Demonstrative Sense
VOJISLAV BOZICKOVIC Macquarie University Sydney, Australia
Avebury Aldershot • Brookfield USA • Hong Kong • Singapore • Sydney
© V. Bozickovic 1995 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored i~ a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form. or b~ any mea~s, e1ect~o~IC, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwIse wIthout the pnor perIDlSSIOn of the publisher.
Contents
Published by Avebury Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hants GU 11 3HR England Ashgate Publishing Company Old Post Road Brookfield Vermont 05036 USA British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Bozickovic, Vojislav . Demonstrative Sense: Essay on SemantIcs of Perceptual Demonstratives I. Title 121.68 ISBN 1 85972 273 3 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-79847
Preamble Notes
1.1 Introduction 1.2 Demonstratives and other indexicals 1.3 The sense as object-dependent Notes Chapter Two: The sense of a demonstrative and the currently perceived object 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Knowing which object it is and knowing its distinguishing properties 2.3 Properties involving reference to sense-data 2.4 Two related questions 2.5 The mode of presentation and propositional knowledge Notes Chapter Three: The sense of a demonstrative and the previously encountered object
Printed and bound by Athenaeum Press, Ltd., Gateshead, Tyne & Wear.
Preface
3.2 (B2), Previously encountered objects, and the mode of presentation . 3.3 (B2) and deliverances of perception 3.4 The suspension of belief revisited 3.5 Russell's restriction 3.6 A Question about existential generalization Notes Chapter Four: Sense, linguistic meaning, demonstratives, demonstrations, definite descriptions 4.1 Sense, linguistic meaning, determination of reference 4.2 Demonstration and determination of reference 4.3 Some qualifications 4.4 Demonstratives and definite descriptiorts and the relation between the linguistic meaning and the sense of a demonstrative 4.5 Mode of presentation, thought, and communication 4.6 Mode of presentation stemming from more than one object Notes
65
79 87
Chapter Five: Reference, sense, and truth 5.1 The referential/attributive distinction 5.2 Demonstratives as rigid designators 5.3 Truth and meaning Notes
102 108 115 120
•.
One of the features of the position defended in this book is that the identity and existence of demonstrative Thought concerning objects perceptually given to the subject is tied to the identity and existence of those objects, i.e., that such Thought is objectdependent. Although this kind of view is sometimes called externalist, the word 'externalism' is, more technically speaking, applied to a somewhat different doctrine (see e.g., Burge 1986 and 1988). It is the doctrine in the philosophy of mind according to which relevant Thoughts are individuation-dependent upon the subject's physical (and/or social) environment. By contrast, internalism denies that there is such dependence. In terms of these definitions, while the position defended in this book is undoubtedly closer to externalism than internalism, it does not amount to the former doctrine. As we shall see, the claim that demonstrative Thoughts are object-dependent does not amount to the claim that the individuation of these Thoughts is dependent upon these objects. That a Thought is individuation-dependent upon an object simply means that the specification of the relevant object needs to be included in the individuation conditions of the Thought ascribed to the given subject. It is understood that this kind of individuation is motivated regarding object-dependent Thoughts. Yet, the thesis of individuation-dependence (i.e. externalism) is not a simple logical consequence of the thesis of ?bject-dependence. For it still seems, prima facie, possible to specify ~ndividuation conditions of object-dependent Thoughts mternalistically, even if such an exercise would be pointless. Neither does the externalist doctrine imply the thesis of objectdependence. Some philosophers, including Evans, however, try to
show that externalism is true, assuming that it either (i) implies or (ii) at least strongly motivates the thesis of ~bject-dependence ..The reader will notice that my arguments in favour of obJectdependence are not based on external~sm, e~ther.in t~e way of (i) or (ii). What is more, the concluding dIScussIon. m th~s book s~ows that this approach is unwarranted. That dIScussIon, I beheve, makes it clear that whether a certain Thought is object-dependent is independent of the issue of whether an interpreter. of the ~p~ech of native speakers can understand what they are saymg, bel~evmg, or doing; a position that McDowell and Evans ta~e as then own point of departure in arguing in favour of the object-dependence thesis. In spite of this disagreement, the reader will notice that this book is in many respects inspired by the writings of E:-rans ~nd McDowell. I am also indebted to David Kaplan whose plOneermg work on demonstratives has been a constant influence on me even if in the end I reject some of his views. . ,. ~ Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to L.J. 0 NellI, Ba~ry Taylor, John Bigelow, Chris Mortensen, Allen Haz~n, MOlra Nicholls Winston Nesbitt and John Colman for then helpful comments on earlier drafts of this book. I also wish to thank Michael Pendlebury, the editor of Philosophical Papers, ~or allowing me to incorporate parts o~ my ~rticl~ 'De~onstratIve Sense and Rigidity' - originally pubhshed m Phtlosophtcal Papers Vol. 22, No.2 - into section 5.2 of the present book.
Preamble
Demonstrative expressions in their uses that are the subject-matter of this essay are referring expressions. In Strawson's terms, this means that they have the role of forestalling the question 'What (who, which one) are you talking about?') Later (in section 3.5), this intuitive conception is supplemented with a discussion that aims to show how they can be viewed as referring expressions even in the light of Russell's criterion. One way to make a distinction between uses of demonstrative expressions is to distinguish their deictical or perceptual use from their anaphorical use. In its deictical use2, such an expression has the function of drawing attention to, for example, an object in such a way that it is normally accompanied by some paralinguistic act on the part of the speaker. On the other hand, the word 'anaphora' usually denotes the kind of relationship that holds between, e.g., a pronoun and its antecedent.3 That a particular demonstrative expression is used anaphorically usually means that it either functions as a variable bound by its antecedent quantifier phrase, or that it is a pronoun of laziness, i.e., a pronoun that simply goes proxy for some expression constructible from words occurring in the syntactic environment of its antecedent, and which is employed to avoid repetitious language.4 To redress the balance, we need also say that in some cases the pronoun comes before the expression on which it hinges (e.g., 'In his best-known book Dummett writes about Frege'). In their anaphorical use, as well as in their deictical or perceptual use, demonstrative expressions are referring expressions (at least in those cases in which the expressions th~y hinge on are themselves referring expressions). The same holds m
the case of some of their other uses that are, alongside anaphora, left outside the boundaries of the present work. One such use concerns designation of abstract objects by their means as in the cases when pointing to a particular instantiation of a certain colour or shape we say 'this colour' or 'this shape'. Another such use concerns Davidson's claim (provided it is correct) that the 'that' of indirect discourse 'is a demonstrative singular term referring to an utterance (not a sentence)'.5 This use seems to combine some anaphorical elements with the designation of an abstract object. The scrutiny in this work proceeds by discussing the relationship between demonstrative expressions in the singular, on the one hand, and so-called spatio-temporal objects, on the other, i.e., by taking such expressions as singular terms.6 However, I believe that some basic tenets of this work (such as the objectdependence of sense) also hold both with respect to groups of such objects as well as with respect to events, processes, or object-stages.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
See Strawson 1971, p. 17. See, for example, Lyons 1975. See Chastain 1975, p. 204. See Geach 1972, and Edelberg 1986. Davidson 1968, p. 105. See, for example, Quine 1960, p. 96, according to whom a singular term is one which purports to refer to just one object.
1 The sense and the demonstrative
The account of sense that will be advocated in this work endorses as its general framework Frege's view about sentential and subsentential expressions exhibited in #32 of his Grundgesetze der Arithmetic. This view is thus in harmony with recent claims that there is a close connection between truth and meaning. This view of Frege's can be summarized as follows: The sense of a sentencel is determined by giving its truthconditions, and the sense of a sentence-constituent is its contribution to the senses of sentences in which it may occur. Following Dummett, this can be put slightly differently, in terms of the notion of understanding. That is, we cannot grasp the sense of a word otherwise than by reference to the way in which it can be used to form sentences; but we understand the word independently of any particular sentence containing it. Our understanding of any such particular sentence is derived from our understanding of its constituent words, which understanding determines for us the truth-conditions of that sentence. However, our understanding of those words consists in our grasp of the way in which they may figure in sentences in general, and how, in general, they combine to determine the truth-condition of those sentences. In other words, to grasp the sense of a sentence is to know the conditions under which that sentence is true; to grasp the sense of an expression is to grasp its contribution to
determining the truth-condition of the Thought expressed by a sentence in which it occurs, of which that sense is a constituent.2
In his influential paper 'Demonstratives'3, Kaplan makes a useful distinction within the class of indexical expressions. This class includes the pronouns'!', 'my', 'you', 'he', 'she', 'it', the demonstrative pronouns 'that', 'this', the adverbs 'here', 'now', 'today', 'yesterday', 'tomorrow', the adjectives 'actual', 'present', and others. Before I distinguish demonstratives from other indexicals, I want to mention briefly one common feature of all indexicals. It is often said that indexicals are context-sensitive, i.e., that their referent is dependent on the context of use. The question as to what the context of use is, is a problem in itself and I cannot deal with it here. All I can say is that a context is a set of features of an actual utterance which includes time, place, speaker, and probably countless other features.4 What, according to Kaplan's view in 'Demonstratives', distinguishes (deictical or perceptual) demonstratives from other indexicals is that demonstratives 'require, in order to determine their referents, an associated demonstration: typically, though not invariably, a (visual) presentation of a local object discriminated by pointing'.5 On the other hand, the class of other indexicals, which Kaplan calls pure indexicals, does not require an associated demonstration, and 'any demonstration supplied is either for emphasis or is irrelevant' (ibid.). The incompleteness of demonstratives is expressed by Kaplan in terms of the linguistic rules governing them. These rules are not sufficient to determine their referent in all contexts of use. 'Something else - an associated demonstration - must be provided. The linguistic rules assume that such a demonstration accompanies each (demonstrative) use of a demonstrative' (ibid.). However, in 'Afterthoughts' Kaplan considers the demonstration associated with an utterance of a demonstrative as a mere externalization of the speaker's directing intention (p. 582). That is, he now takes this kind of intention as the relevant contextual feature regarding demonstratives. On:the other hand, he takes the referent to be the relevant contextaul feature regarding the pure indexicals. In Chapter Four of this essay (section 4.2), it will become
clear that this new view of Kaplan's is unwarranted. For the present I will ignore it because the acceptance of this view would not alter the important insight, which concerns me here, that the distinction between demonstratives and pure indexicals is a matter of linguistic rules. The linguistic rule is, according to Kaplan, what is known by the competent language user. Speaking of indexicals, Perry describes the rule of an indexical - which he calls its role - in terms of our understanding of such a word: When we understand an indexical (in his example 'today'), what we seem to know is a rule taking us from an occasion of utterance to a certain object (Perry 1977,p. 479). The notion of linguistic meaning of an expression is typically characterized in the same way. Thus, regarding indexicals, Burge speaks of the notion of linguistic meaning and the notion of rule interchangeably: The relevant expressions [i.e., indexicals] are each governed by a single linguistic rule and have a single context-free dictionary entry. In learning the [linguistic] meanings of these words, one comes to know how to use and understand the words regardless of what occasion arises.6 Compare now these characterizations of the linguistic meaning and the linguistic rule with Frege's characterization of the notion of the sense of an expression which is for him what is grasped by everybody who is sufficiently familiar with the language7, i.e., who understands it. The coincidence between the notion of sense thus described, on the one hand, and the notions of linguistic meaning and linguistic rule, on the other, is apparent. Somebody who knows the linguistic meaning/rule of an indexical knows at the same time its sense and vice versa. Consider, for example, the linguistic rule (meaning) of 'I' which Kaplan (op. cit., p. 505) puts as
Now, in accordance with the mentioned conception of sense, it can be said that this clause, or a more complete version of it, gives the sense attached to the indexical 'I' (type) by a competent language user. In other words, as far as indexicals are concerned, the given characterization of sense can also be taken as a characterization of linguistic rule or linguistic meaning as they are described here.
Consider now another Fregean characterization of the notion of sense which provides us with one of two of Frege's arguments to the effect that there is a notion of sense as different from the notion of reference.8 It is unintelligible to attribute to anyone a piece of knowledge of which the whole account is that he knows the reference of an expression, i.e., to attribute to him a bare knowledge of the reference of an expression. If someone knows what the referent of an expression is, then this referent must be given to him in some particular way, and the way in which it is given constitutes the sense which he attaches to the expression. As Frege would put it, the sense of an expression is the mode of presentation of the expression's referent (1980, p. 57). Speaking in terms of indexicals, the claim that there is no such thing as a bare knowledge of the referent amounts to the hardly disputable view that objects (events, processes, etc.) that are given to us in the way required by the correct use of an indexical are given to us in a particular way. However, the question arises as to whether the way in which an object (event, process, etc.) is given to us constitutes the indexical's sense. That is, the question is as to which of the two envisaged conceptions of sense is the one that suits indexicals, given that they exclude each other, as pointed out by Dummett (1981a, pp. 100-1). His remarks can be paraphrased as follows. If sense is taken as the mode of presentation of the referent then we are debarred from adopting the apparently harmless and natural view that an indexical, as used by different speakers, has a constant sense but varying reference. Either we must say that its sense alters, as it is used first on one occasion and then on another; or we must allow it a constant sense but deny that, taken by itself, even on a specific occasion of utterance, it stands for an object at all. In the latter case we are regarding it as a functional expression whose argument is supplied by the circumstances of its utterance, with a misleadingly 'complete' or 'saturated' linguistic form. In the first case, we sever the notion of sense from that of linguistic meaning; in the second, we have to deny that an indexical is, as it appears to be, a singular term, even considered as part of a particular utterance, or, as we may put it, the mode under which an object is presented does not enter its sense. It should be noted that both these conceptions seem to accord with Frege's view of sense adopted as my general framework in the last section - that the sense of a sentence is determined by giving its truth-conditions, and the sense of a sentence-constituent
is its contribution to the senses of sentences in which it may occur. If the sense of an indexical is taken as shifting from occasion to occasion, making the sense of a sentence involving it to shift accordingly, the relevant tie between the sense and the truthconditions is preserved by viewing the truth-conditions as shifting in the same way. If the sense of an indexical is taken as constant, which has a consequence that the constant sense of a sentence involving it is nothing but its lingUistic meaning, i.e., its meaning as a sentence-type, the tie in question is preserved by viewing the truth-conditions in terms of, say, a class of objects which would make the given sentence-type true, and so on. The notion of sense of an indexical sentence, i.e., the Thought it expresses, which the latter option encapsulates has, however, a feature that no constant truth-value is attached to it. More precisely, this feature is the outcome of the claim that the sense of an indexical sentence is constant, combined with the natural view that the truth-value of an indexical sentence is relative to the occasion of its use. In accordance with this, when we utter an indexical sentence, for example
on two different occasions in which the indexical (demonstrative) it contains is taken to refer to two different objects, one of which is green, the other not, we take the given sentence (type) as true on the former occasion, false on the latter. According to this conception of sense, the same Thought is thus both true and false which is unacceptable from a Fregean perspective. Moreover, the sense taken as the linguistic meaning does not perform the function that the Fregean sense needs to perform when it comes to statements of identity, which takes us to the second of Frege's two arguments to the effect that there is a notion of sense as different from the notion of reference. As is wellknown, Frege introduced the notion of sense in order to explain those cases in which true statements of identity can be informative. Although he was exclusively concerned with the class of expressions which he considered to be proper names, I believe that a parallel explanation can be provided with respect to indexicals. Consider therefore a situation in which the sentence
is uttered in such a way that the enclosed indexical (demonstrative) in its first occurrence refers to a certain road via one of its parts, while in its second occurrence it refers to the same road via its different part. This statement can be informative for somebody who, because the middle of the road is from his point of view hidden by a forest, believes that there are two different roads and not one. The obvious explanation is that the informativeness of such an utterance is the result of two different senses under which the object is given to the subject in question. As Evans (1985) would say, the informativeness of such a sentence ste~s from two different particular ways of thinking of the object. ThlS kind of sense is, however, nothing but the mode of presentation. Linguistic meaning, on the other hand, plays no role in the explanation of the informativeness of the given statement. The example that I have chosen makes this clear, for the linguistic meaning of the given demonstrative is in both its occurrences the same, and so would be their senses if they were identified with the linguistic meaning. As a result of this, I conclude that the linguistic meaning of an indexical cannot be its sense. It thus leaves us with the mode of presentation associated with an indexical as its bona fide se~se. That is, unlike its linguistic meaning, the mode of presentation associated with an indexical fulfils the role that a Fregean sense is expected to fulfil, both with respect to its func.tion. in the explanation of the informativeness of statements of ldentity and with respect to the constancy of its truth-value when it is the sense of a sentence. That the truth-value in question is constant can be illustrated in the following way. If we take the sentence
as above, such that the indexical (demonstrative) it contains refers first to a green object and then, on a different occasion, to a nongreen object, its two occurrences express two different senses (Thoughts). One of these senses (Thoughts) is constantly true, the other constantly false. That Frege was inclined to think in the same way is suggested by his following insight: ...the mere wording, which can be made permanent by writing or the gramophone, does not suffice for the expression of the thought .... If a time-indication is conveyed
by the present tense one must know when the sentence was uttered in order to grasp the thought correctly.9 Therefo.re, believes Frege, the time of utterance is part of the expresslOn of the Thought, and if someone wants to say today w~at he exp~ess~d yesterday using the word 'today', he will replace this word wlth yesterday'. Although the Thought is the same 'its verbal e~pression must be. different in order that the change of sense which would otherwlse be effected by the differing times of utte~ance may be ~an~elled out' (ibid.). The same, in Frege's view, apphes to words like here' and 'there'. He points out that in such cases the mere wording, as it can be preserved in writing, is not the com~lete exp~ession of the 1?ought and that the knowledge of certam condltions accompanymg the utterance, which are used as means of expressing the Thought, is needed for us to grasp the Thought correctly. 'Pointing the finger'; continues Frege, 'hand gestures, glances may belong here too. The same utterance containing the word 'I' in the mouth of different men will express different thoughts of which some may be true, others false' (ibid.). Here it should be noted that all that has been shown so far regar~ing the no~ion ~f lin?uistic meaning is that the linguistic meanmg of an mdexlcal lS not its sense. The nature of its relationship with the accepted view of the sense of an indexical (i.e., mode of presentation) is yet to be specified and this will be done in Chapter Four. For the present, I want to return to the distinction between demonstratives and other indexicals considered at the beginning of this section. In view of Kaplan's distinction between demonstratives and other indexicals which, as we have seen, he calls pure indexicals _ on .the basis of t~e kind of rules governing them _ the stralghtforward candldates for the category of pure indexicals are '1', 'now', 'to~o~row', 'today', 'yesterday', 'actual', 'present', and some others slml1ar to these ones, not listed above. As to the other expressions listed above, the most obvious candidates for the category of demonstratives are 'that' and 'this', but as it is not difficult to notice the pronoun 'he' ('she') also belongs here.l0 Kaplan's claim that the linguistic rules which govern the use of p.ure indexicals fully determine the referent for each context (op. Clt., p. 491) suggests that 'you' is not a pure indexical but a demonstrative. This is because the stated condition obviously does not hold for at least some occasions of its use - for example, when the speaker has to single out his addressee from a group of people
by an act of demonstration. On the other hand, his claim that a demonstration (or for that matter the directing intention ~hat demonstration externalizes) accompanies each (demonstrativ~) use of a demonstrative, noted earlier in this section, classifies this pronoun as a pure indexi~al.. . A careful consideratlOn of dlfferent posslble uses of the aforementioned indexicals could show that even the most convincing candidates for either of the categories in q~estion c~n be used both as pure indexicals and as de~o~str~tives. It lS, however important to bear in mind that a dlstinctlOn between , f l' ., 1 11 such uses is always a matter 0 mgUlstiC ru es.
1.3 The sense as object-dependent As we have seen, it is hardly disputable that obje~ts (events, processes, etc.) that a~e given .to us in t.he way.reqUlred by the correct use of an indexlcal are glven to us m a particular way. I also believe that if no object (event, process, etc.) ~s given to us at all there is no corresponding mode of presentatlOn. ~ other t~rms, the Thought which contains the mode of presentatlOn as~oclated with a relevant indexical is object-dependent. I .wlll n?w distinguish two versions of th~ object-dependence thesls - callmg them weak and strong, respectively - and show that both of them hold. l' . Consider a situation in which a certain curious Mrs. X lstens m to a conversation between her neighbours through the thin wall of her kitchen. She hears her neighbour, Mrs. Y, utt~rin~ the sentence 'This is the dress that I am going to wear torught, ~nd understands every word in it in terms of .its ~inguistiC m.eanmg (i.e., the rules governing its use). Yet, she 1.Sstill ,!ery anxlO~s t? find out which dress it is and as long as she lS depnved of seemg lt she will also be deprived of understanding (grasping) the Thought which the given utterance of the sentence expresses .. In o~her words the information that such an utterance conveys lS obJectdependent in the sense. that t~e relev.ant. identificati?n of the given object is necessary lf such lnformation lS,to ~e ~ece~ved. It might seem less obvious that such a dlscnmmation of the object in question is required when we c?ncent~ate on th?se ~ases in which the querying person's interest lS not m. that object ltself but rather in something else indicated by the glVen utterance of the sentence. If, for example, Mrs. X were in fact not interested in
(the look of) the dress itself but rather in whether Mrs. Y would be going to a certain party, or not, the foregoing utterance of the sentence could be seen as providing all the information that she need~d: N~verth~les~, this kind of information is only something that lS mduectly mdlcated by the given utterance of the sentence rather than expressed by it. What it expresses qua an utterance of ~ demonstrative ~entence is something that can be grasped only if the ~el~vant ?bJect has been perceptually singled out. ~rml~a~ly,lf I come ~p to you with a marble cupped by my hand, sa~mg I Just b?ught this marble', your curiosity as to what (kind of object) I have m my hand might be satisfied, and the information that you needed is conveyed. Yet, in order to grasp what my utterance qua an utterance of a demonstrative sentence expresses you ne~d to discriminate the given marble on the basis of your perception. In any case, this feature of indexical sentences seems to be questioned by no one. Vigorous debates, however, start when it ~omes to ,:"hat I Will. call ~he strong thesis of object-dependence. It ~s the. thesls tha~ the ldentity and existence of Thought is tied to the ldentity and eXlstence of the objects thought about. This, in other terms, means that if the subject mistakenly takes himself to be perceiving an object he will entertain no Thought at all. Various arguments for and against this thesis have been offered in the rich literature on this subject.l2 The critics of the strong thesis of objectde~endence have come up with some strong counter-arguments which seem ~o refu~e all of Evans's an? McDowell's arguments in favour of thlS thesls.l3 However, I w111provide an argument in favour of the strong object-dependence thesis which is not vulnerable to these counter-arguments. Unlike Evans and like his opponents I submit that the subject may have relevant beliefs when th~ purported object of his thought is missing; yet I do not agree wlth his opponents' claim that in this kind of case the subject's thought may still have content. In what follows I will first present my argument in favour of the strong objectdependence thesis and then confront it with the claims made by its o~ponents. As demonstratives are the main topic of this essay, I wlll focus my attention on sentences containing demonstratives. . Consider again the Fregean claim that the sense of a sentence, l.e., t?~ Thought that it expresses, is determined by giving its truthcondltions. Dummett, as we have seen in section 1.1, glosses this as follows: To gra~J:>the sense (Th?ught) expressed by a sentence is to know the condltions under which that sentence is true.
