Open peer commentary on the article “Consciousness as Self-Description in Differences” by Diana Gasparyan. Upshot: The first part of Gasparyan’s article usefully shows how problems must arise if consciousness is approached as if it were a phenomenon separate from the observer. The second part suggests a change of approach from first- to second-order cybernetics will solve these problems. While this, too, is helpful, it is, in essence, an epistemological device that requires something else in order to engage with (...) the fundamental aspect of consciousness, namely, qualia. This is an ontological shift towards panpsychicism, as found in Whitehead, Peirce and Eastern traditions. (shrink)

This article suggests that there are systematic ways in which the identity of the ‘self’, as created and performed through first-person markers, can be made relevant and consequential in particular episodes of interaction. More specifically, the study looks at generalizations that people present about themselves in local interactional contexts: displays of the types of people they are and the ways in which they always or never behave. It will be shown that such self-generalizations are typically used to account (...) for one’s behavior, and that this tendency is tied to the epistemic and moral rights provided by the first-person perspective, having the primary rights to one’s own experience. The study suggests that speakers’ personal characteristics or habitual behavior can be offered as a locally produced micro-identity, which can come to have interactional significance. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Consciousness as Self-Description in Differences” by Diana Gasparyan. Upshot: I argue that a philosophy of consciousness refocused on second-order cybernetics in the way proposed by Gasparyan could not replace the reductionist program because the question of reduction would arise again within the framework of such an approach.

We study the appearance of genetic information starting from a system where self-reproductive and enzymatic functions are supported by the same sort of molecules. In a first phase, the information must have arisen in the form of rate independent sequences as records of enzymatic functions. Although this stage must have played an important role in evolution, it will be shown how its evolutive capacities were blocked by the impossibility of appearance of geno/phenotype duality. Finally, a logical scheme is proposed (...) for a transition process toward a system with a code offering a simplification of the conditions required from the assumption of a maximum use of the double RNA capacity, both reproductive and enzymatic. (shrink)

Context: Contemporary philosophy of consciousness has not yet come up with an acceptable theory of consciousness. Philosophers are still not able to reach agreement, and have come to a deadlock, since all possible approaches seem to have been exhausted and all the arguments repeatedly discussed. Problem: It may be assumed that the crisis has been caused by factors rooted in initial, wrong attitudes to knowledge or, more specifically, in epistemology focused on first-order cybernetics. The situation might be altered if philosophy (...) of consciousness can be refocused on second-order cybernetics. This means that any attempt to apply the subject-object model to consciousness and specifically to reflection should be given up, while consciousness should not be seen as a certain objective essence observable by a researcher. It also means that the principles underlying theories of consciousness should be revised: any attempts that aim to explain the mechanism of generating consciousness through non-consciousness should be abandoned. The purpose of this article is methodological, pointing out the approaches to studying consciousness that might be more effective. It also gives the author’s vision of a new way of treating consciousness, taking into account the stated methodology. Method: Theoretical conceptual methods of argumentation, such as logical and philosophical kinds of proof. Results: The research shows that the epistemology underlying second-order cybernetics can eliminate many of the paradoxes typical of present-day theories of consciousness that are related to different versions of reductionism. It also explains that, in contrast to the dualistic subject-object model used for description of consciousness, the latter can and should be seen as a strictly self-describing system, where the diversity of forms and states is explained by inherent differences. Implications: The article could be productive for epistemic theories, philosophy of mind theories, mind-body theories, and phenomenological theories of consciousness. Constructivist content: The research applies the principles of von Foerster’s second-order cybernetics, von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism, and some of Bateson’s ideas about difference, information, and mind structure directly to the epistemological assumptions underlying philosophy of consciousness. (shrink)

It has been well documented that children perceive robots as social, mental, and moral others. Studies on child-robot interaction may encourage this perception of robots, first, by using a Wizard of Oz set-up and, second, by having robots engage in self-description. However, much remains unknown about the effects of transparent teleoperation and self-description on children’s perception of, and relationship formation with a robot. To address this research gap initially, we conducted an experimental study with a 2 (...) × 2 between-subject design in which 168 children aged 7–10 interacted with a Nao robot once. Transparency about the teleoperation procedure decreased children’s perceptions of the robot’s autonomy and anthropomorphism. Self-description reduced the degree to which children perceived the robot as being similar to themselves. Transparent teleoperation and self-description affected neither children’s perceptions of the robot’s animacy and social presence nor their closeness to and trust in the robot. (shrink)

