In the semantic revolution that has led many philosophers of language away from Fregeanism and towards the acceptance of direct reference, the notion of rigidity introduced by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity has played a crucial role. The notions of rigidity and direct reference are indeed different, but proponents of new theories of reference agree that there is a one way connection between them: although not all rigid terms are directly referential (witness rigid (...) definite descriptions), all directly referential terms are rigid. My purpose in this paper is to contest this widely held view. I will argue that, on a certain conception of what direct reference is (a conception present in the works of the main proponents of the theory), the fact that a term is directly referential does not entail that it is rigid. From this conclusion, I will argue, we can learn some substantial lessons about the assumptions and commitments of new theories of reference. (shrink)

This volume collects Keith Donnellan's key contributions dating from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, along with a substantive introduction by the editor Joseph Almog, which disseminates the work to a new audience and for posterity.

We have witnessed a fundamental change of perspective in the conception of reference. What the proponents of the new approach criticized and what they proposed to abandon is relatively clear; it is much less clear though what is at the heart of the philosophy that inspired the change. The proponents of the new approach all agreed in disagreeing with Frege: natural languages may, and in fact do, contain expressions that refer without the mediation of a Fregean sense. The core (...) motto of the revolution can thus be summarized in a phrase: there are linguistic devices of pure reference. It is difficult though to put one's finger on a clear characterization of what pure reference consists in. This is so, I believe, because, underlying the anti-Fregean slogans, there are two different ideas which are not just two conceptually different ways of characterizing the same phenomenon. The two conflict in the classifications that they generate, because they rely on different conceptions of the essence of pure, genuine reference. (shrink)

This volume collects Keith Donnellan's key contributions dating from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, along with a substantive introduction by the editor Joseph Almog, which disseminates the work to a new audience and for posterity.

Most of the times we open our mouth to communicate, we talk about things. This can happen because the linguistic expressions we use have semantic properties that connect them to extra-linguistic entities. Thanks to these properties, they may be used by us to refer to things. Or, as we may also say, they themselves refer to things, though in certain cases they do so only relative to a context of use. But how can we characterize the semantic properties in question? (...) What exactly is reference? Philosophers have been trying to answer these questions for centuries, but only in the last century has it become really pressing. Following Frege's account of reference, and Kripke's rebuttal of it, many philosophers began to look at reference from a new perspective, which highlighted the crucial role played in its determination by mundane aspects that are not under the direct control of the speaker. This semantic revolution, however, left us with a number of open problems. The eighteen original essays collected in this volume deal with many of these problems, thus contributing to our understanding of the nature of reference, its role in cognition, and the place it should be given in semantic theory. (shrink)

