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  1. Cognitive Focus.Julie Wulfemeyer - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (4):553-561.
    Philosophers of mind and language who advance causal theories face a sort of conjunction problem. When we say that the thing had in mind or the thing referred to is a matter of what causally impacted the thinker or speaker, we must somehow narrow down the long conjunction of items in a causal chain, all of which contributed to the having in mind, but only one of which becomes the object of thought or the linguistic referent. Here, I sketch a (...)
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  • Polysemy: Pragmatics and sense conventions.Robyn Carston - 2021 - Mind and Language 36 (1):108-133.
    Polysemy, understood as instances of a single linguistic expression having multiple related senses, is not a homogenous phenomenon. There are regular (apparently, rule‐based) cases and irregular (resemblance‐based) cases, which have different processing profiles. Although a primary source of polysemy is pragmatic inference, at least some cases become conventionalised and linguistically encoded. Three main issues are discussed: (a) the key differences between regular and irregular cases and the role, if any, of a “core meaning”; (b) the distinction between pragmatic polysemy and (...)
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  • Folk intuitions about reference change and the causal theory of reference.Steffen Koch & Alex Wiegmann - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8 (25).
    In this paper, we present and discuss the findings of two experiments about reference change. Cases of reference change have sometimes been invoked to challenge traditional versions of semantic externalism, but the relevant cases have never been tested empirically. The experiments we have conducted use variants of the famous Twin Earth scenario to test folk intuitions about whether natural kind terms such as ‘water’ or ‘salt’ switch reference after being constantly (mis)applied to different kinds. Our results indicate that this is (...)
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  • Como os Nomes Nomeiam: Um Passeio Filosófico Sobre a Referência.Sagid Salles - 2020 - Pelotas: UFPel.
    Uma das características mais interessantes da filosofia é sua capacidade de revelar problemas difíceis em lugares inesperados. É precisamente isto que ocorre com o caso dos nomes próprios. Usamos nomes cotidianamente para selecionar ou fazer referência a objetos particulares, e depois podermos dizer algo sobre eles. Talvez o leitor diga a um colega que gostaria de estar tomando um café em Paris, ao invés de gastar tempo lendo mais um livro de filosofia. Neste caso, estará usando o nome “Paris” para (...)
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  • Numerals, positionality, and reference fixing. Reply to Vivanco.Mario Gómez-Torrente - 2020 - Manuscrito 43 (4):165-176.
    Melisa Vivanco objects to my theory of the Arabic numerals in Roads to Reference that the reference fixing procedure that I postulate doesn’t exploit the morphological structure of the Arabic numerals, but it should. Against Vivanco, I argue that the procedure in question does exploit the morphological structure of the numerals in an essential way.
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  • Ordinary kinds and ontological angst. Reply to Demartini.Mario Gómez-Torrente - 2020 - Manuscrito 43 (4):215-220.
    Thainá Demartini has criticized my view that ordinary natural kind terms refer to vague non-scientific kinds and defended the more traditional view that they refer to precise kinds discovered by science. In this note I reject Demartini’s worries as based on inadequate ontological scruples.
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  • Grammar, Ambiguity, and Definite Descriptions.Thomas J. Hughes - 2015 - Dissertation, Durham University
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  • DESCRIPTION, ESPACE LOGIQUE ET ENJEU DE L'IMPLICATION DE L'OUVERTURE AU LANGAGE POUR LA CONCEPTION DU JUGEMENT DE LA LOGIQUE DE PORT-ROYAL.Katarina Peixoto - 2020 - Logique Et Analyse 249 (249-250):79-95.
    In this study, I intend to show how and why, in the Port-Royal Logic, a singular term can reveal the nature of the logical judgment in the handbook. As I argue, the treatment given to one of thee singular terms, namely, the defined descriptions, in the terminology introduced by Russell, leads to an opening to langage that sounds unexpected and unjustified. Considering the privilege of thinking over langage and also that judgment is the mental act that defines logic, however, we (...)
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  • This is a Paper about Demonstratives.Cathal O’Madagain - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (2):745-764.
