ASSIGNMENT

THEORIES OF MEANING, TRUTH, AND REFERENCE(Language Philosophy)

Saidna Zulfiqar Bin Tahir10B01003

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR2010

1. THEORIES OF MEANING

The answer to the question, "What is meaning?", is not immediately obvious. One section of philosophy of language tries to answer this question.

Geoffrey Leech posited that there are two essentially different types of linguistic meaning: conceptual and associative. For Leech, the conceptual meanings of an expression have to do with the definitions of words themselves, and the features of those definitions. This kind of meaning is treated by using a technique called the semantic feature analysis. The conceptual meaning of an expression inevitably involves both definition (also called "connotation" and "intension" in the literature) and extension (also called "denotation"). The associative meaning of an expression has to do with individual mental understandings of the speaker. They, in turn, can be broken up into six sub-types: connotative, collocative, social, affective, reflected andthematic.

Generally speaking, there have been at least six different kinds of attempts at explaining what a linguistic "meaning" is. Each has been associated with its own body of literature.

1.1 Idea theories of meaning, most commonly associated with the British empiricist tradition of Locke, Berkeley and Hume, claim that meanings are purely mental contents provoked by signs.[14] Although this view of meaning has been beset by a number of problems from the beginning, interest in it has been renewed by some contemporary theorists under the guise of semantic internalism.Some have argued that meanings are ideas, where the term "ideas" is used to refer to either mental representations, or to mental activity in general. Those who seek an explanation for meaning in the former sort of account endorse a stronger sort of idea theory of mind than the latter.Each idea is understood to be necessarily about something external and/or internal, real or imaginary. For example, in contrast to the abstract meaning of the universal "dog", thereferent "this dog" may mean a particular real life chihuahua. In both cases, the word is about something, but in the former it is about the class of dogs as generally understood, while in the latter it is about a very real and particular dog in the real world.Stronger idea theoriesJohn Locke, considered all ideas to be both imaginable objects of sensation and the very unimaginable objects of reflection. He said in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, that words are used both as signs for ideas—but also to signify the lack of certain ideas. David Hume held that thoughts were kinds of imaginable entities. (See his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 2). Hume argued that any words that could not call upon any past experience were without meaning.Counter argumentsGeorge Berkeley and Ludwig Wittgenstein held however that ideas alone are unable to account for the different variations within a general meaning. For example, any hypothetical image of the meaning of "dog" has to include such varied images as a chihuahua, a pug, and a Black Lab; and this seems impossible to imagine, all of those particular breeds looking very different from one another. Another way to see this point is to question why it is that, if we have an image of a specific type of dog (say of a chihuahua), it should be entitled to represent the entire concept.Another criticism is that some meaningful words, known as non-lexical items, don't have any meaningfully associated image. For example, the word "the" has a meaning, but one would

be hard-pressed to find a mental representation that fits it. Still another objection lies in the observation that certain linguistic items name something in the real world, and are meaningful, yet which we have no mental representations to deal with. For instance, it is not known what Bismarck's mother looked like, yet the phrase "Bismarck's mother" still has meaning.Another problem is that of composition - that it is difficult to explain how words and phrases combine into sentences if only ideas were involved in meaning.Weaker idea theoriesEleanor Rosch and George Lakoff advanced the theory of prototypes, which suggests that many lexical categories, at least on the face of things, have "radial structures". That is to say, there are some ideal member(s) in the category that seem to represent the category better than other members. For example, the category of "birds" may feature the robin as the prototype, or the ideal kind of bird. With experience, subjects might come to evaluate membership in the category of "bird" by comparing candidate members to the prototype and evaluating for similarities. So, for example, a penguin or an ostrich would sit at the fringe of the meaning of "bird", because a penguin is unlike a robin.Intimately related to these researches is the notion of a psychologically basic level, which is both the first level named and understood by children, and "the highest level at which a single mental image can reflect the entire category". (Lakoff 1987:46) The "basic level" of cognition is understood by Lakoff as crucially drawing upon "image-schemas" along with various other cognitive processes.The philosophers (Ned Block, Gilbert Harman, H. Field) and the cognitive scientists (G. Miller and P. Johnson-Laird) say that the meaning of a term can be found by investigating its role in relation to other concepts and mental states. They endorse a view called "conceptual role semantics". Those proponents of this view who understand meanings to be exhausted by the content of mental states can be said to endorse "one-factor" accounts of conceptual role semantics. and thus fit within the tradition of idea theories.Truth and MeaningSome have asserted that meaning is nothing substantially more or less than the truth conditions they involve. For such theories, an emphasis is placed upon reference to actual things in the world to account for meaning, with the caveat that reference more or less explains the greater part (or all) of meaning itself.Logic and languageThe logical positivists argued that the meaning of a statement arose from how it is verified.Gottlob FregeIn his paper Über Sinn und Bedeutung (now usually translated as On Sense and Reference), Gottlob Frege argued that proper names present at least two problems in explaining meaning.

a.Suppose the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Sam, then, means a person in the world who is named Sam. But if the object referred to by the name did not exist—i.e.,Pegasus -- then, according to that theory, it would be meaningless.

b. Suppose two different names refer to the same object. Hesperus and Phosphorus were the names given to what were considered distinct celestial bodies. It was later shown that they were the same thing (the planet Venus). If the words meant the same thing, then substituting one for the other in a sentence would not result in a sentence that differs in meaning from the original. But in that case, "Hesperus is Phosphorus" would

mean the same thing as "Hesperus is Hesperus". This is clearly absurd, since we learn something new and unobvious by the former statement, but not by the latter.

Frege can be interpreted as arguing that it was therefore a mistake to think that the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Instead, the meaning must be something else—the "sense" of the word. Two names for the same person, then, can have different senses (or meanings): one referent might be picked out by more than one sense. This sort of theory is called a mediated reference theory.Frege argued that, ultimately, the same bifurcation of meaning must apply to most or all linguistic categories, such as to quantificational expressions like "All boats float". Ironically enough, it is now accepted by many philosophers as applying to all expressions but proper names.Bertrand RussellLogical analysis was further advanced by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their groundbreaking Principia Mathematica, which attempted to produce a formal language with which the truth of all mathematical statements could be demonstrated from first principles.Russell differed from Frege greatly on many points, however. He rejected (or perhaps misunderstood) Frege's sense-reference distinction. He also disagreed that language was of fundamental significance to philosophy, and saw the project of developing formal logic as a way of eliminating all of the confusions caused by ordinary language, and hence at creating a perfectly transparent medium in which to conduct traditional philosophical argument. He hoped, ultimately, to extend the proofs of the Principia to all possible true statements, a scheme he called logical atomism. For a while it appeared that his pupil Wittgenstein had succeeded in this plan with his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus".Russell's work, and that of his colleague G. E. Moore, developed in response to what they perceived as the nonsense dominating British philosophy departments at the turn of the century, which was a kind of British Idealism most of which was derived (albeit very distantly) from the work of Hegel. In response Moore developed an approach ("Common Sense Philosophy"[1]) which sought to examine philosophical difficulties by a close analysis of the language used in order to determine its meaning. In this way Moore sought to expunge philosophical absurdities such as "time is unreal". Moore's work would have significant, if oblique, influence (largely mediated by Wittgenstein) on Ordinary language philosophy.

1.2 Truth-conditional theories hold meaning to be the conditions under which an expression may be true or false. This tradition goes back at least to Frege and is associated with a rich body of modern work, spearheaded by philosophers like Alfred Tarski and Donald Davidson.Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of natural language that sees the meaning of assertions as being the same as, or reducible to, their truth conditions. This approach to semantics is principally associated with Donald Davidson, and attempts to carry out for the semantics of natural language what Tarski's semantic theory of truth achieves for the semantics of logic (Davidson 1967).Truth-conditional theories of semantics attempt to define the meaning of a given proposition by explaining when the sentence is true. So, for example, because 'snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white, the meaning of 'snow is white' is snow is white.History

The first truth-conditional semantics was developed by Donald Davidson in Truth and Meaning (1967). It applied Tarski's semantic theory of truth to a problem it was not intended to solve, that of giving the meaning of a sentence.Refutation from necessary truthsScott Soames has harshly criticized truth-conditional semantics on the grounds that it is either wrong or uselessly circular.Under its traditional formulation, truth-conditional semantics gives every necessary truth precisely the same meaning, for all of them are true under precisely the same conditions (namely, all of them). And since the truth conditions of any unnecessarily true sentence are equivalent to the conjunction of those truth conditions and any necessary truth, any sentence means the same as its meaning plus a necessary truth. For example, if "snow is white" is true iff snow is white, then it is trivially the case that "snow is white" is true iff snow is white and 2+2=4, therefore under truth-conditional semantics "snow is white" means both that snow is white and that 2+2=4. That is wrong.Soames argues further that reformulations that attempt to account for this problem must beg the question. In specifying precisely which of the infinite number of truth-conditions for a sentence will count towards its meaning, one must take the meaning of the sentence as a guide. However, we wanted to specify meaning with truth-conditions, whereas now we are specifying truth-conditions with meaning, rendering the entire process fruitless.Refutation from deficiencyMichael Dummett (1975) has objected to Davidson's program on the grounds that such a theory of meaning will not explain what it is a speaker has to know in order for them to understand a sentence. Dummett believes a speaker must know three components of a sentence to understand its meaning: a theory of sense, indicating the part of the meaning that the speaker grasps; a theory of reference, which indicates what claims about the world are made by the sentence, and a theory of force, which indicates what kind of speech act the expression performs. Dummett further argues that a theory based on inference, such as Proof-theoretic semantics, provides a better foundation for this model than truth-conditional semantics does.

1.3 Use theorist perspectives understand meaning to involve or be related to speech acts and particular utterances, not the expressions themselves. The later Wittgenstein helped inaugurate the idea of "meaning as use", and a communitarian view of language. Wittgenstein was interested in the way in which the communities use language, and how far it can be taken. It is also associated with P. F. Strawson, John Searle, Robert Brandom, and others. Throughout the 20th Century, English philosophy focused closely on analysis of language. This style of analytic philosophy became very influential and led to the development of a wide range of philosophical tools.Ludwig WittgensteinThe philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was originally an artificial language philosopher, following the influence of Russell, Frege, and the Vienna Circle. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus he had supported the idea of an ideal language built up from atomic statements using logical connectives. However, as he matured, he came to appreciate more and more the phenomenon of natural language. Philosophical Investigations, published after his death, signalled a sharp departure from his earlier work with its focus upon ordinary language use.

His approach is often summarised by the aphorism "the meaning of a word is its use in a language". However, following in Frege's footsteps, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein declares: "... Only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning."His work would come to inspire future generations and spur forward a whole new discipline, which explained meaning in a new way. Meaning in a natural language was seen as primarily a question of how the speaker uses words within the language to express intention.This close examination of natural language proved to be a powerful philosophical technique. Practitioners who were influenced by Wittgenstein's approach have included an entire tradition of thinkers, featuring P. F. Strawson, Paul Grice, R. M. Hare, R. S. Peters, and Jürgen Habermas.J. L. AustinAt around the same time Ludwig Wittgenstein was re-thinking his approach to language, reflections on the complexity of language led to a more expansive approach to meaning. Following the lead of George Edward Moore, J. L. Austin examined the use of words in great detail. He argued against fixating on the meaning of words. He showed that dictionary definitions are of limited philosophical use, since there is no simple "appendage" to a word that can be called its meaning. Instead, he showed how to focus on the way in which words are used in order to do things. He analysed the structure of utterances into three distinct parts: locutions, illocutions and perlocutions. His pupil John Searle developed the idea under the label "speech acts". Their work greatly influenced pragmatics.Peter StrawsonPast philosophers had understood reference to be tied to words themselves. However, Sir Peter Strawson disagreed in his seminal essay, "On Referring", where he argued that there is nothing true about statements on their own; rather, only the uses of statements could be considered to be true or false.Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the ordinary use perspective is its insistence upon the distinctions between meaning and use. "Meanings", for ordinary language philosophers, are theinstructions for usage of words - the common and conventional definitions of words. Usage, on the other hand, is the actual meanings that individual speakers have - the things that an individual speaker in a particular context wants to refer to. The word "dog" is an example of a meaning, but pointing at a nearby dog and shouting "This dog smells foul!" is an example of usage. From this distinction between usage and meaning arose the divide between the fields of Pragmatics and Semantics.Yet another distinction is of some utility in discussing language: "mentioning". Mention is when an expression refers to itself as a linguistic item, usually surrounded by quotation marks. For instance, in the expression "'Opopanax' is hard to spell", what is referred to is the word itself ("opopanax") and not what it means (an obscure gum resin). Frege had referred to instances of mentioning as "opaque contexts".In his essay, "Reference and Definite Descriptions", Keith Donnellan sought to improve upon Strawson's distinction. He pointed out that there are two uses of definite descriptions:attributive and referential. Attributive uses provide a description of whoever is being referred to, while referential uses point out the actual referent. Attributive uses are like mediated references, while referential uses are more directly referential.

