On Reference

Most of the times we open our mouth to communicate, we talk about things. This can happen because (some of) the linguistic expressions we use have semantic properties that connect them to extra-linguistic entities. Thanks to these properties, they may be used by us to refer to things. Or, as we may also say, they themselves refer to things, though in certain cases they do so only relative to a context of use. But how can we characterize the semantic properties in question? What exactly is reference? Philosophers have been trying to answer these questions at least since Plato's Cratylus, but not until the last century, when language occupied center-stage in philosophy, did the problem come to be felt as really pressing. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Gottlob Frege produced an account of reference that set the stage for the contemporary discussion. Nevertheless, around 1970 a number of powerful arguments against it were produced by Saul Kripke and others. As a result, many philosophers began to look at reference from a new perspective, which highlighted the crucial role played in its determination by mundane aspects that are not under the direct control of the speaker. This semantic revolution, however, left us with a number of open problems. The eighteen original essays collected in this volume deal with many of these problems, thus contributing to our understanding of the nature of reference, its role in cognition, and the place it should be given in semantic theory.

Andrea Bianchi is an Associate Professor in Philosophy of Language at the Università degli Studi di Parma

Introduction - Open Problems on Reference
I. The Nature of Reference
1: Christopher Gauker: The Illusion of Semantic Reference
2: Diego Marconi: Reference and Theories of Meaning as Use
3: Edouard Machery, Justin Sytsma, and Max Deutsch: Speaker's Reference and Cross-Cultural Semantics
4: Genoveva Martí: Reference Without Cognition
5: Andrea Bianchi: Repetition and Reference
6: Michael Devitt: Should Proper Names Still Seem So Problematic?
II. Reference and Cognition
7: Antonio Capuano: Thinking About an Individual
8: Marga Reimer: Drawing, Seeing, Referring: Reflections on Macbeth's Dagger
9: John Perry: The Cognitive Contribution of Names
III. Reference and Semantics
10: Ernesto Napoli: Names As Predicates?
11: Robin Jeshion: Names Not Predicates
12: Delia G. Fara: 'Literal' Uses of Proper Names
13: Robin Jeshion: A Rejoinder to Fara's 'Literal' Uses of Proper Names'
14: Marco Santambrogio: Empty Names, Propositions, and Attitude Ascriptions
15: Ángel Pinillos: Millianism, Relationism, and Attitude Ascriptions
16: Sam Cumming: The Dilemma of Indefinites
17: Joseph Almog, Paul Nichols, and Jessica Pepp: A Unified Treatment of (Pro-) Nominals in Ordinary English
18: Edward L. Keenan: Individuals Explained Away