Abstract
Una Stojnić urges the radical view that the meaning of context-sensitive language is not “partially determined by non-linguistic features of utterance situation”, as traditionally thought, but rather “is determined entirely by grammar—by rules of language that have largely been missed”. The missed rules are ones of discourse coherence. The paper argues against this radical view as it applies to demonstrations, demonstratives, and the indexical ‘I’. Stojnić’s theories of demon-strations and demonstratives are found to be seriously incomplete, failing to meet the demands on any theory of reference. Furthermore, the paper argues that, so far as Stojnić’s theories of these terms go, they are false. This argument appeals to perception-based theories of demonstratives, a part of the tradition that Stojnić strangely overlooks. The paper ends by arguing briefly that though coherence has a place in a theory of understanding, it has no place in a theory of meaning.
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Notes
All my citations of Stojnić are to this work unless otherwise specified.
Neale and Schiffer (2021) are enthusiastic recent examples.
I argue that the Intentionalist view is “(1) Implausible; (2) Incomplete; (3) Redundant once completed; (4) misleading’’ (2020, p. 13). Indeed, intending to refer “should have no place at all in a theory of language”(p. 9). For further criticism, see (2021b, pp. 57–66; 2022). I have, in effect, argued against the Objectivist view too (1976; 2013b, pp. 287–297; 2021b, pp. 123–141).
A further possibility is that the reference of a term is explained partly by a description and partly by a direct relation (Devitt and Sterelny, 1999). This can be overlooked for the purposes of the present discussion.
Given that “direct reference” usually refers to the theory that the meaning of a name is its bearer, a view that Kripke does not hold (Devitt, 2015, pp. 128–135), this is a somewhat misleading description of Kripke’s view.
Hanna (1993) is a helpful discussion of Husserl, relating his views to contemporary discussions.
Where Stojnić mostly talks of reference “resolution”, I prefer to talk of reference “fixing”. “Resolution” is much more likely than “fixing” to misdirect us to how hearers figure out reference, but our concern here is with what constitutes reference. Information about the psychological processes of understanding an utterance could, at best, provide helpful evidence of the utterance’s linguistic meaning. But in fact, I argue (2021a, b), psycholinguistics is still rather a long way from finding such evidence.
So, a criticism that Gómez-Torrente (2022, p. 1013) makes of my theory misses its mark. One can indeed use a demonstrative that refers to one thing, “stuff”, while looking at another, the letter ‘a’. He overlooks that perception of an object makes it the referent only if the perception causes the thought that the demonstrative partly expresses; the causal role is crucial.
“There is much to be said for the old-fashioned view that speech expresses thought, and very little to be said against it” (Fodor et al., 1974, p. 375).
Does Stojnić accept the Gricean priority of thought? This early passage suggests she might: “We want to explain how it is that we are able to convey our thoughts through language” (p. 13). But perhaps not: the crucial idea of language getting its content from thought seems to play no role in the book.
One might object that my explanation is still incomplete: In virtue of what is a certain object the focus of a person’s perception? We must look to psychology for an answer. We should not expect much soon (2015, p. 115).
This oversimplifies because there are physically different gestural shapes or forms that may play deictic referential roles, as Stojnić brings out (pp. 47–48), citing Kendon’s (2004) book-length discussion of gestures. My point is that there is just one convention for any such shape that is conventionally used to refer to an object. There are also, of course, many other gestural shapes with different conventional meanings; for example, what is described in the following remark: “She gave him the finger.”
This is not to say that linguistic meanings are constituted by conventions: they can be innate (“waggle dance”) or idiosyncratic (Mrs. Malaprop) (2021b, pp. 75–78). Nor is it to say that conventions are constituted by regularities: they can be stipulated without being exercised; exercising them may be illegal or tabooed (pp. 79–80).
I take all of these deictic demonstratives to exemplify a referential convention. Discourse-initial demonstratives are also sometimes used attributively, their reference being determined by associated descriptions not by causal-perceptual groundings. I used to think that these uses were likely not exploiting a convention (2004, p. 300, n. 41), but I became persuaded by many examples in the literature that demonstratives do indeed have a conventional quantificational meaning that yields attributive uses; see King (2001, pp. 9–10) including, “That hominid who discovered how to start fires was a genius”; and Hawthorne and Manley, (2012, pp. 206–207), including, “I was once that guy”. So, Gómez-Torrente’s criticism that “Devitt’s theory simply doesn’t work” in cases like these (2022, pp. 1013–114, n. 3) is misplaced: my theory is explicitly not a theory of these cases (2022, p. 996), just as a theory of referentially used definite descriptions, like mine (1981b, 2004), is not a theory of attributively used ones.
Nowak and Michaelson report (2020, p. 130, n. 27) that SSL, in personal communication, have said that “Summary…is not meant to play a reference-fixing role”. I am as puzzled as Nowak and Michaelson by this. How is it to be reconciled with many apparently contrary claims (e.g., Stojnić et al., 2013, pp. 505, 518; see also Stojnić, p. 174)? Furthermore, if Summary does not fix reference, what “coherence relation” does, and how?
However, John Perry (1993, pp. 14–17) does interpret Frege as having a theory of that sort. (Perry’s criticisms include, in effect, an Ignorance and Error argument.) Description theories of a different sort have been quite popular. These theories seem plausible because they are parasitic on plausible ultimate theories. (i) Instead of taking the reference of ‘that F’ to be determined by a gesture at an F, take it to be determined by an associated description of that gestural relation: ‘the F pointed to by a gesture accompanying this token’ (Reichenbach, 1947). (ii) Instead of taking the reference to be determined by perception of an F, take it to be determined by an associated description of that perceptual relation: ‘the F I am perceiving’ (Schiffer, 1978). Parasitic theories are open to the following objection: “Requiring the speaker to associate a description of the relation does no theoretical work. The description theories’ contribution to explaining reference is redundant” (Devitt, 2004, p. 300).
C.f. Stojnić: “It is obvious that in this case the pointing gesture affects pronoun resolution” (p. 44). In my view, the referents of the gesture and of the pronoun are both partly fixed by the referent of the one underlying thought, but in other respects the fixings are independent.
See Devitt (forthcoming) for the detailed argument.
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Una Stojnić for her patience and good humor in explaining her position to me. Also, to the following for comments on a draft: Kent Bach, Andrea Bianchi, David Braun, Dunja Jutronić, Jeff Speaks, and two anonymous referees.
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Devitt, M. Demonstratives, context-sensitivity, and coherence. Linguist and Philos 47, 317–339 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-023-09398-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-023-09398-x