The question I shall attempt to address in what follows is an essentially historical one, namely: Why did analytic philosophy emerge first in Cambridge, in the hands of G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, and as a direct consequence of their revolutionary rejection of the philosophical tenets that form the basis of British Idealism? And the answer that I shall try to defend is: it didn't. That is to say, the ‘analytic’ doctrines and methods which Moore and Russell embraced (...) in the very last years of the nineteenth century were not revolutionary, did not emerge first in Cambridge, were the creation of neither Russell nor Moore and cannot be explained by appeal to facts concerning British Idealism. The adoption of the doctrines and methods which characterised the earliest manifestations of British analytic philosophy are to be explained neither by reference to anything specifically British, nor by appeal to anything unproblematically philosophical. Or so I shall argue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy’s Second Revolution: Early and Recent Analytic Philosophy by D. S. Clarke, and: The Rise of Analytic Philosophy ed. by Hans-Johann Glock, and: Early Analytic Philosophy: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein. Essays in Honor of Leonard Linsky by William W. TaitCharles LandesmanD. S. Clarke. Philosophy’s Second Revolution: Early and Recent Analytic Philosophy. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997. Pp. xii + 232. Cloth, $42.95. Paper, $19.95.Hans-Johann Glock, editor. (...) The Rise of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiv + 95. Paper, $19.95.William W. Tait, editor. Early Analytic Philosophy: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein. Essays in Honor of Leonard Linsky. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997. Pp. viii + 291. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $26.95.A remark once made by a justice of the Supreme Court about pornography may also apply to analytic philosophy: one can’t define it, but one knows it when one sees it. Can one do better than this? For D. C. Clarke, Western philosophy has undergone two revolutionary breaks with its past: the first initiated by Descartes directed against classical philosophy and the second initiated at the turn of this century that came to be known as analytic philosophy. (Continental philosophy is barely mentioned. Heidegger is briefly referred to as a bad example of a philosopher who “employs vacuously general language better designed for expressing attitudes than for advancing claims vulnerable to criticism” [192].) A revolutionary shift of framework, for Clarke, eliminates a whole set of problems. Even though the problems discussed by analytic philosophers seem similar to many of those discussed by Plato and Descartes, in fact the relation is tenuous, and current problems have new meanings (190).Clarke offers little help in defining analytic philosophy for “we find today the clear sense of purpose of analytic philosophy which flourished forty years ago being replaced by a variety of programs sharing no easily discernible common thread” (xi). It looks as if the revolutionary élan has been replaced by business as usual. Clarke’s volume is not, however, a history of analytic philosophy but a survey intended for students and the general reader of the views of analytic philosophers on a selected group of problems: approaches to language, the relation of mind to body, the nature of belief, knowledge, and understanding, the relation between philosophy and science, ethics, and philosophical method. Clarke discusses each issue with clarity and insight and argues for his own views, which are always interesting. He criticizes the current tendency in analytic philosophy toward excessive specialization and argues that the special task of philosophy is to search for a framework capable of integrating various aspects of culture. He emphasizes the importance of the study of the history of philosophy: “The central concepts of any integrating framework are few.... The history of philosophy is an indispensable aid in providing such understanding in choosing those [End Page 481] concepts that can serve this function in the present” (191). This book can be recommended for courses in analytic philosophy and in the history of philosophy in the twentieth century.Most of the essays in the volume edited by Glock are concerned to advance ways of characterizing analytic philosophy. Most of them reject Dummett’s claim that analytic philosophy is distinguished by its concern with explaining thought by giving an account of language. In his essay, Dagfinn Føllesdal recognizes the difficulty of constructing any useful classification of intellectual trends. Because analytical philosophy cannot be characterized by reference to doctrines or problems, he proposes to distinguish it by reference to its approach to philosophical problems: “analytic philosophy is very strongly concerned with argument and justification. An analytic philosopher asks: what reasons are there for accepting or rejecting this position?” (7). The interest in language is merely an offshoot of this more fundamental concern. It follows that “the analytic/non-analytic distinction runs across other divisions.... Whether one is an analytic philosopher depends on what importance one ascribes to argument and justification” (14). Thus Aquinas and Descartes, among others, count as analytic philosophers but not Heidegger or Derrida because “they predominantly make use of rhetoric” (12). Føllesdal thinks that there are ethical reasons for being an analytic philosopher... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Human Revolution and the Adaptive Function of LiteratureJoseph CarrollIBefore the advent of purely culturalist ways of thinking in the early decades of the twentieth century, the idea of "human nature" was deeply ingrained in the literature and the humanistic social theory of the West.1 In the past three decades, ethology, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology have succeeded in making the idea of "human nature" once again a commonplace (...) of public discourse, but the actual shape and content of human nature, even among Darwinian social scientists, remains controversial. Human nature is the product of evolution, and for Darwinians, concepts about the structure of human nature are necessarily bound up with concepts about the course of human evolution. My purpose in this essay will be to examine two chief alternatives in the current Darwinian understanding of human evolution and human nature, to advocate one of these alternatives, and to assess its implications for Darwinian literary study. One alternative can be identified with evolutionary psychology, and the other, the one I shall advocate, with evolutionary anthropology and cognitive archaeology. For the sake of economy, I shall refer to the former as the EP model and to the latter as the EACA model.In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the main theoretical controversy in Darwinian social science was that between the sociobiologists and Darwinian anthropologists, on the one side, and the evolutionary psychologists on the other. The point at issue was whether "fitness maximization" or the desire to maximize reproductive success could serve as a direct motive in human behavior. The sociobiologists tended to assume it could; the [End Page 33] evolutionary psychologists instead insisted that fitness maximization was mediated through "proximal mechanisms" such as the male desire for sex and the female desire to acquire resources from male sexual partners. In the arena of received professional opinion, the evolutionary psychologists won this debate, and evolutionary psychology is now the mainstream, establishment creed in Darwinian social science.2 Its hegemony is evidenced by a flood of popular expositions and textbooks. The majority of these expositions give little evidence that the authors are themselves alert to the speculative character of the fundamental concepts of their creed, and the chief tenets of the creed have often been reiterated in a naively uncritical way.The chief tenets of orthodox evolutionary psychology are (a) that the structure of the human mind stabilized during the Pleistocene (beginning about 1.6 million years ago); (b) that the human mind is "modular" in character—consisting of discrete bits of dedicated neural circuitry automatically activated by environmental releasers; (c) that human cognitive aptitudes and motivational structures are firmly adapted to the hunter-gatherer life-style of the Pleistocene—the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness" or EEA; and (d) that the adaptation to Pleistocene conditions carries with it, as a necessary corollary, a "mismatch" between the adapted human mind and all cultural ecologies more complex than that of hunter-gatherers. The core concept, the idea on which all the others depend, is that of the EEA:What we think of as all of human history—from, say, the rise of the Shang, Minoan, Egyptian, Indian, and Sumerian civilizations—and everything we take for granted as normal parts of life—agriculture, pastoralism, governments, police, sanitation, medical care, education, armies, transportation, and so on—are all the novel products of the last few thousand years. In contrast to this, our ancestors spent the last two million years as Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, and, of course, several hundred million years before that as one kind of forager or another. These relative spans are important because they establish which set of environments and conditions defined the adaptive problems the mind was shaped to cope with: Pleistocene conditions, rather than modern conditions.3For evolutionary psychologists, the difference between our Paleolithic ancestors and ourselves is a difference not in anatomical and neurological character but only in external "circumstances." In the EP model, the structure of the human mind at the present time and the structure [End Page 34] of the mind of, say, half a million years ago, would be the same. They would be equally the mind of the Pleistocene.The EP model of... (shrink)

