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19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / a. Direct reference

[thought connecting directly with external things]

11 ideas
We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam]
     Full Idea: The effect of my account, as of Kripke's, is to separate the question of how the reference of terms such as 'gold' is fixed from the question of their conceptual content.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §2 p.38)
     A reaction: Too simple. 'Gold' isn't a proper name, like 'Hilary', which needs no more content than a serial number. Baptising a gold sample needs much more information than baptising a person.
Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam]
     Full Idea: It seems that the dominant "component" of natural kind words is the extension. The referential factor does almost all the work, and natural kind terms resemble names.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Representation and Reality [1988], §3 p.49)
     A reaction: My concept of 'tiger' does not mainly consist of the tigers. Does the concept contract as the tiger population dwindles? Prototypes, exemplars etc. See 'Concepts'
Kripke derives accounts of reference and proper names from assumptions about worlds and essences [Stalnaker on Kripke]
     Full Idea: One might think that the direction of Kripke's arguments goes the other way - that conclusions about reference and proper names were derived in part from controversial metaphysical assumptions about possible worlds and essential properties.
     From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Reference and Necessity Intro
     A reaction: Nathan Salmon is famous for charging Kripke with trying to get a metaphysics from a semantics, but this remark of Stalnaker's seems much more accurate. Kripke certainly assumes realism, and robust identity.
Kripke has a definitional account of kinds, but not of naming [Almog on Kripke]
     Full Idea: There seems to be an incongruity between Kripke's definitionalist account of the essence of kinds (and the induced necessities), and his definition-free account of naming.
     From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Joseph Almog - Nature Without Essence X
     A reaction: Putnam places more emphasis on baptising a prototypical example, just as we baptise named things.
Direct reference is by proper names, or indexicals, or referential uses of descriptions [Adams,RM]
     Full Idea: Direct reference is commonly effected by the use of proper names and indexical expressions, and sometimes by what has been called (by Donnellan) the 'referential' use of descriptions.
     From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 2)
     A reaction: One might enquire whether the third usage should be described as 'direct', but then I am not sure that there is much of a distinction between references which are or are not 'direct'. Either you (or a sentence) refer or you (or it) don't.
Kripke and Putnam made false claims that direct reference implies essentialism [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: Kripke and Putnam made unsubstantiated claims, indeed false claims, to the effect that the theory of direct reference has nontrivial essentialist import.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence: seven appendices [2005], Pref to Exp Ed)
     A reaction: Kripke made very few claims, and is probably innocent of the charge. Most people agree with Salmon that you can't derive metaphysics from a theory of reference.
The perfect case of direct reference is a variable which has been assigned a value [Salmon,N]
     Full Idea: The paradigm of a nondescriptional, directly referential, singular term is an individual variable. …The denotation of a variable… is semantically determined directly by the assignment of values.
     From: Nathan Salmon (Reference and Essence (1st edn) [1981], 1.1.2)
     A reaction: This cuts both ways. Maybe we are muddling ordinary reference with the simplicities of logical assignments, or maybe we make logical assignments because that is the natural way our linguistic thinking works.
First-order logic tilts in favour of the direct reference theory, in its use of constants for objects [Jubien]
     Full Idea: First-order logic tilts in favor of the direct reference account of proper names by using individual constants to play the intuitive role of names, and by 'interpreting' the constants simply as the individuals that are assigned to them for truth-values.
     From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro)
     A reaction: This is the kind of challenge to orthodoxy that is much needed at the moment. We have an orthodoxy which is almost a new 'scholasticism', that logic will clarify our metaphysics. Trying to enhance the logic for the job may be a dead end.
Direct reference doesn't seem to require that thinkers know what it is they are thinking about [Lowe]
     Full Idea: It may be objected that currently prevailing causal or 'direct' theories of reference precisely deny that a thinker must know what it is the he or she is thinking about in order to be able to think about it.
     From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 7)
     A reaction: Lowe says that at least sometimes we have to know that we are thinking about, so this account of reference can't be universally true. My solution is to pull identity and essence apart. You only need identity, not essence, for reference.
Direct reference is strong Millian (just a tag) or weak Kaplanian (allowing descriptions as well) [Recanati]
     Full Idea: There are two notions of direct reference, the strong Millian notion (where the expression is like a 'tag' with no satisfaction mechanism), and the weaker Kaplanian notion (where reference is compatible with carrying a descriptive meaning).
     From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 17.3)
     A reaction: I immediately favour the Millian view, which gives a minimal basis for reference, as just a 'peg' (Marcus) to hang things on. I don't take a Millian reference to be the object itself. The concept of a 'tag' or 'label' is key. Mental files have tags.
In super-direct reference, the referent serves as its own vehicle of reference [Recanati]
     Full Idea: In super-direct reference, the sort of thing Russell was after, there is no mode of presentation: the referent itself serves as its own vehicle, as it were.
     From: François Recanati (Mental Files [2012], 18.2)
     A reaction: To me this is a step too far, because reference is not some physical object like a chair; it is a mental or linguistic phenomenon. Chair's don't refer themselves; it is people who refer.