    Demonstratives (words like ‘this’ and ‘that’) and indexicals (words like ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’) seem intuitively to form a semantic family. Together they form the basic set of directly referring ‘context sensitive’ terms whose reference changes as the environment or identity of the speaker changes. Something that we might expect of a semantics for indexicals is therefore that it would be closely related to a semantics of demonstratives, although recent approaches have generally treated them separately. A promising new theory of (...)
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  • The History and Prehistory of Natural-Language Semantics.Daniel W. Harris - 2017 - In Sandra Lapointe & Christopher Pincock (eds.), Innovations in the History of Analytical Philosophy. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 149--194.
    Contemporary natural-language semantics began with the assumption that the meaning of a sentence could be modeled by a single truth condition, or by an entity with a truth-condition. But with the recent explosion of dynamic semantics and pragmatics and of work on non- truth-conditional dimensions of linguistic meaning, we are now in the midst of a shift away from a truth-condition-centric view and toward the idea that a sentence’s meaning must be spelled out in terms of its various roles in (...)
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  • Schmidentity and informativity.Hannes Fraissler - 2020 - Synthese 198 (10):9963-9989.
    Although Kripke’s œuvre has had a major impact on analytic philosophy and nearly every aspect of his studies has been thoroughly examined, this does not hold for his schmidentity argument, which, so far, has been widely neglected. To the extent to which it has been treated at all, it has been for the most part radically misunderstood. I hold that this argument, in its correctly reconstructed form, has general relevance for a treatment of Frege’s Puzzle and points towards a fundamental (...)
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  • Semantic Deflationism, Public Language Meaning, and Contextual Standards of Correctness.Krzysztof Poslajko - 2017 - Studia Semiotyczne 31 (1):45-66.
    The paper aims at providing an argument for a deflationary treatment of the notion of public language meaning. The argument is based on the notion of standards of correctness; I will try to show that as correctness assessments are context-involving, the notion of public language meaning cannot be treated as an explanatory one. An elaboration of the argument, using the notion of ground is provided. Finally, I will consider some limitations of the reasoning presented.
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  • Reference by Deference: The Real Semiotic Profile of Indexicals and Their Context.Denis Perrin - 2020 - Theoria 87 (1):109-135.
    Theoria, Volume 87, Issue 1, Page 109-135, February 2021.
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  • Language, Communication, and the Paradox of Analysis: Some Philosophical Remarks on Plato’s Cratylus.Marc A. Moffett - 2005 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 8 (1):57-68.
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  • On Referring: Donnellan versus Strawson.Antonio Capuano - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (4):1091-1110.
    In ‘Reference and Definite Descriptions', Keith Donnellan claimed that Bertrand Russell and Peter Strawson ignored referential uses of definite descriptions. The intense debate that followed Donnellan's paper focused on the contrast between Donnellan and Russell, leaving Strawson aside. In this paper, I focus on the contrast between Donnellan and Strawson. By focusing on this contrast, my aim is, first, to clarify the nature of Donnellan's distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions and, second, to argue that a proper (...)
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  • A Time Traveler’s Note on Proper Names and Definite Descriptions.Xinyuan Gu - manuscript
    This essay aims to coherently introduce a four-dimensional view adapting to the three-spatial-plus-one- temporal-dimensions (3+1) physical world. To orient the discussions, the essay presents several central claims. First, the only description a proper name abbreviates is that of being called, yet a proper name is capable of bringing up the entire object from its birth to its end. Second, there is a crucial difference in the behaviors of proper names and definite descriptions. Third, a co-knowing state may be decisive in (...)
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  • Reference-Securing Belief and Content Externalism.Huiming Ren - 2020 - Acta Analytica 36 (1):87-99.
    I argue that our physical and social environments play a role in determining the content of most of our thoughts only indirectly—by playing a role in causing, and therefore, determining the content of, our reference-securing beliefs concerning general terms, beliefs that, when true, dictate what a general term will pick out. I also show that the problem of empty natural kind terms can be solved.
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  • Presupposing Counterfactuality.Julia Zakkou - 2019 - Semantics and Pragmatics 12.
    There is long standing agreement both among philosophers and linguists that the term ‘counterfactual conditional’ is misleading if not a misnomer. Speakers of both non-past subjunctive (or ‘would’) conditionals and past subjunctive (or ‘would have’) conditionals need not convey counterfactuality. The relationship between the conditionals in question and the counterfactuality of their antecedents is thus not one of presupposing. It is one of conversationally implicating. This paper provides a thorough examination of the arguments against the presupposition view as applied to (...)