Now, in accordance with the rules governing a demonstrative sentence the condition under which an utterance of the sentence 'This bu;terfly is beautiful' is true, is that a particular butterfly is beautiful. And the knowledge of this condition amounts to the grasp of the sense of this utterance of t~i~ sente~ce, i,e., the Thought it expresses. It is, in turn, a prerequ1s1te of th1s knowledge that the subject discriminates the given butterfly from all. o,th~r things because he needs to know which particular butterfly 1t 1Sm order to know what it is for it to be beautiful. However, the subject cannot have this discrim~n.ating knowledge if he mistakenly takes himself to be p~rce1vm? a butterfly. For if he is under the impression that there, 1S.an o~Je~t which is not there he does not know which object 1t 1S. Th1s 1S because this kind of knowledge can only concern, so to speak, a particular object which the subject intends to refer to ~s that particular object. Since his intention reaches no such object, he fails to attain such knowledge. In the light of this conclusion, it also .becomes appa~ent that the discriminating knowledge that figures m demonstrative though,ts differs from that associated with descriptive thoughts. For m contrast with the former, the discriminating knowledge that descriptive thinking involves .concerns !he ?bject (if any) whic.h satisfies certain conditions, whichever object 1t happens to be. This in turn makes unjustified any claim to the eff~ct th~t in, t~e envisaged circumstances the subject knows wh1ch object ~t 1S because he knows the descriptive conditions which the g1ven object is supposed to satisfy. And this is ju~t ano~her way of saying that demonstrative thoughts must d1ffer m content from descriptive thoughts, a point conceded ~ven by ,some of the opponents of the object-depen?ence. t~es1s.~4 ~ s1mple, way to illustrate this is by way of Evans s Intwtive Cntenon of D1fference which he derives from Frege. This criterion states that the Thought associated with one sentence S as its sense must be different from the Thought associated with another sentence S' as its sense, if it is possible for someone (not anyone) t~ und~rstand both sentences at a given time while coherently takmg d1fferent epistemic attitudes towards them, i.e., accepting (rejecting) one while rejecting (accepting), or being agnostic about, the other.15 It is possible for someone to take different attitudes towards the demonstrative and descriptive sentences that are about the same object, or more precisely towards utterances of them, w~ch is. o~r present concern. As Carruthers has pointed out (op. C1t.),th1s 1S
true even if the relevant definite description is couched in terms of. the causes. of the subject's current experiences. That is, someone m1ght take d1fferent attitudes towards utterances of the sentences 'This butter~y is b~autiful' and 'The butterfly which is the cause of the~e expenences 1~ beautiful'. For it is possible for someone to behe~e that.a part1c~lar demonstratively indicated butterfly is beautiful while doubtmg that the butterfly which is the cause of these experiences is beautiful. These cO,nsi~e~ati~nsshow that the subject who is hallucinating lacks the d1scnffil~~ting knowledge required to furnish knowledge of the truth-cond1tion of the relevant utterance of the sentence :This b.utt~rfly is b.ea.ut~fuI', no matter what the subject's 1mpressiOn 1S.And this 1SJust another way of saying that there is no Thought to be grasped by him.16 I~ sh~uld be note~ that this result is independent of whether the subJe.cts assent to his utterance of 'This butterfly is beautiful', in the Circumstances described, is a belief or not. For in order for this utterance to express a Thought more than the relevant belief on the part of the subject is required. In the light of t~s, I want to point out that allowing the subject to ha~e such a behef when he is hallucinating does not discredit the V1ew that demonstrative Thoughts are object-dependent (in the strong sens~), as some phi~osophers claim. It has been argued that the followmg argument m favour of object-dependence (in the str~ng ,sens~) does not work,17 If there is no existent object for the sU~Jects behef to be about, this argument runs, there is no way of statmg the content of the putative demonstrative belief. Then assuming that a. belief whose content cannot be expressed in fac~ has no content, 1t follows that in this kind of case no belief really occurs; for a belief without a content is no belief at all.18 A.ga~nst this ~t can be said that the inability to provide ascnptions ~f behef do~s. not .by itself preclude the subject having r~levant behefs. In add1tion, 1t can be claimed, as Carruthers (op. C1t.)and Pendlebury (1988) do, that ascriptions of belief are possible although not by means of demonstrative that-clauses. However, it needs to be pointed out that the argument in terms of the subject's knowledge does not hinge on any premisses about the difficulties with th~ ascription of knowledge. On the contrary, it is not possible to ascnbe to the subject either discriminating knowledge of the non-existent object or knowledge of the truth-condition of the relevant utterance of the sentence 'This butterfly is beautiful',
because there is no such object to be discriminated and no such truth-condition to be known.l9 On the other hand, the non-existence of such an object need not affect belief. Whether the subject has belief depends on facts about him whereas whether he has knowledge in the relevant sense dep~nds on facts external to him. H?wever, t~at .belief depends on facts about the subject does not entall that behef IS a matter of how things seem to the subject, which has a Cartesia.n flav~ur that both the critics of the (strong) object-dependence thesls and ItS advocates try to avoid. Instead, they try t.o accou~t .for belief i? terr:n~of facts about the subject such as hlS capaclties and dlSpOSltiOns;. for example, his capacity to classify things in a regular way over time, and his capacity to locate objects in space.20 . . However it is of no consequence to the Vlew of obJectdependence' that I am advocating which of thes~ ~o conc~ptions of belief is embraced in the claim that the hallucinating subject can have relevant beliefs. For grasping the relevant Thought is, as I have argued, a matter of knowledge, not belief. . The view that it is necessary for the subject to demonstratively discriminate the object in order to have the relevant demonstrative Thought entails that when on two different occasions the subject thinks demonstratively about two different objects, his Thoughts are also di~fer~n.t de.spite the fa.ct at everything might be phenomenally indlstingUishable for hlm. On the other hand, some examples provided by the opponents of the (strong) object-dependence thesis suggest that in this kind of case phenomenal indistinguishability coincides with the sameness of Thought22, so that the relevant Thoughts can be individuated by the sameness of the appearances for the subject. Yet, because. of their opposition to Cartesianism, they take the demonstrative Thoughts as the contents of beliefs and desires considered as dispositions rather than conscious mental acts, and the~e dispositions need not coincide with the contents of appearances in the subject's mind.23 . . . But once this severance between the dlSpoSltionS and the appearances has taken place, the Thoughts in q~estion be~o?,e nothing but the contents of the subject's non-consctous capaCities. And it becomes mysterious why they are considered to be Thoughts at all, as Thoughts are meant to be contents of whi~h ~he subject is conscious in at least a goo~ many ,cases. When P01~tlI~g twice at a road from two different pOints of Vlew, I say to you This road is the same as this road', the Thought that you are going to
if
entertain is going to be a matter of your conscious realization that the two road-strips are parts of the same road. Another point to be made here is that there is also a more gen~ral reason against taking the contents of the subject's belief (or deSire) as Th?ughts. For, even if we agree with the opponents of the strong object-dependence thesis in their claim that the content o~ the subje~t's belief can be the same with respect to two or more dlfferent objects, we cannot be justified in treating these contents as Thoughts, as they do not comply with the Intuitive Criterion of Difference. To recall, the Intuitive Criterion of Difference states that the Thought associated with one sentence S as its sense must be different from the Thought associated with another sentence S' as its sense, if it is possible for someone (not anyone) to u~derstand ~oth sentences at a given time while coherently taking dlf~erent. at~ltudes tow~rds them, Le., accepting (rejecting) one whl1e rejecting (accepting), or being agnostic about, the other. Now, suppose that these two sentences are in fact two tokens of the sentence 'This butterfly is beautiful' which I use one after ano~her to :efer to two different butterflies although I am under the ImpressiOn that I am referring to the same butterfly twice. The opponents of the object-dependence thesis will say that in the two ca~es .we hav~ the sam~ Thought type. But, by the Intuitive Cntenon of Dlfference this .would ?e justified only if everybody else would have the same ImpressiOn as me. There is, however, no reason for this to be so. For it is possible for someone to take differe~t attitudes to~ar~s two tokens of the foregoing sentence regarding the butterfhes in question. To deny this would be on a par with denying that in the kind of case in which statements of identity can be informative, discussed in the last section, anyone can take different attitudes towards such a statement, or - which amounts to one and the same thing - towards two occurrences of one ~nd the .same sentence, as in the following case. If I am under the ImpressiOn that one road-strip belongs to the same road as another road-strip which I see at the other end of a forest, I will have the same beliefs with respect to two different utterances of the sentence 'This road leads to Rome' in which the two demonstrative tokens refer to the given road via the two roadstrips. Yet, it does not follow that these two utterances of this sentence express the same Thought, as it is not the case that everyone needs to know about this identity and take the same attitudes towards these two utterances of this sentence.
In brief, the Intuitive Criterion of Difference favours the view that the difference in objects results in the difference in Thoughts for it is possible for somebody to take different attitudes towards utterances of the relevant sentences that are about different objects. Consider now Bell's attempt to discredit the strong thesis of object-dependence. He claims that the very notion of objectdependent Thought is of doubtful coherence since it presupposes the possibility that it may seem to me that I am thinking a certain Thought even though I am not, '...a possibility of which the notion of an object-dependent thought itself prevents there being a coherent account' (1988, p. 52). The supposition on whose assumed coherence Bell focuses is that in the circumstances envisaged it is possible for me to think falsely that I am thinking that a is F. That is, he believes that this second-order Thought is intelligible, Le., has content, which could not be there if the first-order Thought it contains were merely apparent. There is, however, no reason to suppose that this second-order Thought exists (Le., in Bell's terminology, that it has content). The hallucinating subject will obviously be under the impression that there is such a Thought (-content), but this is only because he will in the first place take there to be the first-order Thought (-content). However, if there is no first-order Thought (-content), the same holds for the relevant second-order Thoughts. As argued, there is no first-order Thought (-content) when the object it is about is absent. Now, as the object that the relevant second-order Thoughts are about is but (the content of) the first-order Thought, it follows that there are no second-order Thoughts (thought-contents) whenever there is no first-order Thought (thought-content); and similarly for Thoughts of higher orders.24 We have thus seen that it is crucial that the subject have the discriminating knowledge of the given object if he is to grasp the relevant Thought, both in the sense of the weak and the strong thesis of object-dependence. Discriminating knowledge is required by what Evans calls Russell's Principle, i.e., the principle that a subject cannot have a Thought about something unless he knows which object he is thinking about (1982, esp. ch. 4). How this plausible principle is manifested within the framework of the present essay will become clear in due course. As to discriminating knowledge, I have shown that, as far as demonstratives are concerned, it is a result of the subject's perceptual awareness. In other words, the subject's
perceptual discrimination of the given object is necessary for there to be.a mo~e of presentation corresponding to the given object.25 This on Its face value apples not only to demonstratives but also to other indexicals, if the notion of perceptual awareness is taken broadly enough. In this respect, this notion would need to cover the kind of givenness required by the use of the first-person pronoun, as well as that required by the use of the adverb 'here' in the role of a pure indexical.26 In the case of the first-person pro~oun, the perceptual awareness required by the subject in order f~r Its utterance to have sense (mode of presentation) is of a different type than that concerning 'ordinary' physical objects. As to the adverb 'here' in the role of a pure indexical, it seems that the subject can entertain a certain mode of presentation even in those ~ases in which th~ subject's links with the place are only potential. Evans has noticed that the subject can think 'I wonder what it is like here' when he is blindfolded, anesthetized, and has his e~rs.blocked, and (in my terminology) still be credited with assoclatmg some sense (mode of presentation) with 'here'; but there must be a possibility of action and perception for 'here'thoughts to get a grip (Evans 1982, sect. 6.3). No further discussion of pure indexicals is required in order to see that their class is not as homogeneous as the class of demonstratives regarding the nature of givenness through perceptual discrimi~ation req';lired for there to be a corresponding mod~. of presentation: That IS to say, there are some questions speCifiCto (some) particular pure indexicals which would need to be tackled individually within an account of the mode of presentation of pure indexicals. Some of these questions, however, fa: transcend .questions of sense and reference and in this essay I will not go this far. My further investigation will be limited to the class of demonstratives - the class which is heuristically prior to the class of pure indexicals. Ap.art fro~ the use of demonstratives to refer to currently perceived objects - the use to which I have cleaved so far - some of them can also be used to refer to objects that are no longer in our perceptual field, be that a matter of seconds or a matter of decades. This type of a demonstrative also has sense (mode of presentation) the necessa~y ~o~dit.ion of who~e existence is the subject's ~rceptual dlscrrmmation of a certam object, which is in this case hiS past perceptual discrimination. This latter type of demonstratives Evans calls past-tense demonstratives, whereas the former ones he calls ordinary demonstratives (1982, p. 55).
Evans points out yet another way in which some demonstratives can be used, calling them testimony demonstratives. These demonstratives involve information about an object from the testimony of others such as newspapers, etc., not presupposing that the given subject has ever perceptually encountered the object from which such information stems. Yet, Evans believes that the sense (mode of presentation) associated with these demonstratives is object-dependent, just as with the previous two types of demonstratives. This is to say that it is necessary that there be an information-link between the subject and the object for there to be a relevant mode of presentation. In this case though, it does not involve the subject's perceptual discrimination of the objectP However, unlike ordinary and past-tense demonstratives, testimony demonstratives are related to a kind of information that functions in the same way as some antecedents (etc.) do in the case of the anaphorical uses of a demonstrative. Even if, contrary to what seems to be the case, the former relation is not a manifestation of anaphora, the general direction which an investigation of testimony demonstratives would have to follow is ostensible. Such an investigation wO).lld, amongst other things, have to involve different sorts of question as to how a demonstrative draws upon various sources of linguistic information. This is another matter I will not pursue in this essay, concentrating thus on developing an account regarding those types of demonstratives where the sense (mode of presentation) is based on the subject's perceptual awareness - present and past. As my main goal in this essay is to provide a general structure of a feasible conception of the sense of a demonstrative, my investigation is confined to discrimination in terms of visual perception. However, I believe that - regarding the things said about the mode of presentation - the modes of perceiving (Le., of perceptual awareness) involved in the cases when by demonstrative expressions we refer to objects by touching, hearing or smelling them, play the same role as in the visual case. It needs to be noted that our ordinary concept of perception (perceptual awareness) is vague. With respect to visual perception this can be pointed out by claiming with Evans that it is quite undetermined by the ordinary concept what kinds of spatial circuitousness and time-lags in the information channel are consistent with the subject's being said to perceive the object. We speak of seeing someone on the television, or of seeing someone
in a mirror as well as seeing his reflection - but only of seeing someone's shadow, and of seeing stars - despite the long delay that the channel involves, and so on (Evans, 1982, p. 144). As I will be concerned with perception (Le., perceptual awareness) only with respect to those cases which do not involve spatial circuitousness and time-lags there is no need here to replace the concept of perception with some other concept which would not suffer from such vagueness.28
As is well-known, Frege equates the sense of a sentence with a Thought which is understood to be '...not the subjective performance of thinking but its objective content, which is capable of being the common property of several thinkers' (1980, p. 61). In order to forestall any confusion between these two uses of 'thought' I will be using the capital letter whenever the former use is in question, unless it occurs in a quotation in which it is not written with the capital letter. See Dummett 1981b, chapter 1, and 1981a, p. 80. This paper was circulating for years as a mimeograph. It has now been published and is accompanied by his new paper entitled 'Afterthoughts' which, as we shall see, includes his current critical stance towards some of the theses advocated in the main body of the text. See Lewis 1980, for his discussion of this notion and his distinction between context and index. K~plan, 'Demonstratives', p. 490. In the note accompanying thIS he says that a demonstration, which he takes as a theoretical concept, may also be opportune requiring no special action on the speaker's part, as when someone shouts 'Stop that man' while only one man is rushing toward the door. Burge 1979, p. 400. See also footnote 2 in the same work for his overt equation of (linguistic) meaning with Perry's role. The view espoused by Burge with respect to indexicals is just an instance of the more general, widespread, view that linguistic meaning of an expression is a matter of rules. In this vein Schlick writes that 'The meaning of a word or a combination of words is, in this way, determined by a set of rules which regulate their use' (1936, p. 341). Similarly,
7.
8. 9. 10.
11.
12.
13. 14.
15.
Strawson claims that '...to talk about the meaning of an expression or sentence is not to talk about its use on a particular occasion, but about the rules, habits, conventions governing its correct use, on all occasions, to refer or to assert' (1971, p. 9). For a critical discussion of this approach which has many other followers, see Alston 1974. This is a paraphrase of what Frege says about the sense of a proper name, i.e., 'The sense of a proper name is grasped by everybody who is sufficiently familiar with the language or totality of designations to which it belongs' (1980,pp. 57-8). See Dummett 1975,p. 124ff., and 1976,pp. 128-9,as well as his 1991a,chapter 5. Frege 1977,pp. 10.See also his 'Logic'in his 1979,pp. 134-5,for a similar remark. Note that those cases in which the pronoun 'he' is used as a pointer of someone's self-knowledge, self-belief, or selfconjecture, examined by Castaneda (1966),do not belong here, but are rather a different matter. By this I am not claiming that Kaplan's formulations of these rules are complete though I believe that his insights are basically correct. The fact that an indexical can, depending on circumstances, be used both as a pure indexical and as a demonstrative is seen by Q. Smith (1989) as the evidence in favour of his view that every indexical is governed by more than one rule, which in turn are governed by further rules (meta-rules). If this view is correct, it supplements the basis of the foregoing distinction. See Evans 1982;McDowell 1984,1986,1991,and 1994afor their defence of this view, as well as McCulloch 1988and 1989.See also Edwards 1994, for a critical discussion of this as well as some of the opposite views. See Blackburn 1984, chapter 9; Carruthers 1987 and 1988; Noonan 1986and 1991;Pendlebury 1988. Notably Carruthers 1987, section (B), and Noonan 1986, section IV, and 1991, section II. By contrast, Blackburn (1984, chapter 9) seems to allow for the possibility that demonstrative thoughts can be accounted for in descriptive terms. Evans 1982,pp. 18-19.On the other hand, Peacocke (1986)calls it 'Frege's Principle'. A very strong reason for accepting this criterion as a means of individuating Thoughts is that unlike other proposed means of their individuation - it is
sensitive to the important fact that statements of identity can (but need not) be informative. This will become clear in Chapter Four. 16. Note that the same applies on the verificationist view. For the verification procedure which this view requires for demonstrative statements about presently perceived objects hinges on the same kind of discriminating knowledge of such objects that is crucial for my argument. Consequently, it should be borne in mind that the abandonment of the foregoing view about the truth-conditions in favour of verificationism would not as such weaken the case for objectdependence. 17. See Carruthers 1987, who believes that this is Evans's main argument for the Russellian status of singular thoughts (p. 21);also Pendlebury 1988,whose article is not as closely tied to Evans's text. 18. Note that, unlike Pendlebury, Carruthers states the matters in terms of the content of thought, rather than belief. But, it amounts to the same thing since he is using 'thinking' synonymously with 'believing' as exemplified by the sentence 'They thought that that butterfly is worth having' (op. cit.).
19. As a result of this, my argument is not affected by Loar's (1988) objection that that-clauses are insufficiently finegrained to serve as individuators of psychological contents. 20. See Carruthers 1987 especially section (A); see also Noonan 1986, especially section IV, Blackburn 1984, 9.4, and Pendlebury 1988. 21. This also applies to cases involving two different subjects such as those provided by Putnam's (1975) Twin-Earth thought experiment and its cognates. 22. See, e.g. Carruthers 1987, p. 30, Blackburn, 1984, 9.2, and Noonan 1986,p. 84. 23. See, e.g., Carruthers 1987,p. 19,where he says that on the basis of appearance a drugged subject may take himself to be thinking a Thought which might be expressed in the words 'This grass is bright red', when, in fact, lacking the capacity to classify colours in a regular way, he is not thinking such a Thought. Note that despite this Carruthers slips into individuating Thoughts by appearances. On page 31 he claims that various tokens of the same Thought can have different truth-
24.
25.
26.
27. 28.
conditions as a result of the difference in the subject's dispositions. However, given this latter difference, the sameness of this Thought cannot be accounted for by the sameness of the contents of the subject's dispositions. It thus follows that the sameness of the Thought is a matter of the sameness of appearance. In section 3.6 I will take into account an objection concerning the rule of Existential Generalization that apparently threatens the strong object-dependence thesis and show that this objection is unwarranted. Note that the notion perceptual awareness, which furnishes the subject with the perceptual discrimination of the given object, as it is used here is neutral to the issue as to whether the content of a perceptual experience is conceptual or not. Evans (1982)believes it to be non-conceptual (in the sense in which it does not commit him to the bare knowledge view), whereas McDowell (1994b)takes the opposite view. In the role of a pure indexical, this adverb, as well as the adverb 'there', is used to refer to an unspecified location as when somebody says 'It is hot here'. In the demonstrative role, the adverbs 'here' and 'there' refer not to objects but to places and locations. However, places and locations are in relevant respects on a par with objects for they are defined in terms of objects and their relations. Note that when 'there' is used to indicate the region in which some object is in either the informative or uninformative sense of the next chapter, it functions as a demonstrative. Evans's cursory remarks about testimony demonstratives can be found in section 9.1 of his 1982. The theoretical concept which Evans uses is the concept of an information-link. He needs it both in order to avoid the vagueness of the concept of perception and in order to be able to include the testimony demonstratives (as well as proper names) into the class of expressions whose sense is objectdependent - in spite of the fact that they do not require the subject's perceptual encounter with the relevant object. I cannot deal here with the advantages and disadvantages of the reliance on the concept of an information-link. As to the question regarding what kind of sense belongs to (a sentence involving) a demonstrative expression used to
refer to objects 'seen' on television etc., see section 5.1 of this essay.
2 The sense of a demonstrative and the currently perceived object
2.2 Knowing which object it is and knowing its distinguishing properties
(B) The subject may know which object it is even if he does not know any descriptive condition of the given object.
By a descriptive condition of the given object I mean a condition encapsulated by a definite description or other expressions that hold, or are true, of the given object. Trying to show that the claim (B) is true I want first to classify the predominant types of descriptive conditions. They are: (1) Conditions involving what we usually call a unary property of the object, which can be: Both the weak and the strong thesis of object-dependence, each in its own way, amount to the following thesis. If the appropriate object is not given to us (in the way required by the correct use of a demonstrative), no corresponding sense (Thought) associated with the given demonstrative sentence is grasped; or, simply, there is no understanding of such a sentence. As regards both these theses, this is the result of the subject's ignorance of which object it is, i.e., his lack of discriminating knowledge of the appropriate object. The difference is, of course, that when it comes to the weak thesis of object-dependence the subject is aware of his non-discrimination of the object that might but need not exist (remember Mrs. X from the foregoing example), whereas he is under the impression that he perceptually discriminates the non-existent object when the strong thesis of object-dependence is in question. In the light of this, Russell's Principle of Evans, introduced in the last chapter, i.e., the principle that a subject cannot have a Thought about something unless he knows which object he is thinking about, has been vindicated with respect to demonstrative sentences. I would like to turn now to some matters concerning the subject's discriminating knowledge, bringing them subsequently to bear on the notion of mode of presentation.
(1.1) A sortal property which assigns an object to a natural or artefact kind; or (1.2) A qualitative property which relates, for example, to the object's colour or shape, and so on; (2) Conditions involving a state the object is in; (3) Conditions involving (binary, ternary, etc.) relations that the object bears to other objects. Expressions specifying these relations usually involve reference to other relata of a given relation, and so on. The types of conditions on this list further combine to generate more complex types of conditions, i.e., further types of conditions can be readily generated from these basic types. Now, it is a matter of fact that, in terms of the types listed, each object satisfies one or another (or more than one) condition from each of the envisaged types of cases. In simple terms, each object has a certain colour and shape, belongs to a certain kind, is in a certain state, bears numerous relations to other things, and so on. A given subject who, on the basis of his perception of a certain object, knows which object it is need not, however, as I will argue, know that the object satisfies the conditions that it does in fact satisfy - as claimed by (B).