Paul Grice

The philosopher Paul Grice, working within the ordinary language tradition, understood "meaning" - in his 1957 eponymous article - to have two kinds: natural and non-natural. Natural meaning had to do with cause and effect, for example with the expression "these spots mean measles". Non-natural meaning, on the other hand, had to do with the intentions of the speaker in communicating something to the listener.In his essay, Logic and Conversation, Grice went on to explain and defend an explanation of how conversations work. His guiding maxim was called the cooperative principle, which claimed that the speaker and the listener will have mutual expectations of the kind of information that will be shared. The principle is broken down into four maxims: Quality (which demands truthfulness and honesty), Quantity (demand for just enough information as is required), Relation (relevance of things brought up), and Manner (lucidity). This principle, if and when followed, lets the speaker and listener figure out the meaning of certain implications by way of inference.The works of Grice led to an avalanche of research and interest in the field, both supportive and critical. One spinoff was called Relevance theory, developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson during the mid-1980s, whose goal was to make the notion of relevance more clear. Similarly, in his work, "Universal pragmatics", Jurgen Habermas began a program that sought to improve upon the work of the ordinary language tradition. In it, he laid out the goal of a valid conversation as a pursuit of mutual understanding.Inferential role semanticsMichael Dummett argued against the kind of truth-conditional semantics presented by Davidson. Instead, he argued that basing semantics on assertion conditions avoids a number of difficulties with truth-conditional semantics, such as the transcendental nature of certain kinds of truth condition. He leverages work done in proof-theoretic semantics to provide a kind of inferential role semantics, where:

The meaning of sentences and grammatical constructs is given by their assertion conditions; and

Such a semantics is only guaranteed to be coherent if the inferences associated with the parts of language are in logical harmony.

A semantics based upon assertion conditions is called a verificationist semantics: cf. the verificationism of the Vienna Circle.This work is closely related, though not identical, to one-factor theories of conceptual role semantics.Critiques of use theories of meaningCognitive scientist Jerry Fodor has noted that use theories (of the Wittgensteinian kind) seem to be committed to the notion that language is a public phenomenon—that there is no such thing as a "private language". Fodor opposes such claims because he thinks it is necessary to create or describe the language of thought, which would seemingly require the existence of a "private language".Some philosophers of language, such as Christopher Gauker, have criticised Gricean theories of communication and meaning for their excessive focus on the efforts of a listener to discover the speaker's intentions. This, Gauker argues, is not required for linguistic communication, and so will not suffice for theory.In the 1960s, David Kellogg Lewis published another thesis of meaning as use, as he described meaning as a feature of a social convention (see also convention (philosophy) and conventions as regularities of a specific sort. Lewis' work was an application of game

theory in philosophical matters. Conventions, he argued, are a species of coordination equilibria.

1.4 Reference theories of meaning, also known collectively as semantic externalism, view meaning to be equivalent to those things in the world that are actually connected to signs. There are two broad subspecies of externalism: social and environmental. The first is most closely associated with Tyler Burge and the second with Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripkeand others. A direct reference theory is a theory of meaning that claims that the meaning of an expression lies in what it points out in the world. It stands in contrast to mediated reference theories.John Stuart MillThe philosopher John Stuart Mill was one of the earliest modern advocates of a direct reference theory beginning in 1843.[1] In his A System of Logic Mill introduced a distinction between what he called "connotation" and "denotation." Connotation is a relation between a name (singular or general) and one or more attributes. For example, ‘widow’ denotes widows and connotes the attributes of being female, and of having been married to someone now dead. If a name is connotative, it denotes what it denotes in virtue of object or objects having the attributes the name connotes. Connotation thus determines denotation. The same object can, on the other hand, be denoted with several names with different connotations. A name can have connotation but no denotation. Connotation of a name, if it has one, can be taken to be its meaning in Mill.Ruth Barcan MarcusRuth Barcan Marcus advanced a theory of direct reference for proper names at a symposium in which Quine, and Kripke were participants: published in Synthese, 1961 with Discussion in Synthese 1962. She called directly referring proper names "tags". Kripke urged such a theory in 1971 and thereafter. He called such directly referring proper names "rigid designators".Saul KripkeSaul Kripke defended direct reference theorywhen applied to proper names. Kripke claims that proper names do not have any "senses" at all, because senses only offer contingent facts about things.Kripke articulated this view using the formal apparatus of possible worlds. The possible worlds thought-experiment first takes the subject, and then tries to imagine the subject in other possible worlds. Taking George W. Bush, for example. First (1) the thought-experiment must state that the name "George W. Bush" is the name used to describe the particular individual man that is typically meant. Then (2), the experimenter must imagine the possible states of affairs that reality could have been - where Bush was not president, or went into a different career, was never born at all, etc. When this is done, it becomes obvious that the phrase "President of the United States in 2004" does not necessarily describe George W. Bush, because it is not necessarily true in all possible worlds; it only contingently describes him. By contrast, for instance, the word "apple" will always describe the same things across all possible worlds, because of premise (1). So use of the word "apple" to describe apples is true in all possible worlds.

1.5 Verificationist theories of meaning are generally associated with the early 20th century movement of logical positivism. The traditional formulation of such a theory is that the

meaning of a sentence is its method of verification or falsification. In this form, the thesis was abandoned after the acceptance by most philosophers of the Duhem–Quine thesis ofconfirmation holism after the publication of Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism.[22] However, Michael Dummett has advocated a modified form of verificationism since the 1970s. In this version, the comprehension (and hence meaning) of a sentence consists in the hearer's ability to recognize the demonstration (mathematical, empirical or other) of the truth of the sentence. The verification theory (of meaning) is a philosophical theory proposed by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. A simplified form of the theory states that a proposition's meaning is determined by the method through which it is empirically verified. In other words, if something cannot be empiricially verified, it is meaningless. For example, the statement "It is raining" is meaningless unless there is a way whereby one could, in principle, verify whether or not it is in fact raining. The theory has radical consequences for traditional philosophy as it, if correct, would render much of past philosophical work meaningless, for example metaphysics and ethics. It is important to note that the theory is meant to be applied only to synthetic claims (i.e. claims about the world), rather than analytical ones. The statement of the theory itself was taken by Ayer to be an analytic claim.Verificationism is the view that a statement or question only has meaning if there is some way to determine if the statement is true, or what the answer to the question is.For example, a claim that the world came into existence a short time ago exactly as it is today (with misleading apparent traces of a longer past) would be judged meaningless by a verificationist because there is no way to tell if it is true or not.The verification principle was proposed by A.J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (1936). It is a principle and criterion for meaningfulness that requires a non-analytic, meaningful sentence to be empirically verifiable. However, the core of the idea is much older, dating back at least to Hume and the empiricists, who believed that observation was the only way we can acquire knowledge. Today the term "verificationism" is sometimes used to refer to similar philosophical ideas such as the falsification principle.It was hotly disputed amongst verificationists whether the empirical verification itself must be possible in practice or merely in principle. A statement about the core of the sun might one day be possible to confirm through observations using a technology that hasn't been invented yet, but until then it may be unverifiable in all practical senses. Ayer also distinguished between strong and weak verification.Strong verification refers to statements which are directly verifiable, that is, a statement can be shown to be correct by way of empirical observation. For example, 'There are human beings on Earth.Weak verification refers to statements which are not directly verifiable, for example 'Yesterday was a Monday'. The statement could be said to be weakly verified if empirical observation can render it highly probable.Historically, the verificationist criterion for meaning had the effect of rendering meaningless many philosophical debates, due to their positing of unverifiable statements or concepts. Notoriously, verificationism has been used to rule out as meaningless religious, metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical sentences. However, not all verificationists have found all sentences of these types to be unverifiable. The classical pragmatists, for example, saw verificationism as a guide for doing good work in religion, metaphysics, and ethics.Verificationism and related philosophical ideas continue to be very influential today.

1.6 A pragmatist theory of meaning is any theory in which the meaning (or understanding) of a sentence is determined by the consequences of its application. Dummett attributes such a theory of meaning to Charles Sanders Peirce and other early 20th century American pragmatists. Pragmatist theory focuses on the capacity of statements to create effects in the world. Statements are meaningful when there is a correlation between what is said and what consequently happens. Early pragmatist theory is behaviorist in nature; it refers only to the observable effects of the use of statements. In schema-matching, the early pragmatist theory can be exploited by observing the effects of a statement. For example, adding an instance or modifying instance data are akin to making statements. The effect, and therefore the meaning, of statements is the observed behaviour in the database, the application logic, or the organizational real world, after that statement is made. For example, we might observe that in one database, upon creation of a new instance of ”Product”, new instances of ”Components” are created.If we observe, in a second database, that upon creation of a new instance of ”Merchandise”, new instances of ”Component” are created, according to pragmatist theory, ”Product” and ”Merchandise” have similar meaning.In contrast to the early behaviorist account of pragmatism, later pragmatist theory suggests that the meaning of a statement is not its actual effect but its intended effect. To discover the intention of a statement in the database, e.g. the insertion of an instance of ”Product”, we must examine what the user intended by making this statement. One way this can be done is by tracing database operations to a particular software application or part of a workflow. It is often easier to identify the user’s intent from the software module, rather than the database. For example, assuming some known overlap among the data stored in two databases, when a software module ”AddProducts” inserts an instance X into table ”Product” in one database and the same instance X into table ”Item” in the other database, this may increase our confidence that ”Product” and ”Item” have the same, or at least similar, meaning. Of course, this operationalization, as well as that for the Early Pragmatist Theory (Section)

Other theories exist to discuss non-linguistic meaning (i.e., meaning as conveyed by body language, meanings as consequences, etc.)

1. ̂  Mwihaki, S. (2004) "Meaning as Use: A Functional view of Semantics and Pragmatics". In Swahili Forum. 11: 127-129

2. ̂  Penco, C. "Filosofia del Linguaggio". In Enciclopedia Garzantina della Filosofia. ed. Gianni Vattimo. 2004. Milian:Garzanti Editori. ISBN 88-11-50515-1

3. ̂  Block, Ned. "Conceptual Role Semantics." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Forthcoming. [1]

4. ^ a b Davidson, D. (2001) Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford:Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924629-7

5. ̂  Wittgenstein, L. (1958) Philosophical Investigations. Third edition. trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. New York:MacMillan Publishing Co.

6. ^ a b Brandom, R. (1994) Making it Explicit. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54330-0

7. ̂  Burge, Tyler. 1979. Individualism and the Mental. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4: 73-121.

8. ̂  Putnam, H. (1975) "The Meaning of 'Meaning'". In Language, Mind and Knowledge. ed. K. Gunderson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 88-459-0257-9

9. ^ a b Kripke, S. (1980) Naming and Necessity. Oxford:Basil Blackwell. ISBN 88-339-1135-7

2. THEORY OF TRUTH

Truth can have a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with a particular fact or reality, or being in accord with the body of real things, real events or actualities.[1] It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common archaic usage it also meant constancy or sincerity in action or character.[1] The direct opposite of truth is "falsehood", which can correspondingly take logical, factual or ethical meanings.