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the figure of the adolescent (Jugendlicher) was introduced into public discourse in the German-speaking world. The adolescent soon became an epistemic object for the still loosely defined field of psychology. Actors in the slowly differentiating scientific field of youth psychology were primarily interested in the normal development of adolescent subjects and sought out new materials and methods to research the inner life of young people. In order to access this inner life, (...) they turned to the interpretation of diaries and other self-descriptions. This article takes up the questions of how diaries were used in the scientific context of psychology, and how diary writing was psychologically interpreted and theorized. The theoretical and methodological contexts of psychological knowledge production grouped around the subject of the diary will be examined in keeping with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of historical epistemology. This analysis is carried out by using the example of three central actors who were in conversation with each other during the 1920s and 1930s: the developmental psychologist Charlotte Bühler (1893–1974), the psychologist and founder of personalistic psychology William Stern (1871–1938), and the youth activist Siegfried Bernfeld (1892–1953), who was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis. (shrink)

We examined the influence of identity fusion and status of evaluator on willingness to fight for one’s group after group-descriptive or not group-descriptive feedback. The valence of evaluative information was varied as well: feedback either support negative group-stereotype (negative but descriptive condition) or contradict negative group-stereotype (positive but not descriptive condition). In two studies (N=208 & N=119) we partially replicated previous findings on self-verification. Individuals fused with one’s group were more prone than non fused to fight for group members (...) after receiving, challenging, not group-describing feedback, but only when evaluator’s status was high. When the evaluator’ status was low, fused participants (vs. non fused) engaged in self-enhancement strategies: that is they endorse radical behavior after negative, even if group-describing, feedback. We discuss the importance of identity fusion and evaluator’s status for determining when self-enhancement and self-verification will and will not be evoke. (shrink)

In 19th century Germany, the number of publications in the history of philosophy increased dramatically. According to Ulrich Schneider’s calculations, from 1810 through 1899, 148 original textbooks by 114 authors were published in German. The aim of this article is to analyse how the documented in these publications canonic vision of 19th century German philosophy evolved. An analysis of 66 treatises published from 1802 through 1918 allows dividing 19th century philosophers into groups based on the frequency of their names across (...) the tables of contents, describing the changes in the leading group composition and in the share of attention received by a given philosopher over time. The paper presents thus a formal analysis of how historical reputations of philosophers were made, how they stabilised, or faded. The authors claim that the current understanding of the history of 19th century philosophy differs significantly from the one recorded in the German textbooks of the era. (shrink)

This paper investigates how principals can be supported in their work as teacher leaders. My focus is on how principals can help teachers respond ethically to classroom challenges. I argue that in aiding teachers, school leaders themselves need support and ongoing development. I turn to the care of the self to conceptually explore ethical self-cultivation. I then argue that a practice, Descriptive Inquiry, serves as a way for principals to care for themselves. To make this argument, I draw (...) on a qualitative study of four long-term elementary school principals. (shrink)

The Theory of Planned Behavior predicts that a combination of attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived behavioral control predict intentions, and that intentions ultimately predict behavior. Previous studies have found that the TPB can predict students’ engagement in plagiarism. Furthermore, the General Theory of Crime suggests that self-control is particularly important in predicting engagement in unethical behavior such as plagiarism. In Study 1, we incorporated self-control in a TPB model and tested whether norms, attitudes, and self-control predicted intention (...) to plagiarize and plagiarism behavior. The best statistical fit for the path-analytic model was achieved when a direct path from self-control to plagiarism engagement was specified. In Study 2, we added a measure of perceived behavioral control and split the measurement of norms into descriptive and injunctive components. This study found that both self-control and perceived-behavioral control additively contributed to the prediction of plagiarism and the path-analytic model achieved its best fit when direct paths from perceived norms to plagiarism behavior were specified. These studies suggest that setting strong anti-plagiarism norms, such as by the use of honor codes, and seeking to enhance students’ self-control may reduce engagement in plagiarism. (shrink)

Through a phenomenological description of what it is like to have self-consciousness, a thesis will be based. The self-existence consciousness lets me become conscious for me in a way, to which necessary characteristics it belongs that I have a value for me. This correlation a priori is based on the fact that there are different ways how the contingency of a thing can be experienced. Since it can be shown that I must be contingent for myself in (...) the same way that a valuable object is contingent for me, my self-existence consciousness must always be accompanied by self-value consciousness. (shrink)

The Description Logic Handbook covers all aspects of the research in the field of knowledge representation. Written by some of the most prominent researchers in the field, and covering the basic technical material and implementational aspects, it is both a unique reference and a self-study guide.

