Browsing by Subject "Reference"
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Item On semantic reference and discerning referential intentions(2010-08) Bernard, David Lynn, 1979-; Sosa, David, 1966-; Buchanan, RayIn Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference, Saul Kripke posited two kinds of reference involved in every use of a designator—a semantic reference, to the object picked out by the meaning of the words used—and a speaker reference, to the object to which the speaker aimed to call attention by deploying the designator. Kripke tentatively defined the notion of the speaker’s referent as the object that (i) the speaker wishes to call attention to, on a given occasion, and (ii) that he believes fulfills the conditions for being the description’s semantic referent. Although offered as a definition, this account is best interpreted as a tentative statement of the normal success conditions of speaker reference. As such, it raises the question of how special a role semantic reference plays in successful speaker reference. This report addresses that question by evaluating Kripke’s tentative account in the light of an extended series of examples in which definite descriptions are used to speaker refer to objects other than the objects to which the descriptions uniquely semantically refer. The report concludes that words’ semantic characteristics are only one of several forms of evidence that audiences regularly rely on to discern what object a speaker intends to call attention to by a particular act of reference.Item Toward a referential view of definite descriptions(2015-05) Woolwine, Cassandra Joan; Dever, Josh; Buchanan, Lawrence RI argue for a referential view of definite descriptions. According to the view that I advocate, definite descriptions are variables. At the syntactic level, they contribute a free variable that must be assigned a referent in order for the sentence to be truth evaluable. When an assignment is provided, through the referential intentions of the speaker, the semantic content of a given use is a singular proposition involving the object that the assignment assigns to the variable. I show that this view has the resources to accommodate uses of definite descriptions that are bound into by external quantifiers. Using the same resources, I show how one can arrive at the dual readings available for sentences containing definite descriptions embedded in modal and belief operators. I discuss the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions and explain how the relevant differences are achieved on this view.