This article takes Georg Büchner’s pamphlet “The Hessian Messenger,” written in 1834 in collaboration with the theologian and revolutionist Friedrich Weidig, as a starting point to explore the literary forms of peasant agitation and mobilization in the context of the German Vormärz (c. 1830–1848). Against the background of the conceptualization of the peasant as a genuinely conservative and anti-revolutionary force in the theory of the mid-19th century, elaborated by such different thinkers like Karl Marx and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, this article (...) focuses on the possibilities that writers of the radical and progressive opposition like Büchner opened for the integration of peasants into the (liberal) revolutionary project. What is the function of literature in negotiating the political agency of the peasant and what literary forms, aesthetics, and strategies does it generate to portray and influence the peasant’s perspective on the political conflicts of its time? In a close textual analysis, I explore, how, by implementing specific rhetorical means (statistics, agrarian references, biblical narratives), the text _first_ places the peasant world and the interests and problems of the rural population at the center of its argumentation. _Second_, I show how the pamphlet connects the disclosure of the peasants’ social and economic grievances inevitably with a discussion of the constitution and the institution of the state. The abstract liberal question of human rights is thus derived directly from power relations and economic exploitation in the countryside. By referring to those seemingly traditional ‘characteristics’ of the peasant, which until then and later influenced the dominant image of the peasant as conservative, that Büchner and Weidig were able to constitute the peasant as a political, powerful collective and revolutionary disruptive force. (shrink)

This slim volume by an Austrian Marxist attempts two major types of correction to contemporary Marxism. One is an historical correction which seeks to restore what was originally present in the basic vision of Marx and Engels. The other is an innovative correction which seeks to revise the historical doctrine in the face of new conditions which contradict its original conclusions or premisses. The historical correction is the restoration of the human element as the crucial factor in the law of (...) motion of society. Without the human element, there are only tendencies in the movement of history. The human element adds direction--converts a tendency into a specific direction. Previous social movements were spontaneous, but the leap from capitalism to socialism absolutely requires the conscious activity of man. The revisionist correction is two-pronged, but its necessity arises from the same consideration of how to effect the move from capitalism to socialism. The capitalist model has not acted in accordance with Marx's conception of the absolute or relative impoverishment of the working class. Social distribution of surplus value in the industrial powers of the western world has been sufficient to develop a materially satisfied working class. The appeal to the working class, therefore, has to change to a new stress on culture, democracy and, above all, morality. At the same time, the economic arena must not be abandoned. The concept of structural reform, advanced by the late Palmiro Togliatti, should be supported. This means that the working class should join in capitalist planning to avoid depression; that it should insist on a larger role in the operation of the plants and in their relations to the financial and political institutions; and that it should struggle for nationalizing measures which take the decisive means of production out of the hands of the big capitalists. Structural reform could hardly be expected to bring on revolution, but it does move the working class forward toward the decisive content of the socialist revolution, which for Marek is the socialization of the means of production. It thereby tends to heighten the class consciousness which Marek considers vital. This book represents an effort to restore coherence to Marxism by confrontation with historical reality. The failure of the effort does not render it futile, especially as a more extensive attempt by the author is evidently already in preparation. Students of Marxism who do not accept the theoretical exposition of the present volume will still find it useful as a reference for rarely quoted statements by leading Marxists, beginning with Marx himself.--H. B. (shrink)

Le « lieu théologique » qu'est le magistère de l'Eglise s'impose de plus en plus à la réflexion du théologien, du canoniste et, plus largement, de tout catholique averti en raison de documents nombreux et divers émanant du pape et des instances romaines. Tirant ses origines du concept de tradition en référence directe à l'expérience de foi, le Magistère est aussi le produit d'une longue histoire. Dans cette histoire, l'organe transmetteur allait prendre le pas sur la tradition transmise, avec prise (...) en compte de la foi comme obéissance plutôt qu'adhésion et surgissement du concept de « foi ecclésiastique ». Au terme de cette histoire, une question se pose inévitablement : doit-on analyser ces évolutions en terme de dérives ? The « theological site » that is the Church's Magisterium is more and more a subject of reflection for the theologian, the canonist, and, more generally, fur every aware Catholic. This is especially due to the numerous and diverse documents coming from the Pope and other Roman sources. Deriving its origins from the concept of tradition in direct reference to the experience of faith, the Magisterium is also the Product of a long history. In this history the transmitting organ would take ascendancy over received tradition, with an account of the faith as obedience rather than adhesion, and the growth of the concept of « ecclesiastical faith. » At the term of this history a question is inevitably posed : should one analyze these evolutions in terms of going astray ? (shrink)

