names. Anyway, all I want to subscribe to is the idea that confused speakers
presuppose, convey, or merely believe false propositions about identity in
performing some of their acts of referring. The more basic fact is that their
confused beliefs, whether conveyed or not, disrupt the proper function of
the speech acts in question.
Frege sought an explanation for a difference in cognitive significance
and thought he had found it by positing senses. Variation in sense explains
the difference in significance. Correspondingly, sameness of sense ought to
explain triviality; ‘a is a’ is trivial because ‘a’ has the same sense in both occur-
rences. But this was never a plausible explanation of the triviality of identity
statements. Philosophers have usually argued for this by counterexample,
and I’ll provide one later which might be instructive, but the reasoning can
be stated in a more principled manner. If thinkers can mistakenly believe that
two names are disreferring, they can mistakenly believe that two occurrences
of the same name have different senses. If they are confused ‘combinatorily,’
they will mistakenly believe that two occurrences of the same name have the
same sense. If this is right, sameness of sense is not really what explains the
triviality of certain identity statements. On this picture, triviality could only
be explained by appealing to the fact that the thinker in question already
knows the senses of the relevant expressions.
To illustrate, consider a variation on a case presented by Joseph Camp
(2002: ch. 3), which is the inspiration for the example of my daughter being
confused about the identity of her two teddy bears in Chapter 2. Frida
decides to order an ant farm from the hobby store and emails the shopkeeper
to explain what kind she would like. She wants to have a bunch of small ants
and two bigger ants. The shopkeeper is happy to oblige and sends her the
package by mail. Even before the ant farm arrives, Frida has decided that she’s
going to call both of the big ants by the name ‘Joe,’ that way she won’t have to
remember two names, she thinks. By mistake, she receives an ant farm with
. sso n fre e 21
lots of small ants but only one big ant. Frida never realizes, however, and
starts calling ‘both’ of her ants Joe, finding it only slightly odd that she can
only ever see one of them at any given time. But she believes they don’t like

each other. She also imagines various distinguishing marks which she thinks
she can use to separate the two Joes. She might even say things like, ‘Hi there
Joe Joe was here just a few minutes ago. Of course I mean the other Joe ’
Frida’s father finally finds out about the mistake when cleaning the ant
farm one day. His daughter has made many drawings of the two Joes, always
thinking it absolutely obvious how they can be distinguished by appearance
if not by name. He tries to tell her: ‘There is only one big ant in your ant farm.’
But, naturally, she understands this to mean that one of the two is missing.
Frida understands when her dad says, perhaps gesturing at two different
drawings of Joe:
(8) Joe is Joe.
It’s clear, then, that this particular utterance of (8) is informative while, in a
different context, (8) could have been uttered by Frida herself without being
anything more than an expression of the trivial truth that a particular ant
is self-identical. So, we have yet another formulation of the Fregean puzzle.
Can senses or modes of presentation save us? No, they can’t. The mode of
presentation associated with the first occurrence of ‘Joe’ in (8) is the same as
the one associated with its second occurrence. And this is something Frida
has always known. Notice that her dad’s gestures are not essential to the
example, so the introduction of ‘demonstrative’ senses, perhaps presupposed
by the speaker, would not help (e.g., García-Carpintero 2000, Perry 2012; see
Unnsteinsson 2019a and Chapter 2 of this book for more discussion). In this
case, the name ‘Joe’ may be used to designate either one of two ants. The two
ants just happened to be one. Thus, it seems, (8) can be informative even
when both the Fregean and the Russellian propositions expressed are trivial.
This would appear to be a counterexample to what Aidan Gray (2016: 346)
has called ‘minimal descriptivism.’
The edenic theory, I argue, generally does a better job when it comes to
explaining triviality. Some relations are necessarily reflexive and others are
necessarily irreflexive. The clearest examples are identity and distinctness,
respectively. Identity is a relation that necessarily holds between an object
and itself, and nothing else. Distinctness (or non-identity) is a relation that
holds necessarily between an object and every other object, and not itself.
A speaker who utters a sentence containing two names, ‘a’ and ‘b,’ and is a
competent user of those names, will either believe that they corefer or that
they disrefer. If the belief is false, the speaker qualifies as confused on the
Be ef Mo e . But if the belief is true, they will say something trivial if they

assert the distinctness of the referents of disreferring names or the sameness
of the referents of coreferring names. Moreover, the triviality simply follows
if the speaker’s act of reference happens to be ‘edenic,’ that is to say, if
it conforms to the proper function of the mechanism in virtue of which
speakers have the pragmatic competence to perform acts of speaker meaning
and speaker reference (see Chapters 5, 6, and 7).
This explains why statements of identity or distinctness are normally triv-
ial. Speakers who assert ‘a is b’ or ‘a is not b’ will always say something trivial
if their acts of referring conform to the constraints of edenic intentionalism.
In making such assertions speakers will normally assume—questioning,
wondering, and so on are exceptions—that they are not confused about the
identity of the object(s) in question. Of course, they will make such assertions
to inform hearers for whom these facts are not trivial. But none of this is
explained by appeal to senses, modes of presentation, or similar posits. When
I say that John F. Kennedy is not identical to Donald Trump, what I say is
trivial in virtue of the fact that I must already believe, merely by using two
names, that they corefer or disrefer. If I say that JFK and Trump are identical
I say something trivially false.
Admittedly, if this is right, the situation still seems paradoxical. But
identity simply is paradoxical. Ultimately, I agree with the spirit of what
Wittgenstein means when he says that to say of two things that they are
identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself
is to say nothing at all (1961: 5.5303). But he inferred—thought it ‘self-
evident’ ( 5.5301)—that identity was not a relation between objects. My
paradox, by contrast, is that any properly functioning act of referring with
a name trivializes any statement of identity or distinctness containing the
name. This makes it hard to explain why we have any such statements
at all. But the explanation is twofold. First, as Kripke has emphasized,
people are often simply interested in the identity relation itself. Second, and
more substantively, acts of referring do not always conform to their proper
function and so, the triviality involved is perhaps not so trivial after all.
Attitude Ascriptions
This book is a contribution to ongoing research into a phenomenon

which is sometimes called ‘singular thought’ (e.g., Goodman, Genone,
. att t e ascr pt ons 23
and Kroll 2020). But I am convinced that a proper treatment calls for a
more significant division of labor than theorists seem inclined to accept.
At a minimum, singular thought either indicates a representational state

or a representational act. In this book I will presuppose, as a divide-and-
conquer principle, that our theories of states and acts can come apart in
various ways.
What interests me in this book is to explain singular referential competence
where reference is exclusively a property of certain act-types. This means
that I will be saying very little about the corresponding property of singular
representational states, although I assume that they exist. That is to say,
there is a distinction between merely descriptive or satisfactional states
and singular or relational states. But the latter, being states, do not ‘refer’
to anything, even if they can stand in singular representational relations.
Taking the state/act distinction as basic will, I hope to show, pay handsome
dividends by simplifying our explanatory task significantly.
A P
The theory of representational states like belief and desire is in principle
separate from the theory of the representational properties of various rep-
resentational acts, including mental acts like judging and speech acts like
expressing.
I’ll mention three clarifications at this stage. First, this categorization is

importantly different from that which philosophers often assume. The
assumption is normally that there are contentful mental states and mental
acts on the one hand and contentful speech acts on the other, i.e., there are
‘inner’ and ‘outer’ phenomena. The State/Act Pr nc p e, by contrast, puts
mental acts together with speech acts, simply because both are act-types.
Second, the Pr nc p e is silent on the status of mental e ents, occurrences,
and processes. Typically, however, these can be grouped with the states
because, as will emerge in Chapter 4, representational acts are creatures
of intention. Finally, the Pr nc p e is justified methodologically. It is
better to have two difficult questions than a single impossible question.
The impossible question is: What is singular representation? Now, I am
sympathetic to a stronger principle, namely that representational states
have explanatory priority over the acts, roughly for the reasons Jerry Fodor
articulates against accepting pragmatism about conceptual content (2003,
2004, 2008, see also Rives 2009 for discussion). As stated, however, the
Pr nc p e has the advantage of not prejudging such issues. Moreover, I will
sometimes accept pragmatist elements merely for the sake of argument, for
example in Chapter 3, where I articulate an ‘ecumenical’ theory of belief

which incorporates dispositions to act.
Now we can finally turn to the issue of attitude ascriptions. Consider the

