Proper names are typically considered to be devices of individual reference. Since Frege (1882), the debate has mainly concerned the proper semantic characteristics of this individual reference. Burge (J Philos 70:425–439, 1973) challenged this focus by highlighting the predicative uses of proper names and proposed that names are predicates even if they appear as bare singulars in the argument position. In turn, this unificatory account was subjected to criticism by Böer, Jeshion, and others, who provided counterexamples to the (...) predicativist analysis of proper names. In this paper, I want to analyze the nonreferential uses of proper names, which, by being nonreferential, provide a challenge for both predicativism and referentialism about proper names. I critically examine the processes proposed as possible accounts of the problematic examples, i.e. deferred reference, meaning transfer, and coercion, and argue that they do not provide an adequate analysis. I propose an interpretive mechanism that accounts for these problematic uses of proper names, as well as a new principle for classifying the kinds of uses of proper names based on the interpretive mechanisms underlying those uses and which includes all of the kinds of uses discussed in the literature. (shrink)

The objectives of this paper are twofold. The first is to present a differentiation between two kinds of deferred uses of indexicals: those in which indexical utterances express singular propositions (I term them deferred reference proper) and those where they express general propositions (called descriptive uses of indexicals). The second objective is the analysis of the descriptive uses of indexicals. In contrast to Nunberg, who treats descriptive uses as a special case of deferred reference in (...) which a property contributes to the proposition expressed, I argue that examples in which a general proposition is indeed expressed by an indexical cannot be treated by assuming that the property is a deferred referent of the pronoun. I propose an analysis of descriptive uses of indexicals by means of a pragmatic mechanism of ‘descriptive anaphora’, which attempts to explain the special kind of contribution of the property retrieved from the context to the proposition that is characteristic of the descriptive interpretation. (shrink)

According to Putnam, meaning and reference depend on acts of structured cooperation between language‐users. For example, laypeople defer to experts regarging the conditions under which something may be called ’gold’. A modest expert may defer to a greater expert. Question: can deference be never‐ending? Two theories say no. I expound these, then criticize them. The theories deal with semantic processes bound by a ’stopping’ constraint which are not cases of ordimary deferring. Deferring is normally done for a reason, and (...) a rational person is always disposed to defer if there is good reason. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 87, Issue 1, Page 109-135, February 2021.

of (from Philosophy Dissertations Online).

I discuss Paolo Casalegno's objections to my views about semantic normativity as presented in my book Lexical Competence (MIT Press, 1997) and in a later paper. I argue that, contrary to Casalegno's claim, the phenomenon of semantic deference can be accounted for without having to appeal to an “objective” notion of reference, i.e. to the view that words have the reference they have independently of whatever knowledge or ability is available to or within the linguistic community. Against both (...) Casalegno and Timothy Williamson, I argue that a semantic norm based on objective reference would be really inapplicable, even though a speaker might believe to be guided by such a norm. (shrink)

On a standard understanding of externalist metasemantic theories, such theories require a speaker to defer to other speakers in order to share content with them. We argue that this standard understanding is mistaken, and that, on a proper understanding of externalism, sharing content does not depend in any way on deference, either to experts, or one’s linguistic community. We defend a version of externalism that we call ‘pure externalism’, and we argue that the idea that shared content requires deference is (...) a residue of internalism/descriptivisism to which externalists ought to be opposed. We also argue that, despite common belief to the contrary, several of the originators of externalism, including Tyler Burge, do not think that deference is in any way relevant, let alone required, for shared externalist content. (shrink)

There is a robust scientific consensus concerning climate change and evolution. But many people reject these expert views, in favour of beliefs that are strongly at variance with the evidence. It is tempting to try to explain these beliefs by reference to ignorance or irrationality, but those who reject the expert view seem often to be no worse informed or any less rational than the majority of those who accept it. It is also tempting to try to explain these (...) beliefs by reference to epistemic overconfidence. However, this kind of overconfidence is apparently ubiquitous, so by itself it cannot explain the difference between those who accept and those who reject expert views. Instead, I will suggest that the difference is in important part explained by differential patterns of epistemic deference, and these patterns, in turn, are explained by the cues that we use to filter testimony. We rely on cues of benevolence and competence to distinguish reliable from unreliable testifiers, but when debates become deeply politicized, asserting a claim may itself constitute signalling lack of reliability. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that members of a linguistic community typically mean the same by their words. Yet “ignorance and error” arguments proposed by the revolution in the theory of reference seem to show that people can share a meaning and yet differ greatly in usage. Horwich responds to this problem for UTM by appealing to deference. I give five reasons for doubting that his brief remarks about deference can be developed into a satisfactory theory. But this appeal (...) has an even deeper problem: the appeal is inconsistent with UTM. These problems are not minor ones of details: they strike at the very core of UTM. (shrink)

In debates about the proper analysis of demonstrative expressions, ostensive gestures and speaker intentions are often seen as competing for primary importance in securing reference. Underlying some of these debates is the mistaken assumption that ostensive gestures always make the demonstrated object maximally salient to interlocutors. When we abandon this assumption and focus on an object’s mutually-recognized salience itself, rather than on how the object came to be salient, we can work towards a more promising analysis with a uniform (...) treatment of demonstrative reference whether or not there is an ostensive gesture, and whether reference is ordinary or deferred. (shrink)

This paper addresses two problems concerning the deferred ostension of extinct and fictive kinds. First, the sampled item, the fossil or the depiction, is not a sample of the referent. Nonetheless, the retained characteristic shape, understood via analogy with living creatures, enables the reference to be fixed. Second, though both extinct and fictive kinds are targets of deferred ostension, there is an important difference in the sample. Fossilization is a natural causal process that makes fossils to be (...) reflections of their originals. As reflections, fossils embed their referents in the primary existential world of perceived things. Images of artificial kinds, by contrast, leave their referents in the secondary existential world of mere appearance. In this way, the paper widens the scope of the Kripke-Putnam account of ostension for naming kinds by drawing on Quine’s concept of deferred ostension for absent referents. (shrink)

