Pragmatism and Reference by David Boersema

By David Boersema

Regardless of a contemporary revival of curiosity in pragmatist philosophy, such a lot paintings within the analytic philosophy of language ignores insights provided through classical pragmatists and modern neopragmatists. In Pragmatism and Reference, David Boersema argues pragmatist viewpoint on reference offers a unique alternative—and corrective—to the existing analytic perspectives at the subject. Boersema reveals that the pragmatist method of reference, with substitute understandings of the character of language, the character of conceptualization and categorization, and the character of inquiry, is advised within the paintings of Wittgenstein and extra completely built within the works of such classical and modern pragmatists as C.S. Peirce and Hilary Putnam. Boersema first discusses the descriptivist and causal theories of reference—the got perspectives at the subject in analytic philosophy. Then, after contemplating Wittgenstein's method of reference, Boersema information the pragmatist method of reference via 9 philosophers: the ''Big Three'' of classical pragmatism, Peirce, William James, and John Dewey; 3 modern American philosophers, Putnam, Catherine Elgin, and Richard Rorty; and 3 very important continental philosophers, Umberto Eco, Karl-Otto Apel, and Jürgen Habermas. ultimately, Boersema exhibits explicitly how pragmatism deals a surely replacement account of reference, featuring a number of case experiences at the nature and serve as of names. right here, he specializes in conceptions of individuation, similarity, essences, and sociality of language. Pragmatism and Reference will function a bridge among analytic and pragmatist techniques to such themes of shared hindrance because the nature and serve as of language.

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That is, he seems to be saying that Kripke’s account is fine as it stands, but that Kripke is mistaken in thinking that he has offered anything new, anything contrary to a descriptivist theory. 10 However, it does not seem that Kripke would agree with Searle’s assessment of Kripke’s view. While admitting that intentionality plays a role in reference and even that the descriptivist view might suffice for explaining reference in limited contexts (such as an initial baptism), Kripke clearly denies that the descriptivist account is adequate.

The Searlean counterexamples show (or are intended to show) that a historical chain linking a speaker’s use of a name to an object is inadequate as an explanation or account of successful reference. It is held that there are legitimate cases of successful reference (such as to abstract entities) for which historical chains are irrelevant and even nonsensical. For Searle, it is the case that at least one member of the disjunctive set of descriptions associated with the use of a name to an object must be true of the object for reference to successfully occur; for Kripke this is not the case.

At that time he was unable to see the planet even through a telescope. , Venus] is not a star at all). By allowing that the reference of a name can be fixed by a description, then, there is no problem for the causal account to refer to abstract or “future” objects. ” Searle claims that the “causal chain of communication” is simply a characterization of parasitic cases of reference seen from an external point of view. That is, for Searle, the causal (or historical) chain plays no explanatory role in an account of reference (or, in Kripke’s account of reference).

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