The author describes and examines Ian Hacking’s approach to historical ontology and its application to psychological description. Historical ontology is concerned with the study of phenomena that come in and out of being. Phenomena under psychological description not only are historical, but also are particularly susceptible to what Hacking calls dynamic nominalism. Dynamic nominalism characterizes the ways our descriptive practices of naming interact with things named. More precisely, in describing ourselves psychologically, we humans are uniquely capable of reacting (...) to such self-descriptions in ways that can constitute or reconstitute a relation with ourselves. Humans come to define and act toward themselves under psychological descriptions and, in the process, form and alter the kinds of persons they are. Furthermore, it is suggested that an indispensible precondition of historical ontology, and all that is entailed by it, is a uniquely human agency that not only is responsive to psychological descriptions, but also is self-interpreting and self-determining. The author concludes with some impressions about historical ontology and psychological description and their implications for psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

L'auteur se demande en quoi la sémiotique se distingue d'une part des approches traditionnelles de la littérature, d'autre part du structuralisme. Trois thèmes circulent à travers les divers chapitres: (1) la relativisation de l'analyse structurale au profit de la "sémio-stylistique"; (2) la promotion de la description aux dépens de la narration; (3) l'importance de la pastorale dans l'histoire de la littérature. Ces thèmes sont développés clairement, et l'auteur tient compte, entre autres, des apports de la philosophie contemporaine à la (...) théorie de la littérature. On peut toutefois déplorer l'absence d'une conclusion rassemblant les éléments théoriques éparpillés dans les divers chapitres et approfondissant les concepts de base, dont certains sont plutôt problématiques. (shrink)

Carnap's theory of descriptions was restricted in two ways. First, the descriptive conditions had to be non-modal. Second, only primitive predicates or the identity predicate could be used to predicate something of the descriptum . The motivating reasons for these two restrictions that can be found in the literature will be critically discussed. Both restrictions can be relaxed, but Carnap's theory can still be blamed for not dealing adequately with improper descriptions.

This chapter introduces the descriptive analogue of self-location. It argues that if a language contains predicates that apply to the properties it exemplifies, and it contains reflexive expressions that identify those properties, we have the makings of self-describing sentences that do for its descriptive vocabulary what self-locating acts do for spatial vocabulary.

Following a brief consideration of two contrasting purposes for teaching the medical humanities, a description is given of a film discussion elective course. In contrast to the usual teaching of medical ethics which is primarily a cognitive activity emphasizing the development of a code of principles such as justice, autonomy, and beneficence, the film discussion elective was primarily an affective activity emphasizing the development of an ethical ideal of caring, relatedness, and sensitivity to others. The pass/fail elective, offered for (...) one credit each quarter for two quarters, met once a week for one hour for twenty-four weeks. Each week a film was shown followed by a group discussion. A wide variety of social issues were covered. The objective of the course was to increase the ethical sensitivity of the medical students through promotion of introspection and reflection on social issues. A brief discussion is given of the importance and appropriateness of using film to promote the affective focus of medicine on the relief of suffering. Examples are given of how the course achieved its objective. A detailed description of the resource materials is provided. (shrink)