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  • The Polysemy Theory of Sound.Anton Killin - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (2):435-458.
    Theorists have recently defended rival analyses of sound. The leading analyses reduce sound to sensations or mental representations, longitudinal compression waves, or sounding objects or events. Participants in the debate presuppose that because the features of the world targeted by these reductive strategies are distinct, at most one of the analyses is correct. In this article I argue that this presupposition is mistaken, endorsing a polysemy analysis of ‘sound’. Thus the ‘What is sound?’ debate is largely merely verbal, or so (...)
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  • Philosophy of Syntax - Foundational Topics.Mieszko Talasiewicz - 2009 - Dordrecht, Holandia: Springer.
    Since 1970-ties in the theory of syntax of natural language quite a number of competing, incommensurable theoretic frameworks have emerged. Today the lack of a leading paradigm and kaleidoscope of perspectives deprives our general understanding of syntax and its relation to semantics and pragmatics. The present book is an attempt to reestablish the most fundamental ideas and intuitions of syntactic well-formedness within a new general account. The account is not supposed to compete with any of today’s syntactic frameworks, but to (...)
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  • Linguistic Meaning, Rigid Designators, and Legal Philosophy.Matthew McManus - 2019 - Philosophies 4 (2):15.
    This essay is intended to engage some of the controversies that have emerged in legal philosophy concerning the theory of linguistic meaning we should adopt with reference to the law. In particular, I will focus on two theories of linguistic meaning that have opposing positions both on the nature of meaning, and the consequences this might have for law and legal objectivity. The first can be called plain meaning view. The plain meaning theory claims that the meaning of legal terms (...)
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  • Interpreting Mrs Malaprop: Davidson and communication without conventions.Imogen Smith - unknown
    Inspired by my reading of the conclusions of Plato’s Cratylus, in which I suggest that Socrates endorses the claim that speaker’s intentions determine meaning of their utterances, this thesis investigates a modern parallel. Drawing on observations that people who produce an utterances that do not accord with the conventions of their linguistic community can often nevertheless communicate successfully, Donald Davidson concludes that it is the legitimate intentions of speakers to be interpreted in a particular way that determine the meanings of (...)
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  • Contexts in Philosophy: Pragmatic competence as filter.Carlo Penco - 2018 - Modeling and Using Context 2 (1):1-19.
    This programmatic paper is an attempt to connect some worries in the philosophy of language with some traditional views in artificial intelligence. After a short introduction to the notion of context in philosophy (§1), starting from the inventor of mathematical logic, Gottlob Frege, I list three debates in the philosophy of language where the solution is strongly undecided: §2 treats the debate between holism and molecularism; §3 describes the debate on the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics; §4 hints at a (...)
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  • Against predicativism about names.Jeonggyu Lee - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (1):243-261.
    According to predicativism about names, names which occur in argument positions have the same type of semantic contents as predicates. In this paper, I shall argue that these bare singular names do not have the same type of semantic contents as predicates. I will present three objections to predicativism—the modal, the epistemic, and the translation objections—and show that they succeed even against the more sophisticated versions of predicativism defended by Fara and Bach.
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  • Are epistemic reasons perspective-dependent?Davide Fassio - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (12):3253-3283.
    This paper focuses on the relation between epistemic reasons and the subject’s epistemic perspective. It tackles the questions of whether epistemic reasons are dependent on the perspective of the subject they are reasons for, and if so, whether they are dependent on the actual or the potential perspective. It is argued that epistemic reasons are either independent or minimally dependent on the subject’s epistemic perspective. In particular, I provide three arguments supporting the conclusion that epistemic reasons are not dependent on (...)
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  • Towards an Indexical Paradoxico-Metaphysics.Hilan Nissior Bensusan - 2018 - Open Philosophy 1 (1):155-172.
    This paper sketches a metaphysical view according to which the furniture of the universe is made of indexicals. The view draws from work in the philosophy of language and thought concerning demonstratives, proper names and other deictic operations. It also draws on Levinas‘ conception of the Other as beyond any substantive description. Indexicalism, as I call it, is compared with object-oriented views such as Harman‘s and Garcia‘s. Indexicalism lapses into paradox concerning totality and proves to be self-destructive. It is defended, (...)
