Yesterday U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham sponsored a provision to the $100B spending bill for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The provision would bar the release of photographs showing U.S. abuses of suspected terrorist detainees (read: Guantanamo Bay).

This is a sensitive issue with compelling arguments on both sides.  However, like many of today’s hot-button political issues it essentially boils down to freedom (the right to know) versus security (or the perception of).

The alarming aspect of this debate is not the prohibition itself but the justification provided for it.  Yesterday Sen. Graham addressed his constituents and the possibility his provision may be removed from the bill:

“I cannot believe that we’re about to do this.  That we’re going to dismiss the advice of our commanders who are leading our country in the time of war to give in to the fringe element.”

(an audio clip can be found here)

Senator Graham believes his provision should pass because “our commanders advise it.”

This kind of blind faith in “authority” lead Congress to authorize the Iraq war before confirming the existence of WMDs.  This kind of blind faith is not patriotic.  It does not safeguard America or Americans; quite the opposite in fact.

One of the beautiful aspects of America is our intricate network of checks and balances.  However, for the American government to function properly, each division must remain autonomous – pursue its own interests, voice its own concerns, and rarely (if ever) defer to an authority on the sole basis of rank and file.

There is a plausible argument for preventing the release of certain photos.  It is not one that I personally agree with, but that is because of policies I support (e.g. freedom of information, full disclosure of government actions, and torture is never acceptable in any situation) not because an authority or commander says so.

People are fallible, policies need not be, and political decisions should be based on the latter, not the former.

According to the Center for Disease Control 30,000 – 40,000 Americans die each year from the flu. To date, 0 people have died from the swine flu in the U.S.

Now can we please move on?

Yesterday EMI Music representative Bjørn Rogstad responded to a recent study that found “illegal” music downloaders buy 10x more music than those who do not download music illegally:

There is one thing we are not going away [from], and it is the consumption of music increases, while revenue declines. It can not be explained in any way other than that the illegal downloading is over the legal sale of music

Translation: According to Bjørn, illegal downloads are responsible for declining revenues in the music industry.

Simply put, Bjørn Rogstad is an idiot.

The music industry is losing money because its distribution platform has fundamentally changed over the past 15 years.  This is not an opinion but a fact.  A fact that is even understood by the record labels.

The biggest difference is evidenced by services like Pandora, Playlist, and MySpace Music; namely that people can legally listen to whatever music they choose for free. There is no longer a need to buy music albums or tracks because they can be streamed live, on demand, over the internet.

It is unfortunate that this blatant falsehood of so-called illegal music downloads is still given weight in public discourse, but I guess that’s what happens when a marketer/promoter is charged with talking business strategy.

At present time, all accounts of the physical world are wildly incomplete.  The biggest issue, of course, is how the universe came to be.  Neither religion nor science can explain how, for example, a higher power could be self-caused or where all of this physical matter came from (specifically, what created God or what happened prior to 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang).

Yes, most religions claim something like God has always existed or was the cause of him/her self, but it’s quite obvious that these explanations fall well short of complete understanding – for there exists no account of how anything, let alone God, could be the cause of itself (or have always existed).

Similarly, modern day scientific understanding stops at “approximately” 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang, and prominently lacks a unified theory of the physical universe (we use two very different models – Einstein’s theories of relativity and quantum theory – to govern large and small bodies).

New discoveries suggest it may even turn out that time does not actually exist – which is not nearly as implausible as it may seem at first glance (for we already know that time is not a constant, a nice explanation of this is here – choose the 4th video link).

The point is there are gaps in our understanding.  Huge gaps.  Consider the following (paraphrased) metaphor from Baruch Spinoza’s letter to Henry Oldenburg:

Imagine a worm, living in the bloodstream, able to distinguish by sight the particles of blood, lymph, etc., and able to think about how each particle is related.  This little worm would live in the blood [a part of the body], in the same way as we live in a part of the universe.  The worm would consider each particle of blood, not as a part, but as a whole. He would be unable to grasp the larger truth, namely the role the blood plays as a part of the body, and that the blood (his entire world) is only a part of something larger [the body], which in turn is part of something larger still [the universe].