state of believing that p. To a first approximation, to have this attitude the
believer must be in a mental state that represents p and, for many theorists
at least, that mental state must support the satisfaction of their desires in
the right way. Now consider another phenomenon, namely the disposition
or capacity to perform actions whereby speakers represent themselves to
themselves or others as one of the p-believers. This second type of state is
defined in terms of representational acts, like speech acts.
These two types of representation can come apart, most obviously, in
cases of self-deception. If I know, deep down, that my daughter must be
doing drugs—I’ve seen the evidence—but cannot bear even entertaining the
thought that this might be true, I am self-deceived (Hunter 2011 uses a
similar example to make a different point). Whenever the question comes
up in my mind, I either start thinking about something else immediately,
or I deny the possibility outright. But some of my possible behavior cannot
be explained unless we assume that, deep down, I know the truth. How else
would I know how to avoid the evidence as much as possible? I have to know
that what I want to avoid is evidence that my daughter uses drugs. The best
explanation for this, at least in this kind of case, is that I suspect or know that
she is doing drugs.
As we will see in Chapters 2 and 3, however, the two types of state
also come apart in other contexts. I may believe that p but lack the rep-
resentational resources to represent myself to myself as believing that p.
I will try to show that identity confusion is exactly a case of this sort.
Admittedly, combinatory confusion is a much more intuitive example, but
I think ‘separatory’ confusion (as I shall call the Fregean type) also fits the
bill. Basically, I can falsely believe that Art is identical to Con, without really
having two mental devices of singular representation corresponding exactly
to the items ‘Art’ and ‘Con.’ Crucially, however, I can have various attitudes—
perceptually or demonstratively mediated, say—whose truth conditions are,
effectively, Art-dependent without being Con-dependent, and vice versa.
Still, the Be ef Mo e states that I belie e the proposition that Art is
identical to Con. In Chapter 3, I argue that there are other ways in which both
the attitude-part and the content-part of the mental state can be unavailable
to acts of representation.
As is well known, Frege’s second puzzle is that sentences like (9) and (10)
appear to have different truth values even when the two names are assumed
to be coreferring.
. att t e ascr pt ons 25
(9) Lois believes that Superman is strong.

(10) Lois believes that Clark Kent is strong.

Frege’s Curse, as I have called it, is the idea that the solution to the identity
puzzle should, without too much tinkering, solve this puzzle as well. For
Frege, the two proper names occurring within the scope of the attitude refer
to their ‘customary senses’ and not the individual. So, attitude ascriptions
induce a shift in reference.
There is a very long list of proposed solutions, many of which are quite
ingenious and many of which are decidedly un-Fregean. I will not describe
these developments here, especially since others have done so before in much
detail (e.g., Nelson 2019).
As I see it the solution is simple. (9) is true in both the state-sense
and the act-sense. (10) is true in the state-sense and not in the act-sense.
Of course, this is not enough by itself, for I wish to commit to the so-
called naive Russellian view that (9) and (10) ascribe belief in one and the
same proposition to Lois. But the ambiguity attaches to the attitude-part,
not to the proposition-part. When speakers ascribe representational acts
or dispositions to perform such acts they say something false when the
linguistic material in the that-clause would be unavailable to the ascribee
in possible acts of self-representation. And (10) may appear false—at least
compared to (9)—because Lois is not disposed to self-represent as believing
the proposition in question by thinking ‘Clark Kent is strong’ or assenting to
‘Is Clark Kent strong?’
This is more like polysemy than ambiguity proper, because the two
notions are clearly related and become mixed in various ways. Consider self-
deception again, however. Imagine a context where I have recently stated in
no uncertain terms that I do not and could not believe that my daughter is
doing drugs. Later, my two friends, speaking amongst themselves could say,
(11) He knows that she is doing drugs.
They might add that I just cannot admit the truth to them or myself. Now,
taken in the act-sense (11) would express something false. If my assumptions
about self-deception are accepted, I do indeed believe that my daughter
is doing drugs and there is then a sense in which (11) is true, but I am
not disposed to perform any act in which I represent myself to myself as
so believing. Ordinary language sometimes seems to break down when we
try to describe this type of situation. For example, sometimes when people
discuss self-deception they say things like (11) and add ‘but he doesn’t know
that he knows,’ and so on.
But if we take (11) in the state-sense, it is true, just as (10) is true if it is only

understood in the state-sense. It is important that this type of ascription can
be isolated from the act-sense ascription. Otherwise we would not be able to
ascribe self-deception, identity confusion, or other contentful mental states
where there is a robust propositional attitude without the corresponding
dispositions or capacities to self-ascribe.
This solution to Frege’s second puzzle is perfectly general, applying to a
wide variety of cognitive states, responses, and dispositions. Take fear for
example. Many psychologists would argue that humans have a primitive
system to detect danger, which works below the radar of conscious awareness
and results in a reaction of fear and avoidance (Ledoux 1998). Normal
humans basically share a fear of looming danger. Unless I have trained
myself not to fear snakes, my danger-detection system will produce the
appropriate response to anything that vaguely resembles snakes (like a tree
branch in peripheral vision). But having this primitive fear does not depend
on having some corresponding representational dispositions. In the act-
sense, someone may very well ‘believe’ that they fear nothing at all. As
soon as the state is more intellectually sophisticated, however, we may think
that having the disposition or capacity to perform the right representational
act is a necessary condition of being in the representational state, and this
tends to influence our intuitions about truth conditions. If I say that I fear
that post-industrial capitalism has destroyed humanity’s capacity to solve
collective problems like climate change, I will normally be taken at my word.
If, however, I am disposed to deny that I fear anything of the kind, this
is normally taken to be sufficient to falsify the ascription. So, this more
sophisticated representational state is normally taken to be partly constituted
by a corresponding disposition to perform representational acts.
uestioning Attitudes
Importantly, we can also ascribe attitudes to contents involving identity or

distinctness. On the Be ef Mo e , for example, the following are true when
uttered by the unconfused theorist:
(12) Lois believes that Clark is not Superman.

(13) My daughter believes that Bill is Biff.
. est on n att t es 27
Bill and Biff are a pair of identical teddy bears to be introduced in the next
chapter. Strictly speaking, both (12) and (13) are only true in the state-
sense, because neither Lois nor my daughter are supposed to have access

to the particular acts of self-representation involved. This is less obvious in
Lois’s case because she certainly has some ‘Clarkt ’-like and ‘Supermant ’-like
devices with which to represent Superman/Clark. She even has the natural
language analogues of these devices. But whatever represents Bill without
representing Biff at the same time, for my daughter, is not a device associated
with the name ‘Bill’ in any way.
Philosophers have recently done some very interesting work on inter-
rogative or questioning attitudes, such as wondering whether, inquiring
whether, asking whether, and so on (Friedman 2013, 2017, Whitcomb
2010, Carruthers 2018). As Jane Friedman (2013) convincingly argues, these
questioning attitudes are not metacognitive, that is, being curious about the
answer to some question Q is not constituted by a desire to know some
proposition p. This would require some sort of awareness of the deficiency of
one’s own epistemic standing and a desire to fill a gap in one’s knowledge. But
nonhuman animals engage in various investigative activities which must be
motivated by a contentful attitude similar to curiosity. Second, and relatedly,
she argues that the objects of these attitudes are probably not propositions,
but questions.
To discuss theories of the semantics of questions would be too much of
a digression here. Readers should consult Friedman (2013) for a sensible
idea about how to understand the connection between the semantics and
the nature of the attitudes themselves. All I need is the assumption that
questions are not propositions. Perhaps they are sets of propositions—
actual or possible answers to the question—or, perhaps, they are incomplete
propositions or propositional functions. Either way, wondering whether Q
will consist in a motivational state of searching for the most satisfying answer
in a set of answers, or searching for the most satisfying assignment to a
variable in a propositional function. On this latter view, for example, ‘Who is
Clark?’ has a content along the lines of ‘Clark is x.’ And a satisfactory answer
is one that assigns the right individual to x.
The apparent problem, here, for a theory like edenic intentionalism is that
(14) and (15) can be true.
(14) Lois wonders whether Clark is Superman.
(15) My daughter wonders whether Bill is Biff.

