In this volume John Perry develops his “reflexive-referential” account
of indexicals, demonstratives, proper names, and other fragments of
language. On issues of meaning and reference, the philosophy of
language in the twentieth century was shaped by two competing
traditions, descriptivist and referentialist. The referentialist
tradition holds that indexicals, demonstratives, and proper names
contribute content that involves individuals without identifying
conditions on them. In contrast, the descriptivist tradition holds
that referential content does not explain all of the identifying
conditions conveyed by names, demonstratives, and indexicals.
Perry's theory, borrowing ideas from both traditions as well as from
Burks and Reichenbach, diagnoses the problems as stemming from a
fixation on a certain kind of content, coined “referential” or
“fully incremental” content. He reveals a coherent and structured
family of contents—from reflexive contents that place conditions on
their actual utterance to fully incremental contents that place
conditions only on the objects of reference—reconciling the
legitimate insights of both the referentialist and descriptivist
traditions.
For this new second edition, Perry has added a new preface and two
chapters on the interface between semantics and pragmatics and on
the semantics of attitude reports, along with summaries at the end
of each chapter.
John Perry is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the
University of California, Riverside, and Emeritus Professor of
Philosophy at Stanford University.
Translated into Chinese.
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- 1 Two Problems About Reference
- 1.1 Mach and the shabby pedagogue
- 1.2 Paradigms, arguments and problems
- 1.3 Has semantics rested on a mistake?
- 1.4 The reflexive-referential theory
- 1.5 Network content
- 1.6 Plan
- I Reflexivity and the Co-reference
- 2 Contents and Propositions
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 Meaning and
- 2.3 Common sense and official content
- 2.4 The classificatory concept of content
- 2.5 Conditions and propositions
- 2.6 Varieties of designation
- 3 Utterance and Context
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2The reflexive-referential theory
- 3.3 Signs, tokens and utterances
- 3.4 Context
- 3.5 Semantic uses of context
- 3.6 Content-supplemental uses of context
- 4 Context and Cognitive Paths
- 4.1 Introduction
- 4.2 Information games
- 4.3 Cognitive paths
- 4.4 Indexicals and contexts
- 4.5 Stretch the dog
- 4.6 Dthat
- 4.7 Real, doxastic and fictional contexts
- 5 Meanings and Contents
- 5.1 Introduction
- 5.2 Reichenbach, reflexivity and indexical content
- 5.3 Indexical content and referential content
- 5.4 Varieties of content
- 5.5 Official content
- 5.6 Stretching cognitive content
- 5.7 Austin's two tubes
- 6 Names and the Co-reference Problem
- 6.1 Introduction
- 6.2 The computer scientist
- 6.3 Names and conventions
- 6.4 Names and cognitive significance
- 6.5 Reflexivity and names
- 6.6 Paderewski
- 6.7 Mach and the shabby pedagogue
- 6.8 What is said? -I
- 7 What Is Referentialism?
- 7.1 Introduction
- 7.2 Dialectical reversal?
- 7.3 Frege's argument
- 7.4 On being a (psychologized) Fregean
- 7.5 Kaplan and direct reference
- 7.6 Kaplan's arguments for direct reference
- 7.7 Conclusion
- II Networks and the No-reference
- 8 Empty Names, Blocks and Networks
- 8.1 Introduction
- 8.2 Conventions and Networks
- 8.3 Networks: A Simple theory
- 8.4 No-reference reconsidered
- 8.5 Network Content and What is Said
- 9 File Networks
- 9.1 Notions, Files and Networks
- 9.2 Intersubjective file networks
- 9.3 Etiological Structure: origins and parents
- 9.4 The flow of ideas: intersubjective networks of files
- 9.5 Networks and information games
- 9.6 Playing with names
- 10 Contents and Attitudes
- 10.1 Introduction
- 10.2 The original theory
- 10.3 Two-faced attitudes
- 10.4 Saying
- 10.5 Belief Revisited
- 10.6 Types of notions and threads
- 10.7 Mach and quasi-indication
- 10.8 Pierre and disquotation
- 10.9 Back to Austin
- 10.10 Conclusion
- 11 Externalism
- 11.1 Introduction
- 11.2 The Two Faces of Motivation
- 11.3 Meshing Explanations
- 11.4 Conclusion
- 11.5 Narrow Enough Content
- Glossary
- Examples
- References
- Index
May 2012