This article treats the intellectual problem of revolution, agency, and the advent of liberal democracy from the standpoint of mid-nineteenth century France in the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions. After a discussion of the theoretical and historiographical problem—in particular the relevance for this period in history of science studies—the article discusses the views of former Saint-Simonian and political economist, Michel Chevalier, eventually turning to the debate over the free market of goods and labor between the early French socialist Louis (...) Blanc and Chevalier in Chevalier’s new role of liberal free trade activist who trumpeted the ideology of the mass marketplace. Chevalier’s engagement of the social question turned on a distinctively moral, ideological, and, ultimately, technocratic defense of the free market—this free market utopianism became both starker and more ideologically refined as a result of Chevalier’s engagement with Blanc, especially in regard to worker-education. Both referred to the new mass marketplace of cheap, retail goods created by the rapid advance of mass transport, modern logistics, as le bon marché. French political economists went so far as to invoke a new way of life: la vie a bon marché (literally, “life on the cheap”). This notion of work and life was opposed by Blanc on the grounds of fraternal social solidarity. Finally, and potently, the moral virtues of the free market were conceived by Chevalier as a direct answer to social revolution, a means for affording social stability. (shrink)

An analysis of the role of language in basic and applied science from the semantics of science and the theory of reference requires several steps. First, to specify the field of analysis in the light of several factors: the semantic problems of science; the reference in its triple dimension of relation between language and reality, of referent and of transmission in science; and the link between meaning and reference in science.Second, to consider the central approach to the (...) semantics of science, which forks into two main directions: the semantic line and the pragmatic path. De facto, they lead to different interpretations of the role of language in basic science and in applied science. The semantic line focuses on the content expressed through terms, statements and theories, which has been influential in important philosophical trends and still is prominent in some versions of scientific realism. Meanwhile, the pragmatic path emphasizes the meaning as use, which has influenced philosophers of science of diverse tendencies, such as S. Toulmin, Th. Kuhn, American pragmatists and supporters of the methodological pluralism.Third, to make explicit the leading conceptions regarding the theory of reference, both for the formal sciences and for the empirical sciences. There are a number of options, four of which are analyzed here. The view associated with the semantic role and the semantic value, which connects semantic, epistemological and ontological realms in basic science and in applied science. The causal theory of reference, which has shifted towards internal realism. Anti-realistic semantics, where truth is replaced by proof and the reference is the use made by someone of a term in a context. Kuhn’s approach in his linguistic period, where he rethinks the scientific revolutions taking into account the causal theory of reference.Fourth, to be aware of the consequences of these analyses for basic science and applied science in two ways: on the one hand, for the semantic differences between them, and, on the other, for the perspective of reference. (shrink)

Externalist theories in natural language semantics have become the orthodoxy since Kripke is widely thought to have refuted descriptive theories involving internal cognitive representation of meaning. This shift may be seen in developments in philosophy of language of the 1970s – the direct reference “revolution against Frege”. I consider Fodor’s heretical thought that something has gone “awfully wrong” in this philosophical consensus, perhaps confirming Chomsky’s view that the whole field of philosophical semantics is “utterly wrongheaded” and “crazy” (...) by virtue of its non-naturalist assumptions and “methodological dualism.” Kripke acknowledges that he was led to his views by his “natural intuition”. Accordingly, I take up the aetiological question Chomsky poses, suggesting that we may go beyond the usual analysis of those doctrines that have been assumed too uncritically “to ask why they seem so compelling”. I suggest that the externalist orthodoxy is a kind of cognitive illusion seen elsewhere in philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

The emotion of admiration and the semantic theory of natural kinds and direct reference are foundational for Linda Zagzebski's exemplarist moral theory and divine motivation theory. Many have examined difficulties that arise from the central role of admiration, while others have engaged her account of the incarnation. Little attention has been given to her semantic theory or philosophy of language. This essay demonstrates the difficulties and problems that arise from this theory, problems that could be avoided with a (...) sociopractical account of language and exemplarity. One set of problems pertain to the “principle of the division of linguistic labor.” Related problems come to light in Zagzebski's attempt to account for radical changes in perceptions of exemplars through social, political, and ethical revolutions. In the end, her semantic theory creates the very epistemological uncertainties that it is meant to forestall. It also fails to account for radical disagreements about exemplars and the role moral exemplars play in sociopolitical and ethical revolutions. (shrink)

