Manuel García Carpintero is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He also has been a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Studies in the Humanities (Edinburgh, 2001), and he has been appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Lisbon (2013-2016).
His main interests are in philosophical logic, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind and related epistemological and metaphysical issues. He was awarded a “Distinció de Recerca” for senior researchers by the Catalan Government between 2002 and 2008, and in 2009 the prize “ICREA Acadèmia” for excellence in research, also funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya, to work on a book on the nature of assertion and reference (2009-2013).
‘Pretend Reference and Pretend Co-Reference’
Wednesday, 27th November 2013 | 16:00 – 18:00 | Seminar Room L104, Lower Ground floor, IALS, 17 Russell Square
Abstract
In recent work, Stacie Friend points out that we have intuitions of “co-identification” about dialogues like this:
Smith: When he wakes up, Gregor Samsa has been changed into a cockroach.
Nabokov: No, when he wakes up, Gregor Samsa has been changed into a beetle.
Here, Nabokov naturally “takes himself to identify the same character that Kafka invented and that his opponents misconstrue”. After pointing out the connection between Friend’s problem of co-identification and Geach’s notorious issue of intentional identity, I will critically discuss Friend’s and Everett’s take on the issue, and offer an account inspired by contemporary discussions of intentional identity.