I defend a Deferred Ostension view of quotation, on which quotation-marks are the linguistic bearers of reference, functioning like a demonstrative; the quoted material merely plays the role of a demonstratum. On this view, the quoted material works like Nunberg’s indexes in his account of deferred ostensión in general. The referent is obtained through some contextually suggested relation; in the default case the relation will be … instantiates the linguistic type __, but there are other possibilities. In (...) this way, the deferred ostension view deals with a problem I pointed out for the identity proposal in my earlier work, that we do not merely refer with quotations to expression-types, but also to other entities related in some way to the relevant token we use: features exhibited by the token distinct from those constituting its linguistic type, features exhibited by other tokens of the same type but not by the one actually used (as when, by using a graphic token, we refer to its phonetic type), or even other related tokens (see the examples on p. 261 of García-Carpintero 1994). (shrink)

In this paper we argue that moral deference is prima facie obligatory in cases in which the testifier is a member of a marginalized social group that the receiver is not and testifies about their marginalized experience. We distinguish between two types of deference: epistemic deference, which refers to believing p in virtue of trusting the testifier, and actional deference, which involves acting appropriately in response to the testimony given. The prima facie duty we propose applies to both epistemic and (...) actional deference, though defeaters may quash either or both obligations. Even if one fails to epistemically defer to the marginalized testifier, we argue that they may still be ethically obligated to act in accordance with their testimony. (shrink)

This paper describes the linguistic phenomenon of prospective reference. It is a form of deferred reference exemplified by “my cake is ready to go in the oven”, which is interesting because raw batter generally does not qualify as a cake, and “my baby is kicking,” said of a fetus. Because of its importance in political and commercial discourse, prospective reference demands attention from semantic-pragmatic theories in linguistics and jurisprudence. I argue that in at least some cases (...) prospective reference is not the result of polysemy, indeterminacy, vagueness, or promiscuous breadth of concept; rather it is the result of pragmatics, akin to figurative speech and Donnellan’s “referential” use of language. My conclusion is supported by a philosophical critique of semantic externalism plus experimental work indicating that, for speakers of English, fetuses do not fall into the linguistic categories of children, human beings, or persons. (shrink)

We offer a new outlook on the vexed question of the reference of natural-kind terms. Since Kripke and Putnam, there is a widespread assumption that natural-kind terms function just like proper names: they designate their referents directly and they are rigid designators: their reference is unchanged even in worlds in which the referent lacks some or all the properties associated with it in the actual world, and which are useful to us in identifying that referent. There have, however, (...) been heated debates about what should be taken as a natural-kind term. Some challenge the very existence of a separate category of natural-kind terms ; some their being directly referential ; some raise the possibility that direct reference extends to terms beyond those usually assumed to fall under the category, e.g. to ‘polemical’ terms. When these debates turn on the question of what natural kinds are, they take on a strong epistemological or metaphysical dimension. We think the issues can be clarified within the limits of the philosophy of language: by looking into what ranges of general terms are perceived by speakers as rigid designators of natural kinds. The first step to take is to ground the various kinds of semantic externalism in distinct brands of semantic deference. This we define as speakers’ being disposed to use words in line with the norms of their linguistic community and as consenting to being corrected when it is manifest that their use and understanding of a word does not match common practice. When those dispositions are present, speakers defer semantically to something beyond themselves. Here, our focus is on spotting the words for which speakers would defer not to the current usage of the word in the linguistic community, nor to the current experts of the field to which the word pertains, but ultimately to the very nature of the referent of the term. When speakers’ deference conforms to that pattern, we argue, that is evidence that indexical externalism provides the right metasemantic account of how the meaning of the word is determined. In other words, one can say that the word is treated like a natural-kind term. But how can patterns of deference be measured? In an ongoing survey, participants are confronted with conditions that may prompt them to revise certain classificatory statements, e.g. An emu is a bird. Each condition makes salient one of the targets we have identified for deference: the community usage, the experts, the ‘world as it is’. In the condition that seeks to tap into the latter kind of deference, participants are presented with a scenario in which future scientific discoveries result in excluding from the extension of a term certain members currently thought to fall under that extension, e.g. discoveries that require excluding certain species now thought to be birds from the Aves class. The scenario is such that it is clear that the ‘discoveries’ bring us closer to the actual essence, if there is one, of birds. Our reasoning is that, if participants significantly modify their statements in the light of that scenario, they can be taken to ‘defer’ to the nature of the referent, thus vindicating indexical externalism. We test if words not normally assumed to be natural-kind terms – for instance summer, contract or rape – exhibit patterns of deference similar to those for bird. If so, then there’s a case for an extension of indexical externalism beyond the usual set of terms. What would be shown in this way is that speakers have something like realist intuitions with respect to words whose meaning is usually taken to be purely conventional or polemical. We are at the pre-test stage for the survey. We cannot yet report on our results. We should, however, have initial results by March, which, we believe, will enrich the observations made by previous empirical studies. References: Braisby, N., Franks, B. & Hampton, J. 1996. Essentialism, word use, and concepts. Cognition 59, 247-74./Genone, J. & Lombrozo, T. 2012. Concept possession, experimental semantics, and hybrid theories of reference. Philosophical Psychology 25, 717-742./Häggqvist, S. & Wikforss, Å. 2015. Experimental semantics: the case of natural kind terms, in J. Haukioja, Experimental Philosophy of Language, London, Bloomsbury./Jylkkä, J., Railo, H. & Haukioja, J. 2009. Psychological essentialism and semantic externalism: Evidence for externalism in lay speakers’ language use. Philosophical Psychology 22, 37-60./Mallon, R., Machery, E., Nichols, S. & Stich, S. 2009. Against arguments from reference, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79, 332-356./ Marconi, D. 1997. Language, Speech, and Communication. Lexical Competence. Cambridge : MIT Press./Moravcsik, J. 2016. Meaning, Creativity, and the Partial Inscrutability of the Human Mind, 2nd ed. Stanford: CSLI./Schroeter, L. & Schroeter, F. 2014. Normative concepts: a connectedness model, Philosophers’ Imprint 14, 1-26./ Wikforss, Å. 2010. Are natural kind terms special?, in H. Beebee and N. Sabbarton-Leary, The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, New York, Routledge, 64-83. (shrink)

