Nondescriptive Meaning and Reference

Abstract

Part I of this book is a concise exposition of the expression theory of meaning, according to which meaning consists in the expression of thoughts, their component ideas, or other mental states. The theory is founded on the fact that thoughts are event types with a constituent structure, and that thinking is a fundamental propositional attitude distinct from belief. It can account for interjections, syncategorematic terms, pejorative terms, conventional implicatures, and other cases of nondescriptive meaning that have long been seen as difficult for both ideational and referential theories of meaning. Part II defends the analysis of speaker and word reference in terms of the expression of ideas by exploring the vague connection of reference with predication, and reviewing the difficulties of alternative approaches, both descriptivist and causal. Part III shows how the expression theory can account for the meaning of names, and the distinctive way in which their meaning determines their reference. The problems with Millian theories show that the meaning of a name consists in the expression of an idea. The problems with Fregean theories show that the ideas expressed by names are atomic or basic. A name is directly and rigidly referential because the extension of the idea it expresses is not determined by the extensions of component ideas. This account of names does not preclude the use of a possible worlds or situation semantics to systematize their formal referential properties. The referential properties of ideas can also be set out recursively by providing a generative theory of ideas, assigning extensions to atomic ideas, and formulating rules whereby the semantic value of a complex idea is determined by the semantic values of its contents. Arguments for the logical necessity of identity statements expressed using non-synonymous names are shown to be unsound, along with various twin earth arguments.

Fictional coreference as a problem for the pretense theory

“…There is a fictional individual which both Caroline and Bridget believe to be smart. Another theory is the ideational theory of Davis (2005). On this view, it may be argued that pretense is involved when an author first uses an empty name, but instead of creating an abstract object a concept is created which the empty name expresses.…”

Propositions as Structured Cognitive Event‐Types

“…Contingent facts explain what it is for a sentence to represent George as being clever because something could be the sentence without 53 Again, see Prior 1971: 111-6;Davis 2003: §6.3;Kriegel 2007: 307-12;2011: 125-6, 151;Crane 2013: §1.2. It should be noted that while speaker reference is an intentional property, word reference as standardly conceived by philosophers, logicians, and linguists, is a relation (Davis 2005: §9.1). 54 Referees and Reiland (p.c.).…”

Co‐Identification and Fictional Names

“…With many others (cf. Davis (, 175‐190)), I take this to be a hard bullet to bite, so I prefer accounts like the one I'll provide below, which make utterances of (11) straightforwardly false in the indicated circumstances…”

“…Braun () offers an alternative explanation for the (in his view) misguided intuitive impression that the two reports differ semantically. Davis (, 175‐190) articulates many of the reasons why such proposals are very dubious. Of course, Salmon and Braun might prefer other accounts for (11); they might, say, take ‘Alice’ in (11) to refer to an abstract fictional entity, and explain the failure of co‐identification on that basis.…”