However, language and words are essentially "tools" by which humans convey information to one another. As such, "truth" must have a beneficial use in order to be retained within language. Since truths are used in planning and prediction (such as scientific truths being used in engineering), the more reliable and trustworthy an idea is, the more useful and potent it becomes for planning and prediction. Those ideas which can be used anywhere and anytime with maximum reliability are generally considered the most powerful and potent truths. Defining this potency and applicability can be looked upon as "criteria", and the method used to recognize a "truth" is termed a criteria of truth. Since there is no single accepted criteria, they can all be considered "theories".

Various theories and views of truth continue to be debated among scholars and philosophers. There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; what things are truthbearers capable of being true or false; how to define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or absolute. This article introduces the various perspectives and claims, both today and throughout history.

The English word truth is from Old English tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ, Middle English trewþe, cognate to Old High German triuwida, Old Norse tryggð. Like troth, it is a -th nominalisation of the adjective true (Old English tréowe).

The English word true is from Old English (West Saxon) (ge)tríewe, tréowe, cognate to Old Saxon (gi)trûui, Old High German (ga)triuwu (Modern German treu "faithful"), Old Norse tryggr, Gothic triggws,[2] all from a Proto-Germanic *trewwj- "having good faith". Old Norse trú, "faith, word of honour; religious faith, belief"[3] (archaic English troth "loyalty, honesty, good faith", compare Ásatrú).

Thus, 'truth' involves both the quality of "faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity",[4]

and that of "agreement with fact or reality", in Anglo-Saxon expressed by sōþ (Modern English sooth).

All Germanic languages besides English have introduced a terminological distinction between truth "fidelity" and truth "factuality". To express "factuality", North Germanic opted for nouns derived from sanna "to assert, affirm", while continental West Germanic (German and Dutch) opted for continuations of wâra "faith, trust, pact" (cognate to Slavic věra "(religious) faith", but influenced by Latin verus). Romance languages use terms following the Latin veritas, while the Greek aletheia, Russian pravda and Serbian istina have separate etymological origins.

The major theories of truthThe question of what is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs

may properly be considered true, whether by a single person or an entire society, is dealt with by the five major substantive theories introduced below. Each theory presents perspectives that are widely shared by published scholars.[5][6] There also have more recently arisen "deflationary" or "minimalist" theories of truth based on the idea that the application of a term like true to a statement does not assert anything significant about it, for instance, anything about its nature, but

that the label truth is a tool of discourse used to express agreement, to emphasize claims, or to form certain types of generalizations.

Substantive theoriesCorrespondence theory

Correspondence theories state that true beliefs and true statements correspond to the actual state of affairs.[9] This type of theory posits a relationship between thoughts or statements on the one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model which goes back at least to some of the classical Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.[10] This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle solely by how it relates to "things", by whether it accurately describes those "things". An example of correspondence theory is the statement by the Thirteenth Century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas: Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ("Truth is the equation [or adequation] of things and intellect"), a statement which Aquinas attributed to the Ninth Century neoplatonist Isaac Israeli.[11][12] Aquinas also restated the theory as: “A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality” [13]

Correspondence theory practically operates on the assumption that truth is a matter of accurately copying what was much later called "objective reality" and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols.[14] Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved independently of some analysis of additional factors.[5][15] For example, language plays a role in that all languages have words that are not easily translatable into another. The German word Zeitgeist is one such example: one who speaks or understands the language may "know" what it means, but any translation of the word apparently fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages). Thus, some words add an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, whose semantic theory is summarized further below in this article.[16]

Proponents of several of the theories below have gone further to assert that there are yet other issues necessary to the analysis, such as interpersonal power struggles, community interactions, personal biases and other factors involved in deciding what is seen as truth.Coherence theory

For coherence theories in general, truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system. Very often, though, coherence is taken to imply something more than simple logical consistency; often there is a demand that the propositions in a coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system.[17] A pervasive tenet of coherence theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole. Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system.

Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to characterize the essential and intrinsic properties of formal systems in logic and mathematics.[18] However, formal reasoners are content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory systems side by side, for example, the various alternative geometries. On the whole, coherence theories have been criticized as lacking justification in their application to other areas of truth, especially with

respect to assertions about the natural world, empirical data in general, assertions about practical matters of psychology and society, especially when used without support from the other major theories of truth.[19]

Coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of Spinoza, Leibniz, and G.W.F. Hegel, along with the British philosopher F.H. Bradley.[20] They have found a resurgence also among several proponents of logical positivism, notably Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel.Constructivist theory

Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, is historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as "constructed," because it does not reflect any external "transcendent" realities (as a pure correspondence theory might hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender are socially constructed.

Giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture were man-made. Vico's epistemological orientation gathers the most diverse rays and unfolds in one axiom – verum ipsum factum – "truth itself is constructed". Hegel and Marx were among the other early proponents of the premise that truth is, or can be, socially constructed. Marx, like many critical theorists who followed, did not reject the existence of objective truth but rather distinguished between true knowledge and knowledge that has been distorted through power or ideology. For Marx scientific and true knowledge is 'in accordance with the dialectical understanding of history' and ideological knowledge 'an epiphenomenal expression of the relation of material forces in a given economic arrangement'.[21]

Consensus theoryConsensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might

come to be agreed upon, by some specified group. Such a group might include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person.

Among the current advocates of consensus theory as a useful accounting of the concept of "truth" is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas.[22] Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.[23] Among the current strong critics of consensus theory is the philosopher Nicholas Rescher.Pragmatic theory

The three most influential forms of the pragmatic theory of truth were introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Although there are wide differences in viewpoint among these and other proponents of pragmatic theory, they hold in common that truth is verified and confirmed by the results of putting one's concepts into practice.[25]

Peirce defines truth as follows: "Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth." [26] This statement emphasizes Peirce's view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he describes elsewhere as fallibilism and "reference to the future", are essential to a proper conception of truth. Although Peirce uses words like concordance and correspondence to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation, he is also quite explicit in saying that

definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than nominal definitions, which he accords a lower status than real definitions.

William James's version of pragmatic theory, while complex, is often summarized by his statement that "the 'true' is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving."[27] By this, James meant that truth is a quality the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to actual practice (thus, "pragmatic").

John Dewey, less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed truths.[28]

Though not widely touted nor publicized, a new variation of the pragmatic theory was defined and wielded successfully from the 20th century forward. Defined and named by William Hocking, this variation is known as "negative pragmatism". Essentially, what works may or may not be true, but what fails cannot be true because the truth always works. [29] Richard Feynman also ascribed to it: "We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong."[30] This approach incorporates many of the ideas from Peirce, James, and Dewey. For Peirce, the idea of "... endless investigation would tend to bring about scientific belief ..." fits negative pragmatism in that a negative pragmatist would never stop testing. As Feynman noted, an idea or theory "... could never be proved right, because tomorrow's experiment might succeed in proving wrong what you thought was right." [31] Similarly, James and Dewey's ideas also ascribe to repeated testing which is "self-corrective" over time.

Pragmatism and negative pragmatism are also closely aligned with the coherence theory of truth in that any testing should not be isolated but rather incorporate knowledge from all human endeavors and experience. The universe is a whole and integrated system, and testing should recognize and account for its diversity. As Feynman said, "... if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong."[32]

Minimalist (deflationary) theoriesA number of philosophers reject the thesis that the concept or term truth refers to a real

property of sentences or propositions. These philosophers are responding, in part, to the common use of truth predicates (e.g., that some particular thing "...is true") which was particularly prevalent in philosophical discourse on truth in the first half of the 20th century. From this point of view, to assert the proposition “'2 + 2 = 4' is true” is logically equivalent to asserting the proposition “2 + 2 = 4”, and the phrase “is true” is completely dispensable in this and every other context. These positions are broadly described

as deflationary theories of truth, since they attempt to deflate the presumed importance of the words "true" or truth,

as disquotational theories, to draw attention to the disappearance of the quotation marks in cases like the above example, or

as minimalist theories of truth.[5][33]

Whichever term is used, deflationary theories can be said to hold in common that "[t]he predicate 'true' is an expressive convenience, not the name of a property requiring deep analysis."[5] Once we have identified the truth predicate's formal features and utility, deflationists argue, we have said all there is to be said about truth. Among the theoretical concerns of these views is to explain away those special cases where it does appear that the concept of truth has peculiar and interesting properties. (See, e.g., Semantic paradoxes, and below.)

In addition to highlighting such formal aspects of the predicate "is true", some deflationists point out that the concept enables us to express things that might otherwise require infinitely long sentences. For example, one cannot express confidence in Michael's accuracy by asserting the endless sentence:

Michael says, 'snow is white' and snow is white, or he says 'roses are red' and roses are red or he says ... etc.

This assertion can also be succinctly expressed by saying: What Michael says is true.[34]

Performative theory of truthAttributed to P. F. Strawson is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say

"'Snow is white' is true" is to perform the speech act of signaling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements is not as odd as it may seem. Consider, for example, that when the bride says "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, she is performing the act of taking this man to be her lawful wedded husband. She is not describing herself as taking this man, but actually doing so (perhaps the most thorough analysis of such "illocutionary acts" is J. L. Austin, "How to Do Things With Words"[35]).

Strawson holds that a similar analysis is applicable to all speech acts, not just illocutionary ones: "To say a statement is true is not to make a statement about a statement, but rather to perform the act of agreeing with, accepting, or endorsing a statement. When one says 'It's true that it's raining,' one asserts no more than 'It's raining.' The function of [the statement] 'It's true that...' is to agree with, accept, or endorse the statement that 'it's raining.'"[36]

Redundancy and related theoriesAccording to the redundancy theory of truth, asserting that a statement is true is

completely equivalent to asserting the statement itself. For example, making the assertion that " 'Snow is white' is true" is equivalent to asserting "Snow is white". Redundancy theorists infer from this premise that truth is a redundant concept; that is, it is merely a word that is traditionally used in conversation or writing, generally for emphasis, but not a word that actually equates to anything in reality. This theory is commonly attributed to Frank P. Ramsey, who held that the use of words like fact and truth was nothing but a roundabout way of asserting a proposition, and that treating these words as separate problems in isolation from judgment was merely a "linguistic muddle".[5][37][38]

A variant of redundancy theory is the disquotational theory which uses a modified form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. Yet another version of deflationism is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Ramsey's claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true", when said in response to "It's raining", are prosentences, expressions that merely repeat the content of other expressions. In the same way that it means the same as my dog in the sentence My dog was hungry, so I fed it, That's true is supposed to mean the same as It's raining — if you say the latter and I then say the former. These variations do not necessarily follow Ramsey in asserting that truth is not a property, but rather can be understood to say that, for instance, the assertion "P" may well involve a substantial truth, and the theorists in this case are minimalizing only the redundancy or prosentence involved in the statement such as "that's true."[5]

Deflationary principles do not apply to representations that are not analogous to sentences, and also do not apply to many other things that are commonly judged to be true or otherwise. Consider the analogy between the sentence "Snow is white" and the character named Snow White, both of which can be true in some sense. To a minimalist, saying "Snow is white is

true" is the same as saying "Snow is white," but to say "Snow White is true" is not the same as saying "Snow White."Pluralist theories

Several of the major theories of truth hold that there is a particular property the having of which makes a belief or proposition true. Pluralist theories of truth assert that there may be more than one property that makes propositions true: ethical propositions might be true by virtue of coherence. Propositions about the physical world might be true by corresponding to the objects and properties they are about.