Assume, then, that Lois has an interrogative attitude whose object is a

question. In English the question is ‘Is Clark Superman?’ but how should the
object of the attitude itself be described in this case? It is not captured by ‘Is

Clark x?’ or ‘Is x Superman?’ because both of the names seem to play a crucial
role. Rather, Lois is curious about whether Clark and Superman are one or
two individuals. If we assume that questions denote sets of possible answers,
Lois’s state targets a set with at least two members: (1) Clark and Superman
are one, and (2) Clark and Superman are two. If my daughter knows Bill/Biff
as ‘Malcolm’ she may be wondering in the act-sense whether Malcolm is one
or two people. (15) is more plausibly taken as true of her contentful mental
state of wondering about the identity or distinctness of Bill and Biff.
Finally, I believe the consequences for edenic intentionalism about refer-
ence are quite straightforward. Consider any context in which some speaker
has an inquiring attitude toward a question about the identity or distinctness
of some object(s). If the speaker formulates the attitude explicitly as a
question in a natural language, she will ask herself questions of the form ‘Is a
b?’ or ‘Is a one or two?’ But being in this state is exactly to believe that one is
possibly confused about the identity of the object(s). So, the speaker already
knows that she is possibly confused—i.e., that the E en c Constra nt
(see Chapter 7) is possibly violated—and the questioning attitude itself is
motivated by a concern to rectify the mistake, if there was one. I am not
suggesting that the only reason speakers might wonder about identity is to
make sure they are not confused, but it is one reason among many. The
bottom line is that when Lois ask herself whether Clark and Superman are
one she is, even if only momentarily, entertaining the possibility that by
‘Clark’ she has been intending not to refer to Superman while in fact Clark
is Superman. But actually believing this explicitly would be incoherent and,
so, Lois is motivated to resolve the issue. While she wonders, however, the
very status of ‘Clark’ as a properly functioning name, in her idiolect, is under
scrutiny.
To see this more clearly it is helpful to consider what Lois might do if she
were to figure out the truth. Clearly, she could decide to continue as before,
only using the name ‘Clark’ to talk and think of her friend as a reporter and
the name ‘Superman’ to talk and think of him as a superhero. She can do this
without being in the least confused and her purpose might be to make sure
no one knows that she knows. The only aspect of her mental state that has
changed is that now she has found the true answer to the question: Superman
and Clark are one. Edenic intentionalism will predict that this is sufficient for
her acts of referring singularly to Clark to conform to their proper function.
. conc s on 29
Suppose, now, that she says to someone ‘I wish Clark were here,’ and the
response is, ‘Don’t you also wish Superman were here?’ She would have to be
lying if she said ‘No.’

Consider my daughter as well. Upon discovering the truth she might
also continue to refer to both Bill and Biff simultaneously when she uses
‘Malcolm.’ But this is obviously an intentionally deviant use of a proper
name. Moreover, it is very hard to see how this would not automatically
divide ‘Malcolm’ into two names that sound the same. If she is with Bill and
knows Biff is far away, she will not believe that Malcolm is both with her and
not with her at the same time. One of the Malcolms is here and the other
away. I should stress, however, that there is nothing in principle wrong with
intentionally using the same name for more than one things, and thinking
of it as a single name. This does not really violate the E en c Ma , which
basically bans confusion, since there is no confused belief in the background.
Using names in this way can be creative and natural at the same time, like
metonymy or intentional malapropism.
Conclusion
Frege’s first puzzle only arises in the context of identity confusion. As we

shall see, this is a surprisingly common feature of puzzles in the philos-
ophy of language and mind. Here, I have concluded that this characteri-
zation of Frege’s puzzle opens the door to theories, like edenic intention-
alism, which treat the nature of reference in terms of a prior theory of
identity confusion as a representational state. More commonly, theorists’
assignments of semantic values to singular-term utterances depend much
more directly on what is considered the best solution to Frege’s puzzle.
The most prominent exception, of course, is naive Russellianism which, in
one form, distinguishes between semantic reference and various reference-
related information which is conveyed pragmatically (e.g., Salmon 1986).
But naive Russellians are plagued by Frege’s Curse, tending to assume that the
solution to the identity puzzle will unlock the puzzle of attitude ascriptions.
I hope to have shown that this is a groundless assumption. More generally,
I believe it is a mistake to think that Frege’s puzzles enshrine the basic job
description for a theory of reference.
2
t t o on u ion

Say I buy my daughter a teddy bear. She’s been wishing for a teddy bear of
a particular kind for months. When I finally get around to it I decide to buy
two of them. Much too ambitiously, I plan to make a switch every week so
I can put one teddy into the washer. Of course my daughter is not supposed
to know. Excited, she’s decided on a name before even seeing her new toy.
His name is Malcolm. But these are special teddy bears; each one has an
individual name on a label hidden behind the left ear. I’m sure she won’t
notice but one is ‘Bill,’ the other ‘Biff.’
Malcolm becomes my daughter’s favorite companion and they’re almost
inseparable. To my own surprise I stick to the plan, washing Bill one week and
Biff the other. My daughter never finds out and, many years later, when both
have been donated to other children, she has many thoughts about Malcolm.
For example, she remembers well how immaculately clean he was. Her friend
next door had a teddy just like Malcolm, called Alfred, and my daughter
wouldn’t dream of playing with Alfred instead of Malcolm.
It seems fair to say that my daughter harbors a confusion about Malcolm’s
identity. She thinks he is one but he is really two. It’s easy to confuse identical
twins in a similar way, for instance. But this raises a puzzle: which object, if
any, is she thinking about when she thinks about ‘Malcolm’? Sometimes we
are confused in another way, namely by thinking of one thing as if it were
two things. If there is only one teddy bear but my daughter sometimes calls
it Bill and sometimes Biff, her friend might think of these as two bears when
they are only one. I think the same puzzle could arise here.
In this chapter, I will argue that confusion consists in a state of taking
one thing to be two or two things to be one. Thus it is far from cognitively
demanding and ought to a ict the mental lives of humans and non-human
animals alike. A dog who holds a bone in his mouth and takes its reflection
in a pond to be a different bone suffers, albeit momentarily, from confusion.
A fox chasing two similar rabbits, but only ever seeing one at any given
moment, might become confused as well. If the rabbits were to switch roles
behind a rock, appearing to the fox as if a single rabbit disappeared from
sight for only one second, the fox might mistakenly take the two to be one.
. t o o e s of conf s on 31
This chapter proceeds as follows. First, I will describe two plausible models
of the mental state of confusion, the Be ef Mo e and the Concept
Mo e . Next I show that the most influential argument against the Be ef

Mo e fails. According to the argument, confused thinkers lack the concep-
tual resources to represent the beliefs required by the Mo e . The argument
is based on a much too narrow conception of beliefs or belief-like states.
The final two sections ( 2.3–2.4) develop the Be ef Mo e in more detail,
providing a number of considerations in its favor.
o Models of Confusion
As I pointed out in Chapter 1, philosophers have been preoccupied with

various puzzles for quite some time; Frege’s Puzzle, Kripke’s Paderewski
Puzzle, Putnam’s Twin-Earth Puzzles. These puzzles are often mere theatrical
devices which tend to mask the actual object of interest. The object of
interest is a certain cognitive natural kind, namely the mental state of identity
confusion. Basically, philosophers have been intrigued by a number of meta-
physical and epistemological consequences of the assumption that thinkers
or speakers are confused about the identity of some object. What does ‘Mal-
colm’ refer to, for example? But rarely have they considered the underlying
mental state itself and tried to develop a theory of its nature or structure.
In this book, I aim to show that as soon as we have a fully general theory
of this mental state, the door is open to a much more satisfying solution—
dissolution, really—to the alleged puzzles than before. The reason, roughly,
is that the resulting theory can be combined with independently motivated
perspectives on cognition and communication in very natural ways.
My reasons for thinking of confusion—as here defined—as a natural kind
will emerge as the overall argument develops. But one piece of evidence,
which has influenced my thinking, is that the assumption provides a much-
needed unity to all those disparate discussions of puzzles in philosophy of
mind and language. Basically, there is a particular cognitive condition which
makes a mess of the predictions of many antecedently plausible theories of
meaning and representation, but the condition itself has managed to avoid
detection, mostly.
Confusion comes in two varieties. Combinatory confusion is when one
takes two things to be single thing. Separatory confusion is when one takes
a single thing to be two things. In principle, however, a person can be
confused by taking any number of things n to be m things for any distinct
32 t e state of conf s on
natural numbers n and m (arguably, including zero). To keep matters simple,