A model of copyright protection under which the law’s attention is directed towards a dematerialized, malleable essence (‘originality’, ‘labour and skill’ or ‘creativity’) has gradually evolved in the UK. This model has come to regulate all fundamental questions concerning the scope and attribution of rights. Nevertheless, until very recently, some aspects of copyright doctrine have remained incompatible with this dominant model. In certain situations, rather than focusing purely on an abstract property, the law has continued to limit a copyright owner’s (...) powers by reference to the boundaries of the material form within which a protected work is first recorded. It is argued here that, while apparently inconsistent, this approach has served an important function in justifying judicial resistance to expansionist pressures in the law. Since 2009, however, this pragmatic, focus-shifting system has been destabilized by the copyright jurisprudence of the Court of Justice. The Court’s judgments in Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening and subsequent cases have dramatically accelerated the pace of copyright harmonization. As a result, it is possible that UK courts may be obliged to adopt a more consistently dematerialized system of copyright law and our courts may have been deprived of tools previously employed to resist unduly broad claims to copyright protection. The consequences of this development are explored in this article. (shrink)

At the very end of this revised edition of his 1976 book, in a discussion of the fear of death, Robert M. Veatch refers to the Judeo-Christian heritage, which includes the belief that humans are to have dominion over the earth and subdue it. He states, "There are two ways that they may have dominion to lessen that fear of death. In some cases it will mean ingeniously using their scientific and technological skills responsibly to challenge particular evil deaths. In (...) other cases it will mean ingeniously using their intellectual and humanistic skills responsibly to decide that death should no longer be challenged. The primary purpose of this book has been to explore this second alternative". Veatch's exploration through nine chapters is thorough, admirably nondogmatic, and reasonable; moreover, there is much that is of great practical value, from detailed discussion of several public policy issues to a model "advance directive". He provides both information on recent court cases and much essential technical medical detail for the interested lay reader, in the course of canvassing a large number of arguments on both sides of the complex ethical issues surrounding death and dying. (shrink)

Being-in-time to the music from the ground up is a work in phenomenology, where this term is broadly defined, comprehending Plato, Heidegger, Hegel, and Marx. The most direct referent is Hegel, together with the theoretical revolution that he initiated with Phenomenology of Mind. This text's more general purpose is to set the tone for a 21st communism based upon the idea of dancing with death, assuming full responsibility for one's mortality, and abandoning the self to love as the (...) meaning of existence. This dance is choreographed through my conversations with the above mentioned writers. In conversing with them I aim to displace (if not usurp) them from the throne of honour which is nothing more than the authority borrowed from me. By this I do not intend to deny completely their 'other to me' character. However, they exist or even 'figure' for me, both in the sense of of 'count, ' having importance, as those that I read, and by which I read myself. They have borrowed my authority, namely, my own potential to be an author. So 'reading them is to re-assume that borrowed authority. The life of the reader, to paraphrase Barthes, begins with the death of the author. (shrink)

The paper provides an overview of the most fundamental ideas representing analytic philosophy throughout its history from the beginning of 20th century up to now. The history of analytic philosophy is divided into two stages – the early and the contemporary ones. The main distinguishing features of early analytic philosophy are using mathematical logic as a tool of stating and solving philosophical problems, and critical attitude toward ‘metaphysics’, i.e., traditional and contemporary non-analytic philosophical theories. The genesis of analytic philosophy was (...) closely related to the revolution in logic that led to the rise of mathematical logic, and it is no coincidence that some founders of analytic tradition (first of all Frege, Russell, and Carnap) were also prominent logicians. (But there were also authors and schools within early analytic philosophy whose researches were based on less formal tools such as classical logic and linguistic methods of analysis of language. Ordinary language philosophy is an example of this type of philosophy.) Using the new logic as a philosophical tool led to a huge number of new ideas and generated a new type of philosophical criticism that was implemented in a number of projects of ‘overcoming metaphysics’. These features constituted the methodological and thematic profile of early analytic philosophy. As opposed to the later, contemporary analytic philosophy cannot be characterized by a prevailing method or a set of main research topic. Its characteristic features are rather of historical, institutional, and stylistic nature. In the paper, early analytic philosophy is represented by Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Vienna Circle (Schlick, Carnap etc.), and ordinary language philosophy (later Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, and Searle). Contemporary analytic philosophy is represented by Quine, and direct reference theory in philosophy of language (Kripke, Donnellan, Kaplan, and Putnam). (shrink)

This volume puts forward a distinct new theory of direct reference, blending insights from both the Fregean and the Russellian traditions, and fitting the general theory of language understanding used by those working on the pragmatics of natural language.