It is impossible for the worm to get on to the larger, ultimate, reality of the universe from the evidence of his world (the blood).

While it may be possible for mankind to expand its understanding beyond that of the worm’s at some point in the future, modern day knowledge of some ultimate reality is on par with the worm.  This is evidenced by our inability to answer the most fundamental of all questions – how we came to be – and those referenced above.

The tired athiest/theist/agnostic debate – three worms in blood, confusing hubris with enlightenment.

The Dark Side of Dubai is a profound narrative, and worthwhile read, by journalist, author, and playwright, Johann Hari.  It touches on everything from the horrific effects of the current recession to the ironic truth that gays are the most free of all (non-ruling) classes in Dubai.

The Dark Side of Dubai

The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.

But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed’s smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.

Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.

I. An Adult Disneyland

Karen Andrews can’t speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai’s finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don’t have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.

Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice – witty and warm – breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her husband was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. “When he said Dubai, I said – if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you’ve got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him.”

All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. “It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse,” she says. “Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time.”

Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. “We were drunk on Dubai,” she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. “We’re not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt.” After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he’d be okay. But the debts were growing. “Before I came here, I didn’t know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada’s or any other liberal democracy’s,” she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can’t pay, you go to prison.

“When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said – right, let’s take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go.” So Daniel resigned – but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren’t covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.

“Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment.” Karen can’t speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.

Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. “He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn’t face the shame to his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him.”

Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, “but it was so humiliating. I’ve never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I’ve never…” She peters out.

Daniel was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment at a trial he couldn’t understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. “Now I’m here illegally, too,” Karen says I’ve got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he’s out, somehow.” Looking away, almost paralysed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.

She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.

“The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems,” Karen says at last. “Nothing. This isn’t a city, it’s a con-job. They lure you in telling you it’s one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it’s a medieval dictatorship.”

Read the rest of the article here

CNN’s Jack Cafferty writes in his column today:

One senior Harvard economist estimates we spend $44 billion a year fighting the war on drugs. He says if they were legal, governments would realize about $33 billion a year in tax revenue. Net swing of $77 billion. Could we use that money today for something else? You bet your ass we could. Plus the cartels would be out of business. Instantly. Goodbye crime and violence.

Really Jack?  The cartels would be out of business?  Goodbye crime and violence?

I hate the illogical “War on Drugs” as much as the next literate, reasonably well-informed person – and don’t get me wrong, hyperbole is one heck of a literary device – but, no.

No, the cartels would not be out of business (according to UN estimates – p. 127 here – North America consumes less than half of the global illicit drug market).  No, it is not immediately obvious that crime and violence would decrease (see points 5 and 7 here).

The War on Drugs in its present form is ludicrous.  However, overstating the dissenter’s position does nothing to illuminate this insanity.

This travesty courtesy of Sir Ivan. Remarkably he’s even creepier “live”.  Also, he’s 53…

Gottlob Frege

The following is a paper on the views of Gottlob Frege, a 19th Century German philosopher  who founded modern logic and analytic philosophy.  In two of his most famous works (Begriffsschrift and On Sense and Nominatum) he tried to determine what kind of thing an identity statement (like A=A or A=B) is.

In Begriffsschrift, Frege suggested identity is a relation between names or signs of objects.  This means that what is expressed by something like A=B is simply that the name “A” and the name “B” both refer to the same object.  This seems like a reasonable view but it is wrong.  Frege realized his error more than a decade later and returned to the topic in On Sense and Nominatum to explain why he previously thought identity was a relation between names, why this is wrong, and what to make of identity now.

The text is marginally dense but does not require prior knowledge to understand.  Do pay attention to footnotes, they serve as guideposts to keep the wayward reader on course.

I In this section I will explain why Frege correctly rejected the view that identity (an identity is something like A=A or A=B where true) is a relation between objects, the problem of viewing identity as a relation between names[1], and how he tries to resolve these problems with his theory in On Sense and Nominatum.