Traditional approaches tend to regard figuration (and by extension, deference in general) as an essentially marked or playful use of language, which is associated with a pronounced stylistic effect. For linguistic purposes, however, there is no reason for assigning a special place to deferred uses that are stylistically notable — the sorts of usages that people sometimes qualify with a phrase like "figuratively speaking." There is no important linguistic difference between using redcoat to refer to a British soldier and (...) using suit to refer to a corporate executive (as in "A couple of suits stopped by to talk about the new products"). What creates the stylistic effect of the latter is not the mechanism that generates it, but the marked background assumptions that license it — here, the playful presupposition that.. (shrink)

Fodor (1998) argues that most lexical concepts have no internal structure. He rejects what he calls Inferential Role Semantics (IRS), the view that primitive concepts are constituted by their inferential relations, on the grounds that this violates the compositionality constraint and leads to an unacceptable form of holism. In rejecting IRS, Fodor must also reject meaning postulates. I argue, contra Fodor, that meaning postulates must be retained, but that when suitably constrained they are not susceptible to his arguments against IRS. (...) This has important implications for the view that certain of our concepts are deferential. A consequence of the arguments I present is that deference is relegated to a relatively minor role in what Sperber (1997) refers to as reflective concepts; deference has no important role to play in the vast majority of our intuitive concepts. (shrink)

This paper aims to propose a version of the description theory of reference –for short, descriptivism– on natural kind terms. This version is grounded on some proposals of descriptivists, such as Searle and Strawson, about proper names, which will be extended to natural kind terms. According to Searle and Strawson the reference of a proper name is determined by a sufficient number of the descriptions that speakers associate with the name, but among the sorts of descriptions admitted by (...) these authors are those in which the average speaker defers the reference of a term to other speakers. In this regard, descriptivism can accept Putnam’s thesis of the division of linguistic labour and claim that some of the descriptions associated by non-experts have the function of deferring the reference of natural kind terms to their reference in the use by experts. Thus, descriptivism can maintain that the reference of a natural kind term is determined by a sufficient number of the descriptions that experts concerning a natural kind associate with the term. I will argue that this version of descriptivism, which grants more weight to social links than to historical links, can explain better than Kripke’s theory the reference of the use of natural kind terms by the average speaker. (shrink)

The paper focuses on a specific type of referring legal provisions, in which the referring phrase contains a component that indicates the position of a certain fragment of the same text of a normative act by determining the position of that fragment in relation to the fragment in which the given referring phrase is located. Despite the fact that these referrals, called deictic, may be perceived as uncomplicated in structure and as functioning correctly in legal texts, many theoretical as well (...) as practical problems arise during their drafting and legal interpretation. The article attempts to reveal, organize and name these problems basing on the conceptual grid formulated by Studnicki, Łachwa, Fall and Stabrawa as a universal, although not widely known outside Polish jurisprudence, tool for analysing and solving referring provisions as elements of various legal systems, especially continental ones. Texts of selected Polish Codes have been chosen as an illustrative material of deictic referrals which have been incorrectly formulated as leaving space for interpretative doubts in terms of place of indication and place of reference, which also causes a potential problem of the deferred ostension phenomenon noticed by Quine. The author argues that proper drafting of referring legal provisions with deictic indication requires that the legislator should have extensive pragmalinguistic knowledge and is an essential part of law-making oriented towards achieving comprehensibility of texts of normative acts, especially as important as Codes. (shrink)

It's widely accepted that social facts about an individual's linguistic community can affect both the reference of her words and the concepts those words express. Theorists sympathetic to the internalist tradition have sought to accommodate these social dependence phenomena without altering their core theoretical commitments by positing deferential reference-fixing criteria. In this paper, we sketch a different explanation of social dependence phenomena, according to which all concepts are individuated in part by causal-historical relations linking token elements of thought.

In the process of natural language functioning, in the speech communication, new regulations and requirements are constantly emerging that become normative. In the paper, in focus are (1) the interaction of meaning and normativity, and 2) the process of norm construal through socio-linguistic practice, namely – through the concept of deference, the phenomenon of borrowing concepts, knowledge, information from other people, linguistic communities and sources of information is considered. With the help of deference, the other side of the meaningful relationship (...) is indicated and described when we rely on other people's thoughts, knowledge that we believe to be true and authoritative. This can happen both consciously (deliberately), and unconsciously (by default). The bearers of the norm we rely on can be individuals, groups and large linguistic communities. The deferential mechanism described in the paper captures the fact that the communication participants can effectively use and reason with the help of concepts, with little or no understanding of their true meaning. The tendency towards normativisation, unification of language and speech and corrections of all that does not agree with the common usage of words, meanings, norms in society is disclosed in the paper. A distinction is also parsed between how norms work in closed language communities and research expert groups capable of "structural cooperation" and functional definition of norms. Lastly, the author emphasizes that deference substantially complements the language in which we describe guidance, in relation to the real and symbolic worlds, where our view goes, what we remember and what we design; it is our habitual, conscious or unconscious, but not always correct, use of words, which is an important part of living communication between the social and linguistic communities. This is the case where, in some sense, a defect, a violation of norms, or a hindrance of speech communication becomes (may be) a creative means of distinguishing between what is and is not an extension of the term. (shrink)