This paper develops a theory of belief and belief ascription which retains the core of the received Propositionalist theory but which, unlike the Propositionalist theory, is compatible with both Direct Reference and Individualism about belief. The focus is on developing an alternative analysis of belief ascriptions, drawing out its implications, and applying it to some standard problems. On that analysis, ascriptions involving directly referential embedded terms are seen as roughly characterizing, but not specifying, the contents of beliefs. This (...) feature is what makes it possible to maintain both Direct Reference and Individualism. (shrink)

So-called Neo-Russellians, such as Salmon, Braun, Crimmins, and Perry, hold that the semantic content of ‘ n is F ’ in a context c is the singular proposition ⟨ o, P ⟩, where o is the referent of the name n in c, and P is the property expressed by the predicate F in c. This is also known as the Neo-Russellian theory. Using truth ascriptions with names designating propositions, such as ‘Goldbach's conjecture’, in this paper, I will argue that, (...) together with highly plausible principles regarding a priori knowledge, the Neo-Russellian theory leads to unacceptable consequences. I will call this ‘the Goldbach puzzle’. Since the solution to the Goldbach puzzle cannot be to reject the discussed principles regarding a priori knowledge, the puzzle will undermine the Neo-Russellian theory. (shrink)

REASON, SKEPTICISM, REVOLUTION, AND COMMON SENSE--these are the four characteristics which Henry F. May has found to designate the four categories, or stages, in the development of the Enlightenment in Europe and America. These categories, useful for the classification, description, and analysis of the copious intellectual and cultural materials which comprise the Enlightenment, overlap in the formulation of basic documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, which are fundamental American laws. The (...) interweaving of reason and revolution in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States has been examined by direct references to the European philosophers whose ideas were employed, with modifications, and implemented by means of newly invented institutions on the part of the American founders. The ideas of Locke, Montesquieu, Burlamaqui, Hutcheson, Hume, and many other thinkers, became instruments of political change in the hands of the Americans. Revolution, moderated by reason and common sense, led to constitution, in order to secure the gains of revolution. (shrink)

In this essay I defend a theory of psychological explanation that is based on the joint commitment to direct reference and computationalism. I offer a new solution to the problem of Frege Cases. Frege Cases involve agents who are unaware that certain expressions corefer (e.g. that 'Cicero' and 'Tully' corefer), where such knowledge is relevant to the success of their behavior, leading to cases in which the agents fail to behave as the intentional laws predict. It is generally (...) agreed that Frege Cases are a major problem, if not the major problem, that this sort of theory faces. In this essay, I hope to show that the theory can surmount the Frege Cases. (shrink)

Moore's Open Question Argument has been heavily debated ever since it was presented over 100 years ago. In the current paper, it is argued that for the realist, and contrary to the received view by many theorists in the debate, the argument in fact lends strong support for non-naturalism. In particular, David Brink's naturalist defense utilizing direct reference theory is scrutinized. It is argued that an application of direct reference to moral kinds, rather than defusing the (...) Open Question Argument, actually underscores the non-naturalist conclusion. The naturalist argument depends heavily on the analogue between natural kinds and moral kinds. It is argued that the Open Question Argument provides prima facie evidence against the idea that moral kinds are natural kinds, and that the naturalist arguments do not overturn this evidence. Moreover, it is argued that similar reasons to those which render direct reference unviable for moral terms also meet two further potential objections against the Open Question Argument, and it is concluded that the argument carries considerable force against the moral naturalist. (shrink)

There is a prima facie conflict between the semantical theory of direct reference and an intuitively plausible view often called 'individualism'. Direct reference theory is the view that certain expressions pick out their referent directly, without any intervening semantical mechanism. In order to describe the meaning of a sentence which contain such an expression, we have to mention the referent itself. Individualism is a view that mental states are individuated without reference to the subject's environment, (...) either social or physical, and therefore without mentioning an external object of reference. ;I argue that there is no conflict because it is a mistake to carry over the results of a semantical theory into a theory of mental content. My argument ultimately relies on a certain understanding of the difficult notions of mental content and linguistic meaning, gained in part by a close analysis of the historical context in which the theory of reference emerged out of the parallel work in the theory of intentionality. Fundamentally, the elucidation of these concepts is the principal aim of the dissertation, rather than the dismantling of an apparent conflict between two currently accepted views. ;There are two ways in which the conflict may be thought to arise. One argument relies on the identification of linguistic meaning with mental content. Against this I argue that we cannot hold both direct reference and the thesis, crucial to the argument, that linguistic meaning is identical to the thought-content of a competent. The short argument for conflict, therefore, fails. ;The second argument for the conflict is less direct. There are some thoughts, called De Re, which are said to constitute a direct connection between thinker and object. It is often thought that such thoughts are the ones attributed correctly using directly referential expressions. But what we attribute in such cases are just mental states whose attribution essentially involves the extra-mental objects of thought themselves, pace individualism. I argue that this argument depends on a conception of De Re, inherited from W. V. O. Quine, which mistakenly collapses issues of mental content with those of thought-attribution. (shrink)