The problem with viewing identity as a relation between objects is A=A and A=B, if true[2], would not be different in any important respect.  Both would state a logical, a priori truth (namely that some object is identical to itself) because the names “A” and “B” would both stand for the same object and nothing more.  However, there are many cases in which A=A and A=B express genuine, non-a priori knowledge.

Imagine A represents “the sun in the sky today” and B represents “the sun in the sky yesterday”.  A=A (the sun in the sky today is the same as the sun in the sky today) is an obvious, somewhat trivial point, but A=B (the sun in the sky today is the same as the sun in the sky yesterday) represents real, scientific knowledge[3].  Thus, identity cannot simply be a relation between objects because there are identity statements that express genuine knowledge, and identity relations between objects are not capable[4] of expressing genuine knowledge.

In On Sense and Nominatum Frege puts forth the above observation as an explanation for why he previously believed identity to be, not a relation between objects, but a relation between names.  He goes on to explain that what we seem to want to express with a statement like A=B is that the sign A and the sign B both name the same thing[5].  If this were the case, then identity statements would be a relation between names.

However, there is a problem with this view as well.  If identity were a relation between names, “the sun in the sky today = the sun in the sky yesterday” would mean something like: the combination of symbols “the sun in the sky today” stands for the same object as another combination of symbols “the sun in the sky yesterday.”  In other words, this view does not account for the different thoughts expressed by “the sun in the sky today” and “the sun in the sky yesterday,” only that two different signs exist, and serve to name the same object (the sun).   Thus, like the theory of identity as a relation between objects, identity as a relation between names fails to explain how we often use identity statements to express genuine knowledge.

Frege then outlines a theory that accounts for this peculiarity in identity statements.  His theory is based on the acute observation that identities like A=B are non-trivial and express genuine knowledge when the different signs correspond to different ways in which the same object is represented[6].  Again, think back to the sun example and this seems to be intuitively correct.  “The sun in the sky today” and “the sun in the sky yesterday” are two different signs that correspond to the same object (the sun) in two importantly different ways[7], and it is equating these two different modes of correspondence that seems to be the genuine knowledge the identity statement “the sun in the sky today is the same as the sun in the sky yesterday” expresses.  From this observation Frege asserts there are two important parts of a name: a sense (the connotation or meaning) as well as a nominatum (the actual thing/object the name represents).  According to Frege, it is the sense that determines (or helps us get on to or identify) the nominatum, and the sense is an objective thing that can be shared between individuals[8].

This picture does well to address the difficulty faced by the theories of identity as objects and identity as names.  According to this view, identity statements  like A=B represent a relation between two names with different senses but the same nominatum, while statements like A=A represent a relation between the same name with the same sense and nominatum.  The difference between A=A and A=B, then, is in the latter case there exists a non-trivial distinction in the sense of the names.

Frege’s picture as presented above (in a very basic form) is not without its own problems, some of which I will address later in this paper.  However, the question at hand is how well does this view address the problems of identity as elucidated by the theories of identity as a relation between names and identity as a relation between objects, and what should he say about identity as a whole?  I believe Frege’s picture successfully addresses the previous problems of identity and serves to advance the conversation.  However, as previously noted, this new theory gives rise to new, complex difficulties that must be confronted.

II Consider the sentence “Joe is beautiful.”  Prior to reading this sentence someone who speaks the English language will already have an understanding[9] of the meaning (or sense) of “is” and “beautiful” as well as the conjunction “is beautiful.”  However, the thought that is given by the sentence “Joe is beautiful” is incomplete without also an understanding of “Joe.”  Without this, the sentence would translate in to a thought like “____ is beautiful,” where “____” represents a blank spot or gap in the understanding.  This is another point that is fairly easy to get on to and subject to little resistance.  The fact that “Joe is beautiful” is meaningfully different from “___ is beautiful” seems absolutely correct.  Thus, the question become: how (or with what) does the name Joe fill this gap in cognition?