however, I focus only on the two more basic cases. Often, the two varieties of
confusion are kept completely separate, but I think much is to be gained from

thinking of them as variations on an underlying mental kind. Expanding on
Krista Lawlor’s (2005) important work on the topic, I propose two competing
models of this mental state.
T e Be ef Mo e
On this model, confusion consists in some belief-state involving the relations

of identity or distinctness. Paradigmatically, the confused thinker believes
falsely that a is identical to b or believes falsely that a is distinct from b.
However, if the thinker stands in some representational relations to a and b,
mere suspension of judgment about whether the two are identical or distinct
will also be labeled as ‘confusion’ on the Be ef Mo e . I will argue for this
inclusion in 2.3 but, very roughly, the idea is that merely lacking true beliefs
about the identity of a and b can, just like confusion, make it harder for one
to think about or refer to the object(s) in question, at least in contexts where
the question about identity is made salient or relevant in specific ways.
Suppose, for example, that I am late for a meeting at the Royal Numismatic
Society, knowing that O’Connell is due to give a speech. I don’t recognize
O’Connell but I hear his final words without catching a glimpse of him.
Later, I see a tall man in the reception hall and think that that might well
be O’Connell, but I suspend judgment. O’Connell might well be that other
one, sitting next to the president. The tall man turns to me and asks: ‘Well,
what did you think about the speech?’ Because I have no firm opinion about
whether the man in front of me is O’Connell I would have no reasonable
way of deciding between ‘you’ and ‘he’ if I wanted to tell him that the orator
was very persuasive (‘You were ’/‘He was ’). This makes me less than fully
competent to refer to O’Connell using those expressions, across some range
of relevant propositions; first I would need to come to an opinion about
whether the tall man is O’Connell. The state of suspended belief which gives
rise to this communicative problem, counts as (separatory) confusion, at
least on the Be ef Mo e . Of course, however, the state of confusion may
endure for only a brief moment, until the mistake is corrected. Then the
speaker is less than competent only for a moment.
So-called combinatory confusion will, as we shall see, give the most
obvious occasion for disagreement between advocates of the two models.
Another random document with
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she assumed the charge of the paper, she printed it with her own
motto as the heading, Vox Populi Vox Dei.
William Goddard drifted to Philadelphia, where he published the
Pennsylvania Chronicle for a short season, and in 1773 he removed
to Baltimore and established himself in the newspaper business
anew, with only, he relates, “the small capital of a single solitary
guinea.” He found another energetic business woman, the widow
Mrs. Nicholas Hasselbaugh, carrying on the printing-business
bequeathed to her by her husband; and he bought her stock in trade
and established The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser. It
was the third newspaper published in Maryland, was issued weekly
at ten shillings per annum, and was a well-printed sheet. But William
Goddard had another bee in his bonnet. A plan was formed just
before the Revolutionary War to abolish the general public post-
office and to establish in its place a complete private system of post-
riders from Georgia to New Hampshire. This system was to be
supported by private subscription; a large sum was already
subscribed, and the scheme well under way, when the war ended all
the plans. Goddard had this much to heart, and had travelled
extensively through the colonies exploiting it. While he was away on
these trips he left the newspaper and printing-house solely under the
charge of his sister Mary Katharine Goddard, the worthy daughter of
her energetic mother. From 1775 to 1784, through the trying times of
the Revolution, and in a most active scene of military and political
troubles, this really brilliant woman continued to print successfully
and continuously her newspaper. The Journal and every other work
issued from her printing-presses were printed and published in her
name, and it is believed chiefly on her own account. She was a
woman of much intelligence and was also practical, being an expert
compositor of types, and fully conversant with every detail of the
mechanical work of a printing-office. During this busy time she was
also postmistress of Baltimore, and kept a bookshop. Her brother
William, through his futile services in this postal scheme, had been
led to believe he would receive under Benjamin Franklin and the new
government of the United States, the appointment of Secretary and
Comptroller of the Post Office; but Franklin gave it to his own son-in-
law, Richard Bache. Goddard, sorely disappointed but pressed in
money matters, felt forced to accept the position of Surveyor of Post
Roads. When Franklin went to France in 1776, and Bache became
Postmaster-General, and Goddard again was not appointed
Comptroller, his chagrin caused him to resign his office, and naturally
to change his political principles.
He retired to Baltimore, and soon there appeared in the Journal an
ironical piece (written by a member of Congress) signed Tom Tell
Truth. From this arose a vast political storm. The Whig Club of
Baltimore, a powerful body, came to Miss Goddard and demanded
the name of the author; she referred them to her brother. On his
refusal to give the author’s name, he was seized, carried to the
clubhouse, bullied, and finally warned out of town and county. He at
once went to the Assembly at Annapolis and demanded protection,
which was given him. He ventilated his wrongs in a pamphlet, and
was again mobbed and insulted. In 1779, Anna Goddard printed
anonymously in her paper Queries Political and Military, written
really by General Charles Lee, the enemy and at one time
presumptive rival of Washington. This paper also raised a
tremendous storm through which the Goddards passed triumphantly.
Lee remained always a close friend of William Goddard, and
bequeathed to him his valuable and interesting papers, with the
intent of posthumous publication; but, unfortunately, they were sent
to England to be printed in handsome style, and were instead
imperfectly and incompletely issued, and William Goddard received
no benefit or profit from their sale. But Lee left him also, by will, a
large and valuable estate in Berkeley County, Virginia, so he retired
from public life and ended his days on a Rhode Island farm. Anna
Katharine Goddard lived to great old age. The story of this
acquaintance with General Lee, and of Miss Goddard’s connection
therewith, forms one of the interesting minor episodes of the War.
Just previous to the Revolution, it was nothing very novel or
unusual to Baltimoreans to see a woman edit a newspaper. The
Maryland Gazette suspended on account of the Stamp Act in 1765,
and the printer issued a paper called The Apparition of the Maryland
Gazette which is not Dead but Sleepeth; and instead of a Stamp it
bore a death’s head with the motto, “The Times are Dismal, Doleful,
Dolorous, Dollarless.” Almost immediately after it resumed
publication, the publisher died, and from 1767 to 1775 it was carried
on by his widow, Anne Katharine Green, sometimes assisted by her
son, but for five years alone. The firm name was Anne Katharine
Green & Son: and she also did the printing for the Colony. She was
about thirty-six years old when she assumed the business, and was
then the mother of six sons and eight daughters. Her husband was
the fourth generation from Samuel Green, the first printer in New
England, from whom descended about thirty ante-Revolutionary
printers. Until the Revolution there was always a Printer Green in
Boston. Mr. Green’s partner, William Rind, removed to Williamsburg
and printed there the Virginia Gazette. At his death, widow
Clementina Rind, not to be outdone by Widow Green and Mother
and Sister Goddard, proved that what woman has done woman can
do, by carrying on the business and printing the Gazette till her own
death in 1775.
It is indeed a curious circumstance that, on the eve of the
Revolution, so many southern newspapers should be conducted by
women. Long ere that, from 1738 to 1740, Elizabeth Timothy, a
Charleston woman, widow of Louis Timothy, the first librarian of the
Philadelphia Library company, and publisher of the South Carolina
Gazette, carried on that paper after her husband’s death; and her
son, Peter Timothy, succeeded her. In 1780 his paper was
suspended, through his capture by the British. He was exchanged,
and was lost at sea with two daughters and a grandchild, while on
his way to Antigua to obtain funds. He had a varied and interesting
life, was a friend of Parson Whitefield, and was tried with him on a
charge of libel against the South Carolina ministers. In 1782 his
widow, Anne Timothy, revived the Gazette, as had her mother-in-law
before her, and published it successfully twice a week for ten years
till her death in 1792. She had a large printing-house, corner of
Broad and King Streets, Charleston, and was printer to the State;
truly a remarkable woman.
Peter Timothy’s sister Mary married Charles Crouch, who also was
drowned when on a vessel bound to New York. He was a sound
Whig and set up a paper in opposition to the Stamp Act, called The
South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal. This was one of the
four papers which were all entitled Gazettes in order to secure
certain advertisements that were all directed by law “to be inserted in
the South Carolina Gazette.” Mary Timothy Crouch continued the
paper for a short time after her husband’s death; and in 1780 shortly
before the surrender of the city to the British, went with her printing-
press and types to Salem, where for a few months she printed The
Salem Gazette and General Advertiser. I have dwelt at some length
on the activity and enterprise of these Southern women, because it
is another popular but unstable notion that the women of the North
were far more energetic and capable than their Southern sisters;
which is certainly not the case in this line of business affairs.
Benjamin and James Franklin were not the only members of the
Franklin family who were capable newspaper-folk. James Franklin
died in Newport in 1735, and his widow Anne successfully carried on
the business for many years. She had efficient aid in her two
daughters, who were quick and capable practical workers at the
compositor’s case, having been taught by their father, whom they
assisted in his lifetime. Isaiah Thomas says of them:—
A gentleman who was acquainted with Anne Franklin and
her family, informed me that he had often seen her daughters
at work in the printing house, and that they were sensible and
amiable women.
We can well believe that, since they had Franklin and Anne
Franklin blood in them. This competent and industrious trio of
women not only published the Newport Mercury, but were printers
for the colony, supplying blanks for public offices, publishing
pamphlets, etc. In 1745 they printed for the Government an edition of
the laws of the colony of 340 pages, folio. Still further, they carried on
a business of “printing linens, calicoes, silks, &c., in figures, very
lively and durable colors, and without the offensive smell which
commonly attends linen-printing.” Surely there was no lack of
business ability on the distaff side of the Franklin house.
Boston women gave much assistance to their printer-husbands.
Ezekiel Russel, the editor of that purely political publication, The
Censor, was in addition a printer of chap-books and ballads which
were sold from his stand near the Liberty Tree on Boston Common.
His wife not only helped him in printing these, but she and another
