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Each of us bears a unique name given to us at birth. When people use your name, they typically refer to you. But what is the linkage that ties a name to a person and hence allows it to refer? Li’s book approaches this question of reference empirically through the medium of referential intuitions. Building on the literature on philosophical and linguistic intuitions, she proposes a linguistic-competence-based account of referential intuitions. Subsequently, using a series of novel experiments, she investigates the variation of referential intuitions across different cultures, as well as the developmental trajectory and the underlying causes of the observed cultural differences. What she finds is that the cultural patterns of referential intuitions are already in place around age seven, and the differences are largely attributable to the distinct perspective-taking strategies favoured by easterners and westerners, rather than the moral valence of actions involved in the experimental materials. These results are taken to better support referential pluralism (in particular, the ambiguous view) than referential monism. By undertaking this fascinating research, Li’s book provides new insights into the cognitive mechanism underlying people’s referential usage of names. It will be valuable to students and scholars of linguistics, philosophy of language and experimental philosophy, and in particular, to those who research into semantic intuitions and theories of reference.
In The Autonomy of Reference: On the Relational Structure of Nominals, Zoltán Vecsey defends a moderate autonomy thesis concerning the explanatory status of nominal reference. The autonomy thesis is based on the observation that the relational term of reference exhibits a specific resistance to systematizing attempts. The resistance can be observed on two complementary fronts. On the one hand, reference cannot be introduced into the vocabulary of theoretical linguistics in a de novo manner because every reasonable introductory technique must be built on such expressions that are already functioning in a relational mode. On the other hand, and for similar reasons, the term cannot simply be removed from the vocabulary of theoretical linguistics because every reasonable technique of removal must be built on expressions that are still functioning in a relational mode. Although reference is an autonomous aspect of meaning, in that it shows resistance to these attempts of systematisation, it should not be banished from linguistic theory as an unscientific phenomenon. Vecsey argues that this explanatory technique of reverse engineering, which has already been effectively used in the research practices of logic and mathematics, brings theoretical legitimacy to the term of reference.
For fifty years the philosophy of language has been experiencing a stalemating conflict between the old descriptive and internalist orthodoxy (advocated by philosophers such as Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Strawson, and Searle) and the new causal-referential and externalist orthodoxy (mainly endorsed by Kripke, Putnam, and Kaplan). Although the latter is dominant among specialists, the former retains a discomforting intuitive plausibility. The ultimate goal of this book is to overcome the stalemate by means of a non-naïve return to the old descriptivist-internalist orthodoxy. Concerning proper names, this means introducing second-order description-rules capable of systemizing descriptions of the proper name’s cluster to provide us with the right changeable conditions of satisfaction for its application. Such rules can explain how a proper name can become a rigid designator while remaining descriptive, disarming Kripke's and Donnellan’s main objections. In the last chapter, this new perspective is extended to indexicals in a discussion of David Kaplan’s and John Perry’s views, and of general terms, in a discussion of Hilary Putnam’s externalism.
Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science is a fascinating study of the bounds between science and language: in what sense, and of what, does science provide knowledge? Is science an instrument only distantly related to what's real? Can the language of science be used to adequately describe the truth? In this book, Jody Azziouni investigates the technology of science - the actual forging and exploiting of causal links, between ourselves and what we endeavor to know and understand.
Papers gathered in the two volumes investigate the complex relations between philosophy of language and linguistics, viewed as independent, but mutually influencing one another, disciplines. They concentrate on the ‘formal’ and ‘philosophical’ turns in the philosophy of language, initiated by Gottlob Frege, with further developments associated with the work of Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, W.O.V. Quine, Richard Montague, Pavel Tichý, Richard Rorty. The volumes bring together contributions by philosophers, logicians and linguists, representing different theoretical orientations but united in outlining the common ground, necessary for further research in philosophy of language and linguistics. The papers were submitted and, in most cases, presented at the first International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics, PhiLang2009, organized by the Chair of English and General Linguistics at the University of Lódz.
This book offers an innovative systematic approach to the problems of meaning, reference and related issues, unifying in promising ways some of the best insights, not only of exponential philosophers like Wittgenstein and Frege, but also of some influential later theorists like Michael Dummett, Ernst Tugendhat, John Searle and Donald Williams. Moreover, it exposes some main errors popularized by clever formalist-oriented philosophers, from Willard Van Orman Quine to Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam. In this way, it shows how some older major approaches could regain their central importance and how the cartography of philosophy of language could be once more redrawn. The book is clearly written, and will be of interest to anyone with basic training in analytic philosophy.
This volume offers novel views on the precise relation between reference to an object by means of a linguistic expression and our mental representation of that object, long a source of debate in the philosophy of language, linguistics, and cognitive science. Chapters in this volume deal with our devices for singular reference and singular representation, with most focusing on linguistic expressions that are used to refer to particular objects, persons, or places. These expressions include proper names such as Mary and John; indexicals such as I and tomorrow; demonstrative pronouns such as this and that; and some definite and indefinite descriptions such as The Queen of England or a medical doctor. Other chapters examine the ways we represent objects in thought, particularly the first-person perspective and the self, and one explores a notion common to reference and representation: salience. The volume includes the latest views on these complex topics from some of the most prominent authors in the field and will be of interest to anyone working on issues of reference and representation in thought and language.
This volume is focused on understanding a key idea in modern semantics-direct reference-and its integration into a general semantics for natural language. In the first three chapters, foundational analyses from three philosophers -Saul Kripke, David Kaplan and Keith Donnellan-are dissected in detail. The differences between their respective ideas lead to varying consequences in the philosophy of mind, the metaphysics of necessity, and the epistemological idea of a priori knowledge. In the last chapter, two central puzzles said to threaten direct reference are raised. One is Frege's puzzle about judgments of cognitive significance and informativeness. This puzzle is analyzed and is shown to be the opposite of a threat; informative identities are, in effect, a consequence of the new cognitive insights behind direct reference. The second puzzle, the Partee-Kaplan, is a threat: how to unify the referential semantics of nouns with the seemingly non referential semantics of denoting phrases? The volume criticizes the concept of a unifying methodology-assimilating the referential nouns to the complex denoting phrases by way of (set theoretic) "ontological sublimation"--as proposed by Montague--and launches an orthogonal unification methodology generalizing direct reference to the common nouns anchoring the denoting phrases.