In arguing for this claim, I will distinguish two ways ~~ whi~h the given subject can lack the knowledge of the cond1tiOn~ m question. One of them is based on the subject's faul~y perception, the other not. The latter, which will be discussed first, assumes, unlike the former, that the subject is aware that he does not know the descriptive conditions of the object he perceptual~y distinguishes. In the discussion that follows both these way~ ~1ll be divided into the cases corresponding to the types of d~s~nptive conditions discerned above. Another two ways, combmmg the features of these two, can also be distinguished. One relates to the case in which the subject's perception is faulty, but, being aware of its faultiness the subject is also aware that he lacks th~ kno,:"ledge of the given conditions. The ot~er re.lates to the case 1~ wh1ch t~e subject is simply not aware - l.e., d1d not c~me to thi~ - .of his ignorance of these conditions, although h1s perception 1S not faulty. Having noted the.se two furth~r possibilities, I will i~nore them since their discusSiOn would y1eld results that are bas1cally the same as with those two distinguished above. . Regarding (1.1), it is clear that the s~bject m~y kn?w, ~1~h respect to a certain object that he perce1ves, w~c~ object 1t 1S, without knowing (in the sense of being aware of his 19norance) to which natural or artefact kind it belongs. He can, as a matter of fact, discriminate, for example, something glaring, movi.ng through the sky, without knowing whether it is a bird, a satelht~, a comet, an asteroid, a piece of a disintegrated aircraft, or s?methin~ else. Regarding (1.2), to defend the claim (B) 1S t~ cla~m that the subject may know which object it is with~ut kno,:"m? (m the se~se of being aware of his ignorance) any of 1t~ quahtat~ve propertie.s. Similarly to the previous case, we can ~nv1sa~e a clrcumst~nce m which the subject discriminates somet~ng while ~ot knowmg, for example, its shape because its. boundane~ eva~e ~m d~e to glare, or simply because its boundanes are outs1de his v~sual f1eld. B~t, ~t least at first sight, it does not seem that the qu~sti~n of the object s colour can be treated in the same way. That 1S,1t does not seem plausible that the given subject who discriminates a certai~ object on the basis of his current perception may at the same time be ignorant of the colour or at least a kind of colour (light, ~ark~ etc.) in which the object appears (publicly) to us. (That th~ subject 1Sn?t mistaken about the colour is, of course, ex hypothesI precluded m this case.) A resolution of this question requires a caref~l discussion which will for the sake of simplicity be postponed unt11 the next chapter (section 3.3). For the time being I will simply
assume that the claim (B) does not hold for this case. However, as will become clear shortly, this claim can still be sustained in spite of this. Regarding (2), it should be noted that the word 'state' is somewhat vague, i.e., it has various 'meanings'. We, for example, speak of active states of objects such as their moving, and of their passive states, such as their being battered. We also speak of the socalled physical states that can be seen as more intrinsic to objects than their active and passive states are, at least with respect to some kinds of objects. Regarding these latter states, it is again a matter of fact that the subject may know which object it is even if he does not know (in the sense of being aware of his ignorance) whether it is solid, liquid, or gaseous. Similarly, with the states of the former kind: the subject may, for example, be spatially related to the given object in such a way that he does not notice that the object is moving with respect to the position which the subject occupies, and so forth. Without going into further discussions regarding some other 'meanings' and their variants of the word 'state', I believe, we can accept that the claim (B) holds with respect to (2). As regards (3), we can accept the natural assumption that the conditions stated in (3) are constitutive of knowing where the object is. One knows where the object is if one can determine its relative position with respect to other bodies, including oneself. In the light of this, the relevant question becomes whether the subject may know which object it is without knowing (in the sense of being aware of his ignorance) where it is. This kind of knowledge of where the object is, I will call the knowledge of where the object is in the informative sense. On the other hand, by what I will call the knowledge of where the object is in the uninformative sense I am trying to capture the 'limiting' case corresponding to what McDowell (1986, p. 140) characterizes as the subject's knowledge of where in the world the object is, when the only answer he can give to the question 'Where is it?' is 'There'. Now, when it comes to knowledge of where the object is in the informative sense, the answer to the above question is affirmative. This is to say that it is not difficult to envisage a situation in which the object (and/or the subject) is moving too rapidly to assign it any relative position while yet knows which object it is. On the other hand, it does not seem possible to sever in this way the knowledge of where the object is in the uninformative sense
from the knowledge as to which object it is. If the subject knows which object it is, it seems that by the same token ~e knows where in the world the object is in this sense. But, as w1ll become clear shortly, this is of no relevance here, for this latter ki~d of knowledge amounts to nothing over and above the former kmd of knowledge. The claim (B), it can be thus concluded, also holds with resp.ect to (3). The subject may know which object it is without kno~mg (in the sense of being aware of his ignorance) any of the object's descriptive conditions in terms of (3). When it comes to the subject's faulty perception relating to the descriptive conditions of the given object, the claim (B) can be sustained as follows. Regarding (1.1), as a matter of fact the subject may know, on t~e basis of his perception, which object it is while being mistaken m terms of what natural or artefact kind it belongs to. He can, for example, believe that he 'sees' a man when he 'sees' a bear, or, he can believe that he 'sees' a table when he 'sees' a chair instead, and so on. Regarding (1.2), mistakes similar to the~e c~n occur ..DU~to, say, some kind of deception the subject can see a certam tnangular object as round, a certain yellow object as wl~,ite,and so o~' Regarding (2), on similar grounds the subject can be ,rm~taken.by taking, say, a liquid object for a solid one. As to the object s motion (regarding the other tackled 'meaning'. of the word 'state'). ~he subject may 'see' the object as moving w1th respect to the pos1tion the subject occupies when this is not the case, and so on. Regarding (3), no doubt the subje~t can ~e mistaken as to .where the object (in the informative se~~) 1S.It ~ght be th~t, e.g., 1t ~oes not occupy - relative to the pos1tlOn which the subject, occup1es .the position between the objects band c where the subject takes 1t to be, but the position between band d. . It has thus been shown that the claim (B) holds w1th respect to all types of descriptive conditions distinguish~d ab~ve, when. the possibility of th~ su?ject:s faulty. perceptlOn 1S taken mto consideration, which 1mplles that 1t holds for these types of conditions simpliciter. In the light of this, the view that the claim (B) does not hold with re~pect to the objec~'s c~lour, when th~ possibility of the subject s fault~ perceptlOn 1~ ex hypotheSI precluded, can, in accordance. w1th ~y fregomg temporary assumption, be acknowledged w1th (B) still bemg true. To advocate (B) with respect to the question of the object's colour means to
argue that the subject may know which object it is while not knowing which colour (or the sort of colour) it has (or, in which colour it appears publicly to us). This possibility is open, as we have seen, when the subject's faulty perception is taken into consideration. Given that the claim (B) can be sustained on the basis of conside~ing only those cases in which the subject's perception is faulty, 1t proves redundant for this to discuss the cases in which the subject's faulty perception is ex hypothesi precluded. I have, however, included them as well in order to point out that there is a certain diversity of ways in which the descriptive conditions in question might not be known by the given subject who knows which obj~ct it is: This .make~ it .a~parent that the discrepancy betw~~n h1s knowmg ~hich object 1t 1Sand his knowledge of these cond1tions does not anse only because of his faulty perception. As each of the foregoing types of descriptive conditions has been examined individually, it might seem that though the claim (B) holds for each individual type it need not hold for all of them taken together. In other words, somebody might raise the objection that whenever the subject knows which object it is he also knows at least some of the object's descriptive conditions. That this need ~ot be the case can be easily shown by simply joining the foregoing msights abou~ ~ach .individual ca~e t?gether. The subject may perceJ?tuall.y d1stmgUlsh, say, an object m the sky at night without knowmg (m the sense of being aware of his ignorance) which natural or artefact kind it belongs to, be mistaken with respect to its shape or colour, and so on. I believe that it has become clear by now that my somewhat cou~s~ groupin~ of ?e~criptive conditions (1) through (3), remm1scent of Anstotle s hst of categories, suffices here to provide evidential support to the claim (B), and we can leave these matters here. That is, it does not make much difference if some relevant types of descriptive conditions have been omitted from my foregoing classification. For if we think of the sorts of expression in our langua.ge other than the property-words etc., used in (1) - (3), we can easl1y account for corresponding properties etc., (at least) in terms of those foregoing cases that were based on the possibility of the subject's faulty perception.l Moreover, if the expressions which indicate properties of objects are adjectives such as 'big' or 'small' (thought of in either attributive or predicative terms), the resulting .properties which could be taken as purported candidates for formmg counter-examples to (B) might be questioned also
from the knowledge as to which object it is. If the subject knows which object it is, it seems that by the same token ~e knows where in the world the object is in this sense. But, as wl1l become clear shortly, this is of no relevance here, for this latter ki~d of knowledge amounts to nothing over and above the former kmd of knowledge. The claim (B), it can be thus concluded, also holds with resp.ect to (3). The subject may know which object it is without kno~mg (in the sense of being aware of his ignorance) any of the object's descriptive conditions in terms of (3). When it comes to the subject's faulty perception relating to the descriptive conditions of the given object, the claim (B) can be sustained as follows. Regarding (1.1), as a matter of fact the subject may know, on t~e basis of his perception, which object it is while being mistaken m terms of what natural or artefact kind it belongs to. He can, for example believe that he 'sees' a man when he 'sees' a bear, or, he can beli~ve that he 'sees' a table when he 'sees' a chair instead, and so on. Regarding (1.2), mistakes similar to the~e c~n occur ..DU~to, say, some kind of deception the subject can see a certam tnangular object as round, a certain yellow object as wl~.ite,and so o~' Regarding (2), on similar ground~ the subject can be .nu~taken.by taking, say, a liquid object for a sohd one. As to the object s motion (regarding the other tackled 'meaning'. of the word 'state'). ~he subject may 'see' the object as moving wIth respect to the posItion the subject occupies when this is not the case, and so on. Regarding (3), no doubt the subje~t can ~e mistaken as to .where the object (in the informative se~~) IS. It ~ght be th~t, e.g., It ~oes not occupy - relative to the posltlOn which the subject. occupIes ,the position between the objects band c where the subject takes It to be, but the position between band d. . It has thus been shown that the claim (B) holds wIth respect to all types of descriptive conditions distinguish~d ab~ve, when. the possibility of th~ su?ject:s faulty. perceptIon IS taken mto consideration, which Imphes that It holds for these types of conditions simpliciter. In the light of this, the view that the claim (B) does not hold with respect to the object's colour, when th~ possibility of the subject's fault~ perception i~ ex hypothesl precluded, can, in accordance. wIth ~y fregomg temporary assumption, be acknowledged wIth (B) still bemg true. To advocate (B) with respect to the question of the object's colour means to
argue that the subject may know which object it is while not knowing which colour (or the sort of colour) it has (or, in which colour it appears publicly to us). This possibility is open, as we have. seen~ when the subject's faulty perception is taken into consIderation. Given that the claim (B) can be sustained on the basis of conside~ing only those cases in which the subject's perception is faulty, It proves redundant for this to discuss the cases in which the subject's faulty perception is ex hypothesi precluded. I have, however, included them as well in order to point out that there is a certain diversity of ways in which the descriptive conditions in question might not be known by the given subject who knows which obj~ct it is: This .make~ it .a~parent that the discrepancy betw~~n hIS knowmg ~hich object It IS and his knowledge of these condItions does not anse only because of his faulty perception. As each of the foregoing types of descriptive conditions has been examined individually, it might seem that though the claim (B) holds for each individual type it need not hold for all of them taken together. In other words, somebody might raise the objection that whenever the subject knows which object it is he also knows at least some of the object's descriptive conditions. That this need ~ot be the case can be easily shown by simply joining the foregoing msights abou~ ~ach .individual ca~e t?gether. The subject may perceJ?tuall.y dlstmgUlsh, say, an object m the sky at night without knowmg (m the sense of being aware of his ignorance) which natural or artefact kind it belongs to, be mistaken with respect to its shape or colour, and so on. I believe that it has become clear by now that my somewhat cou~s~ groupin~ of ?e~criptive conditions (1) through (3), remmlscent of Anstotle s hst of categories, suffices here to provide evidential support to the claim (B), and we can leave these matters here. That is, it does not make much difference if some relevant types of descriptive conditions have been omitted from my foregoing classification. For if we think of the sorts of expression in our language other than the property-words etc., used in (1) - (3), we can easily account for corresponding properties etc., (at least) in terms of those foregoing cases that were based on the possibility of the subject's faulty perception.l Moreover, if the expressions which indicate properties of objects are adjectives such as 'big' or 'small' (thought of in either attributive or predicative terms), the resulting .properties which could be taken as purported candidates for formmg counter-examples to (B) might be questioned also
because of their indeterminacy. That is, the question arises as to what is exactly meant by, say, asking whether the subject who knows which object it is must also know that the object in question is big or small, and so on. It was noted above that the subject's knowledge of where the object is in the uninformative sense always accompanies ~is knowledge as to which object it is. The same holds for two,special properties, one of which is the nonrelational property of bemg selfidentical, which is a universal general property had by every individual whatsoever.2 This property is formally denoted by the expression 'h[x=x]', where 'A' is used as a v,ariable,-bi~~ing property abstraction operator. ('the property of bemg an mdlVldual
x such that ... '). The other of these properties is the so-called haecceity or 'thisness' of a particular object a, i.e., the property of being this very thing a. This, unlike the former property, is an intrinsically relational particularized property, one had only by the object a and nothing else. To stress the distinction between these two properties Salmon (op. cit.) says that an individual 'occurs in' its haecceity '~s a constituent', whereas self-identity is a purely general property, If anything is. Similar to the subject's knowledge of where the object is in the uninformative sense, the knowledge of these two properties always seems to accompany the subject's knowledge as to which object it is. Now, given the fact that they constitute certain descriptive conditions of the given object, the claim (B), that is, that the subject may know which object it is even if he does not know any of the object's descriptive conditions, has been violat~d. This violation is, however, harmless because nothmg theoretically interesting is going to be lost if I enter a caveat excluding those descriptive conditions of the given object which do not involve the object's distinguishing properties. By distinguishing properties I mean properties such as those encapsulated in (1) - (3) above, i.e., the object's shape, colour etc., which can be taken by the subject as the object's discriminating features on a particular occasion. That properties relating to where the object is in the uninformative sense and the two special properties in question are not the object's distinguishing properties is not difficult to see. We have already seen that by knowing where the object is in this sense the subject does not know anything over and above which object it is. This is tout court to say that by this means he does not know
anything in the sense of t~e properties encapsulated by (1) _ (3) a~o~e. ~s ~o the two specIal properties, that the former is not a disting~shing property is revealed by the fact that it is known by the subject regardless of whether he has discriminated the relevant object (i.e .., he knows which object it is) or not, and the correspondmg descriptive condition vacuously holds of any other object. On the ~ther ~and, the knowledge of the latter property, the property of be~ng !hl~ very thing a, is based on the object a being perceptual~y dIs~nm~n~ted alr~ady by the given subject (i.e., he knows which obJ~ct It IS~.and It does not provide him with any knowle~ge that IS ad~Itional to this knowledge. (Note that properties such as whlte or non-white, coloured if red, etc., can also be accounted for along similar lines.) Given the caveat I have entered, the claim (B) becomes the more specific claim: (Bl) The subject may know which object it is even if he does ~ot know any descriptive condition of the given object which mvolves its distinguishing properties.
It might, however, be claimed that (B1) fails with respect to characte~is~ics suc~ as. appears to me to be green. Such ~haracte7ISt1CS can mfallibly be entertained by the subject tr.res.pe~tive of what the real colour of the object which he has dIscnmmated on the basis of his perception is, and which can be taken as distinguishing properties of the given object. I have assumed above that the claim (B) - now the claim (B1) _ do~s no.t h?l~ for the kind of case relating to the colour of the o~Ject discrtmma~ed by the subject when the possibility that he is ~Istaken about ItS colour is ex hypothesi precluded. It was the kmd o~ case based on the possibility of the subject's faulty pe~ception th,at 'p~ovided requisite evidential support for this claIm. Now, If It IS acknowledged that characteristics such as appears. to me .to be gree~ are (qualitative) distinguishing properties of objects, (B1) fails. For properties like this would fail to be accounted for, not only in terms of the former, but also in terms of ~he ,latter way (Le.,. the on~ t~ading on the possibility of the subject s faulty perception). This lme of thought can be put in the form of the following counter-argument to (B1):
(1) For every object x for which the subject knows, on the basis of his perception, which object it is, it is true that x always appears to him as having one colour or another (or more than one). (2) For any colour , and for any object x, the subject cannot be mistaken regarding x's appearance if x - being distinguished on the basis of his perception, i.e., the subject knows which object it is - appears to him to be . (1) and (2) jointly imply that a subject-relative characteristic of the type appears to me to be is unmistakably entertained when the subject, on the basis of his perception, knows of a given object, which object it is. characteristic of the type appears to is a distinguishing property of objects.
(3) Any subject-relative
me to be
(C) For every object x, it is true that if the subject knows, on the basis of his perception, which object it is, he also knows its distinguishing properties of the type appears to me to be . I will here simply assume that premiss (1) is true (but see section 3.3) for it seems that if, on the basis of his perception, the subject knows which object it is, the object appears to him in one colour or another (or more than one), at least in the sense of being dark or light, and so on. Without going into various issues in philosophy of perception, I will simply concede premiss (2) and in a Russellian manner3 say that we have a direct cognitive relationship with our sense-data. When the subject has a sense-datum, for example, the green colour, he is directly 'acquainted' with the colour and cannot be mistaken regarding the sense-datum he is entertaining. It is premiss (3) to which I want to give longer consideration by trying to investigate whether some counter-evidence to it can be provided. As was stressed in the last section, by a distinguishing property I simply mean a property which can be taken by the given subject, on a particular occasion, as the object's discriminating feature. Thus, to be distinguishing, a property need not be uniquely
individuating, and we should not be worried about the fact that a purported property of the type appears to me to be is not uniquely individuating. In other words, we should not be worried about the fact that the predicate encapsulating it includes an indexical, i.e., a case of the first-person pronoun, which can be used to refer to more than one subject, allowing consequently the predicate and the purported property to be true of more than one object. Besides, even seemingly much stronger candidates for the class of uniquely individuating properties or expressions are subject to various qualms as to their fulfilment of this role. When, for example, we consider definite descriptions denoting so-called particulars, regardless of how uniquely individuating they seem to be, nothing - as Strawson has pointed out - can guarantee that they apply uniquely. We may be very well informed about a particular sector of the universe and may be sure that there is only one particular thing in that sector which answers to a certain general description. This, however, does not guarantee that the description applies uniquely. There might be another particular, answering to the same description, in another sector of the universe. Even if the description is enlarged so that it incorporates a description of the salient features of the sector of the universe concerned, we still lack a guarantee that the description is individuating. The other sector might reproduce these features too. However much one adds to the description of the sector one knows about - its internal detail and its external relations this possibility of massive reduplication remains open. No extension of one's knowledge of the world can eliminate this possibility (1959, p. 20). A fact related to this is the presence of so-called indexical elements in a great many definite descriptions which often remain concealed. In the way in which we ordinarily use it, the description 'the sun' does not require the spelling out of such elements. But, if, for example, an astronomer talks about various solar systems and in the same discourse he wants to make reference to the object which we normally denote by the description 'the sun', he will add some indexical elements in order to avoid misunderstanding. Instead of using simply 'the sun', he will, for example, use the description 'the sun of our solar system'. Premiss (3) is question-begging not because the corresponding predicate includes an indexical, but because the characteristic-type
in question involves reference to the subject's sense-datum. Characteristics of this type are unshareable, unpublic - unlike, for example, properties like being green or being three steps in front of me. In the latter case, the predicate encapsulating the property involves the same case of the first-person pronoun as that encapsulating the foregoing characteristic-type. Now, the fact that characteristics of the type appears to me to be Fare unshareable need not invalidate premiss (3) as such for they can still be seen as distinguishing properties of objects for the given subject. However, this fact certainly does reveal that with such a property nobody but the given subject knows whether it accompanies the object or not, when the subject knows, on the basis of his perception, which object it is. At the level of linguistic communication, this amounts to incommunicability by means of expressions encapsulating such a property. In fact, the speaker can, of course, manage to convey information to the hearer by uttering on a particular occasion, for example, the sentence 'That object which appears to me to be green is my table', due to various factors involved. However, the property appears to me to be green does not figure in specifying what the speaker has said to the hearer while, on the other hand, properties such as being green are involved in such specifications. The privacy of the properties of the former kind has a consequence that one subject does not know whether the property appears to me to be green as entertained by himself is the same as the property appears to me to be green entertained by another subject. I thus do not know, regarding any property of this kind, whether I entertain the same property as somebody else, or not. The most I can expect is that other people always associate one such property or another with objects they perceptually discriminate. We may go even further and, on the basis of various ploys stemming from Wittgenstein's critique of the possibility of private experiences (at least according to some interpretations), claim that we do not deal here with properties at all. This would be a way to refute premiss (3) and, consequently, conclusion (C) of the foregoing counter-argument to the claim (B1). However, instead of dealing with these complicated matters I will simply acknowledge premiss (3) and restrict the claim (B1) accordingly. For, in the light of the fact that the properties encompassed by premiss (3) play no role in linguistic communication, the basic tenet of this claim is not lost if it is restated as the claim:
(B2) The subject may know which object it is even if he does not know any descriptive condition of the given object which involves its distinguishing properties that are publicly
shareable. Now, speaking of public shareability, the question arises as to how, if at all, it can be publicly ascertained whether a particular subject has discriminated an object at all, Le., knows which object it is, when it is the case that he does not know any of the properties of the purported object of his discrimination that are distinguishing and publicly shareable. The answer to this can be provided by reflecting upon some aspects of the subject's linguistic and nonlinguistic behaviour. On the basis of, for example, the subject's gestures such as his pointings to an object (not, of course, blind pointings), he can often be intelligibly credited with the knowledge of which object it is even if this is the only evidence in its favour. I shall return to this in the next chapter.
The first of two questions that I want to deal with in this section is whether the restatement of the claim (B2) in terms of the subject's belief instead of the subject's knowledge also holds. That is, the question is whether it is possible for the subject to know which object it is without having any beliefs as to which descriptive conditions involving publicly shareable distinguishing properties are satisfied by the given object. In other words, the question is whether the subject can suspend all of his beliefs about the object with respect to these descriptive conditions. Before this question is discussed I want to point out that a claim about the subject's belief parallel to the claim (B2) can be construed only in this way. For there is no belief counterpart for knowledge as to which object it is.4 It makes no sense to say, regarding a certain object, that the subject believes which object it is; or, as John Stewart Mill would say, there is nothing here to believe or disbelieve (1973, p. 21). In the light of my discussion of descriptive conditions in section 2.2 above, the answer to the above question can be given as follows. Consider first those cases in which the subject's perception relating to the descriptive conditions of the given object is faulty (whose faultiness he is not aware of) and yet he knows which
object it is. This ex hypothesi involves the subject believing that the object in question satisfies some descriptive condition which it in fact does not satisfy. This was encapsulated in the examples provided in section 2.2 to show that the subject can be mistaken about every descriptive condition of the given object. When it was argued that the subject can be mistaken as to what natural or artefact kind the object belongs to, it was stated that the subject can believe that he 'sees' a man when he 'sees' a bear, and so on. And although in other cases the notion of belief was not overtly employed the same holds for them. For to say, as I did, that the subject 'sees' a triangular object as round amounts to saying that the subject believes that he 'sees' a round object, and so on. As to those cases in which the subject's faulty perception is ex hypothesi precluded and the subject is aware of his ignorance of the descriptive conditions of the given object, he need not have corresponding beliefs about these conditions either. The question, however, arises as to whether in view of the remark made above in section 2.2 this possibility is also open with respect to the object's colour. That is, if it seems implausible, as it was noted there, that the given subject who discriminates a certain object on the basis of his current perception may at the same time be ignorant (in the sense of being aware of his ignorance) of the colour in which the object (publicly) appears to us, the question arises as to whether this mutatis mutandis also holds for the subject's belief. Can he suspend his belief as to the colour in which the object (publicly) appears? It might seem that the answer to this question is that the subject cannot suspend this kind of belief. This answer is based on the tacit assumption that excluding the possibility of the subject's ignorance of the object's colour involves that he is convinced that he knows it, and the further assumption that this conviction on the subject's part involves his corresponding belief about the object's colour. The subject, however, need not have this kind of conviction. He may for various reasons refuse to believe that his perception of the colour of the given object is veridical and if, in addition to this, he has no belief as to the object having some other colour, the suspension of belief as to the object's colour on his part is forthcoming. (I shall return to this in section 3.4.) It has thus been shown that the claim about the subject's belief parallel to the claim (B2), envisaged at the beginning of this section, also holds. The subject may know which object it is without having any beliefs as to which descriptive conditions
involving publicly shareable distinguishing properties are satisfied by the given object. That is, the subject can suspend all of his beliefs about the object with regards to these descriptive conditions. The second question that I want to tackle is related to yet another property which can be added to the list of properties entertained by the subject whenever he knows which object it is, such as properties of being self-identical and of haecceity, encountered in section 2.2 above. As we remember, these properties are publicly shareable but not distinguishing, Le., not accounted for by the claim (B2). The property in question is being an object while the question I want to tackle is whether the subject's perceptual knowledge as to which object it is always involves his knowing whether the given object is a material object, or not. How this question is answered depends on how we conceive of the notion of a material object. If it is taken to involve all those objects as to which the subject can know - in the sense of my discussion in this essay - which objects they are, the answer to the foregoing question is simply that the subject's knowledge as to which object it is always involves his knowing that it is a material object, where the property of being a material object is publicly shareable but not distinguishing. If, on the other hand, the notion of a material object is taken more narrowly, as in those everyday cases in which we do not treat, e.g., shadows or flashes of light as material objects, the property of being a material object belongs with sortal properties dealt with above in section 2.2 and is to be treated accordingly. The subject may know which object it is without knowing whether it is a material object (in this sense) or, say, a flash of light, in either of the examined ways in which the subject can lack this knowledge.
