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Russell’s idea:
Reference requires acquaintance knowledge of reference
Objection: in uttering ‘Julius Caesar drank the Rubicon’, I refered to Julius despite not being acquainted with him.
Reply: ‘Julius Caesar’ is actually a quantifier phrase (specifically, a description), so I did not refer.
Objection: rigid designators (Kripke)
Reply: descriptions can be rigidified
Objection: ...
...
‘we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths’
\citep[chapter 5]{Russell:1912ln}
Russell, 1912 chapter 5
‘We have descriptive knowledge of an object when we know that it is the object having some property or properties with which we are acquainted; that is to say, when we know that the property or properties in question belong to one object and no more, we are said to have knowledge of that one object by description, whether or not we are acquainted with the object.’
\citep[p.~220]{Russell:1910fa}
Russell, 1910 p. 220
Does reference require knowledge of the referent?
My proposal:
1. There are multiple, internally consistent characterisations of reference.
2. If our aim were only to explain The Difference, there would be no ground for preferring one over all others.