Some of the pragmatic theories, such as those by Charles Peirce and William James, included aspects of correspondence, coherence and constructivist theories.[26][27] Crispin Wright argued in his 1992 book Truth and Objectivity that any predicate which satisfied certain platitudes about truth qualified as a truth predicate. In some discourses, Wright argued, the role of the truth predicate might be played by the notion of superassertibility. [39] Michael Lynch, in a 2009 book Truth as One and Many, argued that we should see truth as a functional property capable of being multiply manifested in distinct properties like correspondence or coherence.[40

Most believed theoriesAccording to a survey of professional philosophers and others on their philosophical

views which was carried out in November 2009 (taken by 3226 respondents, including 1803 philosophy faculty members and/or PhDs and 829 philosophy graduate students) 44.9% of respondents accept or lean towards correspondence theories, 20.7% accept or lean towards deflationary theories and 13.8% epistemic theories.[41]

Formal theoriesTruth in logic

Logic is concerned with the patterns in reason that can help tell us if a proposition is true or not. However, logic does not deal with truth in the absolute sense, as for instance a metaphysician does. Logicians use formal languages to express the truths which they are concerned with, and as such there is only truth under some interpretation or truth within some logical system.

A logical truth (also called an analytic truth or a necessary truth) is a statement which is true in all possible worlds[42] or under all possible interpretations, as contrasted to a fact (also called a synthetic claim or a contingency) which is only true in this world as it has historically unfolded. A proposition such as “If p and q, then p.” is considered to be logical truth because it is true because of the meaning of the symbols and words in it and not because of any facts of any particular world. They are such that they could not be untrue.Truth in mathematics

There are two main approaches to truth in mathematics. They are the model theory of truth and the proof theory of truth[citation needed].

Historically, with the nineteenth century development of Boolean algebra mathematical models of logic began to treat "truth", also represented as "T" or "1", as an arbitrary constant. "Falsity" is also an arbitrary constant, which can be represented as "F" or "0". In propositional logic, these symbols can be manipulated according to a set of axioms and rules of inference, often given in the form of truth tables.

In addition, from at least the time of Hilbert's program at the turn of the twentieth century to the proof of Gödel's theorem and the development of the Church-Turing thesis in the early part of that century, true statements in mathematics were generally assumed to be those statements which are provable in a formal axiomatic system.

The works of Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, and others shook this assumption, with the development of statements that are true but cannot be proven within the system. [43] Two examples of the latter can be found in Hilbert's problems. Work on Hilbert's 10th problem led in the late twentieth century to the construction of specific Diophantine equations for which it is undecidable whether they have a solution,[44] or even if they do, whether they have a finite or infinite number of solutions. More fundamentally, Hilbert's first problem was on the continuum hypothesis.[45]

Gödel and Paul Cohen showed that this hypothesis cannot be proved or disproved using the standard axioms of set theory and a finite number of proof steps.[46] In the view of some, then, it is equally reasonable to take either the continuum hypothesis or its negation as a new axiom.Semantic theory of truth

'P' is true if and only if Pwhere 'P' is a reference to the sentence (the sentence's name), and P is just the sentence itself.Logician and philosopher Alfred Tarski developed the theory for formal languages (such as formal logic). Here he restricted it in this way: no language could contain its own truth predicate, that is, the expression is true could only apply to sentences in some other language. The latter he called an object language, the language being talked about. (It may, in turn, have a truth predicate that can be applied to sentences in still another language.) The reason for his restriction was that languages that contain their own truth predicate will contain paradoxical sentences like the Liar: This sentence is not true. See The Liar paradox. As a result Tarski held that the semantic theory could not be applied to any natural language, such as English, because they contain their own truth predicates. Donald Davidson used it as the foundation of his truth-conditional semantics and linked it to radical interpretation in a form of coherentism.

Bertrand Russell is credited with noticing the existence of such paradoxes even in the best symbolic formalizations of mathematics in his day, in particular the paradox that came to be named after him, Russell's paradox. Russell and Whitehead attempted to solve these problems in Principia Mathematica by putting statements into a hierarchy of types, wherein a statement cannot refer to itself, but only to statements lower in the hierarchy. This in turn led to new orders of difficulty regarding the precise natures of types and the structures of conceptually possible type systems that have yet to be resolved to this day.Kripke's theory of truth

Saul Kripke contends that a natural language can in fact contain its own truth predicate without giving rise to contradiction. He showed how to construct one as follows:

Begin with a subset of sentences of a natural language that contains no occurrences of the expression "is true" (or "is false"). So The barn is big is included in the subset, but not " The barn is big is true", nor problematic sentences such as "This sentence is false".

Define truth just for the sentences in that subset. Then extend the definition of truth to include sentences that predicate truth or falsity of

one of the original subset of sentences. So "The barn is big is true" is now included, but not either "This sentence is false" nor "'The barn is big is true' is true".

Next, define truth for all sentences that predicate truth or falsity of a member of the second set. Imagine this process repeated infinitely, so that truth is defined for The barn is big; then for "The barn is big is true"; then for "'The barn is big is true' is true", and so on.

Notice that truth never gets defined for sentences like This sentence is false, since it was not in the original subset and does not predicate truth of any sentence in the original or any subsequent set. In Kripke's terms, these are "ungrounded." Since these sentences are never assigned either

truth or falsehood even if the process is carried out infinitely, Kripke's theory implies that some sentences are neither true nor false. This contradicts the Principle of bivalence: every sentence must be either true or false. Since this principle is a key premise in deriving the Liar paradox, the paradox is dissolved.[47]

^ a b Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, truth, 2005 ^ see Holtzmann's law for the -ww- : -gg- alternation. ^ A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Geir T. Zoëga (1910), Northvegr.org ^ OED on true has "Steadfast in adherence to a commander or friend, to a principle or cause, to one's promises, faith, etc.; firm in allegiance; faithful, loyal, constant, trusty; Honest, honourable, upright, virtuous, trustworthy; free from deceit, sincere, truthful " besides "Conformity with fact; agreement with reality; accuracy, correctness, verity; Consistent with fact; agreeing with the reality; representing the thing as it is; Real, genuine; rightly answering to the description; properly so called; not counterfeit, spurious, or imaginary." ^ a b c d e f g Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Supp., "Truth", auth: Michael Williams, p572-573 (Macmillan, 1996) ^ Blackburn, Simon, and Simmons, Keith (eds., 1999), Truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Includes papers by James, Ramsey, Russell, Tarski, and more recent work. ^ Horwich, Paul, Truth, (2nd edition, 1988), ^ Field, Hartry, Truth and the Absence of Fact (2001). ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, p223 (Macmillan, 1969) Prior uses Bertrand Russell's wording in defining correspondence theory. According to Prior, Russell was substantially responsible for helping to make correspondence theory widely known under this name. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, pp. 223-224 (Macmillan, 1969) ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, p224, Macmillan, 1969. ^ "Correspondence Theory of Truth", in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ^ "Correspondence Theory of Truth", in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (citing De Veritate Q.1, A.1&3; cf. Summa Theologiae Q.16). ^ See, e.g., Bradley, F.H., "On Truth and Copying", in Blackburn, et al. (eds., 1999),Truth, 31-45. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, pp. 223 ff. Macmillan, 1969). See especially, section on "Moore's Correspondence Theory", 225-226, "Russell's Correspondence Theory", 226-227, "Remsey and Later Wittgenstein", 228-229, "Tarski's Semantic Theory", 230-231. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Correspondence Theory of Truth", auth: Arthur N. Prior, p. 223 ff. Macmillan, 1969). See the section on "Tarski's Semantic Theory", 230-231. ^ Immanuel Kant, for instance, assembled a controversial but quite coherent system in the early 19th century, whose validity and usefulness continues to be debated even today. Similarly, the systems of Leibniz and Spinoza are characteristic systems that are internally coherent but controversial in terms of their utility and validity. ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Coherence Theory of Truth", auth: Alan R. White, p130-131 (Macmillan, 1969) ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Coherence Theory of Truth", auth: Alan R. White, p131-133, see esp., section on "Epistemological assumptions" (Macmillan, 1969)

^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Coherence Theory of Truth", auth: Alan R. White, p130 ^ May, Todd, 1993, Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, politics in the thought of Michel Foucault' with reference to Althusser and Balibar, 1970 ^ See, e.g., Habermas, Jürgen, Knowledge and Human Interests (English translation, 1972). ^ See, e.g., Habermas, Jürgen, Knowledge and Human Interests (English translation, 1972), esp. PART III, pp 187 ff. ^ Rescher, Nicholas, Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (1995). ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.5, "Pragmatic Theory of Truth", 427 (Macmillan, 1969). ^ a b Peirce, C.S. (1901), "Truth and Falsity and Error" (in part), pp. 716–720 in James Mark Baldwin, ed., Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, v. 2. Peirce's section is entitled "Logical", beginning on p. 718, column 1, and ending on p. 720 with the initials "(C.S.P.)", see Google Books Eprint. Reprinted, Collected Papers v. 5, pp. 565–573. ^ a b James, William, The Meaning of Truth, A Sequel to 'Pragmatism', (1909). ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.2, "Dewey, John", auth Richard J. Bernstein, p383 (Macmillan, 1969) ^ Sahakian & Sahakian, Ideas, p. 9. ^ Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, p. 152. ^ Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, p. 152. ^ Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, p. 150. ^ Blackburn, Simon, and Simmons, Keith (eds., 1999), Truth in the Introductory section of the book. ^ Kirkham, Theories of Truth, MIT Press, 1992. ^ J. L. Austin, "How to Do Things With Words". Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975 ^ Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.6: Performative Theory of Truth, auth: Gertrude Ezorsky, p. 88 (Macmillan, 1969) ^ Ramsey, F.P. (1927), "Facts and Propositions", Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7, 153–170. Reprinted, pp. 34–51 in F.P. Ramsey, Philosophical Papers, David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990 ^ Le Morvan, Pierre. (2004) "Ramsey on Truth and Truth on Ramsey", The British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12(4), pp. 705-718. ^ Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. ^ Truth as One and Many (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). ^ http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=All+respondents&areas0=0&areas_max=1&grain=medium ^ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ^ See, e.g., Chaitin, Gregory L., The Limits of Mathematics (1997) esp. 89 ff. ^ M. Davis. "Hilbert's Tenth Problem is Unsolvable." American Mathematical Monthly 80, pp. 233-269, 1973 ^ Yandell, Benjamin H.. The Honors Class. Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers (2002). ^ Chaitin, Gregory L., The Limits of Mathematics (1997) 1-28, 89 ff. ^ Kripke, Saul. "Outline of a Theory of Truth", Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975), 690-716 ^ a b c d David, Marion (2005). "Correspondence Theory of Truth" in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ^ Osman Amin (2007), "Influence of Muslim Philosophy on the West", Monthly Renaissance 17 (11).