2.5 The mode of presentation and propositional knowledge In this section I want to bring the considerations from the preceding sections of this chapter to bear on the notion of the mode of presentation. While discussing the notion of the mode of presentation in the last chapter it was remarked that it is hardly disputable that objects that are given to us in the way required by the correct use of an indexical are given to us in a particular way. In the case of
demonstratives referring to currently perceived objects this amounts to the claim that if an object has been singled out by the given subject on the basis of his perception, it is given to him under a particular mode of presentation. The singling out of an object on the basis of his perception is sufficient for there to be a certain mode of presentation. Speaking in terms of the claim (B2) accepted above, this is to claim that if the subject knows on the basis of his perception which object it is, it is given to him under a particular mode of presentation regardless of whether he knows any of its distinguishing publicly shareable properties, or not. Elaborating on this insight, consider again Frege's characterization of the notion of sense as the mode of presentation which, as pointed out in section 1.2 above, provides us with one of his two arguments to the effect that there is a notion of sense as different from the notion of reference. As it was noted, this argument consists in the insight that it is unintelligible to attribute to anyone a piece of knowledge of which the whole account is that he knows the reference of an expression, i.e., to attribute to him a bare knowledge of the reference of an expression. If someone knows what the referent of an expression is, then this referent must be given to him in some particular way, and the way in which it is given constitutes the sense which he attaches to the expression. Dummett believes that on Frege's view such a piece of knowledge must always take the form of knowing that the object, considered as identified in a particular way, is the referent of the expression; and that the mode of identification of the object which enters into the characterization of what it is that the subject knows constitutes the sense of the expression (1976, p. 128). In the light of this, the foregoing insight - that, if on the basis of his perception the subject knows which object it is it is given to him under a particular mode of presentation regardless of whether he knows the object's distinguishing publicly shareable properties, or not - implies that this knowledge on the subject's part is not bare even if he does not know any of these properties. This can be illustrated in terms of the following presentation of what Dummett means by the mode of identif~cation of the object which enters into the characterization of what it is that the subject knows. According to Dummett, an attribution to someone of a knowledge of the reference of an expression is to be understood as a statement of the form rX knows, of a that it is F1, that is, a statement in which the subject of the that-clause stands, in a transparent context, outside the that-clause. Such a statement
Dummett calls an 'attribution of knowledge about an object' (1975, pp. 124-5). The assertion that someone knows the reference of an expression without attaching to it any particular sense amounts to, according to Dummett, attributing to him knowledge about an object, while denying that there is any further characterization of that piece of knowledge by means of a statement of the form rX knows that b is F1, that is, one in which the subject of the thatclause appears within it and hence in an opaque context. Such a statement Dummett calls an 'attribution of propositional knowledge'. But, according to the Fregean argument, Dummett claims, an attribution of knowledge about an object is unintelligible if accompanied by the claim that no further characterization, in terms of propositional knowledge, is possible. For, on this view, propositional knowledge is basic. Whenever an attribution of knowledge about an object is correct, there must be some correct attribution of propositional knowledge from which it follows. Without going into tricky matters regarding transparent and opaque contexts, we can relate this to demonstratives in the following way. Consider a case in which the given subject refers to a certain object, which he perceives, by the use of the demonstrative 'this', saying 'This is F'. Suppose that there is another person present on the same occasion who perceives the object in question and wants to attribute to the given subject the corresponding types of knowledge, i.e., knowledge abo~t ~e obje.ct and propositional knowledge. The former sort of attnbutIOn WIll take, for example, the form of rX knows, of this, that it is F'. As to the latter sort of attribution, the statement-form which Dummett offers, i.e., rX knows that b is F1, contains the expression denoting the given object which differs from the one in the former case: the expression 'a' is replaced with the expression 'b'. This mirrors Dummett's claim that the knowledge of the reference of the name 'Oxford' (his example) must be, in accordance with Fre~e's argument further characterized by saying of the subject something of the form 'He knows that the city which ...is the referent .of "Oxford'''. Speaking in terms of demonstratives, this is to claIm that the knowledge of the reference of a demonstrative ~uch as 'this', on a particular occasion, must be further characterl~~d. ~~, say, 'He knows that the object which ...is the referent of thl~ . Now, on its face value, stating matters in terms of 'the. CI~y which ...' or 'the object which ...' suggests that the subject ~ knowledge of the reference of a name or a demonstrative mus
involve his knowledge of some definite description(s) which provide the sense of the name or t~e demonstrative.s ~s far .as demonstratives are concerned, the Incorrectness of thIS claIm stems not only from the crucial difference between the sense of a demonstrative and the sense of a definite description which will be explored in Chapter Four of this essay, but also from the claim (B2). If the question of difference between the sens~s of these two types of expression is ignored and matters are consIdered only by relying on the claim (B2), then it needs to be pointed out that (B2) does not provide for the possibility of the subject's ignorance of all sorts of descriptions. As we have seen, the subject's knowledge as to which object it is, is always accompanied by his knowledge of the descriptive condition involving the property of being selfidentical, and the like. However, the foregoing claim about propositional knowledge is obviously supposed to include something more informative than this. If it accomplishes anything, this line of thought allows us to construe attributions of propositional knowledge involving descriptions encapsulating properties such as this, and also attributions involving descriptions encapsulating distinguishing publicly shareable properties of the given object when it is the case that the subject knows them. When, on the other hand, the difference mentioned between the sense of a demonstrative and the sense of a definite description is taken into account, then, as will become clear in Chapter Four, it is not at all correct here to attribute propositional knowledge by means of definite descriptions. This objection can, however, be met by a simple move - by construing attributions of propositional knowledge in terms of, say, a demonstrative pronoun accompanied by nouns and other words instead in terms of definite descriptions. Thus, one such attribution takes the form of something like 'He knows that that object which ...is the referent of "this"', where the gap in this sentence-form is supposed to be filled with a descriptive condition or conditions which involve the object's distinguishing publicly shareable properties. This can be done when it is the case that the subject knows some of these properties while it cannot be done when he knows none of them which, in other terms, means that in the latter kind of case we cannot avail ourselves of such attributions. This, however, does not entail, that there is no propositional knowledge when no such attributions are available.6 The notion
of propositiona.l knowled~e belongs with the notion of Thought, the Thought bemg something the subject can grasp irrespective of whet~~r or not he. knows. any of the aforementioned descriptive con~:htionsof the gIven o~Ject. This fact about the Thought and the sUbJ.ect stem~ from th~ Insight stated at the beginning of this sec~IOn t~at 1~ t~e .su.bJec.tknows on the basis of his perception WhICh ob~ect It IS, It IS gIVen to him under a particular mode of pr~se~tat~o~ re~ar?less of .whether or not he knows any of the object s dlstIngwshing pubhcly shareable properties. A further characterization of the intuitive notion of the mode of presentation will be provided in Chapter Four. As to the insight that. ~he subject's perceptual discrimination of the given object is sufficlent for there to be a mode of presentation, I want to conclude thIS chapter by making one remark. As far as demonstratives referring to the objects of the subject's current perception are con~erned, this insight combined with the object-dependence theSIS (both weak and strong), according to which the subject's knowledge of which object it is, is necessary for there to be a mode of presentation, ~mounts t~ the. followin~. If the subject is going to be presented WIth an object m a particular way, Le., under a particular mode of presentation, he must know on the basis of his percepti.on whic~. obje.ct it i~, b~t h~ need not know any of its descnptIve condItIOns mvolvmg ItS dIstinguishing properties that are publicly shareable.
~s t~ t~ose pro~erties or states which are captured by no hngwstIc expressIOns, see section 3.3 of this essay. See Salmon 1982, p. 21. See Russell 1949, chapter 10. In some languages, including German and French, this type of kno~~edge is disti~guished from the type of knowledge exemphfIed by knOWIng, say, that an object has a certain property, by the use of different words denoting them. I believe, that this view is .not ~ntended by Dummett, knowing that he IS not sympathetic WIth the idea that the sense of a singular term must always be thought of as the sense of some description. This suggests that attributions of propositional knowledge should be construed in such a way that the embedded clauses
do not involve any of the foregoing properties. Such clauses would be similar to clauses which, as we shall see in section 5.3, display the senses of proper names according to McDowell and Evans. It is understood that on my view no attribution of propositional knowledge is possi~le ~h~n the purported object of the subject's reference IS mls~mg. For - ~s my arguments in section 1.3 above make It clear - wlthout knowing the referent he cannot have the propositional knowledge in question.
3 The sense of a demonstrative and the previously encountered object
The cases that I have dealt with so far were the cases in which the subject's discrimination of an object was provided on the basis of the object's spatio-temporal concurrence with the subject's referring by means of a given demonstrative, where the relevant spatio-temporal region is the subject's perceptual field. As I have established, this discrimination on the part of the subject is both necessary and sufficient for the object to be given to the subject in a particular way, i.e., under a particular mode of presentation. The question I want to turn to now is how the subject's discrimination of the object proceeds as regards those demonstratives which can be used as so-called past-tense demonstratives, i.e., those used when the referent of the demonstrative is no longer in the subject's perceptual field. Reflecting upon this question, one tends to think that the central notion is that of the reidentification of objects. We tend to think that it is constitutive of the subject's understanding of pasttense demonstratives that he is able to reidentify their referents. Furthermore, one might be tempted to think that the capacity to reidentify an object must involve the subject's knowledge of some of the object's descriptive conditions involving its distinguishing publicly shareable properties, i.e., that the claim (B2)does not hold for previously encountered objects. More specifically, two claims to which such a line of thought gives rise can be distinguished. It might be argued that the claim (B2)does not hold for previously encountered objects as it stands. That is, it might be claimed that some of the descriptive conditions
accounted for by the types (1) - (3), distinguished in section 2.2 above, must be known when it comes to the discrimination of these objects. Alternatively, it might be argued that there are some descriptive conditions not (directly) encompassed by these types which come into play with respect to previously encountered objects, and which must be known by the subject wheneve~ he discriminates such an object. As far as past-tense demonstratives are concerned, the idea behind both these claims is that the subject's understanding of a past-tense demonstrative must involve his knowledge of some relevant features of a past encounter or encounters with the given object which constitute a descriptive condition or conditions in question.
3.2 (B2), Previously presentation
encountered
objects,
and the mode
of
In arguing against these two claims I will for the sake of precision state these matters in terms of the distinction between recognition and recall pointed out by Evans (1982, section 8.4), instead of in terms of reidentification. The difference between recognition and recall can be illustrated by two different ways in which we may exercise a memory ability. When, for example, the subject can name some of the features or properties of a previously encountered object, we say that he recalls these features or properties. If, on the other hand, upon meeting again a previously encountered object, the subject finds himself familiar with some of the object's features or properties which he would not be able to recall in the object's absence, we will credit him with the recognition of the object. Now, on the basis of those cases in which the given subject is not able to recall any of the distinguishing publicly shareable properties of the given object and yet has a capacity to recognize it when confronted with it, it seems that this latter capacity can enable the subject to discriminate the given object. That is, he may know which object it is that he has previously met without knowing any such properties - either those properties encompassed by the types (1) - (3) distinguished in section 2.2 above, or those which might be taken as not (directly) encompassed by them. There are, however, two obvious types of case in which the recognitional capacity cannot give rise to the knowledge as to
which object it is. They have been accounted for by Evans (1983, section 8.1) in terms of two difficulties which arise in the way of supposing that recognitional capacity can underlie the thinking of an object adequate in the light of Russell's Principle. The forthcoming ways of dealing with them will lead me towards my desideratum: showing that the claim (B2) also holds for previously encountered objects. One difficulty arises due to the fact that objects change beyond recognition. When an object undergoes such a change that the subject is no longer able to recognize it, it seems that his capacity to know which object it is is destroyed. To circumvent this difficulty it suffices here to notice that it is perfectly intelligible to claim that if the subject has once managed to single out the relevant object on the basis of his perception, he can still be credited with the knowledge as to which object it is, on the basis of the original encounter(s). This is so in spite of the object's undergoing such a change that it is now beyond the subject's recognition, or, it has simply ceased to exist. The other difficulty relates to the subject's capacity to discriminate an object from all other things. If a recognitional capacity is to provide the basis of the knowledge as to which object it is, it seems that it must enable the subject to distinguish the object concerned, upon the basis of its appearance, from all other things. But, as Evans put it, it is by no means certain that someone who possesses a capacity to recognize another person, for example, can in fact distinguish that person, upon the basis of his appearance" from all other persons in the universe. 'And, what is more worrying, it is difficult to see that whether the subject has a determinate thought or not can depend upon whether or not there is, tucked away somewhere in the universe, a person he would confuse with the person he has met' (1982, p. 278). To see' a way out of this difficulty, we must - Evans remarks correctly - ~alize that while a recognitional capacity, as we or~inarily understand it, does require the ability to distinguish an object from all other things, such a discrimination is made not only on the basis of the object's appearance, but also on the basis of its location. The role of the spatial element in recognition is manifested clearly in cases in which the subject has a short-term capacity to recognize something. Evans gives us a nice example: a subject is watching a group of sheep on the side of a mountain, and sees one of them cough. It is possible for the subject to retain, at least for a
short time, information about the coughing sheep on the basis of his capacity to recognize the sheep without keeping his eye on it. Despite the fact that the sheep may look pretty much alike to him, the appearance of the relevant sheep may be sufficiently distinctive for him to be able to distinguish it from all other sheep in this restricted spatia-temporal setting. The fact that he could ~ot distinguish it from a sheep across the valley does not prevent hi~ from having a capacity to reidentify it, Le., to ~now when he 1S confronted with it again. He is not going to cons1der sheep on the other side of the valley. In this case, Evans believes, there is an area - the area of search such that the subject is disposed to identify an object as the relevant sheep, provided it presents a suitable appearance w~thin this area. The extent of this area, is a function of the subject's estimate of the probability and speed of movement, and the time that has elapsed since the last sighting, and it will, in ~va~s's view, centre upon the estimated position of. the last ~1ghtmg. !~e subject's location of the area in question 1Segocentr~c. The ongm of this area is given by the position the sheep occup1ed at the last sighting, and the subject ca~ know his loc~tion in r~lation to the area by his knowledge of h1s movements smce that ~1me.In these circumstances, claims Evans, we can say that the subject does have a capacity to recognize a particular sheep x, provided that ~i) he.is disposed to identify x as the relevant she~p .upon the bas1s of 1tS appearance, (ii) there is no other sheep w1thm the area of search which he is disposed to identify as the relevant sheep upon the basis of its appearance, and (iii) x is the right sheep, Le. is the s~eep from which the information saturating his thought was denved. And if the subject is able, in this sense, to recognize a particular sheep, then there is just one sheep in the entire unive~se which .he is disposed to pick out, Le, there is just one sheep m the entire universe on which his dispositions, and hence h1s thought, are targeted. 'For any disposition he has to pick out something outside the area of search does not count, and he is disposed to identify just one thing within it'(1982, pp. 280). ., .. This shows that the claim that the subject s recogmtlOnal capacity can give rise to his knowledge as to which object it is can be sustained even if there are indistinguishable objects, provided that they are not in the relevant spatio-temporal area. But, what if an indistinguishable object intrudes into the relevant area? This question can be answered in my favour along the lines similar to those which led to the circumventing of the first
difficulty. That is, although the subject's recognitional capacity is no longer operative after the intrusion of the duplicate, his capacity to think of the object encountered before the duplicate's intrusion into the relevant area is retained and, consequently, his knowledge as to which object it is (was) is not destroyed. The discussion of these two difficulties thus shows that they cannot be circumvented by appeal to the recognitional capacity alone. This suggests that, regarding the question as to what enables the subject's knowledge of which object it is that he has previously met, the following view should be accepted. The recognitional capacity is to be taken into account when it is operative, while the capacity to think of the object on the basis of the original encounter(s) is to be taken into account when the former is not operative (or also when it is operative). In the light of this, the justification of the claim (B2) with respect to a previously encountered object is provided as follows. The subject may know which object it is, either in terms of the former or in terms of the latter of these capacities (or both), without knowing any of the object's distinguishing publicly shareable properties (either those encompassed or those not (directly) encompassed by the types (1) - (3) above), for he need not be able to recall any of them. (If he has, for example, forgotten, Le., does not recall, that the encountered object is red, it does not seem to be correct to attribute to him a piece of knowledge in the manner of the attribution 'X knows that that G is (was) red'.) Consider, however, the position regarding the recognitional capacity pointed out by McDowell (in the appendix to chapter 8 in Evans 1982). He has noticed that, although Evans has shown that recognition-based identification, i.e., identification based on the recognitional capacity, is not reducible to identification by means of a definite description 1, there still might be a position according to which tha former sort of identification figures in nonRussellian Thpughts. That is, it can be available to be employed in singular Thoughts whether or not there is an object it identifies. A recognitional capacity, someone might say, is a disposition to respond in certain ways to an object on the basis of its appearance (the basis agreed not to be capturable in a description); and someone could have such a disposition even if no object capable of presenting the triggering appearance had ever existed - it could still be true that if an object were to present the requisite appearance it would activate the disposition.
This reveals that what enables the subject's knowledge as to which object it is that he has previously met cannot be the recognitional capacity as an autonomous mode of identification. Thereby a certain constraint needs to be imposed on the view, hinted at above, which takes into account both this capacity and the capacity to think of the object on the basis of the original encounter(s). How this knowledge is provided is rather to be seen in the light of McDowell's composite conception of the mode of identification, briefly sketched in the appendix to chapter 8 in Evans's book, comprising both the recognitional capacity and the subject's placing of the object in his own past, which he illustrates by pointing out that a self-conscioussubject necessarily has the idea of himself as having traced some definite path through the world. And he will have some conception - more or less indefinite at different points - of his own past history, organized around a framework of landmark events, which is also a conception of the history of a part of the world (the world as he knew it). As a result of this, claims McDowell, events remembered, and participants in them, can always be identified by reference to oneself - though not necessarily uniquely. In the light of this, at least part of the conception that one has of an individual one can think of is that it is a conception of an individual which one has met. Very often the conception includes more: that it is an individual that one met at such-and-such a period of one's life, perhaps regularly over that period. 'When one takes oneself to be recognizing someone', believes McDowell, 'it seems to be an undeniable part of the way we think that, when one is wrong (e.g. because of the existence of an indistinguishable twin), it is because were one to trace one's life back, one would not - at least not at the appropriate period - reach an encounter with this individual' (ibid.). This thus gives us a further hint as to how the above justification of the claim (B2) with respect to previously encountered objects is to be more fully understood. But, the question noted at the end of section 2.3 above arises again, this time with respect to previously encountered objects. The question is whether and how it can be publicly ascertained if a particular subject has discriminated an object at all, Le.,knows which object it is, when it is the case that he does not know any of the properties of the purported object of his discrimination that are distinguishing and publicly shareable.
~t was claimed that with respect to currently perceived objects a satIsfactory answer to this question is to be provided by reflecting upon .some aspects of the subject's linguistic and non-linguistic behavlOur. Matters, however, seem more complicated now for there is no object spatio-temporally related to the given subject in such a way that we can, on the basis of the subject's current inte~action ~ith ~he ~bject, intelligibly ascribe to him having a partIcular object m mmd. But, pursuing the same line as before yields a satisfactory answer which can be presented in the following ~anner. ~e can witness the subject's original encounter With the object and, on the basis of his behaviour _ linguistic and non-linguistic - on that occasion, as well as as his behaviour on some later occasions (submitting him to controlled obse~a~ion i~neces~ary)we can, at least in some cases, intelligibly credit him With havmg some particular object in mind. As the provided defence for the claim (B2) entails that the subject need not recall any of the foregoing properties of the given object - which implies (or at least does not exclude) that he knew them previously - we have at our disposal various manifestations of the subject's knowledge of these properties. That is, such manifestations are at our disposal both on the occasion of his origina~ encouI~.terwi~h the given object and all the way through the penod ~urmg which he c~>uldstill recall them; and they can serve as eVidence that the subject has a particular object in mind. Suppose that the given subject had talked to his audience about a particular object that they have met together, in terms of various descriptive conditions involving distinguishing publicly shareable properties of the object that he used to know. Later, he had forgotten, Le., he could no longer recall, that the object had any of these properties, and yet his behaviour can be such that it is intelligible to "Ascribeto him having a particular object in mind. He n:ught for example, a~sure t:Usaudience about this by hinting at the CIrcumstancesof theIr earlIer conversations about the object. This can be done even on the basis of false beliefs he might have created as to what properties the object had after he has forgotten about the ones it really had. The possibility of the subject's having false beliefs about the obj~ct's prope~ties reminds us that - similar to the two ways in which the subject can lack the knOWledgeof these properties with r~s~ect~o.currently perceived objec~, discussed in the last chapter _ his mabllIty to recall these propertIes can manifest itself either as
his being aware that he cannot recall them or through his mistaken beliefs about them.2 It is also possible that the subject has been ignorant of all or some of these properties since the very beginning. That is, he could have been ignorant of all or some of them on the occasion of the original encounter in either of the proposed ways, without learning of them in the meantime. Now, the cas~ in wI:Uchhe has been ignorant of all of them all the whlle mlght seem objectionable in view of the foregoing question about publicly ascertaining whether the subject has a particular object in mind at all. However, since this is not the line that I have been pursuing in arguing in favour of the claim (B2), I need not discuss this matter further. When, on the other hand, the subject used to know the relevant properties at some stage, besides the properties which the object had during the original encounter - the knowledge of which could have been acquired either during that encounter or later - he could have also known some properties embodying the object's relatedness to some events posterior to the encounter. The latter are properties which form descriptive conditions not (directly) encompassed by the types (1) - (3) tackled above. The foregoing account regarding ascertaining which object the subject has in mind is further supported by viewing the matters in terms of a neural explanation. When the subject does not know any relevant distinguishing publicly shareable properties he can still be sometimes credited with the knowledge as to which object it is on the basis of the object's affecting his neural composition. That is, if the given object still affects the subject's actions we are in some cases ready to credit him with the knowledge as to which object it is. This line of thought bears some resemblance to one of the consequences of the approach advocated by some recent cognitive psychologists. The consequence is that of dropping the so-called Cartesian view that the subject is the best authority on what he is thinking. According to this approach, a third person might well be in a better position than the subject to know which object the subject is thinking about.3 The foregoing considerations provide a justification of the claim (B2) with respect to previously encountered objects. My strategy can be summarized as follows. I started with the difference between recognition and recall, trying to credit the subject with knowing which object it is on the basis of his recognitional capacity
which could still be effective in cases in which he cannot recall any of the foregoing properties of the given object. But, regarding recognitional capacity I was facing two difficulties pointed out by Evans and one difficulty pointed out by McDowell, which stood in the way of this accomplishment. In circumventing them I placed due emphasis on the subject's capacity to think of the object on the basis of his original encounter(s) with it. It was discovered, however, that this was objectionable because it did not guarantee the public determination of whether the subject has a particular object in mind at all, or not. The way to achieve the desired goal in the face of this objection - called for some facts about the subject's behaviour. When the notion of object-dependence was introduced in section 1.3 above, it was noted that the sense of a demonstrative referring to a previously encountered object is object-dependent. Similar to a demonstrative referring to a currently perceived object, the subject's singling out of a certain object on the basis of his perception is necessary for there to be a suitable mode of presentation. The difference is that the subject's discrimination is now based on his past rather than present perception of the object in question. Furthermore, it was also claimed that objects that are given to us (in the way required by the correct use of an indexical) are given to us in a particular way. As noted in section 2.5 above, in the case of demonstratives referring to currently perceived objects this amounts to the claim that if an object has been singled out by the given subject on the basis of his perception it is given to him under a particular mode of presentation. Now, for this to hold for previously encountered objects it is also required that the subject still remembers the object he has once singled out, Le., that he knows presently, on the basis of his past perception, which object it is. • When the claim (B2) - which ex hypothesi involves that the subject remembers the object - is brought to bear on these issues, the claim that objects that are given to us are given to us in a particular way can be rephrased in the following way. If the subject knows (presently), on the basis of his past perception, which object it is, it is given to him under a particular mode of presentation regardless of whether or not he knows any of its distinguishing publicly shareable properties. A further elaboration of this can be provided along the lines of the elaboration of the corresponding insight regarding currently
perceived objects and I need not go into the details which are basically the same as those provided in section 2.5 above.
Reverting to currently perceived objects, I want to now provide some further evidence for the claim (B2) in terms of some psychological notions. The ensuing account is, however, not going to be a thorough psychological enterprise. All I want to do is to provide a better understanding of how, regarding a currently perceived object, the subject knows which object it is without knowing any of its distinguishing publicly shareable properties. This will be done by dwelling on some psychological phenomena which are a matter of everyday commonsense psychology. Consider first the notion of the subject's perceptual field as a resource of objects of his discriminating knowledge based on his perception. Some of these objects are going to be in the focus of the subject's perceptual field, Le., those which in normal circumstances are the most salient of the objects in the perceptual field by virtue of their position relative to its focal region. The further an object is from this region, the less salient it is - the more it tends to merge with other objects into a vague fringe as it approaches the visual field's periphery. In the light of this, it is natural to expect that objects that might be discriminated by the given subject without knowing any of their foregoing properties will be most readily found somewhere in the vague areas of his perceptual field. In other words, when an object is in such an area, it can be perceptually discriminated by the given subject, although he need not see it well enough to be able to detect any of its foregoing properties. In this kind of case, the chances that the subject does not know any of these properties are increased both in terms of his being aware of his ignorance (when his perception is not faulty) and in terms of his not being aware of his ignorance (when his perception is faulty). That is, the further an object is from the focal region of the subject's perceptual field, the chances of error regarding the given properties are also increased. Another factor on which salience depends manifests itself in such a way that the more uniform the pattern of the perceptual field is, the less salient its features tend to be. Conversely, the larger the contrast between these features, the more salient they
tend to be. The notion of contrast, however, is not as simple as it appears to be at first sight. The colour contrast between black and white squares on a chessboard is the largest possible contrast between any two colours and yet the repetitive pattern of sixty four squares seems to neutralize the salience of anyone particular square (unless we have a special interest in a particular square). This suggests that various things can decide whether an object or feature is going to be more or less salient on the basis of being contrasted to other things. The object's shape, its relatedness with other things, its state of motion or rest with respect to other things, etc., may all count. Now, it is not difficult to envisage a situation in which an object in the subject's perceptual field lacks salience both with respect to its being out of the focal region of the subject's perceptual field as well as with respect to its low contrast with other objects in the field. This somewhat coarse way of stating these matters is satisfactory enough to keep me on the course to be followed when providing support to the claim (B2). It seems for that purpose more useful than introducing various hypothetical psychological mechanisms. But, so far it has not been taken into account that the subject can have a special interest in some portions of his perceptual field, and in this respect the provided account is deficient. In order to make this account more complete, this aspect of the matter should also be considered and I shall therefore introduce the notion of attention in its commonsensical use. On the basis of various reasons and interests that he may have, the subject will typically focus his visual attention on some objects in his perceptual field while more or less ignoring those remaining .•For reasons of convenience the subject will often put himself in such a position that objects of his attention will be in the focal region of his perceptual field, though this need not be the case. For example, when the subject pretends not to be watching an object he will often concentrate his visual attention on the object, while letting it be out of the focal region of his perceptual field. What is relevant to my purposes here is the commonsense psychological fact that though typically the subject's attention is being focused only on some objects in his visual field, the remaining objects need not be unnoticed. In fact, the subject will usually notice or register some if not all of these objects, but in varying degrees. Sometimes he will notice a man walking through an inattentive portion of his visual field, or a car speeding through
it. Sometimes it is less than that; the subject can simply vaguely notice that there is something there (in the uninformative sense of the knowledge of where the object is of the last chapter) without noticing any of its properties in terms of the cases (1) - (3) discussed above. Now, when this insight is combined with the facts about salience and contrast considered above, the evidence in favour of the claim (B2)is provided as follows. The subject can, for example, simply notice on the basis of his rudimentary visual processes that there is something there, somewhere on the periphery of his visual field, not contrasted sufficiently from other things, while his visual attention is focused on some object or objects in the centre of his visual field. In terms of the subject's being aware of his ignorance of the object's distinguishing publicly shareable properties (when his perception is not faulty), this way of viewing the matters enables us to envisage a situation in which the subject can also be ignorant of the colour of the object he has previously distinguished, as with the remaining properties of this kind. In the light of this, the temporary assumption accepted in 2.2 above is abandoned. This is the assumption that the claim (B2) does not hold for the colour of the currently perceived object. It was based on the resistance to accept that the given subject who discriminates a certain object on the basis of his current perception may at the same time be ignorant (provided he is not mistaken) as to the colour or at least a kind of colour in which the object appears (publicly)to us. Abandoning this assumption seems to further invalidate premiss (1) and, consequently, conclusion (C) of the counterargument to my earlier claim (B1),discussed in section 2.3 above. This thereby enables me to restore (B1)which was in the light of this counter-argument restated as the claim (B2). As we remember, this premiss stated that for every object x for which the subject knows, on the basis of his perception, which object it is, it is true that x always appears to him as having one colour or another (or more than one). But given now that the subject can be ignorant of the object's colour (in the sense of being aware of his ignorance), it seems to follow that the object does not appear to him as having any particular colour when this is the case, which invalidates this premiss. Having noted this, I will for the sake of simplicity ignore it and continue in terms of the claim (B2).
