...David E. Taylor This essay argues that deflationism (about truth and reference) is incompatible with the phenomenon of referential indeterminacy (RI). This puts the deflationist in the difficult position of having to deny the possibility of what otherwise seems like a manifest and theoretically...

...Samuel Cumming Variabilism is the view that proper names (like pronouns) are semantically represented as variables. Referential names, like referential pronouns, are assigned their referents by a contextual variable assignment (Kaplan 1989). The reference parameter (like the world of evaluation...

... uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are predicates in all of their occurrences...

...J. Robert G. Williams The concept of moral wrongness, many think, has a distinctive kind of referential stability, brought out by moral twin earth cases. This article offers a new account of the source of this stability, deriving it from a metaphysics of content: “substantive” radical...

... they are in the scope of epistemic modals or attitude verbs. The new view has two interesting philosophical consequences. First, it vindicates a broadly Fregean perspective on referential expressions, essentially refuting the idea that indexicals are rigid designators. Second, it suggests a new picture...

... names are confronted with occurrences of names that appear to behave as predicates, and hence are not directly referential [‘Every Susie I’ve ever known was funny they claim the occurrences aren’t literal). In summary, once one has pointed out that a semantic theory of an expression does...

..., specifically as regards the semantics-pragmatics interface for singular terms. Its main idea is that in order to account for the role of linguistic meaning in communication, we will need reflexive semantic contents beside the ordinary, referential ones. The reflexive contents derive from the reflexive...

... the Syntactic Rationale and presents serious auxiliary problems for predicativism. © 2017 by Cornell University 2017 predicativism referentialism reference proper names count nouns Predicativism is the thesis that names are count nouns having a predicate-type semantic value in all...

... a referential analysis and a (Russellian) quantificational analysis of definite descriptions. Finally, there is predicativist descriptivism , or simply predicativism . This is the view that names are predicates (or count nouns to be precise) with a corresponding predicative meaning, for example (10...

... interpretations from among the recognizable ones; it is the criteria that distinguishes pictures of chairs from pictures of pictures of chairs in the art house scenario (30). The book doesn’t say whether these standards are fixed by the context of creation, or of evaluation, or something else. Referential...

.... 1). Kraus first introduces what she calls Kant’s “basic model of representation.” “Representation” is a relational term, relating a subject and an object of representation. Kraus calls “reflexivity” the relation of a representation to its subject and “referentiality” its relation to its object...

... viable way out” for the ardent realist is if the normative role of a normative concept/predicate fully determines its reference, a phenomenon he calls being referentially normative (12). That is, the ardent realist must hope that the practical profile of ‘ought’ (and ‘ought*’) fixes the property...

... in modal contexts. (b) From (a), that those occurrences are not purely referential. (c) From (b), that variables in the same position are not purely referential. (d) From (c), that the notion of objectual satisfaction is inapplicable...

... with Millikan and others. The problems with the argument begin to emerge with premise 3. Varner summarizes his principle argument for 3 like this: “What has gone wrong with the mental state theory? At bottom it is that desire contexts are referentially opaque, and consequently any attempt to define...

..., variables are logically proper names, or directly referential. That is, the semantic content (“meaning”) of a variable, under an assignment of values to variables, is simply the variable’s designatum (the assigned value) rather than a sense. The content of (2) under A is the false sin- gular...

... brilliant although deeply flawed asymmetric dependency theory of mental content (see, for example, Fodor 1990 ) is not further developed, or further defended, or, as far as I could see, even mentioned in this book. It is not replaced with an alternative theory of referential mental content either. Instead...

..., for Kant aesthetic judgment involves a single self-referential act in which we take our mental state to be universally communicable. Thus it is a mistake to think (as Paul Guyer's “two-act” would have it) that this act is somehow distinct from the free play and pleasure involved in judgments of taste...

... in philosophy; he convincingly unseats the former, but not the latter. Still, throughout, he makes exciting contributions to ongoing philosophical debates. A D-type analysis of pronouns, be they referential, bound, or donkey pronouns, treats them as synonymous with definite descriptions...

... the employment of (referentially used) descriptions (4). The initial examples of ostensive acts, such as the combina- tion of pointing and uttering let that star be called “Hesperus” are of little pedagogical help in this respect: they involve a complex demonstra- tive, but, at least apparently...

... Meinong, ‘I’ refers to Meinong. ‘I’ is directly referential. This means that the object that ‘I’ refers to (relative to a context C) is its content (relative to C), where the content of an expression (relative to C) is what it contributes to the proposi- tions that sentences that contain...