Most direct reference theorists about indexicals and proper names have adopted the thesis that singular propositions about physical objects are composed of physical objects and properties.1 There have been a number of recent proponents of such a view, including Scott Soames, Nathan Salmon, John Perry, Howard Wettstein, and David Kaplan.2 Since Kaplan is the individual who is best known for holding such a view, let's call a proposition that is composed of objects and properties a K-proposition. In this (...) paper, I will attempt to show that a direct reference view about the content of proper names and indexicals leads very naturally to the position that all singular propositions about physical objects are K-propositions.3 Then, I will attempt to show that this view of propositions is false. I will spend the bulk of the paper on this latter task. My goal in the paper, then, is to show that adopting the direct reference thesis comes at a cost problems the view has with problems such as opacity and the significance of some identity statements; it comes at even more of a cost). (shrink)

This volume is a compilation of revised versions of papers presented at a conference held in spring 1994 at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) in Bielefeld, Germany.

The Direct Reference view of proper names remains popular today, even though it is dogged by three longstanding problems: Frege’s puzzle of identity statements, Frege’s second puzzle concerning substitution in non-extensional contexts, and the problem of empty names. This paper criticizes the recent attempts by Braun and Soames to rescue Direct Reference from these traditional objections.

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 (...) referential device, Donnellan is right: if a use of a definite description is referential, it must be possible for it to refer to an object independently of any attributes associated with the description, including those that constitute its conventional meaning. (shrink)

On Sense and Direct Reference: Readings in the Philosophy of Language focuses on the debate between neo-Fregeans and neo-Russellians in philosophy of language. With a foreword by Nathan Salmon, the volume collects more than 40 of the most important papers in philosophy of language in the last 40 years; including David Kaplan's "Demonstratives" and "Afterthoughts", and a paper written by Scott Soames especially for the volume. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.

Angle Grinder Man removes wheel locks from cars in London.1 He is something of a folk hero, saving drivers from enormous parking and towing fi nes, and has succeeded thus far in eluding the authorities. In spite of his cape and lamé tights, he is no fi ction; he’s a real person. By contrast, Pegasus, Zeus and the like are fi ctions. None of them is real. In fact, not only is each of them different from the others, all differ (...) from Angle Grinder Man. After all, Zeus throws thunderbolts but doesn’t remove boots from cars; unlike Superman, Angle Grinder Man couldn’t leap over a parked Mini, and all sightings suggest that he is a human being, not a horse. (shrink)

On some formulations of Direct Reference the semantic value, relative to a context of utterance, of a rigid singular term is just its referent. In response to the apparent possibility of a difference in truth value of two sentences just alike save for containing distinct but coreferential rigid singular terms, some proponents of Direct Reference have held that any two such sentences differ only pragmatically. Some have also held, more specifically, that two such sentences differ by (...) conveying distinct conversational implicata, and that a conflation of implicatum with semantic content leads speakers to judge such sentences capable of differing in truth value. It is argued here that this latter defense of Direct Reference employs false explanans, on the ground that speakers conflate semantic content with implicatum only in quite special cases, and we have independent grounds for thinking that sentences reporting speech acts and attitudes are not cases of this sort. (shrink)

Proponents of supervaluationism claim super-truth, i. e., truth on every admissible precisification, is identical to truth or, at least, is a suitable truth proxy. I object that super-truth is neither identical to nor a suitable proxy for truth. I argue that to claim a statement is super-true is simply to maintain that a certain counterfactual holds, and that a claim is true, counterfactually, is no reason to treat it as true. I further argue that, with super-truth undermined, Roy Sorensen’s objection (...) that supervaluationism cannot accommodate vague directly referential terms presents supervaluationism’s defenders with a significant challenge. (shrink)

The Direct Reference account of the semantics of singular terms is widely assumed to be inconsistent with the traditional Individualist account of psychological states. Because of this assumption, and because of the weight of the evidence for Direct Reference, Anti-Individualism has found supporters despite its counterintuitiveness. In this dissertation, it is argued that Direct Reference and Individualism are not genuinely inconsistent, but that the inconsistency emerges only with the additional assumption of Propositionalism--the orthodox, proposition-based (...) framework for understanding thought and language. Consequently, it is not necessary to endorse Anti-Individualism in order to accept Direct Reference, so long as Propositionalism is accepted only in an attenuated form, if at all. ;It is argued that the best strategy for resolving the inconsistency is to retain all of Propositionalism apart from the Relational Analysis of belief ascriptions. An alternative analysis--the Quantified Relational Analysis --is developed and motivated. According to QRA, an ascription of the form X believes that S attributes the property of believing some member of the class of propositions containing the proposition that S and finer-grained versions of it. QRA is extended also to de re belief locutions. The conjunction of Direct Reference, Individualism, and the remnants of Propositionalism plus QRA is termed Russellian Non-Parallelism. ;Like all Direct Reference theories, Russellian Non-Parallelism has the consequence that co-referring names and other genuine terms are freely substitutable for each other, despite the datum that ordinary speakers intuitively regard such substitutions in belief contexts as suspect. These intuitions are accounted for both pragmatically and semantically. The pragmatic explanation specifies a mechanism whereby the audience sometimes infers from the choice of genuine terms the subject's way of thinking of the objects involved. The semantic explanation motivates an idiomatic reading of ascriptions, on which, under certain circumstances, the choice of co-referring terms in ascriptions literally indicates different belief contents. Russellian Non-Parallelism is then applied to enhanced substitution puzzles and to some other traditional problems, such as the contingent a priori. Finally there is a discussion of pertinent contemporary literature. (shrink)

