The reference book / John Hawthorne and David Manley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hawthorne, John (John P.)

Contributor:

Manley, David (David Jeffrey)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Reference (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

vi, 264 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

John Hawthorne and David Manley present an original treatment of the semantic phenomenon of reference and the cognitive phenomenon of singular thought. In Part I, they argue against the idea that either is tied to a special relation of causal or epistemic acquaintance. Part II challenges the alleged semantic rift between definite and indefinite descriptions on the one hand, and names and demonstratives on the other-a division that has been motivated in part by appeals to considerations of acquaintance. Drawing on recent work in linguistics and philosophical semantics, Hawthorne and Manley explore a more unified account of all four types of expression according to which none of them paradigmatically fits the profile of a referential term. On the preferred framework put forward in The Reference Book, all four types of expression involve existential quantification but admit of uses that exhibit many of the traits associated with reference-a phenomenon that is due to the presence of what Hawthorne and Manley call a 'singular restriction' on the existentially quantified domain. The book concludes by drawing out some implications of the proposed semantic picture for the traditional categories of reference and singular thought. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Against acquaintance

1 Introduction: reference and singular thought 3

1.1 Preliminaries 3

1.2 Themes from Russell 4

1.3 Reference after Russell 8

1.4 Singular thought after Russell 15

1.5 Acquaintance after Russell 19

1.6 Should auld acquaintance be forgot? 25

1.7 Gameplan 35

2 A defense of liberalism 37

2.1 The spy argument 37

2.2 Acquaintance and attitude reports 40

2.3 Turning the tables 45

2.4 Harmony, Sufficiency, and impoverished cases 50

2.5 'Believing of' 53

2.6 The Neptune argument 56

2.7 The irrelevance of Constraint 61

2.8 Sources of confusion 64

2.9 Conditional reference fixers 68

3 Epistemic acquaintance 71

3.1 Knowing-which and discrimination 71

3.2 Evans on acquaintance 74

3.3 Objections 78

3.4 Knowledge of existence 83

3.5 Understanding and knowledge 85

Part II Beyond acquaintance

4 From the specific to the singular 93

4.1 Indefinites: preliminary observations 93

4.2 Specificity: the bifurcated view 99

4.3 Interlude: presupposition 105

4.4 Specificity: the simple view 107

4.5 Interlude: covert domain restriction 117

4.6 Specificity as domain restriction 122

4.7 Singular restrictors 133

4.8 Acquaintance again 136

4.9 Coy and candid restrictions 138

4.10 Variant views 141

4.11 Specifics in attitude ascriptions 144

4.12 The representation requirement 151

5 What 'the'? 155

5.1 Three approaches to uniqueness 155

5.2 Existentialism 156

5.3 Exceptions to specificity? 168

5.4 Russellianism 175

5.5 Neo-Fregeanism 181

5.6 Three arguments for a neo-Fregean 'the' 190

5.7 Five arguments against a neo-Fregean 'the' 196

5.8 The upshot 202

6 Et tu, 'Brute'? 203

6.1 Demonstratives 203

6.2 Non-rigid uses 205

6.3 Salience 207

6.4 Modal themes 211

6.5 The view so far 218

6.6 Names 219

6.7 The predicate view: details 221

6.8 Two ineffective arguments 224

6.9 Calling and describing 227

6.10 Against the predicate view 233

6.11 Bare and bound? 235

6.12 Varieties of validity 239

6.13 Names: a tentative verdict 241.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [249]-258) and index.

ISBN:

9780199693672

0199693676

OCLC:

759910821