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  • Experts In Meaning Ambiguities.Francesca Ervas - 2015 - Humana Mente 8 (28).
    The discrepancy between the theoretical problems experts raise on polysemy, and the ease with which it is everyday understood by speakers, has been defined as the polysemy paradox. The same could be said for other forms of meaning ambiguity in the non-literal side, as for instance metaphor. A sort of metaphor paradox is raised by the fact that metaphor usually goes unnoticed for most people, even though experts claim that it constitutes a theoretical challenge for understanding human thought. In both (...)
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  • Modal Meinongianism and Actuality.Francesco Berto - 2013 - Humana Mente 6 (25).
    Modal Meinongianism is the most recent neo-Meinongian theory. Its main innovation consists in a Comprehension Principle which, unlike other neo-Meinongian approaches, seemingly avoids limitations on the properties that can characterize objects. However, in a recent paper A. Sauchelli has raised an objection against modal Meinongianism, to the effect that properties and relations involving reference to worlds at which they are instantiated, and specifically to the actual world or parts thereof, force a limitation of its Comprehension Principle. The theory, thus, is (...)
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  • The Two-Component Theory of Proper Names and Kripke's Puzzle.JeeLoo Liu - 2013 - Abstracta 7 (2):19-39.
    This paper provides a defense of the description theory of proper names by constructing a ‘two-component’ theory of names. Using Kripke’s puzzle about belief as the stepping stone, this paper first points out problems with Kripke’s direct reference theory of names. It then presents the two-component theory of names and defends it against Kripke’s general criticisms of the description theory. It also compares the two-component theory of names against other leading description theories and shows how the two-component theory provides a (...)
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  • In defense of the unification argument for predicativism.Sajed Tayebi - 2018 - Linguistics and Philosophy 41 (5):557-576.
    The unification argument, usually regarded as the main argument for predicativism about proper names, has recently been attacked by Robin Jeshion. According to Jeshion, the unification argument is based on the assumption of the literality of predicative uses of proper names in statements such as “There is one Alfred in Princeton.” In such a use, a proper name ‘N’ is used predicatively to denote those, and only those, objects called N. As Jeshion argues, however, there are many other examples in (...)
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  • Kaip Apibrėžiamosios Deskripcijos Vartojamos Singuliariniams Teiginiams Išreikšti?Evgeny Borisov - 2014 - Problemos 85:130-140.
    Straipsnyje keliamas klausimas: kokios sąlygos turi būti patenkintos, kad, ištarę sakinį su apibrėžiamąja deskripcija kaip sakinio subjektu, mes išreikštume singuliarinį teiginį. Autorius teigia, kad Wettsteino įsitikinimas, jog teiginio singuliariškumas nustatomas ištarimo metu nurodant apibrėžiamosios deskripcijos referentą, yra nenuoseklus. Straipsnyje siūlomas kitas singuliariškumo kriterijus: teiginys yra singuliarinis, jeigu jame dalyvaujanti apibrėžiamoji deskripcija įvertinama vieninteliame galimame pasaulyje, o jeigu apibrėžiamoji deskripcija turi būti įvertinta daugiau nei vieno galimo pasaulio atžvilgiu, tai teiginys yra bendrasis. Šis kriterijus veiksmingas aiškinant kontroversiškus atvejus – kai išreiškiame (...)
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  • Non-ontological Structuralism†.Michael Resnik - 2019 - Philosophia Mathematica 27 (3):303-315.
    ABSTRACT Historical structuralist views have been ontological. They either deny that there are any mathematical objects or they maintain that mathematical objects are structures or positions in them. Non-ontological structuralism offers no account of the nature of mathematical objects. My own structuralism has evolved from an early sui generis version to a non-ontological version that embraces Quine’s doctrine of ontological relativity. In this paper I further develop and explain this view.
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  • Referential intuitions are still problematic.Massimiliano Vignolo & Filippo Domaneschi - 2018 - Analysis 78 (3):472-483.
