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Sense And Aporia: Reading Neo-Fregeans En Route Derrida

Prasenjit Biswas

Discipline: Philosophy

 

Abstract:

Frege’s famous Caesar problem tells us that the sense and reference of a term or name cannot be determined within an apriori identity between thought and world. Neo-Fregeans revise this by re-establishing the apriori identity through context sensitivity. In the case of names in general and proper names in particular, Fregean and neo-Fregean positions face the problem of an aporia: names and objects do not necessarily share equivalence. Derrida posits this aporia as a problem of passage between thought and world. For Derrida, names are secrets that are the disguised relation between thought and world, a relation which always differs and defers a fixed determination of meaning and subject in communication of sense in some language.