^ Jan A. Aertsen (1988), Nature and Creature: Thomas Aquinas's Way of Thought, p. 152. BRILL, ISBN 90-04-08451-7. ^ Simone van Riet (in Latin). Liber de philosophia prima, sive Scientia divina. p. 413. ^ Avicenna: The Metaphysics of The Healing. Michael E. Marmura. Brigham Young University Press. 2005. p. 284. ^ Disputed Questions on Truth, 1, 2, c, reply to Obj. 1. Trans. Mulligan, McGlynn, Schmidt, Truth, vol. I, pp. 10-12. ^ "Veritas supra ens fundatur" (Truth is founded on being). Disputed Questions on Truth, 10, 2, reply to Obj. 3. ^ a b Kant, Immanuel (1800), Introduction to Logic. Reprinted, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (trans.), Dennis Sweet (intro.) (2005) ^ "Die Wahrheit ist die Bewegung ihrer an ihr selbst." The Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, ¶ 48 ^ On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, §§ 29–33 ^ Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992 ^ Watts, Michael. Kierkegaard, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003 ^ Robert Wicks, Friedrich Nietzsche - Early Writings: 1872-1876, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) ^ John Maraldo, Nishida Kitarô - Self-Awareness, in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) ^ Foucault, M. "The Order of Things", London: Vintage Books, 1970 (1966) ^ a b Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: Michigan University Press, 1994. ^ Baudrillard, Jean. "Simulacra and Simulations", in Selected Writings , ed. Mark Poster, Stanford University Press, 1988) 166 ff ^ Baudrillard's attribution of this quote to Ecclesiastes is deliberately fictional. "Baudrillard attributes this quote to Ecclesiastes. However, the quote is a fabrication (see Jean Baudrillard. Cool Memories III, 1991-95. London: Verso, 1997). Editor’s note: In Fragments: Conversations With François L’Yvonnet. New York: Routledge, 2004:11, Baudrillard acknowledges this 'Borges-like' fabrication." Cited in footnote #4 in Smith, Richard G., "Lights, Camera, Action: Baudrillard and the Performance of Representations", International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2005) ^ a b c d e f Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief And World Religions, Ignatius Press, 2004 ^ Ratzinger, Truth and Conscience, 10th Workshop for Bishops, Dallas, 1991 ^ Ratzinger, Truth and Freedom, Communio: International Catholic Review, Spring 1996 ^ a b Benedict XVI, Address at the University of Regensburg 2006

3. THEORY OF REFERENCEReference is a relation that obtains between expressions and what speakers use expressions to

talk about. When I assert ‘George W. Bush is a Republican’, I use the proper name ‘George W. Bush’ to refer to a particular individual, an individual about whom I go on to speak. Although it questionable whether all words refer, there are several types of words (including proper names)

which are arguably of the referring sort. These will be discussed below. The central question concerning reference is: How do words refer? What, in other words, is the “mechanism” of reference? Subsidiary questions concern the relation between reference and meaning and reference and truth. Some philosophers have thought that the nature of reference is able to shed light on important metaphysical or epistemological issues. Other philosophers are not so sanguine. Indeed, some philosophers deny that reference is a substantive relation deserving of philosophical scrutiny.1. Introduction

We use language to talk about the world. What we say in talking about the world is generally meaningful and oftentimes true. Such is the case when (in the appropriate sort of setting), I assertively utter:

1. George W. Bush is a Republican.How do we manage to do such things? How (for instance) do I manage to talk about George W. Bush and thereby say meaningful and true things about him? In a word: Reference. More picturesquely, we are able to use language to talk about the world because words, at least certain types of words, somehow ‘hook on to’ things in the world — things like George W. Bush. Proper names — expressions like ‘George W. Bush’ — are widely regarded as paradigmatic referring expressions. Although it may seem implausible to suppose that all words refer, that all words somehow ‘attach to’ bits of reality — several different types of words are arguably of the referring sort. These include: proper names, natural kind terms, indexicals, and definite descriptions (all of which will be discussed below.)

The central issues, the central questions, concerning reference are three: (i) What is the mechanism of reference? In other words, in virtue of what does a word (of the referring sort) attach to a particular object/individual? (ii) What is the relation between reference and meaning? For instance, is the meaning of a word to be identified with the mechanism by which it refers? Or is the meaning of a word perhaps the reference itself? (iii) What is the relation between reference and truth? More particularly, does the reference of a word, or its mechanism of reference, somehow enter into the truth conditions of assertive utterances of sentences containing that word?

The focus in this article will be on the first of these three questions, that concerning the mechanism of reference, although some attention will be given to the other two questions as well. Indeed, as will become evident in what follows, addressing the first question is simply not possible without giving at least some attention to the second and third questions. Theories of proper names will be considered first, as proper names are considered by many to be referring terms par excellence, and the means by which proper names refer is arguably unique to such expressions. Afterward, other terms often classified as ‘referring’ terms will be considered: natural kind terms, indexicals, and (singular) definite descriptions. A few remarks will then be made about expressions not typically thought of as ‘referring’ expressions — such as quantifiers, prepositions, verbs, and adverbs. In the penultimate section of the article, some possible connections between both reference and reality and reference and knowledge will be briefly discussed. Finally, a few words will be said about so-called ‘negative’ views of reference, according to which reference is not a substantive relation between language and reality, worthy of serious philosophical study.2. Three Theories of Reference for Proper Names

Proper names are paradigmatic referring expressions. If there are terms that refer — that somehow ‘attach to’ things in the world — then proper names are surely among them. What are

proper names? For the purposes of this article, one might think of proper names as at least roughly co-extensive with the sorts of expressions that ordinary (non-philosophical) folk call ‘names.’ Expressions like ‘George W. Bush’, ‘Barcelona’, and ‘Mount Everest’ are thus to be counted as proper names. What do these expressions have in common? In virtue of what do they constitute a genuine class of linguistic expressions? They are syntactically simple expressions that refer, or at least purport to refer, to particular objects/individuals. Thus, ‘George W. Bush’ refers to a particular man, ‘Barcelona’ refers to a particular city, and ‘Mount Everest’ refers to a particular mountain. And even though it is questionable whether expressions such as ‘Santa Claus’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes’ actually refer to anything at all — there can be no doubt that they at least purport to refer: to Santa Claus and Sherlock Holmes, respectively. They thus count as proper names for present purposes.

There are many theories concerning the means by which proper names refer. We will consider three of the more popular (and plausible) kinds of such theories: description theories, causal theories, and ‘hybrid’ theories, the latter of which combine elements of description and causal theories.2.1 Description Theories

According to description theories of proper names, a proper name, as used by a speaker, refers via the descriptive content associated (by the speaker) with that name. This descriptive content is thought to uniquely determine the name's referent. Thus, when a speaker uses the name ‘N’ and in doing so succeeds in referring to a particular object or individual x, he manages to do so because he thinks of N as the (unique) F, and x is in fact the (unique) F.

As descriptivists Frege (1892) and Russell (1919) acknowledge, the content in question may vary from one speaker to the next. Indeed (according to Russell) such content may vary across time for one and the same speaker. Thus, while I may associate with ‘Bush’ the current U.S. president, his wife may associate with the same name my husband. When Bush is no longer president, my identifying content will no doubt change — perhaps to something like the U.S. president who compromised on the issue of government-funded stem cell research. If Bush and his wife were to divorce, her identifying descriptive content would no doubt change as well — perhaps to my ex-husband. In either case, the individual referred to by means of the name is determined (is ‘picked out’) by the particular descriptive content the speaker associates with that name. Because the descriptive content in question often seems specifiable by means of a definite description (an expression of the form the F), such theories are often (even if somewhat misleadingly[1]) known as ‘description theories’ of proper names.

The motivation for description theories of proper names is two-fold. First, such theories are easily expanded into plausible theories of meaning (or ‘semantic content’). So expanded, the description theory is able to accommodate the very sorts of cases that prove problematic for Millian accounts of the meaning of proper names. (Here, we will begin to see the connection between reference and meaning.) A ‘Millian’ theory (after J.S. Mill, 1867) claims that the meaning of a proper name is simply its bearer. Cases that prove difficult from such theories include: identity statements between co-referring names, sentences containing ‘empty’ names, true negative existentials, and propositional attitude attributions. Second, an expanded description theory of meaning (in contrast to its Millian competitor) provides an account of reference: it says (in effect) that the mechanism by which an expression refers (its associated descriptive content) is its meaning.

Let's begin by looking at the sorts of cases that prove problematic for the otherwise intuitive doctrine of Millianism, according to which the meaning of a proper name is simply its bearer. Consider the following four sentences:

2. Hesperus is Phosphorus.3. Santa Claus lives at the North Pole.4. Vulcan does not exist.5. Fred believes that Cicero, but not Tully, was Roman.The Millian view has problems with these sorts of cases. Suppose (as is in fact the case) that

‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ refer to the same thing (the planet Venus). Suppose as well that ‘Santa Claus’ and ‘Vulcan’ refer to nothing,[2] and that Fred is a perfectly rational agent, and thus not inclined to harbor contradictory beliefs. Then, Millianism would predict that (2), which seems informative, is trivial; it would predict that (3), which seems meaningful is meaningless (on account of a meaningless subject term); it would predict that the intuitively true and meaningful (4) is absurd, as its meaningfulness presupposes the existence of what it denies exists; and it would predict that (5), which attributes seemingly consistent beliefs to Fred, attributes to him beliefs that no minimally rationally agent could possibly entertain (simultaneously). Of course, Millians have made attempts to respond to these concerns. [3] The usual strategy is to claim that the intuitions surrounding utterances of sentences like (2) through (5) are the result of mistaking what is merely communicated (or implicated) for the proposition literally expressed. Thus, although what is literally expressed by (2) is trivial, what is communicated is not; although there may be no proposition literally expressed by (3) or (4), propositions are nonetheless communicated by utterances of those sentences. Finally, although an utterance of (5) is likely to express a falsehood — assuming Fred is a rational agent — such an utterance may nevertheless communicate something true (if Fred has two distinct ‘modes of presentation,’ or ways of thinking about, the famous Roman orator).

In contrast to the Millian approach, which involves ‘explaining away’ wayward intuitions, the descriptive approach embraces these same intuitions as accurate. In particular, the descriptivist might claim (as many description theorists do) that the reference-fixing descriptive content associated with a proper name constitutes the meaning of that name. Thus, not only does the current U.S. president determine the reference of the name ‘Bush’ (as I now employ that name), its meaning also constitutes the meaning of that name. If we allow that proper names that are co-referring can have different descriptive meanings, then we can account for the informativeness of (2) and for the fact that (5) ascribes consistent beliefs to Fred. Just suppose that the meaning of ‘Hesperus’ is the brightest evening star, the meaning of ‘Phosphorus’ is the brightest morning star. Then (2) expresses the informative claim (or ‘proposition’) that the brightest evening star is the brightest morning star. Suppose that ‘Cicero’ means the most famous ancient orator and ‘Tully’ means the guy called ‘Tully’ by the English. Then (5) ascribes consistent beliefs to Fred: the belief that the most famous ancient orator was Roman and the belief that the guy called ‘Tully’ by the English was not Roman. Moreover, if we allow that proper names that don't refer nevertheless have associated descriptive meanings, then we can account for the meaningfulness of sentences like (3) and (4). Thus, by claiming that the reference-fixing descriptive content of an expression is its meaning, description theories of reference are able to provide intuitive accounts for those cases that prove problematic for Millianism.

Moreover, as noted above, Millianism — in contrast to its competitor, expanded descriptivism — does not come equipped with an answer to the central question of reference —

even if it can be supplemented with an answer to this question (such as the causal theory of reference, discussed in the next section). The description theory effectively constitutes an answer to this very question: a proper name refers to its bearer in virtue of the fact that that entity ‘satisfies’ the descriptive content associated with that name.

The central problem with the description theory is that proper names are not semantically equivalent to singular definite descriptions. Ruth Barcan Marcus (1961) articulates the point in terms of her thesis that proper names are ‘tags’. To say that proper names are tags is, for Barcan Marcus, to say that they have no linguistic meaning and are therefore not semantically equivalent to any singular descriptions of their references. Proper names do not, contra the description theory, refer by way of the descriptions they allegedly stand for; they refer directly to their bearers. Barcan Marcus's (1961) view is thus a version of what has come to be known as the “Direct Reference” theory of names. Important consequences of this theory include, as Barcan Marcus (1961) notes, the necessity of identity statements between co-referring proper names. [4]

Other important consequences include the dissolution of puzzles involving substitutivity in modal contexts (Barcan Marcus 1993).

Nearly a decade later, Saul Kripke, in a trio of lectures subsequently published as Naming and Necessity (1980), proposed a similar view of proper names.[5] For Kripke, as for Barcan Marcus, proper names refer directly, without the mediation of any associated descriptive content. And Kripke, like Barcan Marcus before him, makes note of an interesting consequence of this view: the necessity of identity statements between co-referring proper names. However, Kripke articulates his version of the Direct Reference theory, not in terms of the notion of tagging, but in terms of the notion of “rigid designation,” a notion that applies not only to proper names, but to definite descriptions and natural kind terms as well.

This brings us to Kripke's three well-known objections to description theories (1980).[6] There is: the problem of unwanted necessity (sometimes referred to as an ‘epistemic’ problem); the problem of rigidity (sometimes referred to as a ‘modal’ problem); and the problem of ignorance and error (sometimes referred to as a ‘semantic’ problem).[7] The first and second problems apply only to expanded description theories of reference: theories that claim that the meaning of a proper name is its reference-fixing description. The third problem applies to the ‘basic’ versions of the description theory as well: to those versions that claim only that the reference of a proper name is determined by the associated descriptive content, a content which needn't be construed as the name's ‘meaning.’