young woman of his household, having ready pens and a biddable
muse, wrote with celerity popular and seasonable ballads on passing
events, especially of tragic or funereal cast; and when these ballads
were printed with a nice border of woodcuts of coffins and death’s
heads, they often had a long and profitable run of popularity. After
his death, Widow Russel still continued ballad making and monging.
It was given to a woman, Widow Margaret Draper, to publish the
only newspaper which was issued in Boston during the siege, the
Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News Letter. And a miserable
little sheet it was, vari-colored, vari-typed, vari-sized; of such poor
print that it is scarcely readable. When the British left Boston,
Margaret Draper left also, and resided in England, where she
received a pension from the British government.
The first newspaper in Pennsylvania was entitled The American
Weekly Mercury. It was “imprinted by Andrew Bradford” in 1719. He
was a son of the first newspaper printer in New York, William
Bradford, Franklin’s “cunning old fox,” who lived to be ninety-two
years old, and whose quaint tombstone may be seen in Trinity
Churchyard. At Andrew’s death in 1742, the paper appeared in
mourning, and it was announced that it would be published by “the
widow Bradford.” She took in a partner, but speedily dropped him,
and carried it on in her own name till 1746. During the time that
Cornelia Bradford printed this paper it was remarkable for its good
type and neatness.
The Connecticut Courant and The Centinel were both of them
published for some years by the widows of former proprietors.
The story of John Peter Zenger, the publisher of The New York
Weekly Journal, is one of the most interesting episodes in our
progress to free speech and liberty, but cannot be dwelt on here. The
feminine portion of his family was of assistance to him. His daughter
was mistress of a famous New York tavern that saw many
remarkable visitors, and heard much of the remarkable talk of
Zenger’s friends. After his death in 1746, his newspaper was carried
on by his widow for two years. Her imprint was, “New York; Printed
by the Widow Cathrine Zenger at the Printing-Office in Stone Street;
Where Advertisements are taken in, and all Persons may be
supplied with this Paper.”
The whole number of newspapers printed before the Revolution
was not very large; and when we see how readily and successfully
this considerable number of women assumed the cares of
publishing, we know that the “newspaper woman” of that day was no
rare or presumptuous creature, any more than is the “newspaper-
woman” of our own day, albeit she was of very different ilk; but the
spirit of independent self-reliance, when it became necessary to
exhibit self-reliance, was as prompt and as stable in the feminine
breast a century and a half ago as now. Then, as to-day, there were
doubtless scores of good wives and daughters who materially
assisted their husbands in their printing-shops, and whose work will
never be known.
There is no doubt that our great-grandmothers possessed
wonderful ability to manage their own affairs, when it became
necessary to do so, even in extended commercial operations. It is
easy to trace in the New England coast towns one influence which
tended to interest them, and make them capable of business
transactions. They constantly heard on all sides the discussion of
foreign trade, and were even encouraged to enter into the discussion
and the traffic. They heard the Windward Islands, the Isle of France,
and Amsterdam, and Canton, and the coast of Africa described by
old travelled mariners, by active young shipmasters, in a way that
put them far more in touch with these far-away foreign shores, gave
them more knowledge of details of life in those lands, than women of
to-day have. And women were encouraged, even urged, to take an
active share in foreign trade, in commercial speculation, by sending
out a “venture” whenever a vessel put out to sea, and whenever the
small accumulation of money earned by braiding straw, knitting
stockings, selling eggs or butter, or by spinning and weaving, was
large enough to be worth thus investing; and it needed not to be a
very large sum to be deemed proper for investment. When a ship
sailed out to China with cargo of ginseng, the ship’s owner did not
own all the solid specie in the hold—the specie that was to be
invested in the rich and luxurious products of far Cathay.
Complicated must have been the accounts of these transactions, for
many were the parties in the speculation. There were no giant
monopolies in those days. The kindly ship-owner permitted even his
humblest neighbor to share his profits. And the profits often were
large. The stories of some of the voyages, the adventures of the
business contracts, read like a fairy tale of commerce. In old letters
may be found reference to many of the ventures sent by women.
One young woman wrote in 1759:—
Inclos’d is a pair of Earrings. Pleas ask Captin Oliver to
carry them a Ventur fer me if he Thinks they will fetch
anything to the Vally of them; tell him he may bring the effects
in anything he thinks will answer best.
One of the “effects” brought to this young woman, and to hundreds
of others, was a certain acquaintance with business transactions, a
familiarity with the methods of trade. When the father or husband
died, the woman could, if necessary, carry on his business to a
successful winding-up, or continue it in the future. Of the latter
enterprise many illustrations might be given. In the autumn of 1744 a
large number of prominent business men in Newport went into a
storehouse on a wharf to examine the outfit of a large privateer. A
terrible explosion of gunpowder took place, which killed nine of them.
One of the wounded was Sueton Grant, a Scotchman, who had
come to America in 1725. His wife, on hearing of the accident, ran at
once to the dock, took in at a glance the shocking scene and its
demands for assistance, and cutting into strips her linen apron with
the housewife’s scissors she wore at her side, calmly bound up the
wounds of her dying husband. Mr. Grant was at this time engaged in
active business; he had agencies in Europe, and many privateers
afloat. Mrs. Grant took upon her shoulders these great
responsibilities, and successfully carried them on for many years,
while she educated her children, and cared for her home.
A good example of her force of character was once shown in a
court of law. She had an important litigation on hand and large
interests at stake, when she discovered the duplicity of her counsel,
and her consequent danger. She went at once to the court-room
where the case was being tried; when her lawyer promptly but vainly
urged her to retire. The judge, disturbed by the interruption, asked
for an explanation, and Mrs. Grant at once unfolded the knavery of
her counsel and asked permission to argue her own case. Her
dignity, force, and lucidity so moved the judge that he permitted her
to address the jury, which she did in so convincing a manner as to
cause them to promptly render a verdict favorable to her. She
passed through some trying scenes at the time of the Revolution
with wonderful decision and ability, and received from every one the
respect and deference due to a thorough business man, though she
was a woman.
In New York the feminine Dutch blood showed equal capacity in
business matters; and it is said that the management of considerable
estates and affairs often was assumed by widows in New
Amsterdam. Two noted examples are Widow De Vries and Widow
Provoost. The former was married in 1659, to Rudolphus De Vries,
and after his death she carried on his Dutch trade—not only buying
and selling foreign goods, but going repeatedly to Holland in the
position of supercargo on her own ships. She married Frederick
Phillipse, and it was through her keenness and thrift and her
profitable business, as well as through his own success, that
Phillipse became the richest man in the colony and acquired the
largest West Indian trade.
Widow Maria Provoost was equally successful at the beginning of
the eighteenth century, and had a vast Dutch business
correspondence. Scarce a ship from Spain, the Mediterranean, or
the West Indies, but brought her large consignments of goods. She
too married a second time, and as Madam James Alexander filled a
most dignified position in New York, being the only person besides
the Governor to own a two-horse coach. Her house was the finest in
town, and such descriptions of its various apartments as “the great
drawing-room, the lesser drawing-room, the blue and gold leather
room, the green and gold leather room, the chintz room, the great
tapestry room, the little front parlour, the back parlour,” show its size
and pretensions.
Madam Martha Smith, widow of Colonel William Smith of St.
George’s Manor, Long Island, was a woman of affairs in another
field. In an interesting memorandum left by her we read:—
Jan ye 16, 1707. My company killed a yearling whale made
27 barrels. Feb ye 4, Indian Harry with his boat struck a whale
and called for my boat to help him. I had but a third which was
4 barrels. Feb 22, my two boats & my sons and Floyds boats
killed a yearling whale of which I had half—made 36 barrels,
my share 18 barrels. Feb 24 my company killed a school
whale which made 35 barrels. March 13, my company killed a
small yearling made 30 barrels. March 17, my company killed
two yearlings in one day; one made 27, the other 14 barrels.
We find her paying to Lord Cornbury fifteen pounds, a duty on “ye
20th part of her eyle.” And she apparently succeeded in her
enterprises.
In early Philadelphia directories may be found the name of
“Margaret Duncan, Merchant, No. 1 S. Water St.” This capable
woman had been shipwrecked on her way to the new world. In the
direst hour of that extremity, when forced to draw lots for the scant
supply of food, she vowed to build a church in her new home if her
life should be spared. The “Vow Church” in Philadelphia, on
Thirteenth Street near Market Street, for many years proved her
fulfilment of this vow, and also bore tribute to the prosperity of this
pious Scotch Presbyterian in her adopted home.
Southern women were not outstripped by the business women of
the north. No more practical woman ever lived in America than Eliza
Lucas Pinckney. When a young girl she resided on a plantation at
Wappoo, South Carolina, owned by her father, George Lucas. He
was Governor of Antigua, and observing her fondness for and
knowledge of botany, and her intelligent power of application of her
knowledge, he sent to her many tropical seeds and plants for her
amusement and experiment in her garden. Among the seeds were
some of indigo, which she became convinced could be profitably
grown in South Carolina. She at once determined to experiment, and
planted indigo seed in March, 1741. The young plants started finely,
but were cut down by an unusual frost. She planted seed a second
time, in April, and these young indigo-plants were destroyed by
worms. Notwithstanding these discouragements, she tried a third
time, and with success. Her father was delighted with her enterprise
and persistence, and when he learned that the indigo had seeded
and ripened, sent an Englishman named Cromwell—an experienced
indigo-worker—from Montserrat to teach his daughter Eliza the
whole process of extracting the dye from the weed. Vats were built
on Wappoo Creek, in which was made the first indigo formed in
Carolina. It was of indifferent quality, for Cromwell feared the
successful establishment of the industry in America would injure the
indigo trade in his own colony, so he made a mystery of the process,
and put too much lime in the vats, doubtless thinking he could
impose upon a woman. But Miss Lucas watched him carefully, and in
spite of his duplicity, and doubtless with considerable womanly
power of guessing, finally obtained a successful knowledge and
