14.05.2025 | Philosophische Fakultät, Philosophisches Seminar

Frames, senses, and thought-equivalence

The widely used Fregean criterion for difference of thoughts holds that two thoughts are different (at the level of sense), even if they correspond to a single state of affairs (at the level of reference), just if it is possible for a rational thinker to take different attitudes to them. It is also widely accepted that if the thinker becomes aware of the identity at the level of reference, then she is rationally required to take the same attitude to the two thoughts. This paper argues that preference and value create what I term ultra-intensional contexts. These are contexts in which it can be rational to take different attitudes to a single state of affairs (at the level of reference) when it is framed in different ways, even though the thinker is aware of this.