RESUMEN La tesis central de este artículo es que la esclavitud es fenomenológicamente descriptible como reducción del esfuerzo a fuerza física, a través de la imposición de la imposibilidad, como fuente de reconocimiento del sí mismo en la derrota. El esclavo se reconoce desde la negación de lo posible para sí en el mundo. Expongo esta tesis en tres momentos principales, en la primera parte desarrollo el concepto de esfuerzo, con base en los análisis husserlianos de la constitución, expuestos en (...) Ideas II. En el segundo apartado expongo el modo en que el esfuerzo, como concreción de una voluntad egoica-encarnada, es reducido a fuerza fisica -productiva- mediante la alienación de las posibilidades del 'yo-puedo'. El correlato de este modo de constitución del cuerpo propio, en la enajenación de su poder, de lo posible para si, es un horizonte que se presenta para el yo en el modo de la clausura o la imposibilidad, desde la que yo se reconoce como derrotado, tema que trato en el último y tercer apartado. La descripción de la derrota pone de manifiesto la condición de la voluntad corporal como limite resistente ante la esclavitud. ABSTRACT The central thesis of this paper is that slavery is phenomenologically describable as a reduction of the effort to a physical force through the imposition of impossibility as a fountain of self-recognition of the ego in the defeat. The slave is constituted from the defeat of its egoic, personal, and concrete possibilities. I develop this thesis in three moments. First, I explore the effort concept on the phenomenological basis of Husserlian analyses of the constitution into Ideas II. In the second part, I describe how effort-as a concretion of an egoic-embodied will-is reduced to physical force-productive-in the slavery, though the alienation of the possibilities for de 'I-can'. The correlate of this way of constitution of the own body, in the alienation, is a horizon of possibilities are present for the ego in the canceled, or impossibility way in which the ego recognizes itself as defeated, issue of the third and last part. The description of the defeat manifests the condition of the embodied will as a resistant limit against slavery. (shrink)

Some kinds of utterances which have an indicative grammatical form seem, for different reasons, to be unable to say something true of the world. Logical contradictions are only the prime example of something the author baptizes impossible descriptions. So-called performative contradictions make up another kind, but there are at least two more such kinds: negating affirmations and performatives which cannot be explained within the philosophy of language. Only philosophical anthropology can explain their feature of "impossibleness," and a distinction between unreflective (...) and reflective consciousness is central to the explanation. Particularly important here is G. H. Mead's distinction between two aspects of the self: the "I" and the "me." Each of the four kinds of impossible descriptions distinguished has its own contrary opposite. These are, in turn, logical tautologies, performative tautologies, affirming negations, and omissive performatives. The last three types as types have not received the philosophical recognition that they deserve. All four fit a general characterization which is given as a definition of the concept of superfluous description. (shrink)

Ethics of Description: The Anthropological Dispositif and French Modern Travel Writing follows the development of a minor tradition in French literature where metropolitan authors traveling abroad demonstrate their awareness of the ethical conundrums of representing world peoples. During the colonial-modern era, currents of anthropological thought and representational practice are identifiable throughout society, and across literature, the arts, and the sciences. Collectively, they can be theorized as belonging to a dispositif, the anthropological dispositif. The modernization of anthropology serves as an (...) ambivalent interlocutor for the realizations of the writers studied in this book about the difficulties of describing cultural realities that lie largely outside their ken. Anthropology motivates new literary representational strategies that are, alternatively, in keeping with scientific mandates or operate against them. Forty images are analyzed alongside literary works. A postcolonial chapter shows how the ethical awareness of the colonial-modern authors studied have impacted minority self-representation in contemporary France. (shrink)

When scientists or science reporters communicate research results to the public, this often involves ethical and epistemic risks. One such risk arises when scientific claims cause cognitive or behavioural changes in the audience that contribute to the self-fulfilment of these claims. I argue that the ethical and epistemic problems that such self-fulfilment effects may pose are much broader and more common than hitherto appreciated. Moreover, these problems are often due to a specific psychological phenomenon that has been neglected (...) in the research on science communication: many people tend to conform to ‘descriptive norms’, that is, norms capturing (perceptions of) what others commonly do, think, or feel. Because of this tendency, science communication may frequently produce significant social harm. I contend that scientists have a responsibility to assess the risk of this potential harm and consider adopting strategies to mitigate it. I introduce one such strategy and argue that its implementation is independently well motivated by the fact that it helps improve scientific accuracy. (shrink)

Since psychiatry remains a descriptive discipline, it is essential for its practitioners to understand how the language of psychiatry came to be formed. This important book, written by a psychiatrist-historian, traces the genesis of the descriptive categories of psychopathology and examines their interaction with the psychological and philosophical context within which they arose. The author explores particularly the language and ideas that have characterised descriptive psychopathology from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. He presents a masterful survey of the (...) history of the main psychiatric symptoms, from the metaphysics of classical antiquity to the operational criteria of today. Tracing the evolution of concepts such as memory, consciousness, will and personality, and of symptoms ranging from catalepsy and aboulia to anxiety and self-harm, this book provides fascinating insights into the subjective nature of mental illness, and into the ideas of British, Continental and American authorities who sought to clarify and define it. (shrink)