    In order to uphold the claim that referential intuitions are a reliable source of evidence for theories of reference, Machery et al. conducted an empirical research by testing truth-value judgments. First, we discuss a conceptual limitation of Machery et al. ’s experiment on truth-value judgments. Then, we present the data of an empirical survey that shows that people’s truth-value judgments are not congruent with their use of proper names. We explain why the results of our empirical research refute the conclusions (...)
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  • To Have and to Hold.Tatjana von Solodkoff & Richard Woodward - 2017 - Philosophical Issues 27 (1):407-427.
    Realists about fictional entities often distinguish the properties that a fictional character has and the properties a character holds. Roughly, this is the distinction between the properties that a character really possesses and the properties it fictionally possess. But despite the popularity of this distinction in realist circles, it gives rise to a number of subtle issues about which fictional realists can and do disagree. In this paper, we aim to clarify these issues and defend three related theses. One: that (...)
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  • A Lesson from Referential Uses of Definite Descriptions.Adriana Silva Graça - 2007 - Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 27 (1).
    In this paper it will be shown that a substantial conception of semantics, one that does not regard semantic phenomena as subsumed under pragmatic ones, is necessary to account for what cries out for an explanation regarding the old problem of the semantic relevance of the referential/attributive distinction, as applied to singular definite descriptions. I consider some alternative proposals to deal with the data, showing why they are wrong, and I finish by establishing that some arguments that allegedly derive the (...)
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  • Direct Reference and Definite Descriptions.Genoveva Marti - 2008 - Dialectica 62 (1):43-57.
    According to Donnellan the characteristic mark of a referential use of a definite description is the fact that it can be used to pick out an individual that does not satisfy the attributes in the description. Friends and foes of the referential/attributive distinction have equally dismissed that point as obviously wrong or as a sign that Donnellan's distinction lacks semantic import. I will argue that, on a strict semantic conception of what it is for an expression to be a genuine (...)
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  • Adapt or die: The death of invariantism&quest.Jessica Brown - 2005 - Philosophical Quarterly 55 (219):263-285.
    Contextualists support their view by appeal to cases which show that whether an attribution of knowledge seems correct depends on attributor factors. Contextualists conclude that the truth-conditions of knowledge attributions depend on the attributor's context. Invariantists respond that these cases show only that the warranted assertability-conditions of knowledge attributions depend on the attributor's context. I examine DeRose's recent argument against the possibility of such an invariantist response, an argument which appeals to the knowledge account of assertion and the context-sensitivity of (...)
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  • Rigidity in Mathematical Discourse.Marián Zouhar - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (3):1381-1394.
    Rigid designators designate whatever they do in all possible worlds. Mathematical definite descriptions are usually considered paradigmatic examples of such expressions. The main aim of the present paper is to challenge this view. It is argued that mathematical definite descriptions cannot be rigid in the same sense as ordinary empirical definite descriptions because—assuming that mathematical facts are not determined by goings on in possible worlds—mathematical descriptions designate whatever they do independently of possible worlds. Nevertheless, there is a widespread practice of (...)
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  • Quantifier Domain Restriction, Hidden Variables and Variadic Functions.Andrei Moldovan - 2016 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 3 (23):384-404.
    In this paper I discuss two objections raised against von Fintel’s (1994) and Stanley and Szabó’s (2000a) hidden variable approach to quantifier domain restriction (QDR). One of them concerns utterances of sentences involving quantifiers for which no contextual domain restriction is needed, and the other concerns multiple quantified contexts. I look at various ways in which the approaches could be amended to avoid these problems, and I argue that they fail. I conclude that we need a more flexible account of (...)
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  • The Predicative Predicament.Anders J. Schoubye - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (3):571-595.
    The-Predicativism is the view that names are count nouns. For example, the meaning of the name ‘Louise’ is roughly the property of being called Louise. Moreover, proponents of this view maintain that names that are ostensibly in argument position of a predicate are covert definite descriptions. In recent years, The-Predicativism has acquired a number of new supporters, mainly Elbourne (), Matushansky (), and Fara (). And while it was pointed out by Kripke () that these kinds of views generally struggle (...)
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  • Replies to my commentators.Stewart Cohen - 2016 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (7-8):906-922.
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  • The causal metaphor account of metaphysical explanation.Jonathan L. Shaheen - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (3):553-578.
