display all the ideas for this combination of texts
18 ideas
10446 | Fictional reference is different inside and outside the fiction [Bach] |
Full Idea: We must distinguish 'reference' in a fiction from reference outside the fiction to fictional entities. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.1) | |
A reaction: This may be more semantically than ontologically significant. It is perhaps best explicated by Coleridge's distinction over whether or not I am 'suspending my disbelief' when I am discussing a character. |
10447 | We can refer to fictional entities if they are abstract objects [Bach] |
Full Idea: If fictional entities, such as characters in a play, are real, albeit abstract entities, then we can genuinely refer to them. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.1) | |
A reaction: [He cites Nathan Salmon 1998] Personally I would prefer to say that abstract entities are fictions. Fictional characters have uncertain identity conditions. Do they all have a pancreas, if this is never mentioned? |
10443 | You 'allude to', not 'refer to', an individual if you keep their identity vague [Bach] |
Full Idea: If you say 'a special person is coming to visit', you are not referring to but merely 'alluding to' that individual. This does not count as referring because you are not expressing a singular proposition about it. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.1 s2) | |
A reaction: If you add 'I hope he doesn't wear his red suit, but I hope he plays his tuba', you seem to be expressing singular propositions about the person. Bach seems to want a very strict notion of reference, as really attaching listeners to individuals. |
10439 | What refers: indefinite or definite or demonstrative descriptions, names, indexicals, demonstratives? [Bach] |
Full Idea: Philosophers agree that some expressions refer, but disagree over which ones. Few include indefinite descriptions, but some include definite descriptions, or only demonstrative descriptions. Some like proper names, some only indexicals and demonstratives. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], Intro) | |
A reaction: My initial prejudice is rather Strawsonian - that people refer, not language, and it can be done in all sorts of ways. But Bach argues well that only language intrinsically does it. Even pointing fails without linguistic support. |
10441 | If we can refer to things which change, we can't be obliged to single out their properties [Bach] |
Full Idea: We can refer to things which change over time, which suggests that in thinking of and in referring to an individual we are not constrained to represent it as that which has certain properties. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.1) | |
A reaction: This seems a good argument against the descriptive theory of reference which is not (I think) in Kripke. Problems like vagueness and the Ship of Theseus rear their heads. |
10442 | We can think of an individual without have a uniquely characterizing description [Bach] |
Full Idea: Being able to think of an individual does not require being able to identify that individual by means of a uniquely characterizing description. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.1 s1) | |
A reaction: There is a bit of an equivocation over 'recognise' here. His example is 'the first child born in the 4th century'. We can't visually recognise such people, but the description does fix them, and a records office might give us 'recognition'. |
10445 | It can't be real reference if it could refer to some other thing that satisfies the description [Bach] |
Full Idea: If one is referring to whatever happens to satisfy a description, and one would be referring to something else were it to have satisfied the description instead, this is known as 'weak' reference,...but surely this is not reference at all. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.1 s7) | |
A reaction: Bach wants a precise notion of reference, as success in getting the audience to focus on the correct object. He talks of this case as 'singling out' some unfixed thing, and he also has 'alluding to' an unstated thing. Plausible view. |
10457 | Since most expressions can be used non-referentially, none of them are inherently referential [Bach] |
Full Idea: An embarrassingly simple argument is that most expressions can be used literally but not referentially, no variation in meaning explains this fact, so its meaning is compatible with being non-referential, so no expression is inherently referential. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.2 L2) | |
A reaction: I think I have decided that no expression is 'inherently referential', and that it is all pragmatics. |
10463 | Just alluding to or describing an object is not the same as referring to it [Bach] |
Full Idea: Much of what speakers do that passes for referring is merely alluding or describing. ...It is one thing for a speaker to express a thought about a certain object using an expression, and quite another for the expression to stand for that object. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.3) | |
A reaction: Bach builds up a persuasive case for this view. If the question, though, is 'what are you talking about?', then saying what is being alluded to or singled out or described seems fine. Bach is being rather stipulative. |