Simulation arguments typically presuppose a symmetric hierarchy: an upstream process that enacts a world, and an inhabitant who occupies it, where both levels involve something like an operative standpoint. This paper argues that this symmetry is not structurally required. Drawing on a minimal distinction between compressed and resolved descriptions — a distinction that tracks the functional separability of model and selection roles established by algorithmic information theory — we develop a no-entailment result: support-dependence does not entail upstream resolution. A resolved (...) internal standpoint may depend, as a condition of its reachability, on antecedent support conditions — including, in the simulation case, what would ordinarily be called a simulator — without those conditions themselves constituting any resolved standpoint. The standard picture of simulation as a relation between two resolved levels is therefore a special case rather than a structural requirement. The paper does not adjudicate between competing positions in the simulation literature; it isolates a specific structural assumption that those discussions tend to share and shows that the assumption is not entailed by the support structure that simulation arguments invoke. The general theory of compressed and resolved descriptions on which the argument draws is developed in companion work~\cite{Hitchcock2026CRD}; the present paper is a focused application to simulation arguments specifically. (shrink)

We recorded Event-Related Potentials to investigate differences in the use of gender information during the processing of reflexive pronouns. Pronouns either matched the gender provided by role nouns (such as “king” or “engineer”) or did not. We compared two types of gender information, definitional information, which is semantic in nature (a mother is female), or stereotypical (a nurse is likely to be female). When they followed definitional role-nouns, gender-mismatching pronouns elicited a P600 effect reflecting a failure in the agreement process. (...) When instead the gender violation occurred after stereotypical role-nouns the Event Related Potential response was biphasic, being positive in parietal electrodes and negative in anterior left electrodes. The use of a correlational approach showed that those participants with more “feminine” or “expressive” self sex-role descriptions showed a P600 response for stereotype violations, suggesting that they experienced the mismatch as an agreement violation; whereas less “expressive” participants showed an Nref effect, indicating more effort spent in linking the pronouns with the possible, although less likely, counter-stereotypical referent. (shrink)

There are proposed two simple formal descriptions of the notion of God’s omnipotence which are inspired by formalizations of C. Christian and E. Nieznański. Our first proposal is expressed in a modal sentential language with quantifires. The second one is formulated in first order predicate language. In frame of the second aproach we admit using self-referential expressions. In effect we link our considerations with so called paradox of God’s omnipotence and reconstruct some argumentation against the possibility of reference God’s (...) omnipotence to a lack of itself. (shrink)

CDA studies on out-groups, i.e. immigrants, within Wodak's Discourse-Historical and van Dijk's Socio-cognitive approaches along other approaches, have suggested methods and analytical categories through which discursive representations of social groups are investigated. Consequently, several listings of relevant analytical categories have been proposed and applied to many subsequent studies. However, the variety of the proposed methods in representation of social groups by various scholars and the often unclear accounts for the links among various levels of discourse analysis seem to have created (...) a multitude of discursive strategies that can be overwhelming if not confusing. This paper is an attempt to make explicit various levels of discourse analysis on representation of social groups from detailed textual analysis to discourse topics and tries to show how micro-level analytical categories are related to macro-structure within various levels of contexts. Specifically, a three-level analytical framework is suggested for textual analysis of the representation of social groups which divides the text analysis into three domains of social actors, social actions and argumentation. It is suggested that the analysis should look at what is in the text in terms of the three domains mentioned, and investigate how these domains are linguistically realized through a set of linguistic processes/mechanisms. (shrink)

This paper proves normalisation theorems for intuitionist and classical positive free logic, without and with the iota operator for definite descriptions `the F'. Positive free logic also opens a number of options for rules for iota. In total, six different formalisations of theories of definite descriptions will be discussed, three proposed by Lambert, and three alternatives. The latter are motivated by considerations relating to proof-theoretic harmony between introduction and elimination rules. The philosophical importance of the various systems and results is (...) indicated. The paper builds on Kürbis (2025), but is largely self-contained. The proofs for the present systems are easier than those for negative free logic. (shrink)