    This paper argues that the semantic facts about ‘because’ are best explained via a metaphorical treatment of metaphysical explanation that treats causal explanation as explanation par excellence. Along the way, it defends a commitment to a unified causal sense of ‘because’ and offers a proprietary explanation of grounding skepticism. With the causal metaphor account of metaphysical explanation on the table, an extended discussion of the relationship between conceptual structure and metaphysics ends with a suggestion that the semantic facts about ‘because’ (...)
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  • Duality in Logic and Language.Lorenz Demey, and & Hans Smessaert - 2016 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Duality in Logic and Language [draft--do not cite this article] Duality phenomena occur in nearly all mathematically formalized disciplines, such as algebra, geometry, logic and natural language semantics. However, many of these disciplines use the term ‘duality’ in vastly different senses, and while some of these senses are intimately connected to each other, others seem to be entirely … Continue reading Duality in Logic and Language →.
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  • Facts and values in politics and Searle's Construction of Social Reality.David Jason Karp - 2009 - Contemporary Political Theory 8 (2):152-175.
    Contemporary political theory is fractured in its account of ontology and methods. One prominent fault line is between empirical and normative theory – the former usually called ‘philosophy of social science’, or ‘social-science methodology’, and not ‘theory’ at all. A second fault line exists between analytical and post-modern political theory. These fractures prevent political researchers who engage with the same substantive issues, such as the right of same-sex couples to marry, from speaking to one another in a common language. This (...)
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  • Understanding the Intentions Behind the Referential/Attributive Distinction.Megan Henricks Stotts - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (2):351-362.
    In his recently published John Locke Lectures, Saul Kripke attempts to capture Keith Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction for definite descriptions using a distinction between general and specific intentions. I argue that although Kripke’s own way of capturing the referential/attributive distinction is inadequate, we can use general and specific intentions to successfully capture the distinction if we also distinguish between primary and secondary intentions. An attributive use is characterized by the fact that the general intention is either the primary or only designative (...)
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  • Saying nothing : in defence of syntactic and semantic underdetermination.Mark Bowker - 2016 - Dissertation, University of St Andrews
    According to the Encoding Model, speakers communicate by encoding the propositions they want to communicate into sentences, in accordance with the conventions of a language L. By uttering a sentence that encodes p, the speaker says that p. Communication is successful only if the audience identifies the proposition that the speaker intends to communicate, which is achieved by decoding the uttered sentence in accordance with the conventions of L. A consequence of the Encoding Model has been the proliferation of underdetermination (...)
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  • Referential/attributive: a scope interpretation.Richard L. Mendelsohn - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 147 (2):167-191.
    There is a core to the referential/attributive distinction that reveals a propositional ambiguity that is scope-related and rooted in syntax.
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  • Knowledge claims and context: loose use.Wayne A. Davis - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 132 (3):395-438.
    There is abundant evidence of contextual variation in the use of “S knows p.” Contextualist theories explain this variation in terms of semantic hypotheses that refer to standards of justification determined by “practical” features of either the subject’s context (Hawthorne & Stanley) or the ascriber’s context (Lewis, Cohen, & DeRose). There is extensive linguistic counterevidence to both forms. I maintain that the contextual variation of knowledge claims is better explained by common pragmatic factors. I show here that one is variable (...)
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  • Substitutivity, Obstinacy, and the Case of Giorgione.Stefano Predelli - 2010 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 39 (1):5-21.
    In this essay, I propose an analysis of Quine’s example ’Giorgione was so-called because of his size’, grounded on the idea of an obstinate demonstrative. In the first sections, I discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the demonstrative and logophoric treatments of ‘so called’, I highlight certain parallelisms with Davidson’s paratactic view of quotation, and I introduce independent considerations in favor of the idea of an obstinate demonstrative. In the second half of my essay, I apply this notion to Quine’s (...)
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  • Reassessing Referential Indeterminacy.Christian Nimtz - 2005 - Erkenntnis 62 (1):1-28.
    Quine and Davidson employ proxy functions to demonstrate that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is compatible with indefinitely many radically different reference relations. They also believe that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is all that determines reference. From this they infer that reference is indeterminate, i.e. that there are no facts of the matter as to what singular terms designate and what predicates apply to. Yet referential indeterminacy yields rather dire consequences. One thus does wonder whether one can (...)
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