I take it as given that we manage to linguistically refer to objects we can neither perceive nor uniquely describe. Kripke accounts for this fact by appeal to causal-historical chains of communication. But Evans famously presented what has seemed to many a devastating counterexample to Kripke’s view: the phenomenon of reference-shifting. Here, I’ll agree with critics that Kripke’s view is insufficient to handle cases of reference shift, but I’ll argue for an alternative version of the causal-historical account that (...) is immune to Evans’ counterexample. The key move will be at the foundations; it will require a change in what it is we’re giving a causal-historical account of. Critically, I’ll argue that we should reject two claims associated with the causal-historical picture. First, we should reject the claim that names are used to think of their referents. Second, we should reject the claim that later speakers defer to earlier ones. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:69. DID BEATTIE DEFER TO HUME? Robert Paul Wolff, in his essay, "Kant's Debt to Hume Via Beattie," points out a 'rather interesting mistake ' made by Norman Kemp Smith in his Commentary to Kànt's Critique of Pure Reason. In the Commentary Kemp Smith considers the similarities of the respective theories of self of Kant and Hume and finds it intriguing that the two philosophers agree"...that there is no (...) single empirical« 2 state of the self which is constant throughout experience". In spite of this agreement of doctrine Kemp Smith insists Kant must have arrived at his conclusions independently of any reading of Hume. We are told this is so because "Hume's view of the self is not developed in the Enquiry, and is 3 not mentioned by Beattie". And since, as Kemp Smith argues, Kant had only the Enquiry and certain passages of Hume's Treatise as quoted by James Beattie in An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth available to him, this agreement must be considered an accident rather than evidence of an 4 influence of Hume on Kant. Here then is the 'interesting mistake'. Wolff does not wish to dispute the more or less canonical assessment that Kant's knowledge of Hume rested on first hand acquaintance with the Enquiry and Beattie' s Essay rather than the Treatise. However, Wolff does want to question Kemp Smith's account of how much Hume Kant could have gleaned from Beattie. Kemp Smith tells us that in the Essay Beattie says nothing of Hume's theory of self. But as every reader of the Essay knows Beattie spent no less than six pages on Hume's discussion of self and personality, and considered it very important: at least important enough that he seems to have felt that a mere description of Hume on the self would serve as a reductio on the Humean body of beliefs. Still, according to Wolff, what appears to be a mistake made by Kemp Smith turns out not to be one at all. Wolff infers from the 1776 date of Beattie' s Essay which 70. Kemp Smith cites that he was working from the sixth edition, the edition which Beattie, responding to Hume's attempt in the Advertisement for the Enquiries to deny responsibility for the Treatise, "...altered his discussion of Hume's philosophy so that his criticism would not apply to the Treatise alone". Such an alteration of the Essay meant, according to Wolff, making the topics of the Essay line up in number and content with those of the Hume's Enquiry. But as we all know Hume does not discuss personal identity in the Enquiry. Thus this topic is omitted from the sixth edition of Beattie's Essay. And thus Kemp Smith's "mistake" turns out not to be one at all. Even if this dissolution by Wolff of what appears to be a mistake by Kemp Smith were correct we would still have puzzles to contend with. For example, the discussion of causation in the Enquiry has long been recognized to differ? significantly from that of the Treatise. One would then expect that Wolff would also cite some change in the sixth edition of the Essay on this score. Yet Wolff does not mention any alteration in the sixth edition account of causation, and in fact a comparison of the relevant sections of the sixth with an earlier edition will not yield any significant difference in the texts. But, be this as it may, where before we had one seeming mistake and the promise of its being dissolved, we now have two strange mistakes both irresolvable. For the discussion of Hume on personal identity which Wolff and Kemp Smith say does not occur in the edition of Beattie's Essay of 1776 is really there, substantially unchanged from earlier editions. For the sake of completeness it should be noted also that even though Wolff refers only to the sixth edition printed in 1776 there are also at least three other printings of the sixth edition (in 1777, 1778 and 1805), but this makes little difference since Beattie's treatment of the topic of personal identity... (shrink)

The idea that reference is multiply grounded allows causal-historical theories of reference to account for reference change. It also threatens the stability of reference in light of widespread error and confusion. I describe the problem, so far unrecognised, and provide a solution based on the phenomenon of semantic deference, which I differentiate from reference-borrowing. I conclude that deference has an authentic foundational semantic role to play.

This article uses what Patti Tamara Lenard refers to as the cosmopolitan problem of motivation to discuss the roles of loyalty in two philosophical accounts of global solidarity. Avery Kolers’ Kantian, deontological approach to solidarity as reason-based deference is contrasted with Richard Rorty's controversial, anti-Kantian description of solidarity as ethnocentric inclusivity generated through sentimental education. This article offers critical reflections on the work of these two influential thinkers and combines elements of their theories to contribute a limited but useful response (...) to Lenard's concerns regarding loyalty and the motivation of global solidarity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE: VIOLENCE DEFERRED OR VIOLENCE DENIED? Eric Gans University ofCalifornia—Los Angeles ~P ecently I was asked to review applicants at UCLA for a XVpostdoctoral fellowship. The competition was based, along with the usual CV and recommendation letters, on a project proposal relevant to this year's topic: the sacred. There were some sixty applicants working in the modern period since 1800; these new PhD's included literary (...) scholars, philosophers, historians, a few anthropologists, even a musicologist. I was taken aback to discover that not a single one ofthese projects made reference to the name or ideas of René Girard. When I remarked on this to the director ofthe program, a professor ofEnglish with a solid background in philosophy and literary theory, he offered the explanation that these ideas had had a vogue twenty years ago, but were no longer in fashion today. However exaggerated and shortsighted it may be, I take this judgment on the part ofan astute and reasonably unbiased observer as a call to action. Like it or not, the academic world, the university, is the center of American intellectual life. The ideas that motivate COV&R emerged from the university and, however powerful they may become and remain outside it, it is important for their survival that they retain their visibility within it. Thus it is important that we put aside any differences that may divide us in the pursuit ofthis goal that I know we all share. I will return to this point at the end of my talk. What is the origin of language? This question is not only one of formulating hypotheses about the origin, but ofdeciding what it is that we mean by the question itself. Recent advances in neuroscience, cognitive 2 Eric Gans science, speech physiology, paleontology, primatology, linguistics, and related fields make this question both easier and harder to answer than when I wrote The Origin ofLanguage over twenty years ago. I can say at the outset that nothing I have learned in the course of my research dissuades me as a humanist from venturing into an area in which the dominant voices are no longer those of linguists and prehistorians, but those of neuroscientists. As they have always done, scientific advances permit those concerned with the human, "anthropologists" in the broadest sense of the term, to redraw the boundaries of the domain within which anthropological reflection truly belongs. This position is not one widely held by the scientists themselves, who generally share an Enlightenment view for which all thinking not subject to scientific method, particularly that of religion, is a primitive survival condemned to, and deserving of, the fate of alchemy and Aristotelian cosmology. In this view, my—I think I can say, "our"—kind ofanthropology is not a respectable field of inquiry at all. The hypothetical attribution of an originary function to an event or scene considered memorable in itself is not-yet-understood as a necessary methodological tool in the human sciences. Yet a scientific method expanded to include events would not have to put religion within brackets as an expression of the irrational or explain it by an ad hoc theory of psychological expediency, but would begin to integrate within itself the understanding of the human that it has been the historical function of religion to provide. I do not think we need accept the Enlightenment vision ofhistory as the story ofthe continued advance ofscience into domains progressively vacated by unscientific thought. No doubt we no longer rely on religion to supply the basis for cosmology or for natural science in general. And as our knowledge ofthe brain continues to progress, it may no longer be necessary to rely on metaphysical philosophy in order to understand the processes of language and thought. But human culture is not centrally concerned with natural phenomena or even with logic or linguistic structure. It is concerned with the regulation ofhuman interaction, with ethics, and however much science can help provide ethical thought with options, it can never usurp its central cultural function. This last point is usually expressed by the old saw that you can't get to "ought" from "is." Science tells us how it is, not how... (shrink)