The use of language in hate speech is understandably offensive. Though words do not kill, they convey an alarming message that can harm the victim. To understand how words can harm, it is necessary to understand the nature of the meaning of pejoratives or slurs that are used in hate speech. Pejoratives are undeniably offensive. However, they are puzzling as they can be used in two directions, namely, the offensive power preservation and the offensive power destruction. This paper proposes that (...) the direct reference theory of pejoratives can solve the puzzle. A characterization of pejoratives is that it has the property of immediacy. They refer directly to the object of speech. Grounding on a shared context, any descriptions are unnecessary for understanding the offensive message of pejoratives. In this sense, pejoratives have indexical content as it is context-sensitive. The kind of indexical content that pertains to pejoratives is action-oriented. However, its object of reference is empty. In discussing pejoratives that are used in hate speech, some examples of Thai slurs are shown. (shrink)

I defend what I believe to be a new variation on Kripkean themes, for the purpose of providing an improved way to understand the referring functions of proper names. I begin by discussing roles played by perceptual perspectives in the use of proper names, and then broaden the discussion to include what I call cognitive perspectives. Although both types of perspectives underwrite the existence of intentional intermediaries between proper names and their referents, the existence of these intentional intermediaries does not (...) entail that a Kripke-inspired view of direct reference must be abandoned. At the same time, the existence of these intermediaries can be seen to play illuminating roles as regards the referring functions of proper names in the following types of cases, among others: (a) where different names pick out the same subject; (b) where names are empty. Along the way, I argue that perspectival views are not something inside the head of language users as intended by Putnam in his well-known discussion of meaning. (shrink)

It is an interesting and important linguistic fact that we sometimes use singular terms — proper names or indexicals — to refer to wholly future individuals. Given this fact, and given the further fact that wholly future individuals are contingent and indeterminate, neither the “descriptivist” theory of singular reference, nor the “causal theory,” nor Gareth Evans’s “mixed” theory, nor even the “classical” direct reference theory developed by David Kaplan, can account for future singular reference. Only a (...) semantic strategy drawn from direct reference theory is able to solve the puzzle. But in order to solve it, the very idea of direct reference must be extended by invoking two important supplementary notions: (1) “reference delivery systems,” and (2) “referential handiness or skill.” With the addition of these notions — which are updatings of some ideas sketched by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time — direct reference theory effectively accounts for the possibility of future singular reference. But just insofar as the puzzle is solvable along these lines, it follows that the theory of reference cannot be “naturalized.”. (shrink)

This volume is focused on understanding a key idea in modern semantics-direct reference-and its integration into a general semantics for natural language.

I begin by distinguishing between what I will call a pure Fregean theory of reference and a theory of direct reference. A pure Fregean theory of reference holds that all reference to objects is determined by a sense or content. The kind of theory I have in mind is obviously inspired by Frege, but I will not be concerned with whether it is the theory that Frege himself held.1 A theory of direct reference, (...) as I will understand it, denies that all reference to objects is determined by sense or content. We will also distinguish between a theory of reference for thought, and for language. This gives us a fourfold classification of theories. What is puzzling about direct reference theories is not that the semantics of an expression in a public language should assign as its semantic value just a referent, but how such facts could be understood to reflect an underlying feature of thought. There are two interconnected aspects to this.. (shrink)

Synthetic physicalism—understood as the view that while mental concepts are distinct from physical concepts, mental properties are nonetheless identical to physical properties—is the dominant type of reductive physicalism in the philosophy of mind. With a focus on phenomenal concepts, this article examines two competing versions of synthetic physicalism: the demonstrative approach and the constitutive approach, both of which attempt to cash out the common idea that phenomenal concepts directly refer to phenomenal properties. I aim to argue that the synthetic physicalist (...) is impaled on a dilemma in addressing what I call the problem of double aspect: the mental-physical conceptual distinction seems to imply property dualism at a new level. Either she adopts the demonstrative approach or she goes for the constitutive approach, but neither option is acceptable. (shrink)