\section{Three Theories of Reference}
\emph{These are very crude statements of the positions; they are useful at most for getting a handle on the core ideas.}
Pragmatist:For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for this utterance to sieze the ‘interpreter’s eyes and forcibly turn them upon’ Earth.
Causal (Kripke):For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) Earth to have been baptised ‘Earth’ and (b) this utterance to be causally related in the appropriate way to that baptism event.
Description (not Russell, maybe no one):For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) the speaker to have associated this utterance of ‘Earth’ with a descripton, and (b) Earth to be the thing which, uniquely, this description is true of.
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pragamtist idea about reference
‘What the sign virtually has to do in order to indicate its object—and make it its—all it has to do
is just to seize its interpreter’s eyes and forcibly turn them upon the object meant:
it is what a knock at the door does, or an alarm or other bell, or a whistle, a cannon-shot, etc.’
\citep[p.~60/5.554]{Peirce:1931av}
Peirce, 1931 p. 60/5.554
Why do those utterances differ in that one is made true by how things are with Earth whereas the other by how things are with Mars?
Guess: There is some relation between the utterance of ‘Earth’ [the word] and Earth [the thing] in virtue of which Steve’s utterance of the sentence is about Earth rather than Mars.
Terminology: call it ‘reference’
Q: What is this relation?
A [Pragmatist]:For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for this utterance to sieze the ‘interpreter’s eyes and forcibly turn them upon’ Earth.
‘I say that we know an object by means of an idea whenever we ambulate towards the object under the impulse which the idea communicates’
\citep[p.~140]{James:1909vm}
James, 1909 p. 140
‘The pointing of our thought to the tigers is known simply and solely as a procession of mental associates and motor consequences that follow on the thought, and that would lead harmoniously, if followed out, into some ideal or real context, or even into the immediate presence, of the tigers. … It is even known, if we take the tigers very seriously, as actions of ours which may terminate in directly intuited tigers, as they would if we took a voyage to India for the purpose of tiger-hunting and brought back a lot of skins of the striped rascals which we had laid low’
\citep[p.~44--5]{James:1909vm}
James, 1909 p. 44-5
Why do those utterances differ in that one is made true by how things are with Earth whereas the other by how things are with Mars?
Guess: There is some relation between the utterance of ‘Earth’ [the word] and Earth [the thing] in virtue of which Steve’s utterance of the sentence is about Earth rather than Mars.
Terminology: call it ‘reference’
Q: What is this relation?
A [Pragmatist]:For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for this utterance to sieze the ‘interpreter’s eyes and forcibly turn them upon’ Earth.
Pragmatist approach: right or wrong?
Kripke on reference
a. initial baptism
b. causal chain
For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) Earth to have been baptised ‘Earth’ and (b) this utterance to be causally related in the appropriate way to that baptism event.
pragmatist
Kripke
Reference is a matter of the
effects
on the interpreter
of an utterance of the word.
Reference is a matter of the
causes
of the utterer’s
utterance of the word.
For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for this utterance to sieze the ‘interpreter’s eyes and forcibly turn them upon’ Earth.
For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) Earth to have been baptised ‘Earth’ and (b) this utterance to be causally related in the appropriate way to that baptism event.
description theories of reference
Why do those utterances differ in that one is made true by how things are with Earth whereas the other by how things are with Mars?
Guess: There is some relation between the utterance of ‘Earth’ [the word] and Earth [the thing] in virtue of which Steve’s utterance of the sentence is about Earth rather than Mars.
Terminology: call it ‘reference’
Q: What is this relation?
For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) the speaker to have associated this utterance of ‘Earth’ with a descripton, and (b) Earth to be the thing which, uniquely, this description is true of.
\section{Three Theories of Reference}
\emph{These are very crude statements of the positions; they are useful at most for getting a handle on the core ideas.}
Pragmatist:For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for this utterance to sieze the ‘interpreter’s eyes and forcibly turn them upon’ Earth.
Causal (Kripke):For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) Earth to have been baptised ‘Earth’ and (b) this utterance to be causally related in the appropriate way to that baptism event.
Description (not Russell, maybe no one):For an utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth is for (a) the speaker to have associated this utterance of ‘Earth’ with a descripton, and (b) Earth to be the thing which, uniquely, this description is true of.
Evans on the Description Theory of Reference
‘outrageous ... I have strong doubts as to whether anyone has ever seriously held this thesis’
Evans, 1985 p. 3
For Steve’s utterance of ‘Earth’ to refer to Earth, is it necessary that Steve somehow descriptively identify Earth?