10459 | Context does not create reference; it is just something speakers can exploit [Bach] |
Full Idea: Context does not determine or constitute reference; rather, it is something for the speaker to exploit to enable the listener to determine the intended reference. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.2 L3) | |
A reaction: Bach thinks linguistic reference is a matter of speaker's intentions, and I think he is right. And this idea is right too. The domain of quantification constantly shifts in a conversation, and good speakers and listeners are sensitive to this. |
10460 | 'That duck' may not refer to the most obvious one in the group [Bach] |
Full Idea: If one ducks starts quacking furiously, and you say 'that duck is excited', it isn't context that makes me take it that you are referring to the quacking duck. You could be referring to a quiet duck you recognise by its distinctive colour. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.2 L3) | |
A reaction: A persuasive example to make his point against the significance of context in conversational reference. Speaker's intended reference must always trump any apparent reference suggested by context. |
10461 | What a pronoun like 'he' refers back to is usually a matter of speaker's intentions [Bach] |
Full Idea: To illustrate speakers' intentions, consider the anaphoric reference using pronouns in these: "A cop arrested a robber; he was wearing a badge", and "A cop arrested a robber; he was wearing a mask". The natural supposition is not the inevitable one. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.2 L4) | |
A reaction: I am a convert to speakers' intentions as the source of all reference, and this example seems to illustrate it very well. 'He said..' 'Who said?' |
10462 | Information comes from knowing who is speaking, not just from interpretation of the utterance [Bach] |
Full Idea: It is a fallacy that all the information in an utterance must come from its interpretation, which ignores the essentially pragmatic fact that the speaker is making the utterance. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.2 L4) | |
A reaction: [He cites Barwise and Perry 1983:34] This is blatantly obvious in indexical remarks like 'I am tired', where the words don't tell you who is tired. But also 'the car has broken down, dear'. |
5781 | Our important beliefs all, if put into words, take the form of propositions [Russell] |
Full Idea: The important beliefs, even if they are not the only ones, are those which, if rendered into explicit words, take the form of a proposition. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III) | |
A reaction: This assertion is close to the heart of the twentieth century linking of ontology and epistemology to language. It is open to challenges. Why is non-propositional belief unimportant? Do dogs have important beliefs? Can propositions exist non-verbally? |
5782 | A proposition expressed in words is a 'word-proposition', and one of images an 'image-proposition' [Russell] |
Full Idea: I shall distinguish a proposition expressed in words as a 'word-proposition', and one consisting of images as an 'image-proposition'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III) | |
A reaction: This, I think, is good, though it raises the question of what exactly an 'image' is when it is non-visual, as when a dog believes its owner called. This distinction prevents us from regarding all knowledge and ontology as verbal in form. |
5776 | A proposition is what we believe when we believe truly or falsely [Russell] |
Full Idea: A proposition may be defined as: what we believe when we believe truly or falsely. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], p.285) | |
A reaction: If we define belief as 'commitment to truth', Russell's last six words become redundant. "Propositions are the contents of beliefs", it being beliefs which are candidates for truth, not propositions. (Russell agrees, on p.308!) |
16491 | If we define 'this is not blue' as disbelief in 'this is blue', we eliminate 'not' as an ingredient of facts [Russell] |
Full Idea: We can reintroduce 'not' by a definition: the words 'this is not blue' are defined as expressing disbelief in what is expressed by the words 'this is blue'. In this way the need of 'not' as an indefinable constituent of facts is avoided. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (Human Knowledge: its scope and limits [1948], 9) | |
A reaction: This is part of Russell's programme of giving a psychological account of logical connectives. See other ideas from his 1940 and 1948 works. He observes that disbelief is a state just as positive as belief. I love it. |
10458 | People slide from contextual variability all the way to contextual determination [Bach] |
Full Idea: People slide from contextual variability to context relativity to context sensitivity to context dependence to contextual determination. | |
From: Kent Bach (What Does It Take to Refer? [2006], 22.2 L3) | |
A reaction: This is reminiscent of the epistemological slide from cultural or individual relativity of some observed things, to a huge metaphysical denial of truth. Bach's warning applies to me, as I have been drifting down his slope lately. Nice. |