~n t~e cases in which, as described above, the discriminated ~bJect is somewhere on the periphery of the subject's perceptual field, etc., an~ t~e subjec~is aware that he lacks the knowledge of any of th~ obJ~cts ~oregomgproperties (when his perception is not faulty), hiS ml~~ is, m~ntali~tically speaking, 'pretty vacant' as regards entertammg vanous images he would associate with the given object. This may raise some suspicion as to whether in such cases the sUbj~ctis having the knowledge as to which object it is, thereby exp~smg (B2)to a ~hreat.But, as before, I believe that (B2) can be sustamed on the basis of my behavioural account. The justification of (B2) on the basis of the subject's behaviour ranges from extreme cases in which the subject is aware that he ~oes not know any of the foregoing properties of the given object (mcluding also the object's colour) to other extremes, when his ignorance (of which he is not aware) of all of these properties is the outcome of his faulty perception. In between lie various combined ~ases:the subject may lack the knowledge of, say, the object's shape m the former sense, not know its colour in the latter sense, and so forth. Now, speaking in terms of the foregoing mentalistic metaphor, the subject's mind is not so 'vacant' whenever his ignorance of the object's property or properties stems from his fau~ty perception. !he subject will have vivid images as well as their .counte~parts m. thoug~t regar~ing. properties he mistakenly a~soclateswith the. given object, which m various ways can affect his outw~rd .be.havlOur.Thi.scan be exploited in ascertaining that he has dlscnmmated the given object: his false beliefs about the object belong here too. In other words, the images in question need not match their ob~ective counte~parts ~or the subject to discriminate the given object on the basis of his perception. This claim does not involve more th~n the rejec~ion of the preposterous view that propertyrelated images Which the subject entertains must match the object'.s prope~ties per se in order for the subject to discriminate ~he glVe~ object. If the subject has, for example, a visual lmpe.rfe~tionpr~ne ~oca';lsinga misapprehension of the properties o~t~s ~nd, he ~sstill gomg t~ bona fide perceive, i.e., perceptually dlscnmma~e,obJect~,~es~ his perception is extremely vague. The claim (B2) m itS given formulation, that is, in terms of des~riptiv.eco~d~tion~etc., is the ~laim that the subject may know WhiChobject it is without knowmg properties of a certain kind which can be captured by various linguistic expressions. It is understood that our language does not have expressions which
would capture all such properties ~orthere are, for example, m~ny shapes, relations, etc., for WhICh we ha.ve no ~ppr~pr~ate expressions. But, as long as these propertIes are In pnnciple publicly shareable and distinguishing, they are accounted for by the claim (B2). Beyond this there are, howeve~, various phe~omena not even in principle publicly shareable which are entertamed by the subject as a result of his perception of .a certa~n objec~.The subject will entertain some phenome~a ?f t~s. sort. lr~eSpect1v~of whether he is ignorant of all the object s dIStIngUIshingpubhcly shareable properties, or not; and if so, regardless of how - in the light of the foregoing distinction - this ignorance takes place. Together with the foregoing properties - when it is the case th~t they are entertained by the subject (regardless of whether he IS mistaken about them or not) - these phenomena yield various private 'concepts', percepts, insights, intimations, irritations, and so on. Private items such as these, many of which are ineffable, can incite various emotional and volitional attitudes on the part of the subject. The subject may, for example, feel anxious in the object's presence, comfortable in its absence, and so on.4 This further affects his behaviour, providing us thereby with public evidence in ascertaining which object he has in mi~d, even in those cases in which he does not know any of the foregoing properties of the given object. .,. As noted in the last section, my VIewaccords WIththe claIm that a third person might well be in a better position than the subject to know which object the subject is thinking about. This claim can be seen simply as the claim that a third person might know more relevant features of the given object than the subject to whom the discrimination of that object is ascribed. This is obviously true. I believe that the sketchy considerations in this section, the purpose of which is more illustrative than explanatory, have provided some new evidence in favour of the claim (B2).Further evidence in its favour could be provided by taking into account the fact that the subject may be conscious in various degrees of the presence of a certain object in his vicinity, which calls for some interesting questions regarding the comparison between humans and other organisms. This, however, is not the place to pursue these issues.
In section 2.4 above it was argued that the claim about the subject's belief parallel to the claim (B2)also holds, Le., that the subject may know which object it is without having any beliefs as to which descriptive conditions involving publicly shareable distinguishing properties are satisfied by the given object. This is to say that the subject can suspend all of his beliefs about the object as regards these descriptive conditions, yet know which object it is. As it was at that stage still assumed that the subject could not be ignorant, in the sense of being aware of his ignorance, of the colour of the object that he perceptually discriminates, the defence of this claim about belief complied with this assumption. Now, abandoning this assumption in the last section provides me with a simpler way to argue in favour of this claim about belief. If, similarly as with the remaining of the foregoing properties, the subject is aware of his ignorance of the object's colour, he need not have any beliefs about it. In fact, some readers might find that my previous argument in favour of this claim undermines the foregoing assumption. As we remember, in section 2.4 it was claimed that the subject may refuse to believe that his perception of the object's colour is veridical and if, in addition to this, he has no belief as to the object's having some other colour, the suspension of belief as to the object's colour on his part results. Now, if it is assumed, as it often is, that knowledge that something is the case involves as its necessary condition the belief that it is the case, then it follows that if the subject has no belief of this kind then he does not have the knowledge in question at all. That is, contrary to my assumption in section 2.3, that the subject knows that the object has a certain colour when his belief about it is suspended, the suspension of belief about the object's colour, according to this view, implies his lack of knowledge of its colour. Thus, on this view, the subject's entertaining the object's colour does not count as knowledge that the object has that colour when he does not believe that it is the object's colour. If this view, which certainly has intuitive appeal, is correct, then there is yet another way in which the subject may be ignorant of the object's publicly shareable distinguishing properties when his perception is not faulty. On the other hand, the contrary view tentatively favoured in section 2.4 - complies better with those current accounts according to which knowledge is not a species of
belief. But, since my overall argument is not affected irrespective of which of these two views is accepted, I will not pursue these issues further. As regards previously encountered objects, suffice it to mention one way in which the above claim about the suspension of belief holds. In section 3.2 above it was argued that the subject may know - regarding a previously encountered object - which object it is, without recalling any of its distinguishing publicly shareable properties. Now, if the subject is aware that he cannot recall any of these properties, and he has no beliefs about them on any other grounds, the suspension of belief as to these properties is forthcoming.
According to Russell's original conception, a demonstrative can be treated as a referring expression only when it is used as a logically proper name, that is, as an expression whose referent the subject is acquainted with. As is well-known, Russell conceives of the notion of acquaintance in such a way that one is said to be acquainted only with items of one's immediate sensory experience (and maybe oneself). On the other hand, the subject's knowledge about all physical objects is, as Russell calls it, 'by description'. His criterion for testing whether an expression is referring or not is the following. A proposition (Thought) is not expressed by the sentence in which a logically proper name (occurring as a grammatical subject) has no referent. All the so-called referring expressions which 'refer' to physical objects (of which definite descriptions are the paradigmatical case) are, according to the way in which Russell envisages this criterion, not genuine referring expressions. This is because a proposition (Thought) is expressed by a sentence containing as its grammatical subject, say, a definite description regardless of whether there is an object corresponding to the description, or not. On the other hand, since the sense of a demonstrative is, as I have shown, object-dependent - both in the weak and the strong sense - it turns out that a demonstrative used in this way is a genuine referring expression according to Russell's criterion. For no Thought is expressed by a corresponding sentence if the demonstrative has no referent. This reveals that not the criterion as such but Russell's narrow conception of acquaintance underlying the criterion is what precludes treating demonstratives
'referring' to ordinary physical objects as genuine referring expressions. This restriction on the part of Russell, according to McDowell, results, in effect, from refusing to accept that there can be an illusion of understanding an apparently singular sentence (or utterance), involving the illusion of entertaining a singular proposition expressed by it when, since there is no suitably related object, there is no such proposition available to be entertained. Whenever a strictly singular parsing of a range of sentences (or utterances) would involve postulating such illusions, the apparatus of the Theory of Descriptions is, points out McDowell, brought to bear, in order to equip sentences (or utterances) of the range with non-singular propositions which they can be understood to express whether or not there is a suitably related object. This, in McDowell's view, generalizes the original argument against counting definite descriptions as genuinely referring expressions. The generalized argument apples also to ordinary proper names, and to nearly all expressions that one might intuitively regard as devices of singular reference. The upshot, in Russell's hands, is that we can entertain and express singular propositions only where there cannot be illusions as to the existence of an object of the appropriate kind: only about features of sense-data or items present to us with similar immediacy in memory, and (when Russell recognized them as objects) our selves (McDowell 1986, p. 138). The fact that demonstratives 'referring' to ordinary physical objects are, according to Russell's criterion, genuine referring expressions when the criterion is not glossed in terms of Russell's restriction about acquaintance prompts the question as to whether and at what cost this restriction can be lifted, allowing by the same token the possibility that the subject may have illusions about the contents of his own mind. I believe that the account developed in this essay provides a ground for lifting this restriction. As has been argued, the subject is in a certain way required to know which (physical) object it is in order to entertain the sense (mode of presentation) of a demonstrative 'referring' to that object. And it does not seem to be imposed by any epistemological principle that this know which should not count as a natural extension of Russell's notion of
acquaintance - be that a matter of weak or strong objectdependence. Furthermore, the conception of sense advocated in this essay encourages this move. This conception embodies Russell's insight of object-dependence of propositions (Thoughts) while taking senses - not objects as Russell seems to claim - to be their constituents. This Fregean doctrine that Thoughts contain senses as constituents is, according to McDowell, a way of insisting on the theoretical role of Thoughts (or contents) in characterizing a rationally organized psychological structure. And Russell's insight can perfectly well be formulated within this framework, by claiming that there are Fregean Thought-constituents (singular senses) which are object-dependent, generating in turn an objectdependence in the Thoughts in which they figure. 'Two or more singular senses can present the same object; so Fregean singular thoughts can be both object-dependent and just as finely individuated as perspicuous psychological description requires' (1986,p. 142).The principle which McDowell associates with Frege, that if some notion like that of representational content is to serve in an illuminatingly organized account of our psychological economy, it must be such as not to allow one without irrationality to hold rationally conflicting attitudes to one and the same content, thus does not justify Russell's restriction on objectdependent propositions. Forgoing a more detailed account of these matters, which would lead to a more thorough inquiry of Russell's philosophical views, I think that a ground for lifting Russell's restriction has been provided. Consequently, the possibility is open that the subject may have illusions about the contents of his own mind, the possibility embraced by my argument in favour of strong objectdependence in section 1.3 above. The subject might think that he is entertaining a singular Thought when this is not the case. Moreover, as Evans has stressed, there does not seem to be anything incoherent in the idea that it may be for the subject, exactly as though he were thinking about a physical object which he can, for example, see, and yet that he may fail to have a Thought he supposes to have because there is no physical object he is seeing. In addition, Evans says that it is not part of this proposal that his mind is wholly vacant as images and words may clearly pass through it, and various ancillary thoughts may even occur to him.
The claim is simply that there is a kind of thought we sometimes have, typically expressed in the form 'This G is F', and we may aim to have a thought of this kind when, in virtue of the absence of any appropriate object, there is no such thought to be had (1982,pp. 45-6). Despite the envisaged disagreement with Russell, my account of demonstratives that are used to refer to ordinary physical objects is in one sense - in accordance with Evans's use of the term Russellian. As we have seen, it accords with one of two strands of Russell's conception of genuine reference pointed out by Evans and McDowell5: the thesis that there is no understanding of an utterance containing a given expression if it lacks a referent. My account, however, diverges from the second strand of Russell's conception, that is, that ...the [logically proper] name itself is merely a means of pointing to the thing, and does not occur in what you are asserting, so that if one thing has two names, you make exactly the same assertion whichever of the names you use, provided they are really names and not truncated descriptions (Russell 1956,p. 245). In the terminology of my framework, the idea underlying this claim is that whenever the same thing is denoted by different demonstratives, which also includes different tokens of the same demonstrative type, the corresponding sentences express the same Thought. That is, a Thought expressed by such a sentence consisting of, for example, a demonstrative expression and a unary predicate, can, roughly speaking, be represented as the ordered couple of the given object corresponding to the demonstrative and the property corresponding to the given predicate. This way of viewing matters might have its justification within the limits of Russell's restriction, but once the restriction is lifted it loses its ground. Confronted with this ordered couple conception, the conception of sense developed in this work can be seen as gaining evidential support by considering some familiar situations. As it was shown in Chapter One, when the subject looks at a certain road from two different aspects, not realizing that what he sees is one and the same road, he may assent to the sentence 'This road is G' regarding one of its aspects and dissent from it regarding its other aspect. The
conception of sense advocated in this essay accounts for this difference in terms of the difference in Thoughts expressed by the two utterances of the sentence 'This road is G'. By the same token, according to this conception, the identity statement This road [referring to one of it aspects] = this road [referring to its other aspect] can be both informative and true. On the other hand, on the ordered couple conception the two described utterances of the sentence 'This road is G' are supposed to express the same proposition twice, i.e., the ordered couple . It is quite obscure how this conception can account for cases in which the subject has conflicting attitudes towards one and the same proposition.
It might seem that my thesis of object-dependence in the strong sense leads to an implausible thesis in the following way. If the subject is under the impression that he sees a pink unicorn in front of him when there is nothing there, and utters the sentence (1) This unicorn is pink, (1) will express no Thought on the account I propose. By the same token, (1) is neither true nor false for there is no object against which the estimation of its truth or falsity should be carried out. It, however, seems legitimate on the part of the subject in the circumstances described, to infer from (1)
Now, if (1), which expresses no Thought and is neither true nor false implies the sentence (2) which expresses a Thought which is false, the following implausible thesis seems to arise: A (false) sentence, i.e., a sentence expressing a false Thought is implied by a sentence (token) expressing no Thought. Or, to put it another way, a particular (false) Thought is 'implied by no Thought'. However, appearances aside, there is no relation of implication between (1) and (2) in this case. This relation can hold only between those sentences which have a truth-value, i.e., between Thoughts they express which are always true or false. This fact is encapsulated in the way we standardly, i.e., truth-functionally interpret the conditional connective. I wish to make clear that by denying that there is an implication in this case I do not deny that the subject has a good psychological reason to make the inferential move from (1) to (2). If he believes that there is a pink unicorn in front of him, it is natural that he will also believe that there are pink unicorns. When, on the other hand, a demonstrative sentence of the form '...x ...', uttered on a particular occasion, expresses a Thought since a certain object has been singled out, then it implies a statement of the form 'There exists something x, ...x...', i.e., (EG) holds. The asymmetry with respect to the holding of (EG) that thus exists between the cases in which a demonstrative sentence expresses a Thought and the cases in which it expresses no Thought is the outcome of the way we conceive of the notion of implication, not a result of any restriction I have imposed. This asymmetry in fact resembles some similar phenomena in some of the logics we employ. For example, in a logic which, unlike free logics, is not free of the so-called existence assumptions with respect to singular terms, the statement (3) There exists something Charles
that is identical
with
Prince
(2) There exist pink unicorns, which gives us the impression that (1) implies (2), complying thus with the rule known as Existential Generalization, i.e., the rule that (EG) ...5 ... , where 5 is a singular term; There exists something x, ...x ...
is, according to this logic, false.6 Consequently, if the singular term 'Prince Charles' is replaced with the singular term 'Pegasus' in (3), the result is the false statement
(5) There exists something that is identical with Pegasus. To preserve the logical truth of (3), the singular term 'Pegasus' must not be allowed to replace the term 'Prince Charles' in the specimen statement (3), and generally no singular term that falsifies the condition's exists' can be allowed to replace the singular term 'Prince Charles' in (3). Similarly to the foregoing asymmetry with respect to (EG), this type of logic involves a dichotomy on the basis of whether, as a matter of fact, a singular term has existential import, or not. But, while this type of logic places a restriction upon the domain of singular terms - allowing only some of them to replace the term 'Prince Charles' in the specimen statement (3) - the foregoing asymmetry with respect to (EG) does not involve even such an arguably justified restriction.
4 Sense, linguistic meaning, demonstratives, demonstrations, definite descriptions
Frege's remarks about proper names have given rise to two closely related claims about his notion of sense: 1. 2.
3. 4.
5. 6.
This will become clear in the next chapter where the relationship between demonstratives and definite descriptions is discussed. More fully, the possibilities of the subject's ignorance of these properties can be stated in terms of some finer distinctions similar to those noted in section 2.2 above with respect to currently perceived objects, but I will leave these matters here. For these matters see the foreword to Woodfield, ed., 1982, and the essays therein. 'All modern philosophy hinges round the difficulty of describing the world in terms of subject and predicate, substance and quality, particular and universal. The result always does violence to that immediate experience which we express in our actions, our hopes, our sympathies, our purposes, and which we enjoy in spite of our lack of phrases for its verbal analysis' - Whitehead 1929,p. 68. In Evans 1982,Appendix to Chapter 3. See, for example, Lambert 1983, chapter 5, for this kind of logic. Note that the point I want to make equally applies to a logic that takes (4) as not well-formed.
(a) The sense of an expression determines its referent by specification; (b) An expression has sense irrespective of whether there is a corresponding referent or not. It should be noted that the respective acceptance and rejection of these two claims reveal the disagreement between Dummett, on the one hand, and Evans and McDowell, on the other. Dummett believes that both these claims are characteristic of Frege's notion of the sense of a proper name, whereas Evans and McDowell believe that - although they can be found in Frege's writings these claims are not required by his text, and that Frege in fact endorsed the conception of the sense of a proper name as objectdependent. If the account claimed in the present essay to be correct is correct then these two claims - which do not fit in with the conception of sense as object-dependent (both in the weak and the strong sense) do not fit in with the conception of the sense of a demonstrative simpliciter. If the subject's perceptual discrimination of a certain object is necessary for there to be a sense, Le., a mode of presentation, corresponding to the given object, then
(a') The sense does specification; and
not
(b') A given demonstrative corresponds to it.
determine
the
referent
by
which would otherwise be effected by the differing times of utterance may be cancelled out (ibid.).
has no sense when no referent
In other words, the sense of these two indexicals is here the same although their linguistic meaning shifts, for obviously 'today' and 'yesterday' do not have the same linguistic meaning. Moreover, the divergence between their linguistic meanings that is here in question reveals that they are not even partly constitutive of the sense of these two indexicals. Similar considerations would show that the same holds for demonstratives.2 As to the positive account of the constancy of sense in cases such as the one described by Frege, a plausible one was offered by Evans. He believes that the mode of presentation, i.e., the way of thinking of an object, in cases like this is in fact a way of keeping track of an object. This, Evans remarks correctly, permits us to say that a subject on the day d2 is thinking of, for example, the day before, d1, in the same way as on d1, despite lower level differences, because the thought-episodes on the two days both depend upon the same exercise of a capacity to keep track of a time.3 There is an aspect of philosophy of language which seems to threaten to blur the distinction between the notion of sense and the notion of linguistic meaning of an indexical. In various recent discussions of the question as to how the reference is being determined or fixed in the process of linguistic communication often emphasizing its social aspect - linguistic meaning has been assigned a role commonly believed to belong to the notion of sense: the determination of reference (by specification). Thus, the acceptance of thesis (ii) above, i.e., that the linguistic meaning of a demonstrative determines its referent, seems to be conducive to the acceptance of thesis (i), i.e., that the sense of a demonstrative is identical with its linguistic meaning. While outlining Kaplan's notion of linguistic rule in section 1.2 above - where it was noted that this notion is typically characterized in the same way as the notion of linguistic meaning it could be noticed that he says that linguistic rules determine the referents of indexicals in such a way that they are either sufficient for this accomplishment in all contexts of use (pure indexicals) or not (demonstratives). From the standpoint of language as a social phenomenon, this kind of determination of the referent of an indexical, i.e., its determination according to the linguistic rwe, is seen as placing in the focal point the role of the hearer of an
But, somebody might ask: Does not the linguistic meaning which, as it was noted in section 1.2 above, fits Frege's characterization of sense as what is grasped by everybody who is sufficiently familiar with the language, determine the referent of a demonstrative? To answer this question, consider the following two theses: (i) The sense of a demonstrative is identical with its linguistic meaning; and (ii) The linguistic meaning of a demonstrative referent.
determines its
As regards thesis (i), it was shown in section 1.2 above that the linguistic meaning of an indexical is not its sense. That Frege was inclined to think in the same way is suggested by the passage from his 'Der Gedanke' mentioned in that section, in which he points out that the sense of an indexical may shift with context.1 But, the passage might be seen as not making it clear as to whether the linguistic meaning of an indexical is part of its sense. While discussing indexicals, Frege says: ...the mere wording ...does not suffice for the expression of the thought. ...the mere wording, as it can be preserved in writing, is not the complete expression of the thought... (1977, p.10). The locutions I have italicized might be taken as revealing Frege's tendency to see the linguistic meaning of an indexical in an indexical sentence as partly constitutive of the Thought expressed in the given context. But other things that Frege says conflict with this. In between the two quoted sentences he says: If someone wants to say today what he expressed yesterday using the word 'today', he will replace this word with 'yesterday'. Although the thought is the same its verbal expression must be different in order that the change of sense
indexical utterance. The social aspect of language has been emphasized, amongst others, by Wettstein (1982, p. 65) who claims that the (or at least a) primary purpose of natural language is to allow for communication concerning the items speakers have in mind and about which they wish to inform others, ask questions, and so on. Natural languages are, as he points out, institutions like, for example, the law, and as such provide for the fulfilment of the institution's primary functions by means of a complex system of rules and conventions. Having this purpose of natural language in mind, it is natural to see the hearer as having a significant role in this picture for he makes use of these rules and conventions in his determining of the thing which is the referent of a given indexica1.4A simple way to illustrate this point is the following. In accordance with these rules and conventions, upon hearing on a certain occasion an utterance containing, for example, a token of the indexical 'he', used to refer deictically to a certain object, the hearer will try to determine the given referent by making use of, say, the rule governing this indexical's type which states that it should be used to refer only to a male, and so on. It is part of this picture that a divergence may arise between what a speaker meant, on the one hand, and what he strictly or literally said in accordance with these rules and conventions, on the other. What is strictly said is a semantic notion: the relation between what is strictly said by an expression and an object indicated by it has been recognized as semantic.s Discussing the notion of the mode of presentation of a demonstrative grasped by the subject I have so far been primarily concerned with the condition constitutive of this notion, that is, the subject's perceptual discrimination of the relevant object. But, in view of the facts about language just noted, my account seems to need some supplementation, for nothing has been said as to what decides that some particular object is the object of the subject's discrimination and not some other object instead, when the subject plays the role of a hearer. A very general answer to this question is that when he utters, for example, a demonstrative sentence, the speaker characteristically uses its constituent words in accordance with ru1es and conventions of the language (presumed to be) known by the hearer, so that the hearer can rely on them as cues for his singling out of the relevant referent. In other terms, it is the linguistic meanings (rules, conventions) conventionally associated
with the given words (and also the senses of some of these words) which the hearer grasps that serve as cues to his singling out of the given referent. If, on a given occasion the speaker utters, for example, the sentence
in which the pronoun 'he' is used as a deictical (perceptual) demonstrative, the hearer's grasp of the linguistic meaning of the demonstrative 'he' (type) will give rise to his belief that some male object in their vicinity is supposed to be the referent of this demonstrative. His grasp of the linguistic meaning of the predicate '( ) is less than five feet tall' will further narrow down the domain of objects within which he is going to search for the given referent. This might, of course, be insufficient for the hearer's accomplishment of this task, and he often needs to know more than the mere linguistic meanings (or in some cases senses) of the words involved. Various other features, generally though not necessarily described as contextual, have been naturally suggested as further cues on which the hearer relies. They in the first place include pointings and other gestures on the speaker's part. These features of context are furthermore taken to be seman tic determinants of the referent6 along with what is strictly said (i.e., linguistic meaning, etc.), and the referent is seen as determined by the conventions and rules underlying the speaker's words and gestures even if they do not match the speaker's intentions. Thus, according to Wettstein, the semantically significant cues are those that the speaker relied upon, that is, the referent is the individual these cues identify, whether or not this is the intended referent, the individual these cues were intended to identify.7 This brief discussion of these matters suffices to show that the linguistic meaning of a demonstrative, as well as other cues, can in the envisaged way - be said to determine its referent. That is, the aforementioned thesis (ii) is justified. Moreover, this determination proceeds by some sort of specificationwhich accords with what - as pointed out at the beginning of this section - is commonly believed to be Frege's view of sense, and hence the inducement to assume (i) that the sense of a demonstrative is identical with its linguistic meaning. But, as shown above, as far as indexicals are concerned these two notions are different. Frege illustrates this with a case in which the sense remains constant though the linguistic meaning shifts. By
the same token, the converse also holds. When, for example, somebody utters the indexical sentence (2) Today is fine on two different days, the two different tokens of the indexical 'today' will have different senses though their linguistic meaning is the same. As to the discussed notion of the determination of the referent by the hearer, it can hardly be denied that it plays a significant rOle as regards the (or a) primary purpose of the language that has been emphasized - communication. The preceding discussion of these matters, I believe, makes it clear that not only is my notion of sense compatible with the notion of determination of reference just sketched, but that this latter notion is also supplementary to my account from the point of view of the language as a means of social interaction, in spite of the fact that on my account the sense of a demonstrative does not determine its referent.
