Singular Reference: A Descriptivist Perspective
Singular reference to ourselves and the ordinary objects surrounding us is a most crucial philosophical topic, for it looms large in any attempt to understand how language and mind connect to the world. This book explains in detail why in the past philoso
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PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES VOLUME 113
Founded by Wilfrid S. Sellars and Keith Lehrer Editor Stephen Hetherington, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Senior Advisory Editor Keith Lehrer, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A. Associate Editor Stewart Cohen, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, U.S.A. Board of Consulting Editors Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA U.S.A. Radu Bogdan, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, U.S.A. Marian David, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, U.S.A. John M. Fischer, University of California, Riverside, CA, U.S.A. Allan Gibbard, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A. Denise Meyerson, Macquarie University, NSW, Australia François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod, EHESS, Paris, France Mark Sainsbury, University of Texas, Austin, TX, U.S.A. Stuart Silvers, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, U.S.A. Barry Smith, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, U.S.A. Nicholas D. Smith, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR, U.S.A. Linda Zagzebski, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, U.S.A. For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6459
Francesco Orilia
Singular Reference: A Descriptivist Perspective
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Francesco Orilia Università di Macerata Dipto. di Filosofia e Scienze Umane Via Garibaldi, 20 62100 Macerata Italy [email protected]
ISBN 978-90-481-3311-6 e-ISBN 978-90-481-3312-3 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3312-3 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009940003 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To Stefania
Preface
I have been thinking about singular reference for many years and I have always been inclined to view it, like Frege and Russell, from a descriptivist perspective, in spite of the many contrary arguments put forward by Donnellan, Kaplan, Kripke and others. However, in the light of these arguments, descriptivism needs nowadays a careful and thorough defence, if it is to be considered a viable and respected approach. I became fully aware of this when a referee who reviewed my earlier paper “A Description Theory of Singular Reference” (2003) complained that, no matter how interesting my form of descriptivism might be, I neglected to shield it from the well-known anti-descriptivist objections. I then decided that I should at the same time present a descriptivist framework capable of resisting these objections and also show, by confronting these objections head on, that the framework could in fact resist them. Clearly, this plan could not be carried out in the space of
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