Three views of demonstrative reference

Reimer, Marga

doi:10.1007/bf01089275

Cited by 53 publications

(31 citation statements)

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“…If we take this view of demonstrations, then it seems we can hope to give some substance to claims such as Kaplan (1989b) and Bach (1992), it is speaker intention rather than demonstration that determines demonstrative reference; for McCiinn (1981) it is spatio-temporal location. As Reimer (1991Reimer ( , 1992 shows, however, there are some apparently robust intuitions underlying the claim that demonstrations are semantically criterial. Consider a well known example used (in a slightly different form) by Kaplan (1978): the speaker, sitting at a desk, believes that on the wall behind him there is a picture of Rudolf Carnap; he wishes to say of this picture that it is a picture of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century; thus, without turning round, he points to the place he believes Carnap's picture to be and says:…”

Section: Indexicals Individual Concepts and Co-referencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Reimer herself concedes (Reimer 1992), intentions do play at least some role in determining reference. If!…”

Section: Indexicals Individual Concepts and Co-referencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…If; as I have argued above, we cannot define the notion of demonstration so broadly that it takes in whatever determines demonsirative reference in context on pain of rendering our analysis in terms of demonstrations vacuous, then we need to have some independent criterion via which to identi1' what counts as a demonstration. On the view adopted by many (see, for instance, Berckmans (1990), Reimer (1991Reimer ( , 1992, Bach (1992) etc. ), demonstrations are seen as intentional ostensive acts.…”

Section: Indexicals Individual Concepts and Co-referencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Language, Thought and Reference

Powell¹

2010

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How should we best analyse the meaning of proper names, indexicals, demonstratives, both simple and complex, and definite descriptions? In what relation do such expressions stand to the objects they designate? In what relation do they stand to mental representations of those objects? Do these expressions form a semantic class, or must we distinguish between those that arc referential and those that are quantificational? Such questions have constituted one of the core research areas in the philosophy of language for much of the last century, yet consensus remains elusive: the field is still divided, for instance, between those who hold that all such expressions are semantically descriptive and those who would analyse most as the natural language counterparts of logical individual constants.The aim of this thesis is to cast new light on such questions by approaching them from within the cognitive framework of Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory.Relevance Theory offers not just an articulated pragmatics but also a broad conception of the functioning of natural language which differs radically from that presupposed within (most of) the philosophy of language. The function of linguistic expressions, on this conception, is not to determine propositional content, but rather to provide inferential premises which, in parallel with context and general pragmatic principles, will enable a bearer to reach the speaker's intended interpretation.Working within this framework, I shall argue that the semantics of the expressions discussed should best be analysed not in terms of their relation to those objects which, on occasions of use, they may designate, but rather in terms of the indications they offer a hearer concerning the mental representation which constitutes the content of a speaker's informative intention. Such an analysis can, I shall claim, capture certain key data on reference which have proved notoriously problematic, while respecting a broad range of apparently conflicting intuitions.

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Section: Indexicals Individual Concepts and Co-referencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Reimer herself concedes (Reimer 1992), intentions do play at least some role in determining reference. If!…”

Section: Indexicals Individual Concepts and Co-referencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Indexicals Individual Concepts and Co-referencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Language, Thought and Reference

Powell¹

2010

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“…2 3 A reviewer of an earlier draft of this article raised the objection that the evaluation of the argument was rendered difficult because of the notion of 'demonstrative identification'. This reviewer remarked that the phrase 'demonstrative identification' could not be equated with the notion of 'demonstrative reference' as understood in semantics and in Kaplan's tradition [18][19][20][21]. This difficulty is clarified by the distinction between 'demonstrative reference' and By definition, the act of perceptual-demonstrative identification cannot thus be effective in the absence of the genuine perception of the target object.…”

Section: Perceptual-demonstrative Identification By Means Of Perceptumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the discussion of this point is outside of the scope of the present article, this hypothesis may help build a mediation view [4,7,19] based on the reconciliation of the contextualist views [53,54] and the intentional views [27,28] of demonstrative reference. For (i) the (operations) performance of the perceptual and motor routines are strictly context-dependant and conducted for having a bearing on publicly accessible features/cues of the context and (ii) the agents' intentions play a central role for the constructing of attentional strategies, i.e.…”

Section: A Procedural Theory Of the Epistemic Uses Of Attention: The mentioning

confidence: 99%

Context-Dependent and Epistemic Uses of Attention for Perceptual-Demonstrative Identification

Bullot

2005

Modeling and Using Context

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Abstract. Object identification via a perceptual-demonstrative mode of presentation has been studied in cognitive science as a particularly direct and context-dependent means of identifying objects. Several recent works in cognitive science have attempted to clarify the relation between attention, demonstrative identification and context exploration. Assuming a distinction between '(language-based) demonstrative reference' and 'perceptualdemonstrative identification', this article aims at specifying the role of attention in the latter and in the linking of conceptual and non conceptual contents while exploring a spatial context. First, the analysis presents an argument to the effect that selection by overt and covert attention is needed for perceptualdemonstrative identification since overt/covert selective attention is required for the situated cognitive access to the target object. Second, it describes a hypothesis that makes explicit some of the roles of attention: the hypothesis of identification by epistemic attention via the control of perceptual routines.

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Intentions in Utterance Interpretation

Leth

2015

Modeling and Using Context

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Three views of demonstrative reference

Cited by 53 publications

References 10 publications

Language, Thought and Reference

Language, Thought and Reference

Context-Dependent and Epistemic Uses of Attention for Perceptual-Demonstrative Identification

Intentions in Utterance Interpretation

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