Bertrand Russell believed the gap in cognition was filled by the nominatum of the name (the thing itself).  There are many problems with this view, I will outline three.  First, the objection Frege posed[10] goes something like the following.  “The nominatum can’t be the gap filler because it cannot be the case that I have this physical thing in my mind.  Thoughts are non-physical, while the nominatum is a material thing that exists in the physical world, so how can this physical thing come to exist in my thought?  It clearly cannot.  Furthermore, if the nominatum were the gap filler, I would have to have every part of the object in my cognition.  Certainly this is not the case.  Consider something like the Pacific Ocean.  It would be absurd to suggest that I have a thought about every drop of water in the Pacific Ocean when I use or perceive the name “Pacific Ocean.”  However, despite this truth I do (successfully) use names like “Pacific Ocean,” so Russell is incorrect in asserting that the nominatum itself is the gap filler.”

A second problem with Russell’s view is, the aforementioned objection aside, Russell’s picture still does not solve the problem Frege observed with identity as a relation between objects or names.  Namely, if A=A and A=B are true, then how can A=B present different cognitive content than A=A[11][12]?  For, if the cognitive gap filler of a name were simply the thing itself, there would be no meaningful difference between A=A and A=B.  As I have established[13], we know this is a flawed view so Russell’s theory cannot be accurate.

A third reason why a name’s nominatum cannot be the cognitive gap filler is there are some names that we use perfectly well that have no nominatum.  Consider names from mythology or literature.  Take Beowulf for example.  There is no medieval Geatish hero who slayed the evil Grendel and was buried in a burrow.  However, even though the sign ‘Beowulf’ does not name any real person (and thus has no nominatum), “Beowulf was a brave warrior” is a complete and coherent expression.  This is not possible according to Russell’s view.  According to Russell, the nominatum fills the cognitive gap created by the name “Beowulf.”  But because Beowulf has no nominatum, the gap remains empty and, according to Russell, “Beowulf was a brave warrior” and “___ was a brave warrior” are analogous, incomplete expressions.  Again, this seems quite clearly not to be the case.

III Earlier I signaled an important clarification regarding what Frege uses the term ‘name’ to represent[14].  I will now discuss the importance of this distinction with respect to his theory of meaning, explain why it is problematic to group his two kinds of names into the same category, and address an additional difficulty for his theory (indexicals).

Frege’s theory serves quite well to explain the function of definite descriptions.  Definite descriptions are generally combinations of properties, properties that we get on to through real world experience.  Consider the definite description ‘the tallest blonde woman in this room.’  Through visual perception, formal education and observing others, I understand the meanings (or senses) of properties like tallest, blonde, and woman; the concept room; the function of is.  I also know how linguistic rules govern the conjunction of all seven words in this instance and serve to communicate one singular meaning (sense) that uniquely picks out one object (nominatum), which in this case is a tall, blonde woman.  The sense of the definite description ‘the tallest blonde woman in this room’ determines the nominatum (the singular object that is uniquely identified by this, specific, definite description).  With respect to names that are definite descriptions, Frege’s theory of sense and nominatum seems to be exactly right.

Indexicals like the first person pronoun ‘I,’ are more difficult for Frege’s picture to account for.  For example, when I say “I am hungry” what is expressed is “Joe Cure is hungry.”  However, when my mother says “I am hungry” what is expressed is “Mary Cure is hungry.”  In each case ‘I’ has a different nominatum.  In the first instance Joe Cure[15] is the nominatum, in the second Mary Cure is the nominatum.  However, in both cases both my mother and I understand what is said, which suggests the meaning (or sense) of ‘I’ remains the same while the nominatum changes.  This is a problem for Frege because he believes that sense determines nominatum, and in this case it seems this isn’t true because the nominatum changes but the sense does not.  If sense determined the nominatum in the phrase “I am hungry” that is spoken by me, when my mother says the same exact phrase “I am hungry” ‘I’ would have to refer to me, not her.  As I have already established, this does not happen.