This thesis addresses two enduring issues in legal theory-- rationality and its association with rule of law values--by offering detailed models of two patterns of legal reasoning. One is reasoning by analogy. The other is the inference process that legal reasoners use when they defer epistemically to scientific experts in the course of reaching legal decisions. Discussions in both chapters reveal that the inference pattern known as "abduction" is a deeply important element of many legal inferences, including analogy and epistemic (...) deference to experts--something that has been largely unrecognized in legal theory. After presenting a detailed model of analogy, Chapter 1 argues that legal reasoning by analogy, like analogical argument in logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences, possesses a great deal of rational force when properly executed. Chapter 2 investigates the reasoning process by which non-expert legal reasoners defer epistemically to the judgments of scientists. It presents five main conclusions or explanations. Every practical syllogism actually consists of two distinct chains of inference, and what is usually considered in writings on practical reasoning to be the minor premise of a practical syllogism is actually the conclusion of a separate chain of argument. When a practical reasoner defers epistemically to a theoretical expert, this separate chain of argument has a special structure, which is modeled in Chapter 2. The non-expert legal reasoner must always make a prescriptive practical judgment about the standard of epistemic appraisal and level of epistemic confidence that the reasoner requires of scientific evidence before it may be relied upon in reaching a legal decision. Legal systems should be committed to an emergent rule of law ideal identified and referred to as "intellectual due process" which condemns epistemically arbitrary reasoning processes insofar as they play a role in legal decisionmaking. Since non-arbitrariness is a necessary condition of both epistemic and legal legitimacy, we have compelling reason to doubt that the non-arbitrariness condition can be met when non-experts defer epistemically to scientific experts. (shrink)

I deploy the sense-reference distinction and its kin from the philosophy of language to answer the question what in constitutional interpretation should, and should not, be able to change after founders adopt a constitutional provision. I suggest that a constitutional expression's reference, but not its sense, can change. Interpreters should thus give founders' assessments of reference only Skidmore-level deference. From this position, I criticize the theories of constitutional interpretation offered by Raoul Berger, Jed Rubenfeld, and Richard Fallon, (...) and apply the theory to whether the Fourteenth Amendment forbids racial segregation in public schools. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the “Standard View” of the semantics of ‘I’—according to which ‘I’ is a pure, automatic indexical—from a challenge posed by “deferred reference” cases, in which occurrences of ‘I’ are (allegedly) not speaker-referential, and thus non-automatic. In reply, I offer an alternative account of the cases in question, which I call the “Description Analysis” (DA). According to DA, seemingly deferred-referential occurrences of the first person pronoun are interpreted as constituents of a definite description, (...) whose operator scopes over an open sentence Rxy—where R is a contextually selected relation ranging over pairs of people and objects. The role of intentions is thus limited to the determination of R, which is posterior to the fixation of the reference of ‘I’. In support of the DA I present evidence that, in the cases in question, the (Determiner) phrase containing ‘I’ behaves in relevant ways like a description. I show that the DA can account for the problematic examples, while preserving the simplicity of the standard semantics of ‘I’. Finally, I examine a rival account of the data, offered by Nunberg (Linguist Philos 16:1–43, 1993), and argue for the superiority of the DA. (shrink)

We defend the view that an indexical uttered by an actor works on the model of deferred reference. If it defers to a character which does not exist, it is an empty term, just as ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Ophelia’ are. The utterance in which it appears does not express a proposition and thus lacks a truth value. We advocate an ontologically parsimonious, anti-realist, position. We show how the notion of truth in our use and understanding of indexicals (and fictional (...) names) as they appear within a fiction is not a central issue. We claim that our use and understanding of indexicals (and names) rests on the fact that their cognitive contribution is not exhausted by their semantic contribution. (shrink)

A homonymy analysis is proposed to explain the so-called “demonstrative use” of personal pronouns. This analysis explains why some pronouns (_it_) do not allow a demonstrative use, as demonstrated in Nunberg (1993). The absence of a demonstrative feature in _it_ can also account for the fact that it does not allow deferred reference. It is argued on the basis of the structure of the nominal demonstrative paradigm that the homonymy analysis is more parsimonious than a single-item analysis.