To see these problems, consider assertive utterances of the following sentences:6. Aristotle (if he existed) was a philosopher.7. Aristotle was fond of dogs.8. Einstein was a genius.

Suppose that, for a particular speaker Fred, the definite description that expresses the meaning of ‘Aristotle’ is ‘the last great philosopher of antiquity’. Then, if expanded descriptivism is correct, a sentence like (6) should sound (to Fred) trivial, analytic, necessary. It should sound as trivial, necessary and analytic as ‘bachelors are unmarried’ or ‘squares have four sides’ — at least to Fred. But it probably won't; even Fred would admit that Aristotle might never have gone into philosophy. Had things been different, Aristotle might (for instance) have died in infancy. This is the problem of ‘unwanted necessity.’

Now let's consider just such a ‘possible world’: a world in which Aristotle died in infancy. Suppose that this possible world is, in other respects, pretty much like the actual world. And suppose, for the moment, that we adopt the description theory. Then, sentence (7), as used

by English speakers in the actual world, would arguably be true of such a possible world just in case Plato was (in that possible world) fond of dogs! For given the suppositions in question, Plato would arguably have satisfied the description associated with ‘Aristotle’ (by hypothesis ‘the last great philosopher of antiquity’). But it seems intuitively implausible to suppose that the name ‘Aristotle’ — as we in fact use that name in the actual world — could be used to refer to anyone other than its actual world referent: Aristotle. Of course, had things been relevantly different, the name ‘Aristotle’ might have been used to refer to Plato (say), but given how the name is actually used, it cannot be used by speakers to refer to Plato in this — or any other possible — world in which Plato exists. All this suggests that names are rigid: such that they refer to the same individual in every possible world in which that individual exists. But definite descriptions, in contrast, do not appear to be rigid: the definite description ‘the last great philosopher of antiquity’ might well refer to (or ‘denote’) Plato in a world where Aristotle dies in infancy. This suggests that names are semantically different from descriptions, which in turn suggests that the mechanism by which a name refers cannot be identified with some definite description. This is the problem of ‘rigidity.’

Now let's move on to the problem of ‘ignorance and error.’ Suppose that Fred believes of Einstein only that he was a physicist. Then, he will fail to refer to Einstein via his use of ‘Einstein’ because the associated descriptive content — a physicist — fails to pick Einstein out from among countless other physicists. This is the problem of ‘ignorance.’ Suppose now that Fred believes that Einstein was the inventor of the atomic bomb. (According to Kripke (1980) many speakers believe this.) The description theory would then predict what is surely false — that when such a speaker utters a sentence like (8), he refers not to Einstein but to Oppenheimer (the person who did in fact invent the atomic bomb). This is the problem of ‘error.’

For these and other reasons, many have rejected description theories in favor of causal or hybrid theories. Not everyone, though, has rejected the description theory. Searle's (1983) response to Kripke's three-pronged challenge basically claims that the theory refuted by Kripke (the so-called ‘Frege-Russell’ theory) is a strawman, and that a plausible version of the description theory (namely, Searle's) can circumvent each and every one of Kripke's objections. One need only acknowledge that the reference-fixing content associated with the use of a given name needn't be the sort of content expressible by a single definite description, or even by an open disjunction of such expressions. For there is no reason to insist that reference-determining content must be expressible linguistically. Rather, the reference-fixing content is identical to the totality of ‘intentional content,’ mental content a given speaker associates with the name in question. The referent will be whatever object/individual fits the bulk of this content. Moreover, such content (which might vary widely from speaker to speaker) is not to be regarded as giving the meaning of a name, where the ‘meaning’ of a name is construed as something like a definition. Once these acknowledgments are made, the problems noted by Kripke are easily avoided (according to Searle). In response to the problem of unwanted necessity, Searle effectively bites the bullet. On his view, it is indeed a necessary truth that Aristotle (for instance) satisfies a significant chunk of the intentional content associated (by the speaker) with the name ‘Aristotle’. But this does not mean that ‘Aristotle was a philosopher’ is on par with ‘bachelors are unmarried’. For the associated descriptive content is not in any way ‘synonymous’ with the name; it does not define the name, it merely fixes its reference. In response to the rigidity problem, Searle points out that intuitions of rigidity are easily enough accommodated: one can simply rigidify the reference-fixing description. Thus, ‘Aristotle’ refers (in all possible scenarios) to the individual who actually did such-and-such. Finally, in response to the problem of

ignorance and error, Searle points out that once all of the relevant intentional content is taken into consideration, the problem of ignorance and error simply does not arise. For associated with ‘Einstein’ will of course be the content individual whom others in my community call ‘Einstein’. If this content, which might well be sufficient to pick out Einstein, has significant weight for the speaker, it could effectively ‘trump’ any divergent content. It might thus succeed in ‘picking out’ the right individual: Einstein. (And if it didn't, that would only show that the speaker wasn't really referring to the individual others in his community call ‘Einstein’.)

Despite Searle's ingenious defense of the description theory, many have found it ultimately implausible. Although there has been surprisingly little response to Searle's vigorous defense of his particular version of descriptivism, the general sentiment among contemporary philosophers of language seems to be skepticism about any version of descriptivism for proper names.[8] This is due (in part) to the conviction of many contemporary philosophers of language, that there is something ‘magical’ about description theories of reference. Such theories appear (according to these philosophers) to imbue the mind with a rather curious property: one that allows its contents to ‘magically’ attach to things outside of it. Causal theorist Michael Devitt (1990), echoing Hilary Putnam (1981), makes this very complaint. He first makes the general point that nothing inside an object is sufficient to determine its relation to something outside it. He then applies this principle to the case at hand, asking pointedly (p. 91):

How can something inside the head refer to something outside the head? Searle sees no problem: It just does. That's the real magic.Evans (1982, p. 298) had made much the same point earlier, when he wrote:

What makes it one rather than another of a pair of identical twins that you are in love with? Certainly not some specification blue printed in your mind… If God had looked into your mind, he would not have seen with whom you were in love, and of whom you were thinking.The point is clear: mental content, however detailed, is simply not sufficient to ‘pick out’ out some extra-mental entity. Fortunately, there are promising and well-developed alternatives to descriptivism. In particular, there are both causal and hybrid theories of reference. It is to the first of these two alternatives that I now turn.2.2 Causal Theories

The causal theory was adumbrated by Kripke[9] (1980) as an alternative to the description theory of nominal reference. The central idea underpinning this sort of theory is that (the use of) a name refers to whatever is linked to it in the appropriate way, a way that does not require speakers to associate any identifying descriptive content with the name. The causal theory is generally presented as having two components: one dealing with reference fixing, the other dealing with reference borrowing. Reference is initially fixed at a dubbing, usually by perception, though sometimes by description. Reference-fixing is by perception when a speaker says, in effect, of a perceived object: “You're to be called ‘N’.” Reference-fixing is by description when a speaker stipulates, in effect: “Whatever is the unique such-and-such is to be called ‘N’.” (As noted by Kripke (1980), the name ‘Neptune’ was fixed by description, stipulated by the astronomer Leverrier to refer to whatever was the planetary cause of observed perturbations in the orbit of Uranus.) After the reference-fixing, the name is passed on from speaker to speaker through communicative exchanges. Speakers succeed in referring to something by means of its name because underlying their uses of the name are links in a causal chain stretching back to the dubbing of the object with that name. Speakers thus effectively ‘borrow’ their reference from speakers earlier in the chain but borrowers do not have to be able to identify lenders; all that is required is that borrowers are appropriately linked to their lenders

through communication. However, as Kripke points out, in order for a speaker (qua reference borrower) to succeed in using a proper name to refer to the object/individual the lender was using the name to refer to, he must intend to do so. Thus, I may use the name ‘Napoleon’ to refer to my pet cat, even if the lender of the name used it to refer to the famous French general. For in such a case, I do not intend “to use the name to refer to the individual the lender used it to refer to.”

The most serious problem with the causal theory of reference (as sketched by Kripke) is that it appears to be at odds with the phenomenon of reference change. Gareth Evans cites the case of ‘Madagascar’, once used to refer to a portion of the African mainland, which now refers to the African island. Marco Polo was apparently the first speaker to use the name to refer to the island. He was under the impression — a misimpression — that such was how the name was actually used. The problem is this. When Marco Polo used the name, he surely intended to refer to whatever was referred to by the person(s) from whom he acquired the name; his intention was not to introduce a novel use of the name. But the individual(s) from whom Polo acquired the name intended (by hypothesis) to use the name to refer to a portion of the African mainland. How, then, did it come to refer to the island? Evans goes on to provide an imaginary case that makes the same basic point.

Two babies are born, and their mothers bestow names upon them. A nurse inadvertently switches them and the error is never discovered. It will henceforth undeniably be the case that the man universally known as ‘Jack’ is so-called because a woman dubbed some other baby with that name. (1982, p. 301.)

In developing a version of the causal theory designed to handle reference change, Devitt (1981) contends plausibly that a name is typically ‘grounded’ in its bearer in numerous perceptual confrontations after the initial dubbing. These subsequent groundings are thus semantically significant and are thus capable of effecting reference change. Given a sufficient number of such groundings over a sufficient period of time, reference change may occur. Thus, ‘Madagascar’ was able to shift reference from the mainland to the island once perceptually-based groundings in the island became established. The island was effectively dubbed ‘Madagascar’ by means of such groundings. And the man known by all as ‘Jack’ is not so-called because, years earlier, someone dubbed another individual that name. He is so-called because numerous uses of ‘Jack’ are grounded in him.

Although the causal theory (as revised by Devitt) provides a plausible account of nominal reference, its advocates will need to supplement their theory of reference with a theory of meaning — a theory that accounts for the fact that proper names appear to have some sort of meaning or ‘cognitive content.’[10] For as it stands, the causal theory of reference does not provide any answers to the questions of cognitive significance that so bothered description theorists like Frege and Russell.2.3 Hybrid Theories

Reference change is not the only problem faced by the causal theory of reference. Evans (1973) provides several examples of uses of proper names that are most naturally accounted for via a hybrid theory, according to which the reference of a proper name (as used by a speaker) is the dominant causal source of the body of descriptive information the speaker associates with the name. Consider, for instance, the following hypothetical case discussed by Evans:An urn is discovered in which are found fascinating mathematical proofs. Inscribed at the bottom is the name ‘Ibn Khan’ which is quite naturally taken to be the name of the constructor of the proofs. Consequently it passes into common usage amongst mathematicians concerned with that

branch of mathematics. ‘Khan conjectured here that…’ and the like. However suppose the name was the name of the scribe who had transcribed the proofs much later; a small ‘ id scripsit’ had been obliterated. (1982, p. 306)

Intuitively, we want to say that the name as used by contemporary mathematicians refers to the ancient mathematician — not to the scribe. But the (unamended) Kripkean causal picture would predict that the name refers to the scribe. After all, contemporary mathematicians no doubt intend to use the name to refer to the individual called — by those in the ancient community — ‘Ibn Kahn.’ Their intention is not to introduce a novel use of the name. On Evans' view, however, the name refers to the ancient mathematician, since it is the mathematician who constitutes the ‘dominant causal origin’ of the descriptive information associated with the name: mathematician who proved such-and-such. Because the ancient mathematician is responsible for the existence of the proofs, he is arguably the ‘dominant causal source’ of the descriptive information associated with the name ‘Ibn Kahn’.

The advantages of Evans' theory appear to be considerable. Evans himself claims that his theory effectively combines the virtues of the descriptive theory with those of the causal theory, while avoiding their respective vices. Like description accounts, it accounts for cognitive significance (of the sort evidenced by sentences like (2) through (5)) as well as reference; like causal accounts, it preserves the intuition that one cannot refer to something with which one has no causal link whatsoever. Moreover, Evans' theory avoids the problem of ignorance and error. For it denies that reference is determined by ‘fit’ or ‘satisfaction’ of any sort of descriptive content.

