Seven puzzles: Paderewski

Courtesy of Amazon Prime, Seven Puzzles of Thought and How to Solve Them arrived just before Christmas and I have been dipping in.   Puzzle number four is Kripke's puzzle about Paderewski.   Although Sainsbury and Tye seem to have the resources in their originalistic theory of concepts to treat the problem nicely, I'm not sure  I find their analysis on page 131 and following entirely convincing.

Here is the puzzle.  Peter our subject has been to a concert by the great pianist Paderewski and agrees that he has musical talent.  He has also attended a political rally at which Paderewski gave a speech, but believing that no politician is musically talented he thinks this is a different Paderewski.  So, although he is rational enough, Peter appears to have the contradictory beliefs that Paderewski is musical and that Paderewski is not musical.  As the authors say, 'no amount of logical acumen on his part will enable him to uncover the inconsistency.'

Sainsbury and Tye present the puzzling aspects of this as follows:

1. Peter believes that Paderewski has musical talent (formed at the concert).
2. Peter believes that Paderewski lacks musical talent (formed at the rally).
3. The belief attributed in (1) that Paderewski has musical talent, contradicts the belief attributed in (2) that Paderewski lacks musical talent.
4. Peter cannot tell that he has contradictory beliefs: 'no amount of pure logic or semantic introspection suffices for him to discover his error' (Kripke)
5. Anyone is in a position to notice and correct contradictory beliefs if he has them.
6. Peter's ability to 'notice and correct' contradictions is unimpaired: if he has such beliefs he is in a position to come to know this merely by reflection.

The authors accept 1--4 and reject 5 and the second part of 6.  Their analysis diverges into a discussion of our beliefs about our beliefs.  They say, page 137,

The answer is that Peter falsely believes that he does not believe that Paderewski has musical talent.  The second order belief is false: he formed the belief that Paderewski has musical talent at the concert, and has not abandoned it.  So his belief that he lacks this belief is false...

This is too baroque for me.  It merely elaborates on the same confusion that results in the inconsistency of 1--6, without satisfactorily explaining it.   As I see things, the puzzle arises because of the attempt in 1 and 2 to report Peter's belief state in terms of our concepts rather than Peter's.    Peter's belief state is this.

• There are two men called Paderewski. 
• One is a pianist and a talented musician. 
• The other is a politician and is not musically talented. 
• No politician is musical.

There is no contradiction in these four statements, though they add up to a false picture of reality.  The world could indeed be like this, so there can be no contradiction here.  Peter has two singular concepts, PADEREWSKI-1, the pianist and musician, and PADEREWSKI-2, the unmusical politician, and these are distinct.  Sainsbury and Tye claim that Peter exercises the public concept PADEREWSKI.  I can't agree with this:  PADEREWSKI includes IS-A-POLITICIAN whereas Peter's PADEREWSKI-1, the only possible candidate for identity with PADEREWSKI, certainly does not.  If it did, and knowing that this concept is instantiated, Peter would have available to him an immediate counter-example to his belief that no politician is musical.  Peter's problem is that he has somehow acquired a faulty copy of the public PADEREWSKI concept, one that lacks the critical IS-A-POLITICIAN component.

Sainsbury and Tye's analysis is full of sentences attempting to explicate Peter's belief state in terms of the public concept PADEREWSKI, as in the example quoted above.  If my analysis is right they are adding storeys to a house built on sand.