The determination of the referent of a demonstrative is thus not a function of the accepted notion of sense (i.e., mode of presentation). However, it has been argued that one of the means of determination of the referent of a demonstrative for the hearer, Le., demonstration, has sense. That is, Kaplan has pointed out that the analogy between definite descriptions and demonstrations is close enough to provide a sense and reference (which Kaplan calls denotation) analysis of the 'meaning' of a demonstration on the model of the definite description which Kaplan sees as the paradigm of a meaningful expression for a Fregean (1989, IX). This paradigmatical kind of expression, according to Kaplan, picks out or denotes an individual, a unique individual, satisfying a condition s which he identifies with the sense of the definite description. Since a given individual may uniquely satisfy several distinct conditions, definite descriptions with distinct senses may, in Kaplan's view, have the same denotation. And since some conditions may be uniquely satisfied by no individual, he believes that a definite description may have a sense but no denotation. 'The condition by means of which a definite description picks out
its denotation is the manner of presentation of the denotation by the definite description'.8 Kaplan believes that in view of this it seems quite natural to regard each demonstration as presenting its demonstratum (Le., the demonstrated object) in a particular manner which may be regarded as the sense of the demonstration. The same individual believes Kaplan, could be demonstrated by demonstrations s~ different in manner of presentation that it would be informative to a competent auditor-observer to be told that the demonstrata were one. Kaplan illustrates this by the identity statement That [pointing to Venus in the morning sky] is identical with that [pointing to Venus in the evening sky] (provided it is uttered very slowly). The two demonstrations which accompanied the two occurrences of the demonstrative 'that' have, says Kaplan, the same demonstratum but distinct manners of presentation. He believes that it is this difference between these two demonstrations that accounts for the informativeness of this statement (but, as I will show in section 5.2, this is not true). It is, as Kaplan points out, also possible, analogously to the case of definite descriptions for a demonstration to have no demonstratum. This, he believes, can arise in several ways: through hallucination, through carelessness (not noticing in the darkened room that the subject had jumped off the demonstration platform shortly before the lecture began), through what he calls a sortal conflict, Le, using the demonstrative phrase rthat Fl, where F is a common noun phrase, while demonstrating something which is not an F, and in other ways (ibid., p. 515). As I will show in section 5.2, the informativeness of the foregoing identity statement stems from the auditor-observer's perceptual discrimination of Venus from two different aspects, Le., on the basis of its givenness under two different modes of presentation, and has nothing to do with the sense of a demonstration. Nevertheless, I believe that there is a different kind of informativeness that involves the senses of demonstrations, parallel to the case of definite descriptions. If in the foregoing example the auditor-observer did not observe Venus but rather the speaker's different acts of demonstration, it could be informative for the auditor-observer to be told that these acts of demonstration refer to one and the same object which he has not
perceptually distinguished. From this it follows that the senses of these acts of demonstration differ. This thereby makes the analogy between demonstrations and definite descriptions even closer than Kaplan allows it (due to his mistaken account of the informativeness of the demonstrative statements of identity). In view of this, I believe that Kaplan gives us a good reason to accept his suggestion that the demonstration has sense similar to the sense of the definite description.9 The demonstration according to its rules plays such a role that the speaker will use its manifestations like pointings of the finger, nods of the head, etc., in order to enable the hearer to single out or determine the given referent (rather than to show to himself which object he wants to talk about or which object he thinks or wants to think about - unless his demonstration is blind). The speaker, intending to convey some piece of information to the hearer will, for example, point with his finger to the object he wants to refer to by the use of a given demonstrative uttered on that occasion, and the like. This feature of demonstration (in all of its manifestations), and the assumption that it has the sense analogous to the sense of the definite description, jointly entail that the sense of a demonstration (on a given occasion) determines a certain object for the hearer. (It can also determine an object for the speaker when his demonstration is blind.) The sense of a particular demonstration may be involved, in one way or another, in the mode of presentation under which a certain object is entertained by the subject, but this need not be the case. That is, if being helped by the speaker's demonstration the hearer has picked out a certain object, he might think of the given object in such a way that his thinking of the object somehow involves his entertaining the sense of the speaker's demonstration which led him to single it out, but this obviously need not be the case. The same holds for the linguistic meanings and senses of the words that the speaker utters to the same effect, i.e., a demonstrative itself as well as sortals, adjectives, and the like. If, for example, the speaker refers to a certain object by means of the demonstrative pronoun 'he', it is not incumbent on the hearer to think of the object as a male; or, if the speaker refers to the object by the demonstrative phrase 'that F', it does not entail that the object must be presented to the hearer as an F, and so on. The same sense of a demonstrative belonging to two or more particular acts of demonstration can, on different occasions,
determine different objects. That is to say, this sense does not pick out an individual uniquely in the way in which the sense of a definite description is ideally supposed to do. Yet, as will become clear in the next section, there is a parallel in this respect between the sense of a demonstration and the sense of the vast majority of definite descriptions. The parallel does not hold only between the sense of a demonstration and the sense of those few descriptions ~hich are held to apply uniquely, e.g., 'the square of 5', and the hke. The same sense of a demonstration may fail to determine a uniqu~ object no~ only when on two different occasions, regarding two dIfferent objects, two acts of demonstration have the same sense. The sense of a demonstration can also fail to accomplish this on a single occasion. First, this can happen when the speaker's pointing is vague in such a way that the audience cannot discern which object is the one to which the line projected from the speaker's finger leads, often as a consequence of the audience's location. Secondly, there is a phenomenon which Kaplan calls the 'ambiguity of demonstration' and illustrates it in the following way. When Kaplan points at something, from the surveyor's point of view he points at many things. When he points at his son saying 'I love that', he may also be pointing at the book he is holding, his jacket, a button on his jacket, his skin, his heart, or the dog standing behind him - from the surveyor's point of view (1973, Appendix VIII, and 1978, p. 240). The resource to resolve the issue, according to Kaplan, is the speaker's intentions, taken in a broad sense to include that which guides the speaker's pointing. If we wish to avoid an intentional element, we might require that the demonstrative in question always be accompanied by a common noun phrase, forming thus demonstrative phrases like 'that boy', 'that button', 'that book', and so on (1973, Appendix VIII). Thus, the demonstration, on the one hand, and the noun pru:ases and other words,. on the other, can combine in a way which enables them to pIck out a unique individual. In other words, when the demonstration is sufficiently supplemented with these linguistic cues it can be seen as satisfying a sort of uniqueness c?n?ition. This uniqu~ness condition is not in relevant respects SImIlar to that regardmg those descriptions which are like 'the square of 5' supposed to single out a unique object absolutely. Yet it bears the relevant similarity to those descriptions which single out a unique object in the relative manner like 'the son of Kaplan',
although the person in question need not be Kaplan's only son and there are also other Kaplans with their sons, and so on. If the hearer is a competent language user and knows the conventions governing gestures and othe~ extra-ling';listic s.upplemen~ary devices he can be expected to pIck out a uruque object on a gIVen occasion. If, for example, in the described situation Kaplan said to his audience 'I love that boy' and his son is the only boy both around and along the line projected from his finger, th~ situation can be seen as providing the hearer with the cues whIch enable him to single out a unique object. This thereby pl~ces the demonstration with noun phrases and other words as bemg on a par with the kind of definite description whic~ - like one ~nd the same such demonstration - can be used to smgle out dIfferent objects on different occasions, yet allowing us to pick out a unique object on a particular occasion. This analogy suffices to illuminate how far the disambiguation and the achievement of precision of a demonstration can go. We now see that it goes as far as with those definite descriptions which are uniquely individuating in a way which is not absolute but which still allows us to accomplish successful communication, and this is far enough.
4.3 Some qualifications
In order to point out some relevant aspects of the analogy between demonstrations and definite descriptions, I would like to introduce some useful distinctions. In accordance with Bach's (1981a) helpful terminology, those descriptions which, like 'the square of 5' or 'the least prime number', single out a unique object absolutely will be called semantically complete descriptions, though, strictly speaking, their uniqueness stems from some mathematical truths rather than being a matter of semantics. That is, semantically complete descriptions are, according to Bach, those that are satisfiable by at most one individua1.10 For all other descriptions, the question as to whether they are complete or not, i.e., whether they refer to a unique object absolutely or not, is not a semantic question but a factual one. In view of this, Bach suggests that all descriptions which are short of being semantically complete deserve the same semantic treatment regardless of how specific they are; for example, both the factually incomplete description 'the table' and the factually complete description 'the man who has crossed
continents walking backwards'. Their semantic contributions to the sentences in which they occur are the same. For if there were such a difference, Bach remarks correctly, then presumably if many people did what Pleni Wingo did and if there existed but a single table the two descriptions would receive reverse semantic treatment. In the light of this and the insights of the last section, the following remarks about Kaplan's analogy between demonstrations and definite descriptions can be made. Demonstrations can be granted senses similar to the senses of those definite descriptions which are short of being semantically complete, rather than of those which are semantically complete. Both demonstrations and semantically incomplete descriptions have senses that can in different circumstances determine different objects, unlike in the case of semantically complete descriptions. When it comes to those descriptions which are factually incomplete, various circumstances in which the same sense of, say, two tokens of the description 'the table' determines different objects strikes us as similar to those circumstances in which the same sense of two acts of the speaker's demonstration determines different objects. Equally, though less obviously, the relevant similarity also holds with respect to factually complete descriptions. That is, in the case of say, the description (which we believe to be factually complete) 'the man who has crossed continents walking backwards', the possibility that the sense of this descriptiori determines different objects is open b~cause somebody else could repeat what Pleni Wingo did. Moreover, if for the sake of being even more specific we supplement the given description so that it becomes, say, 'the first man who has crossed continents walking backwards', and the like, the possibility that the sense of this description determines more than one object is still open in the wake of the possibility of massive reduplication considered in section 2.3 above. If we want to avoid various questions regarding so-called Twin-Earths and their likes to which a discussion of massive reduplication seems to lead, we can provide more mundane examples such as ones trading on the possibility of there being another man who finished his backward walk across continents at the same time as Pleni Wingo but, say, at a different point on the Earth, and so on. If, furthermore, this possibility was realized and we knew of this, we would treat this description as factually incomplete and, consequently, as open to be used like the description 'the table' whose sense can - similarly to the sense of
demonstration - determine different objects in different circumstances. Whether a semantically incomplete definite description is factually complete or not does not depend on our knowledge or beliefs about the world. Our knowledge or beliefs about the world, however, playa significant role in deciding whether to treat a certain description as factually complete or incomplete. Thus, in the wake of our knowledge or belief that there are many tables in the world, we take the description 'the table' as incomplete and use it in such a way that its sense, with some help from various features of context, is purported to determine a particular object on a certain occasion. Likewise, the sense of demonstration is helped by some similar features of context in its determination of a particular object on a certain occasion. Towards the end of the last section it was remarked that by adding some noun phrases and other words to a certain demonstrative that is accompanied by a given act of demonstration, regarding the hearer's singling out of a certain object, the demonstration can attain the same degree of precision as those descriptions which individuate uniquely but in a relative manner. This, in the terminology introduced in the present section, is to say that in this respect the demonstration is on a par with those descriptions which are semantically incomplete. Noun phrases and other words which are provided by the speaker to enable the hearer to pick out a certain object need not, however, be overtly used by the speaker to accompany his act of demonstration. The speaker might expect that the hearer will make use of them on the basis of the previous conversation between them, say, on the day before. If, for example, the speaker spoke to the hearer about some man that the hearer has not previously met, and promised to show him that man next day at a meeting they are both going to attend, the direction of the speaker's eyes and raising of his eyebrows might be sufficient for the hearer to pick out the relevant object. Moreover, the speaker's gestures need not be accompanied by any utterance. Even if they are, the utterance might well be 'that one' which in the absence of background information could easily leave the hearer in doubt as to whether the speaker is referring to, say, a certain man, his coat, or something else. Furthermore, the speaker might not even rely on some such specific conversation with the hearer but simply, knowing some of the hearer's interests or worries, he might count on the hearer's
picking out.the ri~ht object. If, for example, the speaker knows that the hearer 1Safra1d that a certain man who is going to attend the same meeting but who he has never met is going to kill him and that he knows that the speaker knows that man though they have never talked about him, the simple nod of the head on the speaker's part can be quite sufficient for the hearer's picking out the ri~ht object and his undertaking the right action.!! This example shows how both those demonstrations which are in one way or another accompanied by noun phrases and other words, on the one hand, and those which are not accompanied by such phrases and words, on the other, can accomplish a successful determination of a certain object on the basis of certain conventions. That is, it shows that when the sense of a demonstration which is not accompanied by these expressions determines, on a particular occasion, a certain object without ambiguity, it is enabled by virtue of some additional conventional factors which are similar to those involved with a demonstration which is accompanied by these expressions. As, in addition to this, it can obviously be the case that a demonstration accompanied by these expressions in a conventionally appropriate way fails to be specific enough to enable the hearer to single out a unique object, it becomes clear that this latter kind of demonstration does not play any privileged semantic role over the former one, with respect to determination of reference. This, in other words, redresses the balance as to the foregoing comparison between the demonstration and definite descriptions, making it clear that it is not necessary for a demonstration to be accompanied by noun phrases and other words in order to be specific or precise, regarding the hearer's singling out of a certain object, similar to those definite descriptions which are semantically incomplete. In the last section it was remarked that the sense of a particular demonstration which enabled the hearer to pick out a certain object need not be involved in the mode of presentation under which the object is given to him, and that the same holds for the linguistic meanings and senses of the words the speaker utters to the same effect. This, in other terms amounts to the fact that the given remark also holds for the cases in which the sense of a particular demonstration is accompanied by linguistic meanings and senses of the speaker's words. Now, driving this wedge between the mode of presentation, on the one hand, and the senses and linguistic meanings of these
cues, on the other, prompts the question as to what makes the mode under which a certain object has been entertained the sense of a corresponding demonstrative. To make this clear, I will rephrase it in the following way. . The linguistic meaning of a demonstrative and the senses of noun phrases and other words as well as the senses of demonstrations are, so to speak, inherent in them and they always go with them, regardless of whether there is an object purported to be determined by them or by their means, or not. Now, as none of these linguistic meanings and senses are - as it was shown above constitutive of the mode under which the object that is singled out by their means is presented to the hearer,. this sev~rance of the mode of presentation from these features mherent m these cues leaves us with the following question: What is it that ensures the tie between the mode of presentation and any of these cues, including demonstratives to which the mode of presentation has been attached? In fact, it does not suit any of these cues other than demonstratives to have the mode of presentation as their sense on the grounds that all of them - i.e., demonstrations, noun phrases, etc. - already have senses (though as we shall see in the next section, the mode of presentation can in some special cases be attached to them). As this does not hold for demonstratives, it is somehow natural to see the mode of presentation as their sense. But, this needs to be substantiated, which can be done as follows. On the basis of the rules governing the use of demonstratives, a demonstrative - in its uses that have been the subject-matter of this essay - is a means by which language agents communicate, i.e., interchange information (or parts of information) about some object or objects. Hence, if somebody wants to participate in this aspect of the language-game he will use the right kind of word, that is, a demonstrative, to this effect. The speaker will, for example, use the demonstrative 'that', in an appropriate context, to indicate the object about which he wants to impart information to the hearer (and the object might be given to him under some particular mode of presentation which need not coincide with the hearer's mode of presentation12). With this in mind, a typical communicative situation can be described as follows. Suppose the speaker wants the hearer to single out a particular object which is in their perceptual field, in order to convey to him some piece of information about it. As for there to be a mode of presentation regarding such an object for the
subject he must distinguish it on the basis of his perception, it only makes sens~ to assume that this has been done by the speaker before he tnes to convey information to the hearer. Now, at the second stage he will in accordance with linguistic rules use an appropriate linguistic expression, i.e., a demonstrative in this case (with or without accompanying phrases, gestures, etc.). The hearer ~eing. al~o a competent player ?f the language-game, will grasp th~ ImgUlstlc meamng of the gIven demonstrative (and also the senses of the accompanying noun phrases, etc., if there are any, as well as the sense of the demonstration, if it is provided). When he p~cks out the obj~ct the speaker wants him to, it will be given to him under a particular mode of presentation. That is, the mode of ~rese~t~tion in. question is consequential upon his grasp of the lIngUlStlc meamng of the demonstrative (as well as the senses of other cues) used by the speaker. On the other hand this consequential order is somewhat different in the speaker. Fi;st, he has singled out the object under a particular mode of presentation and then he has chosen (according to the rules) an appropriate word (words, gestures, etc.) as a means of communicating some piece of information about the object. .This way of accounting for these matters suffices to provide us WIth the answer to the above question (which will become more specific in the light of the relationship between the mode of presentation and the linguistic meaning of a demonstrative discussed in the next section). It is the inclusion of both some particular mode of presentation and a demonstrative (token) in the same chain that justifies seeing a particular mode of presentation as the sense that is attached to (or simply the sense of) a given demonstrative as used on some particular occasion. The communicative picture just offered also shows that, as with the hearer, the speaker - who picks out the object before choosing the linguistic and extra-linguistic cues in order to communicate - need not entertain the object under a mode of presentation which includes linguistic meanings and senses of these cues.
4.4 Demonstratives and definite descriptions and the relation between the linguistic meaning and the sense of a demonstrative There is a temptation to see a demonstrative phrase of the form 'that 11>' (or 'this 11>') as being in relevant respects on a par with a definite description of the form 'the 11>'. That is, we are tempted to
view these two types or expressIon as naYIngme ~illlie~t:'U~t:' Ui ell least some circumstances, and it is this issue that I want to settle now. n should be noted, to start with, that in certain circumstances we use these two types of expression to the same effect. That is to say, the speaker can, for example, use either the demonstrative phrase 'that F' ('this F') or the definite description 'the F' to enable the hearer to pick out some object in their vicinity. This can furthermore be taken as some kind of evidence for the similarity or identity between the senses of these two types of expression. However, this needs careful elaboration. The question as to whether a definite description and a demonstrative phrase have the same sense can be seen as two-fold. In the first place it arises with respect to the sense (mod~ .of presentation) of a demonstrative phrase and the sense of a d~flrute description. However, with some adjustment of apparatus, It a~so arises with respect to the linguistic meaning of a demonstratlve phrase, which includes a certain descriptive conte~t, and the ~ense of a definite description. (It should be noted that If the latter ISthe case, it does not imply the former, Le., that the sense ?f. a demonstrative phrase coincides with the sense of a deflrute description. For, as we have seen, t.he linguistic ~eanin.g o~ a demonstrative (phrase) differs from ItS sense.) My Investlgatlon will start with the latter aspect of this question. Although the demonstrative phrase 'that F' ('this F') and the description 'the F' can be used to the same effect wi~ re~pectto ~he hearer's singling out of the given object, there are s~tuationswhi~h reveal the relevant divergence between them. ConsIder the case In which the speaker wants the hearer to perceptually single out the apple on the top of his cup~o~rd and to info~~ him that it has a certain property G, e.g., that It ISrotten. Now, If In consequence the speaker utters the sentence '~e apple on the top of .my cup~oar~ is rotten', that is, a sentence In which the grammatlcal subject IS the definite description 'the apple ...', the hearer need not perceptually single out the apple in question in order to ~~sp ~he Thought this sentence expresses. In other words, the speclflcatlon of the apple is achieved via its satisfaction of some descriptive condition(s) and the hearer need not single out the apple perceptually in order to grasp the truth-conditions of the sentence. In the light of the Fregean principle adopted in Chapter One above, that to grasp the sense of a sentence is to know its truth-conditions, this means that he grasps the sense (Thought) expressed by the
sentence. un tne otner nana, In accordance with my earlier discussions, no Thought is grasped by the hearer regarding the sentence which instead of the description 'the apple...' contains the demonstrative phrase 'that apple'. The sentence 'That apple on the top of my cupboard is rotten' expresses no Thought for the hearer if he has not perceptually singled out the given object. As shown in Chapter One, this is necessary for his knowledge of the truth-conditions of the sentence. This suggests that there is some difference between the linguistic meaning of the given demonstrative phrase and the sense of the given description. To make this more specific, consider again the Fregean Intuitive Criterion of Difference introduced in Chapter One. To recall, according to this criterion the Thought associated with one sentence S as its sense must be different from the Thought associated with another sentence S' as its sense, if it is possible for someone (not anyone) to understand both sentences at a given time while coherently taking different epistemic attitudes towards them, Le., accepting (rejecting) one while rejecting (accepting),or being agnostic about, the other. In the foregoing kind of situation which gives rise to the insight about the divergence between the linguistic meaning of the given demonstrative phrase and the sense of the given definite description, the subject (i.e., in this case the hearer) can be seen as taking different attitudes towards the two sentences containing these two expressions. That is, he can at the same time accept or reject the sentence containing the given description while being agnostic towards the sentence containing the demonstrative phrase. This is because, in accordance with the weak thesis of object-dependence, he has not perceptually singled out the relevant object, and refuses to accept the given demonstrative sentence as either true or false. But, as he entertains no suitable Thought here, the Intuitive Criterion of Difference is not applicable. This is to say that the subject's taking different attitudes towards these two utterances is not a matter of this criterion which by definition concerns the relationship between Thoughts. Though not applicable to this kind of case, the Criterion might be seen as applicable when the subject grasps a certain mode of presentation associated with the given demonstrative phrase. This happens when on the basis of his singling out perceptually the relevant object the hearer associates a certain Thought with the given (utterance of the) sentence.