One way Frege’s theory may be able to survive this apparent inconsistency is to admit that in the case of idexicals, senses are not objective and sharable.  In certain respects, this seems to be a reasonable concession and one that can still be compatible with Frege’s theory as a whole.  Indexicals are different kinds of words than given names or definite descriptions, and it seems reasonable to think that different rules would apply to them.

Consider the consequences of believing senses of indexicals to be subjective and non-sharable.  For example, when I say “I am beautiful” the person I am speaking to and I (myself) would have to have two different thoughts about the meaning or sense of the word “I” in that sentence.  In some respects this is correct, for I certainly have a different idea of who or what I am than anyone else does.

But then how could communication be possible[16]?  One explanation may be that communication is possible because the two senses of “I” are sufficiently similar for the two people to both get on to the nominatum in question (the physical being Joe Cure).   It is kind of like as if someone were to say “I went to Sea World and saw a huge black and white fish do tricks.”  This person’s understanding of the definite description “huge black and white fish that does tricks at Sea World” is different than my understanding of the same description because I know the animal he/she is speaking about is actually a mammal, not a fish[17].  However, the definite description is close enough to get us both on to the same nominatum although our understandings of the definite desctiption are different.  This is to say, indexicals are problematic for Frege’s general picture but it may be that a reasonable (and justified) adjustment can be made that allows Frege’s theory to succeed.

Given names pose the most difficult problem to Frege’s picture.  He takes the position that given names are similar to properties like tall or blonde.  We get on to the sense of “tall” through experiences and understand the sense of “tall” to be some kind of group of properties or descriptions.  We then use this sense to get on to nominata of “tall” and “blonde.”  The problem is while there are properties of “blonde” that determine what it is to be blonde, and these properties help to make up the sense, it doesn’t seem like there are certain x,y,z properties that determine what it is to be a given name like Joe Cure.  Actually, the opposite seems to be true.  When I was created my parents decided they would call this thing “Joe Cure” regardless of what properties it (I) came to have.  I could have been blonde, brunette, tall, short, etc. (read: have any sense) and still have been called Joe Cure.  Being male wasn’t even a necessary characteristic of having the name “Joe Cure.”

Recall from section II, Frege establishes given names (and names as a whole) contain cognitive information.  His task then is to explain what this cognitive content is.  Frege claims the cognitive content expressed by given names is the sense of the name (which is a group of descriptions or properties of the thing named).  What I have shown in the previous paragraph places this position in serious doubt because it does not seem like this idea of the sense of a given name is essential in any way to determining its nominatum, even to the extent where the nominatum could be prior to the sense.  We know that one function of a given name is get us on to the actual thing named, and because the sense (as understood by Frege[18]) clearly does not do this, it seems like the cognitive content expressed by a name cannot be its sense.

IV Kaplan suggests a way to resolve Frege’s problem with given names in which the spirit of the general picture may be preserved: the cognitive content expressed by (and the sense of) a given name is simply the name itself[19].  One strength of this position is the sense remains objective and sharable.  This explains how we are able to communicate using given names.  The sense of the name “Joe Cure” for me is the same as the sense of the name “Joe Cure” for you, so when either one of us uses the name we both can immediately pick out its nominatum.  It seems like language does work this way so that is a strength of the theory.

Another strength of holding that the sense of a given name is the name itself is that the name is cognitively accessible only to those with language.  This is an important point.  Without language an individual could come into contact with me and have some cognitive content associated with who I am, but not with the name “Joe Cure.”  If the sense of a given name is the name itself, then it is not possible for someone to get on to the sense of Joe Cure without language, which seems correct.  Additionally, this picture avoids all three problems encountered by Russell’s theory and better addresses those faced by Frege’s official account of given names (which essentially is an unsuccessful attempt to reduce given names to abbreviations of definite descriptions).