application of the complex and annoying methods of extracting
indigo,—methods which required the untiring attention of sleepless
nights, and more “judgment” than intricate culinary triumphs. After
the indigo was thoroughly formed by steeping, beating, and washing,
and taken from the vats, the trials of the maker were not over. It must
be exposed to the sun, but if exposed too much it would be burnt, if
too little it would rot. Myriads of flies collected around it and if
unmolested would quickly ruin it. If packed too soon it would sweat
and disintegrate. So, from the first moment the tender plant
appeared above ground, when the vast clouds of destroying
grasshoppers had to be annihilated by flocks of hungry chickens, or
carefully dislodged by watchful human care, indigo culture and
manufacture was a distressing worry, and was made still more
unalluring to a feminine experimenter by the fact that during the
weary weeks it laid in the “steepers” and “beaters” it gave forth a
most villainously offensive smell.
Soon after Eliza Lucas’ hard-earned success she married Charles
Pinckney, and it is pleasant to know that her father gave her, as part
of her wedding gift, all the indigo on the plantation. She saved the
whole crop for seed,—and it takes about a bushel of indigo seed to
plant four acres,—and she planted the Pinckney plantation at
Ashepoo, and gave to her friends and neighbors small quantities of
seed for individual experiment; all of which proved successful. The
culture of indigo at once became universal, the newspapers were full
of instructions upon the subject, and the dye was exported to
England by 1747, in such quantity that merchants trading in Carolina
petitioned Parliament for a bounty on Carolina indigo. An act of
Parliament was passed allowing a bounty of sixpence a pound on
indigo raised in the British-American plantations and imported
directly to Great Britain. Spurred on by this wise act, the planters
applied with redoubled vigor to the production of the article, and
soon received vast profits as the rewards of their labor and care. It is
said that just previous to the Revolution more children were sent
from South Carolina to England to receive educations, than from all
the other colonies,—and this through the profits of indigo and rice.
Many indigo planters doubled their capital every three or four years,
and at last not only England was supplied with indigo from South
Carolina, but the Americans undersold the French in many European
markets. It exceeded all other southern industries in importance, and
became a general medium of exchange. When General Marion’s
young nephew was sent to school at Philadelphia, he started off with
a wagon-load of indigo to pay his expenses. The annual dues of the
Winyah Indigo Society of Georgetown were paid in the dye, and the
society had grown so wealthy in 1753, that it established a large
charity school and valuable library.
Ramsay, the historian of South Carolina, wrote in 1808, that the
indigo trade proved more beneficial to Carolina than the mines of
Mexico or Peru to old or new Spain. By the year of his writing,
however, indigo (without waiting for extermination through its modern
though less reliable rivals, the aniline dyes) had been driven out of
Southern plantations by its more useful and profitable field neighbor,
King Cotton, that had been set on a throne by the invention of a
Yankee schoolmaster. The time of greatest production and export of
indigo was just previous to the Revolution, and at one time it was
worth four or five dollars a pound. And to-day only the scanty records
of the indigo trade, a few rotting cypress boards of the steeping-vats,
and the blue-green leaves of the wild wayside indigo, remain of all
this prosperity to show the great industry founded by this remarkable
and intelligent woman.
The rearing of indigo was not this young girl’s only industry. I will
quote from various letters written by her in 1741 and 1742 before her
marriage, to show her many duties, her intelligence, her versatility:—
Wrote my father on the pains I had taken to bring the
Indigo, Ginger, Cotton, Lucern, and Casada to perfection and
had greater hopes from the Indigo, if I could have the seed
earlier, than any of ye rest of ye things I had tried.
I have the burthen of 3 Plantations to transact which
requires much writing and more business and fatigue of other
sorts than you can imagine. But lest you should imagine it too
burthensome to a girl in my early time of life, give me leave to
assure you I think myself happy that I can be useful to so
good a father.
Wont you laugh at me if I tell you I am so busy in providing
for Posterity I hardly allow myself time to eat or sleep, and
can but just snatch a moment to write to you and a friend or
two more. I am making a large plantation of oaks which I look
upon as my own property whether my father gives me the
land or not, and therefore I design many yeer hence when
oaks are more valuable than they are now, which you know
they will be when we come to build fleets. I intend I say two
thirds of the produce of my oaks for a charity (Ill tell you my
scheme another time) and the other third for those that shall
have the trouble to put my design in execution.
I have a sister to instruct, and a parcel of little negroes
whom I have undertaken to teach to read.
The Cotton, Guinea Corn, and Ginger planted was cutt off
by a frost. I wrote you in a former letter we had a good crop of
Indigo upon the ground. I make no doubt this will prove a
valuable commodity in time. Sent Gov. Thomas daughter a
tea chest of my own doing.
I am engaged with the Rudiments of Law to which I am but
a stranger. If you will not laugh too immoderately at me I’ll
trust you with a Secrett. I have made two Wills already. I know
I have done no harm for I conn’d my Lesson perfect. A widow
hereabouts with a pretty little fortune teazed me intolerably to
draw a marriage settlement, but it was out of my depth and I
absolutely refused it—so she got an able hand to do it—
indeed she could afford it—but I could not get off being one of
the Trustees to her settlement, and an old Gentⁿ the other. I
shall begin to think myself an old woman before I am a young
one, having such mighty affairs on my hands.
I think this record of important work could scarce be equalled by
any young girl in a comparative station of life nowadays. And when
we consider the trying circumstances, the difficult conditions, in
which these varied enterprises were carried on, we can well be
amazed at the story.
Indigo was not the only important staple which attracted Mrs.
Pinckney’s attention, and the manufacture of which she made a
success. In 1755 she carried with her to England enough rich silk
fabric, which she had raised and spun and woven herself in the
vicinity of Charleston, to make three fine silk gowns, one of which
was presented to the Princess Dowager of Wales, and another to
Lord Chesterfield. This silk was said to be equal in beauty to any silk
ever imported.
This was not the first American silk that had graced the person of
English royalty. In 1734 the first windings of Georgia silk had been
taken from the filature to England, and the queen wore a dress made
thereof at the king’s next birthday. Still earlier in the field Virginia had
sent its silken tribute to royalty. In the college library at Williamsburg,
Va., may be seen a letter signed “Charles R.”—his most Gracious
Majesty Charles the Second. It was written by his Majesty’s private
secretary, and addressed to Governor Berkeley for the king’s loyal
subjects in Virginia. It reads thus:—
Trusty and Well beloved, We Greet you Well. Wee have
received wᵗʰ much content ye dutifull respects of Our Colony
in ye present lately made us by you & ye councill there, of ye
first product of ye new Manufacture of Silke, which as a
marke of Our Princely acceptation of yoʳ duteys & for yoʳ
particular encouragement, etc. Wee have been commanded
to be wrought up for ye use of Our Owne Person.
And earliest of all is the tradition, dear to the hearts of Virginians,
that Charles I. was crowned in 1625 in a robe woven of Virginia silk.
The Queen of George III. was the last English royalty to be similarly
honored, for the next attack of the silk fever produced a suit for an
American ruler, George Washington.
The culture of silk in America was an industry calculated to attract
the attention of women, and indeed was suited to them, but men
were not exempt from the fever; and the history of the manifold and
undaunted efforts of governor’s councils, parliaments, noblemen,
philosophers, and kings to force silk culture in America forms one of
the most curious examples extant of persistent and futile efforts to
run counter to positive economic conditions, for certainly physical
conditions are fairly favorable.
South Carolina women devoted themselves with much success to
agricultural experiments. Henry Laurens brought from Italy and
naturalized the olive-tree, and his daughter, Martha Laurens
Ramsay, experimented with the preservation of the fruit until her
productions equalled the imported olives. Catharine Laurens
Ramsay manufactured opium of the first quality. In 1755 Henry
Laurens’ garden in Ansonborough was enriched with every curious
vegetable product from remote quarters of the world that his
extensive mercantile connections enabled him to procure, and the
soil and climate of South Carolina to cherish. He introduced besides
olives, capers, limes, ginger, guinea grass, Alpine strawberries
(bearing nine months in the year), and many choice varieties of
fruits. This garden was superintended by his wife, Mrs. Elinor
Laurens.
Mrs. Martha Logan was a famous botanist and florist. She was
born in 1702, and was the daughter of Robert Daniel, one of the last
proprietary governors of South Carolina. When fourteen years old,
she married George Logan, and all her life treasured a beautiful and
remarkable garden. When seventy years old, she compiled from her
knowledge and experience a regular treatise on gardening, which
was published after her death, with the title The Garden’s Kalendar.
It was for many years the standard work on gardening in that locality.
Mrs. Hopton and Mrs. Lamboll were early and assiduous flower-
raisers and experimenters in the eighteenth century, and Miss Maria
Drayton, of Drayton Hall, a skilled botanist.
The most distinguished female botanist of colonial days was Jane
Colden, the daughter of Governor Cadwallader Colden, of New York.
Her love of the science was inherited from her father, the friend and
correspondent of Linnæus, Collinson, and other botanists. She
learned a method of taking leaf-impressions in printers’ ink, and sent
careful impressions of American plants and leaves to the European
collectors. John Ellis wrote of her to Linnæus in April, 1758:—
This young lady merits your esteem, and does honor to
your system. She has drawn and described four hundred
plants in your method. Her father has a plant called after her
Coldenia. Suppose you should call this new genus Coldenella
or any other name which might distinguish her.
Peter Collinson said also that she was the first lady to study the
Linnæan system, and deserved to be celebrated. Another tribute to
her may be found in a letter of Walter Rutherford’s:—
From the middle of the Woods this Family corresponds with
all the learned Societies in Europe. His daughter Jenny is a
Florist and Botanist. She has discovered a great number of
Plants never before described and has given their Properties
and Virtues, many of which are found useful in Medicine and
she draws and colours them with great Beauty. Dr. Whyte of
Edinburgh is in the number of her correspondents.
N. B. She makes the best cheese I ever ate in America.
The homely virtue of being a good cheese-maker was truly a
saving clause to palliate and excuse so much feminine scientific
knowledge.
CHAPTER III.
“DOUBLE-TONGUED AND NAUGHTY WOMEN.”
I am much impressed in reading the court records of those early

