engleski

Reference Is Not a Real Relation

This paper is an attempt to read Kenneth Taylor’s posthumously published ‘Referring to the World’ (2021) from a fully internalist, conceptualist position in semantics. Taylor’s key distinction in the book is one between objectual and objective representations. Whereas fully objective representations stand for real existents and are semantically answerable to the world, merely objectual representations are those that are “fit” for referring, although they perhaps do not yet do so. This fitness is defined, according to Taylor, in ‘syntactic’ (in the sense of logical syntax) terms. As the first move in the paper, objectuality is accepted, including its syntactic definition (although some doubts are raised whether Taylor is right in claiming that ‘referential fitness accrues only to a system of representations’), but objectivity, which construes reference as a real relation in nature, is rejected. It is claimed that nobody has been able to give a convincing account of reference as a real relation (some views, not discussed by Taylor, are adduced, especially Michael Devitt’s). A consequence of Taylor’s view of objectivity is that there can be incomplete propositions. It is argued, to the contrary, that propositions construed as mental entities are never incomplete. At the mental level, what Taylor construes as incomplete propositions are fully-fledged propositions (i.e. at the level of mental functioning, there is no difference between an “incomplete proposition” and a complete one). This is reinforced by the claim that cognitive science, as the theory of mental structure and mental processing, has no place for “incomplete contents” – and it is claimed that Taylor’s, and any other, theory of reference should find a natural home within cognitive science. This line of argument is buttressed by a thought experiment. Next, attention is directed at Taylor’s construal of names. According to Taylor, names are defined (syntactically again) as devices of explicit coreference, and therein lies the solution to Frege’s puzzle. This is accepted, as are Taylor’s arguments against the indexical and predicative views of names. The potential homonymy view of names is endorsed. In the final part of the paper, a different account of reference is proposed. It is claimed, first, that reference is not a real relation, but a conceptualization of a relation/connection between a term and an entity, a conceptualization which competent speakers of a language share. Reference as a stable, extra-mental, scientifically studiable relation doesn’t exist. Second, it is claimed that, in the sense in which it does exist as a phenomenon outside the mind, reference is a social phenomenon which crucially involves the Theory of Mind (ToM) faculty. Reference in the social sense is the process of systematic calling attention to certain entities, be they in the immediate environment or not. As such it involves ToM at the levels of learning, using and dubbing. It is concluded that ToM is the blind spot of existing theories of reference (including Taylor’s).

Reference ; Objectual ; Theory of Mind

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