Together with the volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Linguistic and theoretical issues,” this book collects selected contributions to the conference Pragmasophia II held in Lisbon in 2018. This first volume intends to contribute to the dialogue between philosophers and linguists, trying to broaden the boundaries of this discipline defined by the crucial notions of context and verbal action. To this purpose, the contributions are collected in an order that reflects the core and the frontiers of pragmatics, the former constituted by (...) the classical and more philosophical topics as quantifiers, semantic intentions and semantics, and common knowledge, and the latter exploring areas such as the relationship between pragmatics and other fields, such as argumentation and discourse analysis. Between these two poles of theoretical developments, we can find new theoretical challenges to some basic pragmatic problems, such as pure indexicals, deferred reference, polysemy, explicatures and indirect reports. (shrink)

Kripke’s most important arguments in Naming and Necessity against the description theory of reference of proper names are the arguments from ignorance and error concerning names of historical figures. The aim of this paper is to put forward a reply to these arguments. The answer to them is grounded on the development of one component of the version of the description theory proposed by the authors that are regarded as the classical contemporary advocates of this theory, namely Searle and (...) Strawson; one of the targets of Kripke’s arguments is precisely the version of the description theory of reference submitted by these authors. The development of that component results in a sort of description theory of reference not affected by Kripke’s arguments from ignorance and error concerning the names of historical figures, deferential descriptivism. (shrink)

The problem of how concepts can refer to or be about the non-mental world is particularly puzzling for abstract concepts. There is growing evidence that many characteristics beyond the perceptual are involved in grounding different kinds of abstract concept. A resource that has been suggested, but little explored, is introspection. This paper develops that suggestion by focusing specifically on metacognition—on the thoughts and feelings that thinkers have about a concept. One example of metacognition about concepts is the judgement that we (...) should defer to others in how a given concept is used. Another example is our internal assessment of which concepts are dependable and useful, and which less so. Metacognition of this kind may be especially important for grounding abstract concepts. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain’. (shrink)

The kinds of real or natural kinds that support explanation and prediction in the social sciences are difficult to identify and track because they change through time, intersect with one another, and they do not always exhibit their properties when one encounters them. As a result, conceptual practices directed at these kinds will often refer in ways that are partial, equivocal, or redundant. To improve this epistemic situation, it is important to employ open-ended classificatory concepts, to understand when different research (...) programs are tracking the same real kind, and to maintain an ongoing commitment to interact causally with real kinds to focus reference on those kinds. A tempting view of these non-idealized epistemic conditions should be avoided: that they signal an ontological structure of the social world so plentiful that it would permit ameliorated classificatory schemes to achieve their normative aims regardless of whether they defer to real-kind classificatory schemes. To ground these discussions, the essay appeals to an overlooked convergence in the systematic naturalistic frameworks of Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. (shrink)

In fundamental rights adjudication, should judges defer to the judgment of other decision makers? How can they defer, without betraying the respect that judges ought to accord those rights? How can they refuse to defer, without betraying the respect that judges ought to accord to other decision makers? I argue that only principles of comity justify deference, and their reach is limited. Comity never forbids the judges to take and to act upon a different view of fundamental rights from that (...) of another decision maker. I elaborate this view by reference to the decision of the House of Lords in Adan and Aitseguer [2001] 1 All ER 593. (shrink)

What I refer to here as the dilemma of authority arises when one ought to defer to authority; one ought to act as the more weighty reason demands; one can do either; one cannot do both. For those who reject the possibility of legitimate authority, the dilemma does not arise. Among those who accept legitimate authority, some, including Joseph Raz, presume the conflict can be resolved without remainder. In this paper, I argue that, in a moral conflict of this kind, (...) when one of the reasons for action is defeated but not cancelled, it is rational to feel regret for failing to do what one ought to do. (shrink)

This paper argues against Boydian synthetic moral naturalism by way of a critical examination at metasemantic issues. I first show that the Boydian metasemantics delivers determinate but wrong reference, building on an analysis by Schroeter and Schroeter. I then propose a diagnosis which says that the problem occurs due to an overly simple way of understanding externalist metasemantics, and that a proper understanding requires us to pay heed to the higher-level constraints set by the speakers’ deferring pattern. That in (...) turn is restricted by what I call reference defeaters, which are essentially some central beliefs held by the speakers and are so called because they have the power to defeat reference of a term to certain things. Applying the notion to moral discourse, I argue that the entrenched is/ought distinction held by the ordinary speakers defeats the reference of the moral predicates to natural properties, that is, synthetic moral naturalism is not true. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Locke on the Knowledge of Material Things ROBERT FENDEL ANDERSON IT IS nOT John Locke's intention, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, to deal with matter and material substance nor with how these are able to affect the mind. These are considerations for natural philosophy; Locke counts himself rather among the moral philosophers. He does not propose, therefore, to meddle with the physical aspects of the mind, nor with (...) the physical production of sensations through the organs, nor with the production of ideas in the understanding, nor even with whether ideas depend upon matter for their source. He defers to the wisdom of such men as Boyle, Sydenham, Huygens and Newton in these considerations, and finds it "... ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge....,, 1 It is true that Locke's Essay is characterized chiefly not by an interest in matter and the mechanics of perception but rather by an interest in epistemology and in the ordering and assessment of our knowledge. Because of the very nature and emphasis of this epistemology, however, Locke finds that he must, from time to time, at least mention the nature of matter and how it affects us. Finally, it becomes apparent, certain changes or ambiguities in his point of view regarding the mode of our knowledge and its certainty are consequences of his understanding of matter. It is a demonstration of these elements of his doctrine, which seem not to have obtained the full attention of such scholars as Aaron, Fraser, and Gibson, that I shall attempt in this paper. Fundamentally, Locke's theory of matter appears to be that of Democritus and Epicurus. Like the Greek atomists, he conceives of matter as consisting of particles or corpuscles infinite in number. At least some of these are so minute as to be individually insensible, and probably he intends that all are, although, to my knowledge, he never states that this is so. In the aggregate, in any case, particles do constitute perceptible bodies. As for the Greeks, so also for Locke, the particles arc all extended, having size and shape. They are said also to possess motion or rest, although he takes care to say that matter cannot produce motion in itself,e Locke frequently mentions other properties as being "primary" or "really in" material things. Some of these are solidity, texture, cohesion of parts, situation, and number. Apparently some of these may be ranked under others since, as he 1"Epistle to the Reader," Vol. I, p. 14. All footnotes refer to passages in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, collated and annotated, with prolegomena, biographical, critical, and historical by Alexander Campbell Fraser, in two volumes (New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1959). Large Roman numerals refer to books of the Essay; small Roman numerals refer to chapters of the books; Arabic numerals refer to sections of the chapters. 2 IV, x, 10. [205] 206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY remarks, figure presupposes extension, and receiving or communicating motion through impact presupposes solidity. The influences of these particles upon one another are treated by Locke under the topic of "powers," a notion which includes in it some kind of "secret relation of parts." 3 The capacities in any substance to give alterations of primary qualities are active powers; the capacities to receive such alterations are passive powers. This alteration must be accomplished by impact or impulse since this, Locke says, is the only way in which bodies can be conceived to operate. Sensation in the percipient being then is to be understood as a special case of this impact of particles upon others. It is evident to Locke that from external obiects some motion must be conveyed by some parts of our bodies to the brain or seat of sensation to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of these external objects. We are able by sight to perceive at a distance the primary qualities of bodies of observable size. Locke reasons that therefore "... some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to... (shrink)