days, to note the vast care taken in all the colonies to prevent lying,
slandering, gossiping, backbiting, and idle babbling, or, as they
termed it, “brabling;” to punish “common sowers and movers”—of
dissensions, I suppose.
The loving neighborliness which proved as strong and as
indispensable a foundation for a successful colony as did godliness,
made the settlers resent deeply any violations, though petty, of the
laws of social kindness. They felt that what they termed “opprobrious
schandalls tending to defamaçon and disparagment” could not be
endured.
One old author declares that “blabbing, babbling, tale-telling, and
discovering the faults and frailities of others is a most Common and
evill practice.” He asserts that a woman should be a “main store
house of secresie, a Maggazine of taciturnitie, the closet of
connivence, the mumbudget of silence, the cloake bagge of rouncell,
the capcase, fardel, or pack of friendly toleration;” which, as a whole,
seems to be a good deal to ask. Men were, as appears by the
records, more frequently brought up for these offences of the tongue,
but women were not spared either in indictment or punishment. In
Windsor, Conn., one woman was whipped for “wounding” a neighbor,
not in the flesh, but in the sensibilities.
In 1652 Joane Barnes, of Plymouth, Mass., was indicted for
“slandering,” and sentenced “to sitt in the stockes during the Courts
pleasure, and a paper whereon her facte written in Capitall letters to
be made faste vnto her hatt or neare vnto her all the tyme of her
sitting there.” In 1654 another Joane in Northampton County, Va.,
suffered a peculiarly degrading punishment for slander. She was
“drawen ouer the Kings Creeke at the starne of a boate or Canoux,
also the next Saboth day in the tyme of diuine seruis” was obliged to
present herself before the minister and congregation, and
acknowledge her fault, and ask forgiveness. This was an old Scotch
custom. The same year one Charlton called the parson, Mr. Cotton,
a “black cotted rascal,” and was punished therefor in the same way.
Richard Buckland, for writing a slanderous song about Ann Smith,
was similarly pilloried, bearing a paper on his hat inscribed Inimicus
Libellus, and since possibly all the church attendants did not know
Latin, to publicly beg Ann’s forgiveness in English for his libellous
poesy. The punishment of offenders by exposing them, wrapped in
sheets, or attired in foul clothing, on the stool of repentance in the
meeting-house in time of divine service, has always seemed to me
specially bitter, unseemly, and unbearable.
It should be noted that these suits for slander were between
persons in every station of life. When Anneke Jans Bogardus (wife of
Dominie Bogardus, the second established clergyman in New
Netherlands), would not remain in the house with one Grietje van
Salee, a woman of doubtful reputation, the latter told throughout the
neighborhood that Anneke had lifted her petticoats when crossing
the street, and exposed her ankles in unseemly fashion; and she
also said that the Dominie had sworn a false oath. Action for slander
was promptly begun, and witnesses produced to show that Anneke
had flourished her petticoats no more than was seemly and tidy to
escape the mud. Judgment was pronounced against Grietje and her
husband. She had to make public declaration in the Fort that she
had lied, and to pay three guilders. The husband had to pay a fine,
and swear to the good character of the Dominie and good carriage of
the Dominie’s wife, and he was not permitted to carry weapons in
town,—a galling punishment.
Dominie Bogardus was in turn sued several times for slander,—
once by Thomas Hall, the tobacco planter, simply for saying that
Thomas’ tobacco was bad; and again, wonderful to relate, by one of
his deacons—Deacon Van Cortlandt.
Special punishment was provided for women. Old Dr. Johnson
said gruffly to a lady friend: “Madam, there are different ways of
restraining evil; stocks for men, a ducking-stool for women, pounds
for beasts.” The old English instrument of punishment,—as old as
the Doomsday survey,—the cucking-stool or ducking-stool, was in
vogue here, was insultingly termed a “publique convenience,” and
was used in the Southern and Central colonies for the correction of
common scolds. We read in Blackstone’s Commentaries, “A
common scold may be indicted and if convicted shall be sentenced
to be placed in a certain engine of correction called the trebucket,
castigatory, or cucking-stool.” Still another name for this “engine”
was a “gum-stool.” The brank, or scold’s bridle,—a cruel and
degrading means of punishment employed in England for “curst
queans” as lately as 1824,—was unknown in America. A brank may
be seen at the Guildhall in Worcester, England. One at Walton-on-
Thames bears the date 1633. On the Isle of Man, when the brank
was removed, the wearer had to say thrice, in public, “Tongue, thou
hast lied.” I do not find that women ever had to “run the gauntelope”
as did male offenders in 1685 in Boston, and, though under another
name, in several of the provinces.
Women in Maine were punished by being gagged; in Plymouth,
Mass., and in Easthampton, L. I., they had cleft sticks placed on their
tongues in public; in the latter place because the dame said her
husband “had brought her to a place where there was neither gospel
nor magistracy.” In Salem “one Oliver—his wife” had a cleft stick
placed on her tongue for half an hour in public “for reproaching the
elders.” It was a high offence to speak “discornfully” of the elders and
magistrates.
The first volume of the American Historical Record gives a letter
said to have been written to Governor Endicott, of Massachusetts, in
1634 by one Thomas Hartley from Hungar’s Parish, Virginia. It gives
a graphic description of a ducking-stool, and an account of a ducking
in Virginia. I quote from it:—
The day afore yesterday at two of ye clock in ye afternoon I
saw this punishment given to one Betsey wife of John Tucker,
who by ye violence of her tongue had made his house and ye
neighborhood uncomfortable. She was taken to ye pond
where I am sojourning by ye officer who was joyned by ye
magistrate and ye Minister Mr. Cotton, who had frequently
admonished her and a large number of People. They had a
machine for ye purpose yᵗ belongs to ye Parish, and which I
was so told had been so used three times this Summer. It is a
platform with 4 small rollers or wheels and two upright posts
between which works a Lever by a Rope fastened to its
shorter or heavier end. At the end of ye longer arm is fixed a
stool upon which sᵈ Betsey was fastened by cords, her gown
tied fast around her feete. The Machine was then moved up
to ye edge of ye pond, ye Rope was slackened by ye officer
and ye woman was allowed to go down under ye water for ye
space of half a minute. Betsey had a stout stomach, and
would not yield until she had allowed herself to be ducked 5
severall times. At length she cried piteously Let me go Let me
go, by Gods help I’ll sin no more. Then they drew back ye
machine, untied ye Ropes and let her walk home in her
wetted clothes a hopefully penitent woman.
I have seen an old chap-book print of a ducking-stool with a “light
huswife of the banck-side” in it. It was rigged much like an old-
fashioned well-sweep, the woman and chair occupying the relative
place of the bucket. The base of the upright support was on a low-
wheeled platform.
Bishop Meade, in his Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of
Virginia, tells of one “scolding quean” who was ordered to be ducked
three times from a vessel lying in James River. Places for ducking
were prepared near the Court Houses. The marshal’s fee for ducking
was only two pounds of tobacco. The ducking-stools were not kept in
church porches, as in England. In 1634 two women were sentenced
to be either drawn from King’s Creek “from one Cowpen to another
at the starn of a boat or kanew,” or to present themselves before the
congregation, and ask forgiveness of each other and God. In 1633 it
was ordered that a ducking-stool be built in every county in
Maryland. At a court-baron at St. Clements, the county was
prosecuted for not having one of these “public conveniences.” In
February, 1775, a ducking-stool was ordered to be placed at the
confluence of the Ohio and Monongahela Rivers, and was doubtless
used. As late as 1819 Georgia women were ducked in the Oconee
River for scolding. And in 1824, at the court of Quarter Sessions, a
Philadelphia woman was sentenced to be ducked, but the
punishment was not inflicted, as it was deemed obsolete and
contrary to the spirit of the times. In 1803 the ducking-stool was still
used in Liverpool, England, and in 1809 in Leominster, England.
One of the last indictments for ducking in our own country was that
of Mrs. Anne Royall in Washington, almost in our own day. She was
a hated lobbyist, whom Mr. Forney called an itinerant virago, and
who became so abusive to congressmen that she was indicted as a
common scold before Judge William Cranch, and was sentenced by
him to be ducked in the Potomac. She was, however, released with a
fine.
Women curst with a shrewish tongue were often punished in
Puritan colonies. In 1647 it was ordered that “common scoulds” be
punished in Rhode Island by ducking, but I find no records of the
punishment being given. In 1649 several women were prosecuted in
Salem, Mass., for scolding; and on May 15, 1672, the General Court
of Massachusetts ordered that scolds and railers should be gagged
or “set in a ducking-stool and dipped over head and ears three
times,” but I do not believe that this law was ever executed in
Massachusetts. Nor was it in Maine, though in 1664 a dozen towns
were fined forty shillings each for having no “coucking-stool.” Equally
severe punishments were inflicted for other crimes. Katharine Ainis,
of Plymouth, was publicly whipped on training day, and ordered to
wear a large B cut in red cloth “sewed to her vper garment.” In 1637
Dorothy Talbye, a Salem dame, for beating her husband was
ordered to be bound and chained to a post. At a later date she was
whipped, and then was hanged for killing her child, who bore the
strange name of Difficulty. No one but a Puritan magistrate could
doubt, from Winthrop’s account of her, that she was insane. Another
“audatious” Plymouth shrew, for various “vncivill carriages” to her
husband, was sentenced to the pillory; and if half that was told of her
was true, she richly deserved her sentence; but, as she displayed
“greate pensiveness and sorrow” before the simple Pilgrim
magistrates, she escaped temporarily, to be punished at a later date