Michael Devitt's (1981) version of the causal theory is also a ‘hybrid’ theory of sorts. Although his theory of reference borrowing is a purely causal one, there is a descriptive element in his theory of reference-fixing. This descriptive element is needed to handle what Devitt calls the ‘qua problem,’ a problem entailed by the view that reference-fixing is a purely causal, non-descriptive, event. This is simply false, according to Devitt. In order to fix the reference of a name, the namer must at least know what kind of object he is naming. Thus, in order to name a certain dog ‘Spot’, I must at least know what kind of thing the nominatum-to-be is: I must at least know that he is (say) an animal. If I think he is merely an inanimate spot in my field of vision, I will not have succeeded in naming him. Now, to know what kind of object one is naming is to conceptualize that object, to think of it as an object of a certain sort, as (in other words), satisfying a certain predicate. It is thus to think of it qua such-and-such. Thus, if an act of reference-fixing is to be successful, the reference-fixer must think of the referent-to-be under a certain description — one that that object or individual ‘fits.’3. Other Terms3.1 Natural Kind Terms

Putnam (1975) extended Kripke's views of proper names to so-called ‘natural kind’ terms. These are terms that refer (naturally enough) to kinds of things that are found in nature. The ‘kinds’ in question are kinds of the sort studied by scientists, whether biologists, chemists, or physicists; they are kinds individuated by underlying structure: a structure that purportedly explains the more superficial properties of the kind. Thus, the expressions ‘tiger’, ‘gold’, and ‘H2O’ are natural kind terms. ‘Dust bunny’ and ‘cow patty’ are not — despite the fact that they refer (loosely speaking) to ‘kinds’ of things ‘found in nature.’ The traditional view of such terms sees them as descriptive in content, where the descriptive content of such terms determines their reference. That is, the kind is referred to in virtue of the fact that it ‘satisfies’ the properties expressed by the associated descriptive content. The motivation for such a view is two-fold.

First, it provides intuitive analyses in cases where a purely referential account of meaning proves unintuitive; second, in contrast to an account of the latter sort, a descriptive account of natural kind terms offers an explanation of reference. The intuitiveness of the descriptive view is brought out by seeing how it might handle cases that a purely referential account of natural kind terms would have trouble with. Consider, for instance, assertive utterances of the following sentences:

9. Furze is gorse.10. Gnomes are mythical creatures.11. Unicorns don't exist.12. Fred believes that filberts, but not hazelnuts, are sweet.

(9) seems informative, (10) meaningful, (11) both meaningful and true, and (12) appears to attribute consistent beliefs to Fred. A purely referential account of meaning, according to which the meaning of a natural kind term is nothing other than its bearer, would predict that the first is trivial, the second and third meaningless,[11] and the fourth as attributing inconsistent beliefs to Fred. In contrast, suppose that we adopt a description account of meaning. Then, provided co-referring terms can have different descriptive contents, and provided empty kind terms have descriptive contents, we can explain the informativeness of (9), the meaningfulness of (10) and (11), and the fact that (12) does not ascribe inconsistent beliefs to Fred. (The explanation here parallels the descriptive explanation for (2)–(5).). But according to Putnam (1975), it would be a mistake to suppose that natural kind terms refer via descriptive content ‘inside the head of’ the competent speaker. I can refer to such things as furze (gorse) and filberts (hazelnuts) even if the descriptive content I associate with the expression in question is not ‘uniquely satisfied’ by such things — indeed, even if the content in question is satisfied by (say) walnuts or cashews. (This is basically the problem of ‘ignorance and error.’) Putnam made the same basic point via a number of thought-experiments. Thus, I refer to elm trees when I use the term ‘elm’; and I refer to beech trees when I use the term ‘beech’. But the descriptive content I associate with these terms may well be the same — something like deciduous tree of some sort. Thus, it cannot be what is inside my head that determines what I refer to. Consider the famous ‘Twin Earth’ thought-experiment. Oscar and Twin Oscar refer to different kinds of substances (H2O, XYZ) when they use the term ‘water’ — this despite the fact that their psychological states are identical, that (more particularly) the descriptive content they associate with the term (clear, odorless, colorless liquid, that falls from the sky and accumulates in lakes, rivers, and oceans) is the same. The moral is: the reference of a natural kind term cannot be determined by what's ‘in the head.’ So, if meanings are reference-determiners, they are not in the head. (And if they are in the head, they are not reference-determiners.)

This brings us to the Putnam/Kripke causal view of reference. It is similar to Kripke's account of nominal reference; indeed, it is more or less an extension of that account. Reference is initially fixed at a dubbing, either by perception or description of samples of some particular natural kind. The reference is then to whatever has an internal structure identical to that of the samples. In the case of water, this would be having the chemical structure H2O. Speakers at a dubbing are able to lend their reference to others via communicative exchanges, and these others can then lend reference to still others. Speakers who are ignorant as to the properties of the kind in question can nevertheless use the natural kind term to refer to the members of the kind because underlying their uses are causal chains stretching back to a reference-fixing.

Putnam thought that his causal account of natural kind terms could be extended to artifactual kind terms. These are terms that refer to kinds of man-made objects: pencils, clocks,

telephones, and so forth. Putnam motivates his causal account of artifactual kind terms by appealing to intuitive considerations, to ‘thought-experiments.’ Suppose we were to discover that pencils are not artifacts, but organisms. We would still call them ‘pencils’ and would be correct in doing so. This shows that the reference of such expressions cannot be fixed via some description of the form artifact the function of which is to…

Perhaps. But that only shows (at most) that the description in question cannot be of the particular form in question. Perhaps the relevant description is one of the form: that which has such-and-such a function. There need be no mention of the notion of an ‘artifact’. In fact, a descriptive view, according to which the reference of such terms is fixed by a function-specifying description, is intuitively plausible. Why? Presumably because artifacts are not individuated by anything ‘hidden,’ but by something transparent — their function. Since function is transparent, it is not implausible to suppose that reference is determined by a description that specifies the function in question. Does that mean that one must know the reference-fixing description in order to refer to the kind in question? No, only that non-experts effectively defer to experts who do know (and don't just theorize about) the relevant reference-fixing descriptions.3.2 Indexicals

What are indexicals? They are expressions the reference of which depends on the context in which they are used, where ‘context’ is construed as incorporating (inter alia) speaker, hearer, time, and place. Examples of such expressions include: ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘that’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘now’, and ‘me’. The traditional (Frege/Russell) view is that the reference of such expressions is fixed by some sort of descriptive content associated by the speaker with the expression, and that the reference-fixing description is the meaning, the propositional contribution, of the expression. The motivation for such a view is largely intuitive. Such expressions certainly do seem to have meanings of some sort, and these meanings seem to have something to do with how the expressions refer. Thus, for instance, the meaning of ‘I’ is arguably the speaker of this utterance and refers to that individual; the meaning of ‘now’ is arguably the time of this utterance and refers to that time. And so on. Some of the problems with this view are brought out by Kaplan (1989). The central problem (according to Kaplan) is with the idea that reference-determining descriptions constitute the propositional content of an expression. As Kaplan points out, such a view violates our intuitions about ‘what is said.’ Thus, consider an assertive utterance of:

13. He [pointing] is tall.Suppose first, that Fred is pointed to during the utterance; now suppose that we go back in

time and that Bill is pointed to during the utterance. Intuitively, different things would have been said, but not so according to the descriptive account of indexical content and reference, according to which the subject term means the same thing in both cases — something like the demonstrated male. This leads to Kaplan's ‘Direct Reference’ view of indexicals, according to which ‘character’ determines reference in a context. Reference in a context is ‘content,’ that is, an expression's contribution to ‘what is said.’ Character is more like linguistic meaning than reference and is supposed (according to Kaplan) to account for cognitive significance. The character of an expression provides the rules for its correct application. Thus, the character of ‘I’ will be a rule specifying that the expression refers to the speaker in the context of utterance; the character of ‘you’ will be a rule specifying that the expression refers to the audience in the context of utterance. And so on.

Although widely accepted, some have expressed concerns with Kaplan's direct reference account of indexicals. Nunberg (1993) thinks that indexicals have descriptive uses: uses that are

semantically significant, that are relevant to what is said. To see this, consider the following two sentences:

14. I thought you were my mother.15. He who hesitates is lost.Suppose that there is a knock on the door and you assume that it is your mother, whom you

are expecting. You then open the door, see that the visitor (x) is a friend, and utter (14) upon opening the door. You arguably mean by that utterance something like I thought that the person at the door was my mother. It seems implausible in the extreme that you meant that you thought that x, your friend, was your mother! You would never mistake the one for the other. In the utterance of a proverb like (15), ‘he’ arguably means whoever. Since there is no contextually specified male, x, you cannot mean any such person. There are of course responses that a direct reference theorist might make. For instance, such a theorist might claim that to suppose that the descriptive use is semantically significant is to conflate the pragmatic with the semantic; it is to mistake what is merely communicated for what is actually said. This is just the sort of line taken by some Russellians in response to the contention that definite descriptions have a semantically significant referential use. (See below for details.)3.3 Definite Descriptions

A definite description is simply an expression having a certain grammatical form: namely, the F. The central question here is whether or not a quantificational theory of descriptions — Russell's in particular — is adequate to handle the data of what Donnellan has called the ‘referential use’ of descriptions. Some background is needed to understand this issue.Russell (1905) famously opposed both Meinong (1904) and Frege (1892), claiming that definite descriptions are not genuine referring expressions, they are not ‘logically proper names.’ In other words, their propositional contribution is not (simply or at all) their denotation. Russell's arguments appeal to intuitions (he would no doubt call them ‘facts’) about truth value and meaningfulness. Thus, consider assertive utterances of the following two sentences:

16. The King of France is bald.17. The Queen of England has three sons.

(16) is meaningful, though certainly not true — ‘plainly false,’ according to Russell. Russell's ‘Theory of Descriptions’ predicts that (16) is meaningful but false, expressing a (false) proposition to the effect that there exists exactly one king of France and that whatever is king of France is bald. (17), according to Russell, should get the same kind of analysis as (16), and so pace Frege, it cannot be about its referent: the Queen of England. Indeed, it is about nothing at all: for definite descriptions are not referring terms, but existential quantifiers. More specifically, the ‘proposition expressed’ by the assertive utterance of a sentence of the form The F is G is one to the effect that there is exactly one F and whatever is F is G. Strawson (1950) claimed that Russell's theory was the result of overlooking certain fundamental distinctions, including that between referring and meaning. Attend to these distinctions, and you will see that definite descriptions are indeed referring expressions, not quantifiers. This does not mean that they are logically proper names; only that speakers use them to talk about particular objects/individuals, not to assert that things of a certain sort exist. Thus, consider an assertive utterance of:

18. The King of France is wise.According to Strawson, such an utterance would be neither true nor false — because nothing is referred to. Indeed, nothing has been asserted (stated or said). (On Russell's view, the statement is false as it involves the false claim that there exists a unique king of France.) The meaning of the description, on Strawson's view, is given by a rule: one to the effect that it is to be used in

cases where there is a (contextually) unique king of France to whom one is referring. Donnellan (1966) thought that definite descriptions were ‘ambiguous’ in that they had two different uses, and that these were relevant to what is said, to the ‘statement’ made. One of these uses — the so-called ‘attributive use’ — was captured by Russell's theory but not Strawson's; the other use — the ‘referential use’ — was captured by Strawson's theory but not Russell's. Or so Donnellan claimed. Thus, suppose that Smith is found brutally murdered and it is claimed (on account of the heinousness of the crime) that:

19. The murderer of Smith is insane.Suppose that the speaker has no idea who the murderer is. Then, the description is used

attributively — to say something about whoever (uniquely) murdered Smith — and Russell's analysis applies. That is, the statement is true just in case there is a unique murderer of Smith and whoever murdered Smith is insane. But now suppose that Jones is accused of Smith's murder and that the speaker believes that Jones is guilty. In attempting to say something about Jones, the speaker comes out with an utterance of (19). Then, the description is used referentially, merely to pick Jones out so as to say something about him, and the statement is thus true just in case Jones is insane — even if he is innocent and the actual murderer (Robinson) is quite sane. Russell's theory, according to Donnellan, cannot accommodate the referential use, and so is incomplete at best. Kripke's (1977) response was that Donnellan was mistaking pragmatic facts for semantic facts, speaker reference for word reference. Kripke claimed that the referential use of definite descriptions was both genuine and interesting, but was not semantic and so was not relevant to Russell's theory. As Kripke claimed, the truth value of:

20. The man in the corner drinking champagne is happy tonight.depends on whether the man in the corner drinking champagne is happy. This is so even if the speaker intends to refer to someone else, a man in the corner who only appears to be drinking champagne — but is in fact drinking sparkling water. In such a case, the speaker may say something true (or false) about the individual to whom he intends to refer. Nevertheless, the truth value of the sentence itself will not depend upon the properties of the speaker's referent, but on those of the semantic referent: on those of the description's denotation. Thus, according to Kripke, Russell's theory of descriptions, though perhaps not without its problems, is not undermined by the referential use of descriptions. Although many have accepted at least the basics of Kripke's rejoinder to Donnellan, the debate over the referential use — over whether it undermines Russell's theory of descriptions — continues unabated.[12]

3.4 Non-Referring ExpressionsIt seems almost obvious that there are expressions that refer. But do all (meaningful)

expressions refer? Intuitively, at least, there appear to be many sorts of expressions — perfectly meaningful expressions — that do not refer, that are not used to refer. Consider, for instance, the following five sentences:

21. Nobody runs faster than me.22. Fred is tall.23. Do it for the sake of the children.24. Yes, I am very proud of you and the children.25. She skipped happily.