This might provide us with the answer to the question as to whether the given demonstrative sentence and the given descriptive sentence express the same Thought, or not, and consequently the question about the relationship between the senses of their grammatical subjects. However, the question about the relationship between the linguistic meaning of 'that F' (not its sense) and the sense of 'the F' that is under discussion here is again unaccounted for by the Criterion. The Intuitive Criterion of Difference is thus of no relevance to specifying further the remarked difference between the linguistic meaning of a demonstrative phrase and the sense of a corresponding definite description, and we must look for this somewhere else. But, before this is done, I would like to dwell on the question as to whether the cases in which the hearer believes that both the demonstrative and the descriptive sentence are about the same object yield that the sense (mode of presentation) of the given demonstrative phrase on the given occasion is the same as the sense of the given definite description. This, in other words, takes us to the former of the two aspects of the question I started with above. Suppose the speaker utters the descriptive sentence in question, pointing at the apple on the top of his cupboard. Then, for some reason (at about the same time), he utters the corresponding demonstrative sentence, pointing at the same apple. It is forthcoming that the hearer - who in the process manages to pick out perceptually the relevant object and establishes the belief that both utterances are about the same object - will somehow entertain the same sense with respect to both the definite description in the former utterance and the demonstrative phrase in the latter one. But, what in fact happens in this kind of case is that the mode of presentation characteristic of the demonstrative is also attached to the given definite description, which sometimes happens in the process of our linguistic communication. The mode of presentation can in fact also be attached to other cues, either linguistic or extra-linguistic - for example, to the general term 'apple' uttered on its own by the speaker in order to enable the hearer to perceptually pick out the relevant object, and so on. On the other hand, the proper sense of a definite description is object-independent, that is, the subject need not single out the object perceptually in order to grasp the description's sense13, as in the case of demonstratives. This crucial difference between these two kinds of expression can be stated in terms of linguistic
conve~tions by ~aying, for example, that the object-dependent ~ense. IS c?nventtonally reserved only for demonstratives (i.e., mdexlcals m general). As linguistic conventions govern the correct use of. expressions in li,nguistic communication, I believe, it is only the object-dependence m the weak and not in the strong sense that is by such conventions required. This is to say that the subject needs to perceptually discriminate the given object in the sense of the weak object-dependence, or at least believe to have discriminated it in this sense, in order to use the demonstrative correctly. On the other hand, the correct use of the demonstrative does not require that the object really exist. Namely, if the subject 'refers' by means of a demonstrative to an object which he mistakenly takes to be seeing in front of him, his use of the given demonstrati~e is not as such incorrect. Hence, the strong objectdependence IS not required by linguistic conventions but is rather a result of an independent philosophical argument. Since in those cases in which this kind of sense is also attached to some definite description or to a general term like 'apple' uttered on its own, etc., this association, it might be argued, is also governed by some linguistic conventions, it might be more accurate to state the difference in question in the following manner. The sense (mode of presentation) which is objectdependent in accordance with the weak thesis of objectdepend~nce is the only kind of sense which, according to linguistic conventIOns, belongs to demonstratives in their uses that are the subject-matter of this book14 (and to other indexicals). As for definite descriptions, general terms, and other similar cues, the weak object-dependent sense can on some occasions be attached to them. However, the proper sense of these cues that is allotted to them by the system of linguistic conventions is the one that is object-independent. As far as the senses of the sentences 'The apple on the top of my cupboard is rotten' and 'That apple on the top of my cupboard is rotten' and the senses of their grammatical subjects are concerned, the following remark can be made. If it is assumed that the mode of presentation which the hearer associates with the ?emonstrative phrase in the demonstrative sentence in question IS also associated by him with the description in the given descriptive sentence, it trivially holds that they have the same sense and that these two senten~es express the same Thought. If, on the other hand, the hearer In the first place entertains the proper sense that is allotted to the definite description by the
linguistic conventions governing it, then he entertains the sense which is object-independent. This sense differs in kind from the sense associated with the given demonstrative phrase which, consequently, also holds for the Thoughts expressed by the two corresponding sentences. It is time to return to the question about the relationship between the linguistic meaning of the demonstrative phrase 'that F' and the (proper) sense of the definite description 'the F'. The example provided earlier in this section revealed that there is some difference between the linguistic meaning and the sense, respectively, of these two expressions. It was shown that this difference could not be captured and further specified by the Intuitive Criterion of Difference which turned out to be of no relevance to such an accomplishment. Starting anew from where I was before this criterion was reintroduced in this section, consider the question what constitutes the linguistic meaning of the demonstrative phrase 'that F'. The answer at hand is that it is constituted of the linguistic meanings of the components of this phrase. That is, it is constituted of the linguistic meaning of the demonstrative 'that' and the sense or the linguistic meaning of 'F', where, in the simple case, 'F' should be taken to be a general term (granting that linguistic meaning coincides with sense when it comes to general terms and other similar expressions). Now, broadly speaking, one and the same sense or linguistic meaning of 'F' enters both the linguistic meaning of the demonstrative phrase 'that F' and the sense of the corresponding definite description, contributing to each of them in a different manner. This reflects different roles played by the demonstrative in the former expression and the definite article in the latter. In other words, a way to explain the fact that the hearer needs to perceptually single out some particular apple in order to grasp the Thought expressed by the demonstrative sentence, while this is not required from him in order to grasp the Thought expressed by the corresponding descriptive sentence, can be provided in terms of rules and conventions governing, respectively, the given demonstrative (type) and the definite article. Thus, as far as the standard use of a definite description is concerned, the rules governing the definite article can be seen as involving the rule(s) stating that the definite article combines with general and other terms in the following way. When the resulting description forms part of a sentence such as the one considered above, the understanding of the sentence does not require the singling out of
the object which is supposed to be specified by the given description, on the basis of past, present or future perception. The understanding of the sentence does not even depend on whether there is such an object, or not. (Alternatively, some such rule perhaps governs-the use of a definite description as a whole, but, which of these two alternatives we should accept is a question that need not be settled here. However, it should be noted that only the latter alternative makes sense when it comes to those languages which do not include a definite article.) On the other hand, the rules that govern the uses of a demonstrative (or a demonstrative phrase) that have been the subject-matter of the present essay can be seen as involving, for example, the rule(s) stating that the understanding of (an utterance) of a sentence involving a demonstrative is consequential upon the subject's perceptual discrimination of a certain object. Alternatively, speaking in terms of the notion of linguistic meaning which, as it was shown in section 1.2 above coincides with the notion of linguistic rule, this can be stated in the following way. This fact about the understanding of a demonstrative sentence, or its variation, is what is known by somebody who knows the linguistic meaning of a given demonstrative, and this component of the linguistic meaning of a demonstrative governs its use in the way that is not shared by definite descriptions (in their standard use). This way of viewing these matters further reveals that there is some kind of dependence between the linguistic meaning of a demonstrative, which, as we have just seen, embodies some components typical of demonstratives, on the one hand, and its sense (mode of presentation), also typical of demonstratives, on the other. This takes us back to the question of their relationship. As far as this relationship is concerned, earlier in this essay it was shown that the linguistic meaning of a demonstrative differs from its sense. It is time now to provide a positive account of this relationship. As McDowell has pointed out, this relationship can be viewed in the following way. Particular modes of presentation can be grouped into sorts; different modes of presentation can present their different objects in the same sort of way - for instance by exploiting their perceptual presence. And the univocity of a context-sensitiveexpression can be registered by associating it with a single sort of object-dependent sense,15
Given a context, a sort of de re [object-dependent] sense may determine a de re sense...or else it...may determine nothing. And in the latter sort of case...there can only be a gap - an absence - at so to speak, the relevant place in the mind - the place where, given that the sort of de re sense in question appears to be instantiated, there appears to be a specific de re sense (1984,p. 188). This relationship is illustrated more technically by Evans (1985, section VI). Changing his example which included pure indexicals 'today' and'!', consider the demonstrative sentence
A Fregean Thought associated with the sentence (1) uttered on some particular occasion on which the demonstrative in it refers to some object 0 can be equated with the ordered pair of the sense (mode of presentation) which 'this' has on this occasion and the sense of the concept expression (predicate) '( ) if F', thus: (2) <Particular mode of presentation of 'this', Sense of '( ) is F'>.
One grasps the sense of 'this' on the given occasion if and only if, on the basis of one's perception one knows, regarding the given object 0, which object it is, i.e., in virtue of one's satisfying some relational property AX (R1 (x,o)) - so that we may, equivalently, equate the Fregean Thought with the ordered pair:
One entertains the object (3) if one thinks of an object in virtue of one's satisfying the first component, to the effect that it is F. Furthermore, to bring out the way in which any two utterances of (1) are similar, we might equate the Thought with the triple:
One entertains (4) if one thinks of the first member, in virtue of oneself and the first member, satisfying the second member, to the effect that it is F. In this construction the second and the third
components of the sense of an utterance of (1) are always the same, though the sense which 'this' has on the given occasion referring to the object o can be equated with neither the first member, nor the second member, taken singly, but only with the pair. This also completes the answer to the question as to what makes the mode under which a certain object has been entertained the sense of a corresponding demonstrative, discussed in the last section. The provided answer, that it is the inclusion of both some particular mode of presentation and a demonstrative (token) in the same consequential chain that justifies seeing a particular mode of presentation as the sense of a given demonstrative, is to be glossed in the light of the relationship between the sense and the linguistic meaning outlined in this section.
So far it has been assumed in this essay that the identity of the Thought expressed by a demonstrative sentence on a certain occasion is affected by a change of the mode of presentation associated with the demollstrative it contains. However, it remains to be clarified as to whether every variation of the mode of presentation affects the identity of such a Thought. In section 4.3 above it was remarked that the speaker and the hearer can successfully communicate even when they do not associate the same mode of presentation with the demonstrative by which means information about the object it refers to is conveyed (which will be illustrated by an example later in this section). Now, if this kind of information is conceived of as the Fregean Thought, it follows that the demonstrative sentence in question expresses the same Thought both for the speaker and the hearer even when they do not associate the same mode of presentation with the given demonstrative. This, in other words, would yield that not every variation of the mode of presentation affects the Thought expressed by the given demonstrative sentence. On the other hand, the alternative view can be conceived of in the following way. In those situations in which, as remarked, the mode of presentation varies from the speaker to the hearer, as a matter of fact the information16 about the object is conveyed (as will be illustrated later in this section). This, however, does not mean that the speaker and the hearer grasp the same Thought. They grasp different Thoughts which are similar
enough, or are in some kind of correspondence relation in the way which enables the conveyance of information, thereby allowing for successful communication between them. Thus, one and the same piece of information is considered as defining a class whose members are Thoughts which satisfy a certain similarity or correspondence relation. The Intuitive Criterion of Difference to which, according to Frege, the notion of Thought should conform, favours the latter alternative. To make this clear, I will consider first a variant of this criterion that supposedly favours the former alternative, and show that the line of thought behind it is wrong. Returning to my earlier example, suppose that the subject is viewing a road whose middle is obscured by a forest so that he sees parts of it on each side of the forest, believing that two different roads are in question. In other words, this road is given to him under two different modes of presentation. This is because in his singling out of what he believes to be one of the two roads he will appeal to facts that are different from the facts that he appeals to in his singling out of what he believes to be the other road. Suppose now that the subject learns that what he believes to be two roads is in fact one road. He can obviously continue to view, in one way or another, the given road under two different modes of presentation coinciding with his identification of the road by looking at each of its two parts, respectively. Furthermore, suppose that he utters the sentence of the form 'This road is \Ii " referring first to the given road via one of its two parts, and then he utters the same sentence again referring to it via its other part. It follows that although the two modes of presentation associated with the demonstrative in this sentence differ in its two utterances, the subject cannot take different attitudes towards these two utterances which seems to yield that they express the same Thought. If this conclusion was correct, it would provide us with a justification of the first alternative considered above, that is, that not every variation of the mode of presentation associated with a given demonstrative affects the Thought expressed by a corresponding demonstrative sentence. This allows for the possibility of the speaker's and the hearer's grasp of the same Thought when the modes of presentation they associate with the given demonstrative are different. However, this conclusion is ill-founded for it is based on a version of the Criterion which appears to be incorrect. That is, the Criterion states that two sentences express different Thoughts if it
is possible for someone (not anyone) to understand both sentences at .a given time while coherently taking different epistemic attitudes towards them. This, in other words, means that for two Thoughts to be different it suffices that there could be somebody who would coherently take different attitudes towards the sentences expressing them, regardless of whether or not there is somebody who cannot take different attitudes towards the two sentences. Thus, although the subject in the foregoing example cannot take different attitudes towards the two utterances of the given sentence, the possibility of taking different attitudes on the par~ of somebody else is open. Anyone who is like the given sU~Ject before he cam.e to know about the identity of what he believed to be two dIfferent roads can take different attitudes towards the two utterances of the given sentence believing that they are about two different objects. However, a different interpretation allows us to see the Criterion as prima facie avoiding this criticism. It may be claimed that no subject can take different attitudes towards the two utterances in ques.tion, provided that he believes that they are about th~ same obJect.17 In other words, given this proviso, it is not possIble for anyone to take different attitudes towards these two utterances. The question arises now as to which of these two ways of accounting for these matters we shall adopt. The answer to this question can be provided as follows. As pointed out in Chapter One above, Frege introduced the notion of sen:'e as the mode of presentation in order to explain those cases in which true statements of identity can be informative, or simply, in order to solve the so-called paradox of identity. In the case of demo~stratives, this p.aradox can be presented as revealed by the followmg fact. Regardmg the road from the foregoing example, an utterance of the sentence
in which the first occurrence of the demonstrative refers as before to the given road via one of its parts while its second occurrence ref~rs to i~ via its o.ther part, may be both informative and unmformattve dependmg on whether the subject knows that one and the same road is in question, or not. However, this fact is not compatible with the latter variant of the Criterion which rules out those cases in which the above sentence is informative whereas it is in perfect accordance with its former variant. This th~ provides
us with a strong reason to reject the latter and accept the former of these two variants. The answer to the question with which I started this section is that - on the basis of the Intuitive Criterion of Difference - every variation of the mode of presentation associated with a demonstrative affects the identity of the Thought associated with a corresponding demonstrative sentence. The reason that we should rely on this criterion in providing us with the right answer to this question can be seen as residing in the fact that, as Evans has remarked, the connection between the theoretical notion of sense and ordinary propositional-attitude psychology - the connection encapsulated by the Criterion - was needed by Frege if that theoretical notion was to help him solve the mentioned paradox or puzzle. This puzzle can also be put in the form of the question as to how sentences composed out of expressions with the same referents can have different cognitive values (i.e., everybody knows that a=a while a=b is informative for somebody who is not aware of this identity, and so on). For the notion of cognitive value is a notion partially defined in terms from propositional-attituq.epsychology: a sentence S has a different cognitive value from a sentence S' just in case it is possible to understand Sand S' while taking different attitudes towards them (Evans 1982,p.19). The acceptance of the view that every variation of the mode of presentation associated with a demonstrative affects the identity of the Thought expressed by a sentence containing it, commits us to the latter of the two views sketched at the beginning of this section. According to this view, the fact that information about an object can be conveyed in cases in which the speaker and the hearer do not associate the same mode of presentation with a demonstrative referring to the given object is accounted for in the following way. The speaker and the hearer are not entertaining the same Thought but different Thoughts which are similar enough or corresponding to each other in the way which enables the conveyance of information. The problem with this view seems to concern the vagueness of the given similarity or correspondence relation. In the first place this raises the questions as to which are the relevant respects of similarity or correspondence of Thoughts and what is the minimal degree of similarity or the minimal extent of correspondence that
should hold between the Thoughts belonging to the class defined by one and the same information.l8 Nevertheless, a depiction of how the Thought entertained by the speaker is related to the Thought entertained by the hearer can be provided without dealing with these complex questions. Consider a case in which the speaker and the hearer view at the same time an object from different aspects. Suppose, in accordance with the foregoing example, that the speaker faces one of the two parts of the given road without seeing the other, whereas the hearer is in the reverse position, and that they can see and hear each other. Suppose further that the speaker says 'This road is muddy', pointing towards a muddy stretch of the road which is hidden from the hearer's view. The speaker can understand the speaker's remark correctly without ever seeing the stretch of the road to which the speaker is pointing. On the basis of the speaker's utterance and gestures the hearer can easily pick out the relevant object, i.e., the road in question, which is presented to him under some mode of presentation. As a result of this, he will entertain some particular Thought as associated with the sentence uttered by the speaker. As the mode of presentation he attaches to the given demonstrative is different from the mode of presentation attached to it by the speaker, i.e., they appeal to different facts in their demonstrative identification of the given road, the Thought he entertains is different from the Thought entertained by the speaker, as my foregoing considerations make clear. Yet, this example, which resembles many everyday cases, shows that a piece of information has been conveyed, that an act of successful linguistic communication has been accomplished. It has been accomplished due to the fact that, regardless of the difference in sense, the referent the hearer associates with the given demonstrative is the same as the one associated with it by the speaker. Although this way of viewing these matters provides us with some insights about the communication of Thoughts on the basis of pointing out some facts about linguistic communication, it is pretheoretical and is in need of further articulation. Reflecting upon this leads us to some general questions about the Fregean model of communication. This model requires that communication between the speaker and the hearer includes their entertaining the same Thought in accordance with the Intuitive Criterion of Difference but in everyday linguistic practice this is obviously not always the case. As is well-known, Frege believed that this phenomenon arises as a result of the imperfection of
ordinary language and ought not to occur, in a perfect lan?uage (1980, p. 58, note). Dummett .disputes. Frege s resp~nse to t.his gap between idealization and reality. He dIsputes Frege s declarmg that our actual practice is, so far as it falls short of the idealiz~tion, defective and ought to be purified so as to correspond to the Ideal. Yet, he claims that the ideal picture is of importance, not because we ought to purge our l~nguage so as to .cor~esp~nd completely to it, but because, in particular problematic situatI~ns, w~ need to impose a new practice, which approximates to the Ideal pIcture, on the employment of some or other fragment of our language, in order to resolve problems with which we are faced (1981b, pp. 1056). Thus, Dummett basically agrees with Frege when he takes the Fregean model of communication as an ideal which, as remarked by Evans, means that in a certain sense we do not re~lly communicate, do not perfectly understand one another. Treatmg the Fregean model of communication in this way ~s unwarranted for, as pointed out by Evans (19.82, p~. 4~-41), .m many c~ses, particularly many of those cases mvolvmg mdexical expressIons like 'here' (in its use as a pure indexical) and 'now' (in that same use), etc., it seems to be required that the speaker and the he~r~r entertain the same Thought in order to communicate. Thus, It IS more natural to consider Frege's model of referential communication as having extensive, if not unlimited application. This means a justification of this model but only to a certain extent. 'We do not have Frege's full model of the role of sense in communication', Evans remarks correctly, 'for we do not have the thesis that communication between speaker and hearer requires them to think of the referent in the same way (in any plausible or natural sense of that phrase). The nearest we come to the full Fregean model is with expressions like "here" and "now"; the furthest we move away from the full model is with expressions like "I" and "you'" (1982, p. 316). According to this plausible picture, in situations in which the Fregean model does not hold and yet the communication about the referent is effected the Thought entertained by the speaker and the Thought entertained by the hearer, as Evans (1982, p. 333) and McDowell (1984, p. 290) put it, stand and are mutually known to stand in a suitable relation of correspondence. Although a complete account of linguistic communication would have to specify this correspondence relation more closely in terms of the questions raised above, an elucidation as to how the
communication via correspondence works can be provided without undertaking such a difficult task. Grasping the linguistic meaning (rules) and senses of the words included in the speaker's sentence 'This road is muddy', and also the sense of the speaker's demonstration, the hearer has picked out the relevant object which is given to him under a particular mode of presentation. As presupposed by the foregoing example this mode of presentation is different from the speaker's mode of presentation. This, by the same token, generates his grasp of the Thought which is different from the Thought grasped by the speaker. But, in spite of this difference there are some things that they both share. For information to be conveyed (in accordance with the proper use of language), both the speaker and the hearer need to use words and gestures according to the same rules (regardless of whether they entertain the same Thought, or not). Thus, they both need to know, for example, the rule(s) stating that the understanding of a sentence involving a demonstrative - in its uses that have been the subject-matter of this essay - is consequential upon the perceptual discrimination of a certain object, and so on. Consider also McDowell's characterization of the relationship between the mode of presenta,tion of a demonstrative and its linguistic meaning adopted at the end of the last section. It was remarked that particular modes of presentation can be grouped into sorts; different modes of presentation can present their objects in the same sort of way - for instance by exploiting their perceptual presence; and the univocity of a context-sensitive expression can be registered by associating it with a single sort of object-dependent sense. This suggests that it is the same sort of object-dependent sense which both the speaker and the hearer need to associate with the given demonstrative if the conveyance of relevant information is to be effected. There is a threefold significance to the fact that the speaker and the hearer need to share the same rules/linguistic meanings if they are to communicate by the use of a demonstrative. First, it shows that they need to grasp at least something in the same way (in the natural sense of this phrase). Second, as a result of this (though not of this alone), and in accordance with my discussion earlier in this chapter, the sameness of the referent they both entertain is secured (i.e., these rules/meanings playa role in the hearer's singling out of the object about which the speaker is talking). This establishes another link between them. Third, seeing
the linguistic meaning as 'defining' a particular sort of objectdependent sense puts some limitation on the allowed divergence between the sense entertained by the speaker and the sense entertained by the hearer.l9 Although crude, this picture suffices here to provide us with some cornerstones for the account of how communication works in those cases in which the speaker and the hearer do not share the same Thought, the development of which I will not undertake here.
The Intuitive Criterion of Difference states that having different attitudes towards two sentences suffices for their expression of different Thoughts. That is, two sentences express different Thoughts as long as there could be somebody who would (rationally and at a given time) take different attitudes towards them. On the other hand, it is not self-evident that somebody's taking different attitudes is necessary for two sentences to express different Thoughts. Consider the following example. Suppose a particular subject faces an object in front of him, uttering the sentence 'This is F'. In accordance with my view, the object is given to him under a particular mode of presentation associated with the given demonstrative and he, consequently, entertains a particular Thought expressed by this sentence on this particular occasion. Now, suppose that while the subject briefly takes his sight off the given object, or even during his looking at the object from the same position, the object is replaced with another one looking the same in such a way that he has not noticed any change. Suppose further that the subject points again towards what he believes to be the same object, being located in the very same place, uttering again the sentence 'This is F'. This might be seen as a situation in which the given subject, and anybody who would be in his position takes the same attitude towards the two utterances of the given sentence, and yet they express different Thoughts as a result of the fact that not one but two different objects are in question, consequently generating two different Thoughts. This conclusion might be seen as forthcoming, but further reflection reveals that it is wrong. It is its second part that is, as I shall argue shortly, wrong. Its first part, i.e., that the subject and
anybody who is in his position takes the same attitude towards the two sentences, stems from the provided example and is in acco~~ance ~it~ the requirement for the correct application of the IntUItive Cntenon of Difference, which can be seen as follows. First, (one and) the (same) subject is taken to understand both sentences. Second, though there is a time lapse between the subject's observations of the two objects and between his two utte~ances of the given sentence this all happens at the same time _ not In terms of some tolerated extension of this last notion, but in terms of the natural application of this notion that accords with the Criterion.20 This is to say that the subject's understanding of some two sentences (or two utterances of the same sentence) require~ some lapse of time, i.e., there must be some temporal succeSSlOnbetween his entertaining the Thought expressed by one and his entertaining the Thought expressed by the other sentence (or by two utterances of the same sentence). Third, it is plausible to ~uppo~~ that anybody in the given subject's place would be InSensItive to the duphcate in the same way as the subject, due to some ~eneral facts about the limits of sensitivity of human perception. Consequently, anyone would take the same attitude towards two utterances of the given sentence. ,So,m.ething need~ to be s~i, Le.,'using a definite description referentially, a speaker may say something true even though the description correctly applies to nothing' (1966, p. 298). In other words, Donnellan holds that , on a particular occasion , when the speaker uses the description 'the man drinking a martini' referentially, the sentence 'The man drinking a martini is G' can be true with respect to a certain man who does not drink a martini but, say, water, if it is clear that the speaker intends to refer to that man and provided that he is G. In accordance with my discussion earlier in this section where it was claimed that the distinction between the attributive and the referential use of definite descriptions is not semantical, Le, that their referential use is not a semantical matter, it is inappropriate to claim that in this kind of case the sentence 'the man drinking a martini is G' is true. This is because truth is a semantic notion and as such belongs with the attributive use of definite descriptions which, unlike their referential use, is their semantically approved use. Whether this sentence is true or not thus depends on whether there is, somewhere in the relevant area, another man corresponding to the description who is G. Similarly with sentence (3) above. On the other hand, we cannot deal with the question of truthvalue of sentences (1) and (2), or more generally of the sentences of the form 'That cI> is G' or 'This cI> is G', in this way. That is, as the referential use of a demonstrative is par excellence a matter of semantics, this provides us with a background different from the one that we had in the case of definite descriptions. Unlike with the sentence 'The man drinking a martini is G', whose truthvalue is a matter of its attributive use only, the truth-value of the sentence 'That man drinking a martini is G', uttered in the same way, is a matter of its referential use. This being a semantical matter, I will make a tentative claim that the sentence 'That man drinking a martini is G' is false if the man referred to is drinking not a martini but, as supposed water. This is the case regardless of whether he is G or not for something not true of him has been ascribed to him. Similarly, sentences (1) and (2) above, uttered when the object referred to is not male, are false. This is because the descriptive
content contained in the demonstrative 'he' and the demonstrative phrase 'that male' is simply not true, i.e., does not hold, of the object in question.
It is commonly assumed that deictical or perceptual demonstratives are rigid designators. However, as Kaplan argues that their rigidity leaves no room for a Fregean sense, I want to show that this is not true when it comes to the conception of sense defended in this essay.3I will argue that the conception of sense as the mode of presentation is consonant with the thesis of rigid designation provided it is not subjected to the restriction imposed on it by Kaplan. As will be shown, this restriction on rigid designation stems from the view held by Kaplan - as well as by Donnellan (1974)and Perry (1977)- that the referent of a singular term is itself a component of the proposition expressed by the sentence as a whole. That this view is unintelligible will become clear in due course. As is well-known, the thesis of rigid designation was introduced by Kripke who characterizes it in the following way: A designator d of an object x is rigid, if it designates x with respect to all possible worlds where x exists and never designates an object other than x with respect to any possible world.4
A possible world is given by the descriptive conditions we associate with it ... 'Possible worlds' are stipulated, not discovered by powerful telescopes (1980,p. 44). A little bit later (with respect to Nixon's winning the election) he says that we just say 'suppose this man had lost'. It is, believes Kripke, given that the possible world contains this man, and that in that world, he had lost. If we have an intuition about the possibility of that (this man's electoral loss), then, in Kripke's view, it is about the possibility of that.