Talking About An Intentionalist Theory of Reference 1St Edition Elmar Unnsteinsson Full Chapter

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Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory

of Reference 1st Edition Elmar

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ourselves by thinking that we simply picked this piece of language up off

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sorry if I am forgetting someone, but I would like to thank Eliot Michaelson,

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I continue to be amazed by my wife who, what with the wobbliness of

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the literature, can be combined to solve the problem of identity confusion

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Traditionally, many philosophers have thought that the success or failure of

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Mental Mechanisms and the Act of Referring

In Chapters 4 to 6, I develop the intentionalist theory of speaker meaning

speakers intend to have effects on minded entities. Now, certainly, they

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mechanisms whose normal operation is causally responsible for the effect

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Schematically, the idea is that the speech act of referring singularly to an

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this book. More generally, however, I take the conclusion to be indirect

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Finally, I address the issue of interrogative attitudes—wondering, asking,

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statements seem to differ so dramatically in their cognitive effects, and I

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(1) Tully is an orator if Cicero is.

(2) Cicero is an orator if Cicero is.

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(3) Tully is an orator.

cognitive effects on S if and only if S is ignorant of the fact that Cicero =

(A) S believes truly that Cicero = Tully.

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(5) JFK was Catholic if John F. Kennedy was.

(6) John F. Kennedy was Catholic if John F. Kennedy was.

not arise for S in epistemic state (A).

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Frege said it was about: In virtue of what does ‘a = b’ seem to differ in

issol ing rege

In this section I will spell out how edenic intentionalism is supposed to

The solution to this puzzle, however, is contained in the Be ef Mo e

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speaker/hearer S. Assume, also, that we are particularly interested to know

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In the twin-case it is apparent that, or so I will argue, if we want to attribute

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(7) John F. Kennedy was presidential,

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(8) Joe is Joe.

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This book is a contribution to ongoing research into a phenomenon

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I’ll mention three clarifications at this stage. First, this categorization is

example in Chapter 3, where I articulate an ‘ecumenical’ theory of belief

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(9) Lois believes that Superman is strong.