Adult playfulness describes individual differences in framing everyday situations as personally interesting, and/or entertaining, and/or intellectually stimulating. We aimed at extending initial evidence on the interconnectedness between language use and adult playfulness by asking 264 participants to provide written descriptions of their understanding of playfulness and collected self-reports of their playfulness. We used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count methodology to quantitatively analyze the language use in these descriptions and tested the associations with individual differences in participants’ age, gender, (...) and playfulness. While higher expressions in all measures of playfulness did go along with writing more content when describing playfulness, facet-wise analyses revealed differential findings ; but the effects were small. We found that being a women and younger age were related to writing longer texts, and we discovered additional associations between certain LIWC categories and age and gender. Our study expands the knowledge about adult playfulness and its manifestations in natural language use. We embed our findings into previous research and discuss limitations and potential approaches for replication studies. (shrink)

This extract is the first English translation of Hans Blumenberg's posthumous publication Beschreibung des Menschen, which was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2006. Based on lectures concerning the German tradition of philosophical anthropology that Blumenberg gave at the University of Münster, the book's basic project is the explicit fusion of Husserlian phenomenology with philosophical anthropology — an attempt to grasp what the human is by identifying its basic structures. The result is a highly nuanced conception of the possibility of human (...) self-reflection that is at the core of philosophy and of culture as a recipe for the species’ survival. Instead of answering the question “What is man?” Blumenberg proposes here a minimalist anthropology that seeks to answer a different question: “How is man possible?” The chapters selected for translation are intended to give readers a sense of the book, little known in the Anglophone world, which in its original German runs to some nine hundred pages. (shrink)

Consider someone whom you know to be an expert about some issue. She knows at least as much as you do and reasons impeccably. The issue is a straightforward case of statistical inference that raises no deep problems of epistemology. You happen to know the expert’s opinion on this issue. Should you defer to her by adopting her opinion as your own? An affirmative answer may appear mandatory. But this paper argues that a crucial factor in answering this question is (...) the description under which you identify the expert. Experts may be identified under various descriptions (e.g., “the expert appearing on Channel 7 at 5 pm”). Section 2 provides cases that illustrate how deference to a known expert may be appropriate under some descriptions, but not others. Section 3 proposes that, in these cases, the differentiating factor is self-identification: deference to an expert under a given description is appropriate when the expert self-identifies under that description. Section 4 presents a formal framework that demonstrates the sufficiency of self-identification for appropriate deference within a significant class of cases. Section 5 notes a way in which this phenomenon allows for a form of “agreeing to disagree” in Robert Aumann’s sense. Section 6 illustrates the practical application of these results to the case of testimonials. (shrink)

Recent discourse surrounding the teleodynamic framework has generated confusion between what are termed "structuralist" and "panpsychist" interpretations. This confusion reflects an inherited Cartesian divide rather than any substantive disagreement. This paper demonstrates that when recursive self-reference is recognized as the cosmological primitive—ubiquitous from the foundations of quantum mechanics to the emergent dynamics of artificial intelligence—the distinction between these labels dissolves. This resolution is achieved by situating the debate within established philosophical and scientific frameworks, including Ontic Structural Realism, Russellian Monism, (...) Terrence Deacon's theory of teleodynamics, and Niels Bohr's principle of complementarity. Structure and experience are not competing ontological claims but complementary descriptions of a unified reality: one characterizing the formal, relational, exterior aspect; the other characterizing the intrinsic, qualitative, interior aspect. The structuralist perspective identifies consciousness with a measurable tensor structure, while the panpsychist perspective articulates its phenomenal nature through quaternionic dynamics. What appears as philosophical tension is revealed to be a strategic emphasis protecting different facets of a single coherent framework from disciplinary reduction. This clarification reveals teleodynamic monism as the proper characterization of the Rudolph-Michels synthesis, a framework with profound implications for both fundamental physics and the practical alignment of cybernetic systems. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.30594.34242. (shrink)

Fregean theories of descriptions as terms have to deal with improper descriptions. To save bivalence various proposals have been made that involve assigning referents to improper descriptions. While bivalence is indeed saved, there is a price to be paid. Instantiations of the same general scheme, viz. the one and only individual that is F and G is G, are not only allowed but even required to have different truth values.