Ethics, Value, and Reality is a collection of essays written after Kolnai settled in England in 1955. These essays from Kolnai's mature years sit atop a remarkable gestation of moral and political thinking. At the heart of his thought is the special role of privilege in a good social order. Kolnai relies heavily on the work of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century value theorists such as Alexius Meinong, Nicolai Hartmann, and Max Scheler. He blends this continental tradition of ethics with (...) British intuitionism and Scottish Enlightenment articulations. For Kolnai, ethical life cannot be adequately understood except by reference to moral emphasis, and thus, Kolnai can be thought of as a liberal conservative. He acknowledges myriad values, moral and non-moral, and accepts that all can have some claim upon us. Low values as much as high values have a legitimate claim. His is a tolerant conservatism though not for a moment does he forgo the necessity of judgment: a readily graspable hierarchy keeps the respective demands of values in proportion. Kolnai welcomes the call to seriousness, which is the hallmark of existentialism. The ground of Kolnai's thought is the idea of emotion as cognitive. He saw the typical analytical philosopher's fascination with simplicity of explanation not only thoroughly refuted by the gains in understanding wrought by phenomenological method, with its deference to the richness of phenomena, but sensed in the monistic inclination he dreaded a harbinger of totalitarianism. Never denying his emotionalism, he nonetheless made his points well enough by adopting an analytical approach to philosophy and ethics. This is a major work crossing moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

In the Summer 2017 NCBQ, Joshua Evans strongly criticized arguments made by Charles Camosy about the possibility of a prenatal child being a material mortal threat to her mother. Here Camosy demonstrates that the formal/material debate remains open for non-dissenting Catholic moral theologians. He also shows that his reference to just-war theory is used to discuss innocence; it is not evidence of a particular methodology. Despite Evans’s claim to the contrary, Camosy notes multiple examples where he affirms the uniqueness (...) of pregnancy and the special duty of parents to children. He argues for full deference to the magisterium in matters where doctrine has been defined and urges solid theological grounding for teachings on abortion when the mother’s life is at risk, especially given the profound personal and political issues at stake. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:R. D. Ackerman BELIEVING IN A FICTION: WALLACE STEVENS AT THE LIMITS OF PHENOMENOLOGY The "ring of men" of "Sunday Morning" will chant their "devotion to the sun, / Not as a god, but as a god might be, / Naked among them, like a savage source" (CP, pp. 69-70).' Solar nakedness is deferred even as it is named. The problem for belief is the question of appearance (...) and representation. Things appear as and like.... The phenomenological return to things is also a turn to fiction, as Husserl understood: "If anyone loves a paradox, he can really say... that the element which makes up the life of phenomenology... is fiction. ' " The sun is divine, and it is not; it is both naked and clothed, savage and civilized, source (or end) and means. But such paradox is ultimately unsatisfying, and as we will see with Stevens, the need for belief—for an image or idea of totality—forces the issue of fiction and reality. The Stevens we will have in view is not the Stevens—as if there were such a creature. Our Stevens is the one most persuaded by promises such as those of phenomenology, the one most concerned with decreation (reduction) and fresh beginnings, with discovery and recognition, with imagination, the body, and the earth. This is the Stevens for whom the barrier of language presages at last not absence and difference but fictive recovery of presence and identity, the one for whom poetry represents a way of belief beyond mysticism even as it bodes mythic proximity. Finally, this is the Stevens who predominates throughout the prose (as well as in much of the poetry), who tries mightily to secure a belief while disencumbering himself of metaphysics—but alas, I think, with small success. Although Stevens's association of the problem of belief with the idea of fiction occurs in early poems such as "A High-Toned Old Christian 79 80Philosophy and Literature Woman" and "To the One of Fictive Music," his most intensive involvement with fiction as belief dates from the early 1940s and spans the period of his major essays and his last four volumes of poems. He recounts, for instance, a 1942 conversation with a student: "I said that I thought that we had reached a point at which we could no longer really believe in anything unless we recognized that it was a fiction. The student said that that was an impossibility, that there was no such thing as believing in something that one knew was not true. It is obvious, however, that we are doing that all the time" (L, p. 430). What does it mean to believe in a fiction? That is my main subject here, as we seek out the limits of the phenomenological Stevens. His letters of this period are preoccupied with the problem of fictive belief: "If one no longer believes in God (as truth), it is not possible merely to disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe in something else.... A good deal of my poetry recently has concerned an identity for that thing.... In one of the short poems that I have just sent to the harvard advocate, I say that one's final belief must be in a fiction. I think that the history of belief will show that it has always been in a fiction" (L, p. 370). The poem referred to, "Asides on the Oboe," begins: The prologues are over. It is a question now, Of final belief. So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose. (CP, p. 250) Acknowledging that "in the long run, poetry would be the supreme fiction" (L, pp. 430-31), Stevens nonetheless singles out the nominative function of poetry as the essence of its claim to supremacy: "Poetry means not the language of poetry but the thing itself.... The subject matter is what comes to mind when one says of the month of August... 'Thou art not August, unless I make thee so'" (L, p. 377). The quoted line (also from "Asides") underscores the paradox that for Stevens the essence of fiction (the nontrue) is its capacity to nominate the true or the real. This... (shrink)