It need not be identified with the possibility of a man looking like such and such, or holding such and such political views, or otherwise qualitatively described, having lost. We can point to the man, and ask what might have happened to him, had events been different (1980,pp. 45-6). This is to say that, as regards our use of deictical (perceptual) demonstratives, possible worlds are stipulated in such a way that the object we take to be the referent of a demonstrative (token) in the so-called actual world is also its counterfactual referent, i.e., its referent with respect to other possible worlds; or, in terms of the foregoing- definition, deictical (perceptual) demonstratives designate rigidly. Let us see now how the account of sense as the mode of presentation relates to the outlined claim that demonstratives are rigid designators. The fact that a certain object is given to us under a particular mode of presentation does not clash with the stipulation that, when a certain object is referred to by a certain demonstrative (token), it is still referred to by it when we consider the object counterfactually. What is more, the rules governing a demonstrative commit us to the thesis of rigid designation. This is because according to these rules a deictical (perceptual) demonstrative can be used to refer only to an object that is related to us in a certain sort of way, i.e., under a particular mode of presentation. Thus we cannot refer by means of a deictical demonstrative to a possible, non-actual, object such as a unicorn for it is not related to us in the way required by the correct use of a demonstrative. That such objects are not related to us in this way is another way of saying - as David Lewis does - that there is not any trans-world causation. Referring to Kripke's remark quoted above that possible worlds are not discovered by telescopes, he claims that the lack of such causation is the real reason why there could not be a very powerful telescope for viewing other worlds. 'Telescopic viewing, like other methods of gathering information, is a causal process: a "telescope" which produced images that were causally independent of the condition of the thing "viewed" would be a bogus telescope. No trans-world causation, no trans-world telescopes' (1986,p. 80). Because of these rules a deictical demonstrative can correctly be used to refer only to objects in the actual world and in such a way that when it refers to a certain object, it refers to it regardless of
whether we state something about it with respect to the actual world or consider what might have happened to it (i.e., consider it counterfactually). This is to say that the referent of a demonstrative is kept fixed, i.e., that a demonstrative is a rigid designator. .., A similar result can be achIeved wIthout appeahng to the apparatus of possible worlds. Peacocke (1975) suggests a criterion which does not make use of this apparatus. According to this criterion, an expression is a rigid designator if and only if its referent 'directly enters into' the truth-conditions of a sentence containing the given expression; that is, the truth-condition for a sentence involving such an expression is that that object (or its unit sequence) satisfy a certain predicate or predicates. Thus, definite descriptions (in the use of them with which Kripke was concerned when he denied that they are rigid designators) are not rigid designators since the way in which they relate to object~,.i.e., by specification, renders the objects to these truth-condItions 'indirectly'. On the other hand, Peacocke claims that on this criterion indexicals (which he calls demonstratives) are rigid, and that even Frege conceded that (certain) demonstratives are rigid designators, pointing out that in 'Der Gedanke' he remarks that the very same Thought can be expressed by uttering on Wednesday a sentence containing 'today' as by uttering a certain sentence on Thursday containing the word 'yesterday'. 'Here a particular day, a certain Wednesday, directly enters the truthconditions of the uttered sentence' (1975, p. 119) With respect to this criterion, the conception of the sense of a demonstrative as the mode of presentation commits us again to the thesis that demonstratives are rigid designators. For it only makes sense to assume that the truth-conditions of a demonstrative sentence involve the object itself, i.e., involve it 'directly'. To assume that what is involved is not the object itself but the mode of presentation, is not viable. For two or more subjects can entertain the same referent of the same demonstrative (token) under different modes of presentation. Consequently, if the truth-condition of a demonstrative sentence does not involve the object itself, the truth of a sentence (Thought) is relative to the particular subject entertaining it. This account differs from Kaplan's in that he claims that a proposition expressed by a demonstrative sentence involves the object itself, coinciding thus with its truth-condition. According to him, this is a better alternative to the view that such a sentence
expresses a Fregean sense since he suggests that the latter cannot account for the fact that the referent of a demonstrative (indexical) is kept fixed in all possible worlds. However, as we shall see shortly, Kaplan understands the Fregean sense to be something that mediates, in the way of determination, between the term and its referent, which, as is clear by now, has nothing to do with the kind of sense befitting a deictical or perceptual demonstrative. The latter is, as we have seen, in perfect harmony with the rigidity thesis. Kaplan's central thesis is that demonstratives and indexicals in general are not only rigid in the sense discussed above, but directly referential, where this is taken to mean the following: ...I intend to use' directly referential' for an expression whose referent, once determined ...is taken as being the propositional component (1989, p. 493). This is to say that the proposition expressed by a sentence containing a deictical demonstrative includes the referent of the demonstrative itself. This view of the structure of a singular proposition (which Kaplan takes from Russell's Principles of Mathematics) faces, however, the problem of accounting for the paradox of identity (as noted at the end of section 3.5 above). Being aware of this Kaplan seeks a solution by appealing to a Fregean sense that he attributes to the speaker's demonstration. As it was pointed out in the last chapter, he claims that the analogy between definite descriptions and demonstrations is close enough to provide a sense and reference analysis of the 'meaning' of a demonstration on the model of the definite description. With this analogy in mind he claims that the same individual could be demonstrated by demonstrations so different in manners of presentation that it would be informative to a competent auditorobserver to be told that the demonstrata were one. As we remember, Kaplan illustrates this by means of the identity statement That [pointing to Venus in the morning sky] is identical with that [pointing to Venus in the evening sky] (provided it is uttered very slowly). The two demonstrations which accompanied the two occurrences of the demonstrative expression 'that' have, according to Kaplan, the same
demonstratum but distinct manners of presentation. In his view, it is this difference between these two demonstrations that accounts for the informativeness of this statement, which, as promised in section 4.2 above, I will show now not to be true. What Kaplan seems to mean is that Frege's conception of sense as linguistic meaning, according to which the sense of a demonstrative is constant on all occasions of its use, cannot solve the paradox of identity, as I have already established. Hence, that kind of sense has to be replaced with some other which can fulfil this role. This, according to Kaplan, gives rise to what he calls 'the Fregean theory of demonstratives' which takes the sense of a demonstration accompanying an utterance of a demonstrative to be the sense of the demonstrative itself in order to solve the paradox. However, as it was shown in Chapter One above, the paradox is solved in terms of the sense as the mode of presentation of the referent which seems to provide us with its only intelligible solution. According to Kaplan, what is wrong with 'the Fregean theory of demonstratives' is this. As in the case of definite descriptions, the sense of a demonstration which the corresponding demonstrative takes on determines its referent (if any) by specification and as such it can specify different objects in different possible worlds. Thus, according to this theory, demonstratives are not rigid. However, since Kaplan believes that demonstratives are rigid, he concludes that this theory is wrong. Yet, as discussed, he believes that the sense of a demonstration provides the solution to the paradox of identity; that is, he accepts what he calls 'the Fregean theory of demonstrations'. However, as will become clear shortly, the sense of a demonstration provides us with no solution at all. Nevertheless, it does provide us with the solution to the parallel paradox that arises not with demonstratives but with acts of demonstration, as I pointed out in section 4.2 above in slightly different terms. As with definite descriptions, this paradox concerns the hearer's not being aware that the senses of two or more acts of demonstration on the part of the speaker demonstrate one and the same object by specification. This kind of situation occurs when, for example, the speaker points more than once to an object located behind the hearer's back and the hearer takes these pointings to specify two different objects, rather than different aspects of the one object. The paradox concerning deictical or perceptual demonstratives, the primary concern for both Kaplan and this essay, is by contrast
always an outcome of the subject's perceptual discrimination of the relevant object. The foregoing Venus example as well as the following statement from his 'Afterthoughts' make clear that this is also how Kaplan sees this paradox: We will need to be able to formulate sentences of the formal language in which different intentions are associated with different syntactic occurrences of a demonstrative, if we are to face the looming challenge of Frege's Problem, in which one who is simultaneously perceiving two parts of what mayor may not be a single object asserts "Thatl is that2" (p. 587). Kaplan is, however, running together the sense as the mode under which an object is given to the subject with the sense of a demonstration which in fact is of a different type. He believes that he is providing a solution to Frege's Problem in terms of the latter kind of sense, though he is in fact trading on the former one. However, he is in no position to acknowledge the former since it is inconsistent with his view that a singular proposition contains the object referred to as its component.s Further, the view that the referent itself is a propositional component, where a proposition is taken to be a certain state of affairs, makes sense only in conjunction with the view that what is expressed by a demonstrative sentence is a Fregean sense. Accordingly, it can be granted that such a sentence asserts a certain proposition, but does not express it. Now, despite the impression that Kaplan's view commits him to the bare knowledge thesis (which is as it was pointed out in Chapter One unintelligible), he insists that his account of Frege's Problem refutes this thesis, i.e., 'direct acquaintance theories of direct reference' in his terminology. In section XVII of 'Demonstratives' he addresses this issue. By this stage he has enriched his apparatus by introducing the demonstrative 'dthat'. This is 'a special demonstrative which requires completion by a description and which is treated as a directly referential term whose referent is the denotation of the associated description ...' (op. cit., p. 521). Kaplan writes it as 'dthat [a]', where 'a' is any description (or any singular term), while 'dthat' is the demonstrative 'that' with the follOWingsingular term functioning as its demonstration. As with Kaplan's treatment of demonstrations, he now seeks to solve the paradox of identity by appealing to the difference in the
senses of descriptions accompanying two co-referring utterances of a demonstrative. It is, however, by no means obvious that each utterance of a demonstrative hinges in this way either overtly or tacitly on some description(s). However, granting that it does, Kaplan then faces a problem parallel to that regarding the sense of a demonstration. As discussed, the kind of sense which determines its referent by specification cannot solve the paradox of identity that arises with respect to identity statements featuring deictical, i.e., perceptual, demonstratives. This is because the latter is always an outcome of the subject's perceptual discrimination of the relevant object, not of the object's different specifications. The same considerations hold for Kaplan's latest proposal. In the passage from 'Afterthoughts' quoted above he appeals to different intentions that are to be associated with different syntactic occurrences, i.e., tokens, of a demonstrative if we are to face the looming challenge of Frege's Problem. That is, as noted earlier in this essay, he now considers the demonstration associated with an utterance of a demonstrative as a mere externalization of the speaker's directing intention (ibid. p. 582). However, the speaker's directing intention can no more solve this problem than can the sense of a demonstration. It is clear by now that this problem is an outcome of the subject's perceptual discrimination of the relevant object and not something that results from those features and devices whose role is to enable the subject to single the object out. None of the features proposed by Kaplan solve this problem; his theory of direct reference only amounts to just another 'direct acquaintance theory of direct reference'.6 According to the view that I have been defending in this essay, the sense (mode of presentation) associated with a certain demonstrative is a constituent of the Thought expressed by a demonstrative sentence involving the demonstrative. On the other hand, the object that the demonstrative refers to is a constituent of the truth-conditions of the given sentence (Thought). Accordingly, the same object enters into the truthconditions of two different demonstrative sentences that concern the same object. When two such sentences are in fact two utterances of the same sentence (type), this amounts to the fact that they have the same truth-conditions. Thus, when the subject associates two different modes of presentation with a given demonstrative in two different utterances of the same sentence, as in the case discussed earlier concerning the same road, we have a situation in which the truth-conditions of the two utterances are
the same for their constituents are the same. On the other hand, the Thoughts associated with them are different for they include different modes of presentation as their constituents. The case is similar when as in the example in section 4.5 above, in which the speaker tells the hearer 'This road is muddy', one utterance and two subjects associating two different modes of presentation are involved. The truth-conditions of the Thought entertained by the speaker and the Thought entertained by the hearer are the same although these Thoughts are different. In the light of this, the account of how communication works in cases in which the speaker and the hearer do not associate the same Thought with a demonstrative sentence, provided in section 4.5. - i.e., in cases in which the Thought entertained by the speaker and the Thought entertained by the hearer stand in a suitable relation of correspondence - can be supplemented with yet another important factor alongside those tackled there: the truth-conditions they both associate with the given sentence are the same.
The following has been advocated. The sense (mode of presentation) associated with a given demonstrative is a constituent of the Thought expressed by a corresponding demonstrative sentence, while the object it refers to is a constituent of the truth-conditions of the given sentence (Thought). It is not straightforwardly clear that this can accommodate the Fregean doctrine that the sense of a sentence is determined by giving its truth-conditions. It remains to be clarified how objects, given that they cannot be constituents of the sense (Thought) expressed by a particular sentence but only of its truthconditions, playa role in determining this sense (Thought). To see how this works I will restate this Fregean claim in terms of the grasp of the sense of a sentence. We recall from Chapter One Dummett's glossing of this claim as the claim that to grasp the sense of a sentence is to know the conditions under which that sentence is true. Thus, the condition under which a sentence involving a demonstrative (in the uses that are the subject-matter of this essay), for example, one of the form 'That is \11 " is true, is that a particular object satisfies a certain predicate of the form '( ) is \11'. And the knowledge of this condition amounts, according to
this claim, to the grasp of the sense of the sentence, Le., the Thought it expresses. It/ however, needs to be borne in mind that the knowledge or grasp of the truth-conditions of such a sentence does not involve the object itself but the mode of presentation under which it is given to the particular subject (Le.,whenever an object is given to us it is given to us in a particular way). This makes it apparent that the above claim that the object itself is a constituent of the truthcondition does not in the least pull apart the outlined tie between the knowledge of the truth-condition and the grasp of the sense (Thought) expressed by the given sentence. In other words, a connection between truth and meaning on which many philosophers have recently been insisting remains intact. I believe that it is not out of place to conclude this essay by making a few remarks as to how one way of accounting for this connection along these lines yields the conception of the sense of a proper name which has some relevant links with the views advocated in this work. What I have in mind is the view brought out by McDowell in his seminal paper 'On the Sense and Reference of a Proper Name' which was accepted and further developed by Evans. McDowell's account of the sense of a proper name is conceived of as part of a theory of meaning of the Davidsonian type, Le., a theory whose central component is a theory of truth in the style of TarskL A Tarskian theory of truth entails, for each indicative sentence of the language it deals with, a theorem specifying a necessary and sufficient condition for the sentence to be true. The theorems are derivable from axioms which assign semantic properties to sentence-constituents and determine the semantic upshot of modes of combination. In theories which deal with (fragments of) English in English, names - according to McDowell- might be handled by axioms such as:
The role which some such clause plays in the derivation of assignments of truth-conditions to sentences in which the name occurs would, believes McDowell, display the contribution made by the name to those truth-conditions. When this is seen in the light of Frege's doctrine that the senses of sentences can be determined by giving truth-conditions, and that the sense of a
sentence-constituent is its contribution to the senses of sentences in which it may occur, it turns out that such a clause gives the sense of the name. McDowell believes that this meets the requirement that the referent of an expression must be given to the subject in some particular way. What clauses such as (1) accomplish is that the theory of sense should not be considered as something additional to and independent of the theory of reference. As Evans put it (1985/p. 194)/if sense is a way of thinking of reference, we should not expect to be given the sense of an expression save in the course of being given the reference of that expression. In accordance with this, McDowell and Evans take one formulation of the theory of reference - the formulation of the theory which identifies references of expressions in the way in which one must identify them in order to understand the language - and make it serve as a theory of sense. Thus, the clauses
are, according to McDowell and Evans, equivalent as clauses in the theory of reference, but only (1) can occur in a theory of reference which is to serve as a theory of sense. For it alone identifies the reference of the name in a way which shows, or displays, its sense. When a theory of reference meets this condition quite generally, it can, according to Evans (1982/p. 26)/serve as a theory of sense, and if someone knows that it meets this condition, he may use it as a theory of sense. Evans believes that this conception of the relation between Fregean theories of sense and reference is attractive, both because it makes the form of a theory of sense so unmysterious, and because it explains the central place of a theory of reference in the global theory of language. The need to have one formulation of the theory of reference which is capable of serving as a theory of sense (and hence one formulation which specifies the reference of every sentence of the language in a way which displays the sense expressed by that sentence) is the source of considerable empirical constraints on the theory of reference. If, on the other hand, we suppose that expressions without reference may still have a sense,
we cannot - believes Evans - avail ourselves of this conception; we simultaneously lose our grip both on the point of the notion of reference and on the nature of sense. We have thus come to the point which is central as regards the disagreement between McDowell's and Evans's so-called austere conception of sense, on the one hand, and Dummett's rich conception, on the other.7 According to the latter conception, expressions without reference may still have a sense. In other words, according to the austere conception, the knowledge that 'Hesperus' stands for Hesperus - in the context of suitable knowledge about other expressions, and suitable knowledge about the forces with which utterances may be issued - suffices for understanding utterances containing 'Hesperus'. According to the rich conception, more is required, Le., the knowledge that the bearer of the name is going to be recognized or identified as thus and so. In the light of this, there is a bona fide reason to qualify the conception of the sense of a demonstrative advocated in this essay as austere. This, however, does not mean that the outlined account of proper names, provided that it is correct, gives us a simple clue as to how to modify or extend a theory of meaning based on a Tarskian truth-theory of the kind just envisaged to (systematically) encompass demonstratives or indexicals in general. This is a problem that requires special treatment and I shall not deal with it here.8 It is understood that in order for such a modification or extension of a theory of meaning to be motivated this theory needs to be true. But, as I see it, in its existing form it has one major shortcoming. As we have seen, Evans rejects the view that expressions without reference have sense because its acceptance would deprive us of the outlined theory of reference which can serve as a theory of sense. However, the question as to whether a certain expression has sense, or not, cannot be decided on these grounds but rather by an independent argument. The problem with Evans's and McDowell's arguments in favour of object-dependence is that they are based on the form of a global theory of meaning whose role is to enable somebody to reflectively and systematically make sense of what it is that native speakers of a language say and understand unreflectively. According to this view, clauses such as (1) are part of the means by which an interpreter of the speech of native speakers can understand what they are saying, believing or doing. This has a
consequence that if these speakers were to use expressions without reference - with the same seriousness etc., as when they are using expressions with reference - the interpreter would have difficulty understanding them. By the same token, it would make no sense to construe clauses such as (1) either for the purposes considered earlier in this section, or in order to use them as that-clauses in ascribing propositional attitudes to subjects. However, as remarked at the beginning of this essay (in section 1.3), the inability to provide ascriptions of such attitudes - in my example belief - does not by itself preclude the subject having such attitudes, as McDowell and Evans would have us believe. (It was also noted that ascriptions of such attitudes can nevertheless be constructed although not by means of a demonstrative that-clause). This makes it clear that we need to look elsewhere in order to find grounds for object-dependence since McDowell's and Evans's global theory of meaning does not provide them. We have seen that my argument in favour of strong (as well as weak) objectdependence is not based on any difficulties in ascribing propositional attitudes to the subject. The inability to ascribe to him a relevant propositional attitude is the outcome of - rather than the reason for - the subject's not having such an attitude (Le., the outcome of the lack of the knowledge of the truth-conditions of a sentence when the relevant object does not exist). In my discussion this concerned only demonstratives and demonstrative sentences and not proper names. This being the case, some such independent argument is still needed in favour of the view that the sense of a proper name is object-dependent in order to lend support to McDowell's and Evans's theory. Similarly, the mentioned unmysteriousness of a theory of sense that Evans is looking for9 can only be defended by means of such an independent argument, Le., an argument which would show that the ontology of a theory of sense need not exceed names and their referents. Unlike with Evans and McDowell, the arguments provided in this essay are not conditioned by any global theory of meaning and yet they do not commit us to postulate the existence of any abstract entities as senses of demonstratives. For the sense of a demonstrative is nothing but a way of thinking about a perceptually singled out object which does not exist when the suitable object has not been perceptually singled out. As the discussion in this essay makes it clear, this avoidance of the Scylla of Platonism does not lead to the Charybdis of
psychologism. According to the psychologist view, senses are mental states in the subject's mind in the sense of images or representations, and which have a decisive role in determining the referent of the given term, such that to every relevant mental state corresponds only one object. The inadequacy of psychologism in this sense can be illustrated by means of Putnam's (1975) familiar thought-experiment and its cognates, showing that two subjects can be in the same (narrow) psychological or mental state, yet refer to different objects. Similarly, the same subject can, in different situations, be in the same mental state, yet refer to different objects (as it was shown in section 1.3 above). Besides, the subject can associate the same images with different objects/events even when with respect to them he is not in the same mental state. This is illustrated by Wittgenstein who asks us to imagine an old man climbing up a hill and to concentrate upon our image carefully. Might it not be an image of an old man - asks Wittgenstein - sliding backwards down a hill? That it is an image of the former and not the latter is not a matter of anything intrinsic to that image but rather a matter of how we take it. This is enough to show that images, i.e., phenomenal contents of experience, cannot determine a unique event or object. Furthermore, considerations in this essay make it clear that the phenomenal content of experience has nothing to do even with the determination of reference in the relatively unique manner (in the sense of my terminology from Chapter Four). For the relevant referent is determined by cues such as the speaker's demonstration, i.e., by means of the publicly shareable senses and linguistic meanings of these cues. This fact about the determination of reference accords with the conception of linguistic behaviour as multiple interaction between speakers, the world, and other speakers. Not only is this picture in accordance with Wittgenstein's insights concerning the functioning of ordinary language but also with Frege's well-known view: that there is no room for psychologism in semantics.
1.
See Evans 1982,p. 145.He claims correctly that in the cases of deferred ostension the identification is 'by description'. As to the use of a demonstrative expression to refer to objects 'seen' on the television etc., mentioned above at the end of Chapter
2.
3. 4.
5.
One, Evans claims (pp. 150-151)that Thoughts which rely on information channels involving circuitousness and time-lags constitute a sui generis category which combines features of both purely demonstrative (i.e., object-dependent) Thoughts and (information-based) descriptive Thoughts. This thus means that when a demonstrative expression is used in this way we do not have another case of deferred ostension. Here I presuppose that when we, for example, say 'The whale is a mammal', we do not take the phrase 'the whale' to be a definite description at all. Otherwise, this would involve a different semantically approved use of a definite description. Kaplan's 'Afterthoughts' does not reveal whether he still maintains the view that a demonstrative cannot have both a Fregean sense and be rigid. This statement of Kripke's originates from Kripke's letter to Kaplan reprinted in the aforementioned 'Afterthoughts' (p. 569). It is intended to settle the issue as to what Kripke really meant by calling a designator rigid given that Kaplan (as well as Salmon 1982, pp. 33-4) had found that Kripke had dealt with more than one type of rigid designator ('Demonstratives', section IV). The new formulation is also useful as it is stated in terms of the expression 'with respect to all possible worlds' rather than 'in every [all] possible world[s]' which can be found in his original definitions, e.g., in Kripke 1971, p. 145 and that in Kripke 1980, p. 48. The phrase 'with respect to' captures Kripke's intention more accurately than the earlier expression 'in'. Furthermore, there are cases in which the paradox arises though the acts of demonstration associated with two utterances of a demonstrative have the same sense, as well as cases in which there is no demonstration and consequently no sense of a demonstration. Kaplan is aware of the latter kind of case and, as mentioned in Chapter One of this essay, claims that in such circumstances a demonstration is opportune: 'However a demonstration may also be opportune and require no special action on the speaker's part, as when someone shouts "Stop that man" while only one man is rushing toward the door' ('Demonstratives', p. 490, note 9). Yet it is hard to imagine that such a demonstration can have the kind of sense that determines its referent by specification.
6.
7.
8. 9.
Kaplan also considers the possibility that the cognitive difference relevant to Frege's Problem that arises with respect to proper names might rest on nothing more than syntax (see the last section of chapter III of his 'Afterthoughts' and also his 1990). However, he does not attempt to show how this problem is actually solved along !hese lin~s. ., The notions of austerity and nchness in connectiOn with these matters were first introduced by Dummett (1975) and McDowell (1977). For some of these matters see Davidson 1967, esp. pp. 33-35; also Weinstein 1974, and Taylor 1980. See also McDowell 1977, section 3.
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Frege, G., 3, 6-9, 11, 12, 19, 20, 38, 60, 65, 66, 67, 69, 81, 89, 90, 91, 92, 97, 100, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 120, 121
Index
Acquaintance, 58-60 Alston, W., 20 Bach, K., 74, 75, 99, 104, 100 Belief, 13-15, 35-37, 57, 58 Bell, D., 16 Bigelow, J., viii Blackburn,S., 20, 21 Burge, T., 5. 19,98 Cartesianism, 13 Carruthers, P., 12, 13, 21 Castaneda, HN., 10 Chastain, c., 2 Colman, J., viii Communication, 67, 68,82, 91, 92 Davidson, D., 2, 116, 122 Demonstration, 77-74, 75,76,77,103,104 Demonstratives, anaphorical, 1-2; and other (pure)
indexicals, 4ff.; deictical, 1,4 Definite descriptions, 12-13, 40, 58, 7072, 73, 74, 75, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 102f£.; semantically complete/incomplete, 74,75,76,77,98 Donnellan, K., 102, 105, 106, 107, 108 Dummett, M., 1, 3, 6, 11, 19, 20, 38, 39, 42, 65, 92, 100, 118, 122 Edelberg, W., 2 Edwards,S., 20 Evans, G., vii, viii, 8, 11, 12, 16-19, 22, 42, 44-48, 51, 60, 61, 65, 67, 86, 90, 92, 98, 101, 105, 116-121 Existential generalization, 12, 62-64 Externalism, vii-viii
Indexicals, 4ff. Individuation-dependence, vii Internalism, vii Kaplan, D., viii, 4, 5, 9, 19, 20, 67, 70, 74, 75, 99, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 121 Knowing which, 12, 16, 24ff., 59 Kripke, 5., 99, 104, 108, 109,110,121 Lambert, K., 64 Lewis, D., 19, 109 Linguistic Meaning, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 66-70, 72, 77, 78-82,84,85,93 Loar, B., 21 Lyons, J., 2 McCulloch, G., 20 McDowell, J., viii, 11, 20, 22, 27, 42, 47, 48, 51, 59-61, 65, 85,92,93,116,117, 118, 119, 122 McGinn, c., 99 Mill, J.5., 35
Mode of Presentation, 6-9, 10, 17-18, 24, 37-38, 41, 43, 67, 68, 77, 78, 80, 83, 85, 87, 89, 94, 96, 97, 100, 108, 109, 110, 112, 115, 116 Mortensen, c., viii Nesbitt, W., viii Nicholls, M. viii Noonan, H, 20, 21
Peacocke, c., 15, 110 Pendlebury, M., viii, 13,21 Perry, J., 5, 19, 108 Proper Names, 22, 116f£. Propositional Knowledge, 39-41 Putnam, H, 21, 120
Referential! attributive distinction, 102105 Referring expressions, 1,58ff. Rigid designation, 108f£. Roberts, L., 99, 100 Russell, B., 32, 41, 58, 59,60,61,111 Russell's Principle, 16, 24,45 Salmon, N., 30, 41, 121 Schlick, M., 19
· determinant, ,69 tic referent, 99 e, 2, 3, 4, 5ff., 10ff., 20, 38ff., 65, 66, 67, l09ff, 115ff.; as object-dependent, vii, viii, 2, 10ff., 24, 51, 60, 83, 118, 119; see also mode of presentation Sense-data,31-34 Singular terms, 2 Smith, D.W., 100 Smith, Q., 20 Strawson, P.F., 1,20, 33,100
Tarski, A, 116, 118 Taylor, B., viii, 122 Thought, 4, 7, 8, 9, 1016, 19, 20, 21, 24, 58, 60-63, 88-93, 94-98, 101, 110 Truth-conditions, 3-4, 21, 6-7, 80, 110, 114-116 Weinstein, S., 122 Wettstein, H., 68, 99 Whitehead, AN., 64 Wittgenstein, L., 34, 99,
120 Woodfield, A, 64