Consider the italicized words in each and ask yourself what they might be used to refer to. ‘Nobody’ certainly doesn't refer to anyone; ‘Fred’ refers to Fred but what does ‘tall’ refer to? A property? But what's a property and do such things really exist in a sense that would allow them to be objects of reference? This is controversial. What about ‘sake’ (and other nouns like ‘behalf’

and ‘dint’)? And what of ‘yes’, ‘very’, ‘of’, and ‘and’? What do adverbs like ‘happily’ refer to? A way or manner of some activity? Again, is it plausible to suppose that such things exist in a sense which enables them to be objects of reference? Not obviously. The point is simply this: some perfectly meaningful expressions do not seem to be referring expressions, in which case a theory of how they refer, of how their reference relates to the meaning or truth of sentences in which they occur, would be beside the point. It seems more reasonable (or at least more intuitive) to suppose that such expressions derive their meaning from something other than reference. Consequently, attempts to devise theories of reference for such expressions are rather uncommon, though certainly not unheard of. Frege (1952) had a highly systematic conception of reference on which reference is assigned to every constituent of a sentence that is relevant to determining its truth value. (Quantifiers, for instance, are said to refer to second level concepts.) Much later, Montague (1960) constructed a semantic theory on which expressions of the sort in question have referents. But it is fair to say that the sense in which such expressions might be said to refer is not an intuitive one, but one that is highly technical and theory-laden.4. Other Issues: Reference, Reality, and Knowledge

Reference is arguably the central notion in the philosophy of language, with close ties to the notions of meaning and truth. But one might wonder whether reference has implications for philosophical issues that go beyond the philosophy of language proper. Many have thought that it does, and many of these philosophers have seen connections between reference and reality — the nature of which is the subject matter of metaphysics. One of the oldest metaphysical problems — the so-called ‘problem of non-being’ — involves the notion of reference. Many others have seen connections between reference and knowledge — the nature of which is the subject matter of epistemology. One of the newest epistemological problems — presented via Putnam's infamous ‘brain in a vat’ thought-experiment — also involves the notion of reference. In contrast, there are philosophers who believe that reference — construed as providing a substantive link between language and the world — is not a subject worthy of serious philosophical study. Various reasons have been given for this negative attitude toward reference, including: (i) reference is inherently indeterminate (Quine, 1960), (ii) the notion of reference is without theoretical value (Davidson, 1984), and (iii) all that one can say about reference is what is embodied by instantiations of a schema like [a] refers to a. Before looking briefly at these negative views, let's look at a possible connection between reference and reality.4.1 Reference and RealityConsider the following sentence:

26. Pegasus does not exist.Surely this sentence is true. More precisely, its assertive utterance would express a true proposition. After all, we all know that Pegasus is a purely mythical creature. Yet, the truth of (26) would seem to imply that Pegasus in some sense is: that Pegasus has being of some sort. Otherwise, how could we refer to the mythical horse and say truly of it that it does not exist? Thus, Pegasus — as well as other things that don't exist — are; they have being; otherwise we could not coherently (and truly) deny that they exist. Or so claimed Meinong (1904). How do we avoid commitment to what Quine (1961) famously called Meinong's ‘bloated universe’?[13] One solution (Quine's) is to distinguish sharply between meaning and reference, and then claim that although ‘Pegasus’ has no reference, it does have a meaning. In particular, its meaning is given by a definite description which is to be interpreted a la Russell (1905). Thus, (26) gets analyzed as (something like):

27. There does not exist a unique winged horse.

More precisely:28. It is false that there exists a unique winged horse.

And this sentence is clearly true — and we can say that it is true without being committed to the being of Pegasus. In effect, the solution claims that certain expressions that look like names are not names in the logical sense: their meaning (if any) is not their reference. Such expressions are instead abbreviated Russellian descriptions. Such descriptions do not have meaning in isolation — in particular, they do not mean what they denote — and they may in fact denote nothing. Rather, they have meaning only in the context of the sentence in which they occur, a sentence whose assertive utterance expresses a complex existential proposition to the effect that there exists a unique F and whatever is F is G. This is not the only way out of Meinong's universe of non-existent beings, however. Some philosophers have argued that names of fictional and mythical creatures refer to existent objects — abstract objects in particular. Nathan Salmon (1998) has recently advocated a version of this general view. Salmon claims that ‘Pegasus’ and the like refer to existent things — to abstract entities, man-made artifacts.[14] On such a view, (26) is actually false. Pegasus, a man-made artifact, does indeed exist and so can be referred to. Intuitions to the contrary are to be explained by a conflation of speaker meaning and word meaning, the former of which may involve a proposition to the effect that Pegasus does not exist as a physical object. This way of looking at the problem of non-being allows Salmon to salvage Millianism: the view that the meaning of a proper name is nothing more than its reference.4.2 Reference and Knowledge

Now let's turn to issues of reference and knowledge, looking specifically at Putnam's envatted brains. Putnam purports to arrive at a substantive conclusion, that we are not brains in vats, with the assistance of a particular theory about the nature of reference — the causal theory. The basic argument is this: If you were a brain in a vat, you could not think that you were; but you can think that you're a brain in a vat; so you cannot be a brain in a vat. The reason for this is that thinking you are a brain in a vat requires causal links to things which (if you are a brain in a vat) don't exist. These are the sorts of causal links between thought and reality that would make thinking you are a brain in a vat possible in the first place. So you can't have such thoughts — if those thoughts are true. You can in fact have such thoughts, so they must not be true.The literature responding to Putnam's argument is enormous. Some who have responded to Putnam have interpreted his argument as a refutation of skepticism; other respondents have interpreted the argument as having a considerably more modest (metaphysical) conclusion: that I am not a brain in a vat. One of the most influential responses to Putnam's argument, given this more modest conclusion, was put forth by Tony Brueckner (1986). Brueckner contends that the argument doesn't seem to yield the conclusion that Putnam promised — that I am not a brain in a vat — but only the significantly different conclusion that my use of ‘I am not a brain in a vat’ is true. Some subsequent literature has explored the legitimacy of the ‘disquotation’ step that's needed to get from where Putnam gets us to where he promised to get us. Another influential criticism of Putnam's argument was first made by Peter Smith (1984). Smith argues that Putnam's argument won't work against certain ways of construing the brain in a vat hypothesis. But Smith's criticism, though compelling, responds only to Putnam's argument construed as a refutation of skepticism. After all, the skeptic needs only one coherent skeptical hypothesis to motivate his position.

How does all this relate to the causal theory of reference? The sentiment among some epistemologists is that the sort of semantic externalism underpinning the causal theory is simply not strong enough to support a refutation of skepticism. Thus, suppose we accept the reasonable

view that the content of some thoughts/expressions is not completely determined by what is going on inside one's head. Suppose that such contents are at least partly determined by the nature of items one has been in causal contact with. Even then, it is not clear that we have the basis for concluding that skepticism is incorrect even if we end up with a priori considerations supporting the metaphysical conclusion that we're not brains in vats. (See DeRose 2000 for more on this view.)5. Negative Views of Reference

Thus far, this article has been concerned largely with what might be called ‘positive’ views of reference. Reference, construed as a relation between bits of language and bits of reality, is assumed to be a genuine, substantive relation worthy of philosophical scrutiny. Accounts (whether descriptive, causal, or hybrid) are then given of what constitutes this link. Moreover, some philosophers (as just noted) believe that referential theories have important implications for metaphysical and epistemological issues. But not all philosophers are so sanguine about the possibility or theoretical importance of reference. In closing, I will discuss briefly some ‘negative’ views of reference. Quine (1960) has argued that reference is inherently indeterminate or ‘inscrutable.’ By this, Quine means that there is no fact of the matter as to what our words refer to. It is not that our words refer to something but we are unable to determine what that is. Rather, there is no such thing as what our words refer to. Nevertheless, Quine does not go so far as to say that our words fail to refer in any sense. His view is rather that it makes sense to speak of what our words refer to only relative to some purpose we might have in assigning referents to those words. Quine's argument for the inscrutability thesis involves an application of the thesis that empirical theories are underdetermined by their supporting evidence. For any body of empirical evidence we might have about speakers of a given language, there will be a number of competing theories as to what their words refer to. Such theories will be empirically equivalent: equally consistent with the empirical data. One theory might say that in the language in question, ‘gavagai’ refers to rabbits; another might say that it refers to undetached rabbit parts; a third might say that it refers to time-slices of rabbits. Quine's views on underdetermination can be applied to one's own language. The result is that the available evidence no more forces the speaker to the conclusion that by ‘rabbit’ he means rabbits, than it forces him to conclude that by ‘rabbit’ he means undetached rabbit parts or time-slices of rabbits. If a speaker observes himself using the word ‘rabbit,’ the evidence he amasses will give equal support to all three theories, as well as to many others. So, according to Quine, for any given body of empirical evidence, there will be numerous competing theories as to what the words one uses refer to. And there will be no principled way of adjudicating between these theories.

Davidson's instrumentalist views on reference are even more radical than Quine's. Davidson (1984) claims that reference is a theoretically vacuous notion: it is of absolutely no use in a semantic theory. His basis for endorsing this position is his conviction that no substantive explanation of reference is even possible. The problem is that any such explanation would have to be given in non-linguistic terms — but no such explanation can be given. As he puts it (1984, p. 220): If the name ‘Kilimanjaro’ refers to Kilimanjaro, then no doubt there is some relation between English (or Swahili) speakers, the word, and the mountain. But it is inconceivable that one should be able to explain this relation without first explaining the role of the words in the sentences; and if this is so, there is no chance of explaining reference directly in non-linguistic terms.

However, this does not mean that there is no hope for semantics. On the contrary. On Davidson's view, a Tarskian theory of truth for a language is at the same time a theory of

meaning for that language. The point here is that a Davidsonian theory of meaning has no place for the notion of reference.Similar in spirit to Davidson's views are the views of the deflationists. Such theorists claim that there is nothing more to referential notions than is captured by instances of a schema like ‘a’ refers to a. Such a schema generates claims like ‘Frege’ refers to Frege. Such views are often accompanied by, and motivated by, a deflationary theory of truth, according to which to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself.[15]

Despite these ‘negative’ views of reference, the nature of the relation between language and reality continues to be one of the most talked about and vigorously debated issues in the philosophy of language.

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