‘Natural kind essentialism’—here defined as the view that (i) the existence of natural kinds is a mind- and theory-independent matter, (ii) their essences are intrinsic, and (iii) they have a hierarchical structure—is commonly thought to be justified by appeal to Kripke–Putnam semantics, according to which propositions like ‘water is H20’ are necessary a posteriori. This chapter argues that the Kripke–Putnam semantics is in fact compatible with the denial of each of the three tenets of natural kind essentialism. The basic argument (...) is that, assuming the range of natural kinds goes beyond those kinds for which we have vernacular names, deference to scientific theories is required in fixing the reference of natural kind terms. That those theories describe mind- and theory-independent reality, and that they do not admit a non-hierarchical structure for the categories they deploy, are theses that are independent of anything derivable from Kripke–Putnam semantics itself. (shrink)

Are there “social kinds” the way there are “natural kinds”? Are social sciences likely to hit upon “essences” the way natural sciences do? Or are all social phenomena purely theoretical constructs? Questions about whether there are natural kinds, what exactly they are and which kinds of phenomena they cover have been the object of heated epistemological and metaphysical debates. We think the issues can be clarified within the limits of the philosophy of language: by looking into what ranges of general (...) terms are perceived by speakers as rigid designators of natural kinds. The first step to take is to ground the various kinds of semantic externalism in distinct brands of semantic deference. Our focus is on spotting the words for which speakers would defer not to the current usage of the word in the linguistic community, nor to the current experts of the field to which the word pertains, but ultimately to the very nature of the referent of the term. When speakers’ deference conforms to that pattern, we argue, that is evidence that indexical externalism provides the right metasemantic account of how the meaning of the word is determined; the word is treated like a natural-kind term. But how can patterns of deference be measured? In an ongoing survey, which shows a kinship with work by Braisby et al., Jylkkä et al., and Genone & Lombrozo, we confront participants with conditions that may prompt them to revise certain classificatory statements. Each condition makes salient one of the targets we have identified for deference: the community usage, the experts, the ‘world as it is’. In the condition that seeks to tap into the latter kind of deference, participants are presented with a scenario in which future scientific discoveries result in excluding from the extension of a term certain members currently thought to fall under that extension. Our reasoning is that, if participants significantly modify their statements in the light of that scenario, they can be taken to ‘defer’ to the nature of the referent, thus vindicating indexical externalism. We test if words not normally assumed to be natural-kind terms, including terms for social phenomena, exhibit patterns of deference similar to those for natural-kind terms. If so, speakers have something like realist intuitions with respect to words whose meaning is usually taken to be purely conventional or polemical, and there’s therefore a case for an extension of indexical externalism beyond its usual boundaries. Braisby, N., Franks, B. & Hampton, J. 1996. Essentialism, word use, and concepts. Cognition 59, 247-74./Genone, J. & Lombrozo, T. 2012. Concept possession, experimental semantics, and hybrid theories of reference. Philosophical Psychology 25, 717-742./Jylkkä, J., Railo, H. & Haukioja, J. 2009. Psychological essentialism and semantic externalism: Evidence for externalism in lay speakers’ language use. Philosophical Psychology 22, 37-60./Schwarz, S. 1983. Reply to Kornblith and Nelson. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 21, 475-481. (shrink)

A full account of purposive action must appeal not only to propositional attitude states like beliefs, desires, and intentions, but also to motor representations, i.e., non-propositional states that are thought to represent, among other things, action outcomes as well as detailed kinematic features of bodily movements. This raises the puzzle of how it is that these two distinct types of state successfully coordinate. We examine this so-called “Interface Problem”. First, we clarify and expand on the nature and role of motor (...) representations in explaining intentional action. Next, we characterize the respective functions of intentions and motor representations, the differences in representational format and content that these imply, and the interface challenge these differences in turn raise. We then evaluate Butterfill and Sinigaglia’s recent answer to this interface challenge, according to which intentions refer to action outcomes by way of demonstrative deference to motor representations. We present some worries for this proposal, arguing that, among other things, it implicitly presupposes a solution to the problem, and so cannot help to resolve it. Finally, we suggest that we may make some progress on this puzzle by positing a “content-preserving causal process” taking place between intentions and motor representations, and we offer a proposal for how this might work. (shrink)

This paper explores Jean‐Luc Nancy's philosophical reflection on surviving his own heart transplant. In ‘The Intruder’, he raises central questions concerning the relations between what he refers to as a ‘proper’ life, that is, a life that is thought to be one's own singular ‘lived experience’, and medical techniques, shaped at this particular historical juncture by cyclosporine or immuno‐suppresssion. He describes the temporal nature of an ever‐increasing sense of strangeness and fragmentation which accompanies his heart transplant. In doing so, Nancy (...) opens up the concealed of transplantation in terms of the problematic ‘gift’ of a ‘foreign’ organ, the unremitting suffering intrusiveness of the treatment regimen, and the living of life as ‘bare life’. He uncovers and exposes the relentless uncanniness that pervades the post‐transplant experience, which for him is an example of our humanistic, never‐ending impulse, to alter ourselves. Nevertheless, Nancy offers no answer to this dilemma, but instead calls us to think about the meaning or ‘sense’ of the prolonging of life and deferring of death, which currently drives our medical interventions. (shrink)