However, it is still unclear whether in this picture the sense of a given name (the name itself) actually determines the nominatum, or if it is even possible (in any picture) for the sense of a given name to determine its nominatum.  The way in which it could be said that the sense determines the nominatum in Kaplan’s theory is something like the name Kelly Cure was created when my sister was born and it was said that this barely sentient infant would be named Kelly Cure.  A consequence is one would have to maintain that Kelly Cure in this case is a different name from any other given name Kelly Cure that has ever and will ever exist.  In one sense this seems right because this given name Kelly Cure refers to one singular object that no other given name Kelly Cure will ever refer to.  But, in another sense it seems odd to say this name Kelly Cure is different from another name Kelly Cure.

What I want to say about Kaplan’s suggestion is I believe it is the best possible picture that is compatible with Frege’s general theory.  If it does fail, it is because it adheres to Frege’s (possibly mistaken) belief that the sense of a given name determines its nominatum[20].  In this case Kaplan’s theory would be similar to the best account of the physical world in which the earth is flat, or of a universe that revolves around the earth.  There are worthwhile points to be taken from the theory, but if it is shown to be based on the fundamentally flawed understanding of how given names are determined it will ultimately be incorrect.

[2] Wherever “A=A and A=B” is referenced in this paper I will assume they are both true identity statements unless expressly stated otherwise

[3] I will refer back to this case as the sun example

[4] Because, again, an identity statement between objects simply states one object is identical to itself, regardless of what symbol(s) is used to represent the object

[5] On Sense And Nominatum p. 199

[6] On Sense And Nominatum p. 199

[7] Namely, the time at which the object was perceived

[8] Frege thinks the sense must be objective and sharable because if it were not, communication like ‘please pass the salt’ would seem impossible.  For my sense of ’salt’ would be different than yours and possibly then refer to a different nominatum.

[9] I use thought, cognition, and [the] understanding to mean roughly the same thing

[10] Russell’s picture challenged Frege’s theory of names because Frege held there was both a sense and nominatum for each name, while Russell tried to show there was only a nominatum.

[11] Things like the sun example definitively show there are cases where A=A and A=B are true identity statements relating to the same object, but express different cognitive information or knowledge.

[12] Recall Frege’s solution is that names are comprised of two parts: a sense and a nominatum, so for A=A both sides of the statement have the same sense and nominatum but for A=B each side represents the same nominatum but different senses.

[13] (e.g. the sun example)

[14] Frege uses “name” or “sign” to mean both definite descriptions that pick out definite objects like ‘the tallest man in the state of California’, as well as given or proper names like ‘Barak Obama’ (from p.1, footnote 2)

[15] The physical person, not the name

[16] In other words, if two people have different understandings of the word “I,” how is it that the word “I” still succeeds in picking out the same thing/person for both individuals?

[17] Our understandings of the phrase differ in that I know parts of it to be false, while the speaker does not.

[18] Again, the sense of a given name is simply a group of definite descriptions or properties of the thing named

[19] Or the cognition attached to/associated with the name (but it must be an objective, not subjective cognition)

[20] I explained why one might think this to be incorrect in the second to last paragraph of section III

The University of Virginia recently published the results of a study aimed at discovering when human mental abilities begin to decline.  They evaluated 2,000 well educated, healthy people ages 18-60 over a period of seven years, using visual puzzles, memory tests and pattern recognition.

The results?  Human cognition peaks at 22 and begins to noticibly decline at 27.

Hmmm… anything special about the magic age of 22?  Well, yes – that’s when most “well educated, healthy people” graduate college.  The average 22 year old will have spent the past 16 years in more or less full-time academic settings, challenging his or her mind daily.

Chances are at 27 that same person will have been removed from academia for 5 years (and anyone who has a “real” job can attest the professional world is not nearly as mentally stimulating as the academic – generally speaking).

What happens if you don’t exercise your body for five years?  Isn’t it reasonable to think the same might happen to the mind?  Thus, the study would need to evaluate three separate groups of people who have (1) high school degree only (2) undergraduate degree (3) graduate degree to prove mental abilities truly decline at 27 and the recent findings are not simply the result of 5 years of brain rot.

Education is a pretty huge variable not to account for in a cognitive study…