I hold that coreferential proper names 'a' and 'b' differ in meaning because they play different causal roles in the explanation of behaviour. I have previously rejected the Fregean view that we must believe in this difference in meaning because 'a = a' and 'a = b' differ in informativeness. Bozickovic argues that I was wrong to reject this view. I have come to agree with him, though not because I was convinced by his argument. I was wrong to think that the Fregean view rested on the 'Cartesian' assumption that competence with a term brings with it knowledge-that about meanings. The view rests rather on an assumption of knowledge-how. The knowledge-how that constitutes competence with 'a' and 'b' causes 'a = a' and 'a = b' to differ in informativeness. So, there will be this difference only if 'a' and 'b' differ in meaning. These meanings, I have argued elsewhere, are causal modes of reference.

Kokoomateos sisältää filosofisia esseitä analyyttisen filosofian kolmesta keskeisestä aiheesta: todellisuuden, kielen ja totuuden luonteesta. Lisäksi teos tuo esiin uutta filosofista pohdintaa filosofian perusluonteesta. Teos on omistettu Tampereen yliopiston filosofian professori Panu Raatikaiselle, joka on tuotannossaan käsitellyt edellä mainittuja teemoja ja jolta monet kirjoittajista ovat saaneet oppia ja inspiraatiota. Kokoelma kerää yhteen kirjoituksia merkittäviltä filosofeilta, jotka ovat kohdanneet Raatikaisen erilaisissa akateemisissa yhteyksissä, sekä hänen entisiltä ja nykyisiltä kollegoiltaan. Artikkeleissa käydään kriittistä, rakentavaa vuoropuhelua Raatikaisen keskeisten ajatusten ja argumenttien kanssa.

The received wisdom is that de se thoughts and their ascriptions are particularly problematic. The paper argues that this is a myth, an artifact of misguided philosophical approaches to the mind and semantics, particularly the positing of Platonic propositions. The paper argues for the explanatory priority of the theory of thoughts over the theory of ascriptions. Mental representations are taken to be the “objects of thoughts”, leading to suggestions about thoughts in standard and “puzzle” situations: Kripke’s Paderewski, Richard’s phone booth, and the de se. These suggestions are sufficient to show that there is nothing particularly problematic about de se thoughts. In light of this, ascriptions of thoughts are considered and it is concluded that there is nothing particularly problematic about the ascription of de se thoughts either. The paper emphasizes throughout that languages and minds are parts of the natural world, interacting causally with other parts of that world.

In our paper, "The reference of proper names" (2018), we raised and rebutted the "New-Meaning" objection to our methodology. Our rebuttal rested on theoretical considerations and experimental results. In "Do the Gödel vignettes involve a new descriptivist meaning?", Nicolò D'Agruma provides an interesting argument against our theoretical considerations (but does not address the experimental evidence). Our present paper argues against D'Agruma. So, our original rebuttal of the objection still stands. We offer further evidence against the objection.

Devitt and Porter tested the hypothesis that a biological term referring to a taxon of scientific but little practical interest, 'Rio de Janeiro Myrtle', would be covered by a Causal-Historical Theory of reference, as Saul Kripke suggested, but that one referring to a kind of significant practical interest, 'rice', would not. 'Rice' would be covered by a Hybrid Theory, part-causal, part-descriptive, and so Kripke would be only half-right about 'rice'. Devitt and Porter concluded that their experiments confirmed this hypothesis. The present paper raises concerns that those experiments may have improperly biased participants against the Description Theory. The paper presents the results of follow-up experiments on 'Rio de Janeiro Myrtle' and 'rice' designed to remove those concerns. The paper concludes that Kripke was indeed right about 'scientific' biological kind terms while being only half-right about 'practical' biological kind terms.

The article reports experiments testing the theory of reference for implement terms, using “fax machine” and “abacus” as examples. We found strong evidence against the description theory that the reference of these terms is determined by the descriptions that participants associate with them. This supports the causal theory of reference borrowing for these terms. We emphasize that our findings do not support a causal theory of the initial reference fixing by the “experts” who introduce an implement term. Indeed, we think it highly plausible that reference is initially fixed by a description of the implement's function and defining physical characteristics.

According to direct reference (“DR”), the meaning or “semantic content” of a name is simply its referent. I have argued against this in “Against Direct Reference” (ch. 5) and many times elsewhere. In this paper, I do so again from the methodological perspective of Coming to Our Senses. This leads to the view that a name’s causal mode of reference is (at least one of) its meanings. This view, ignored by Soames, is the core of my argument against DR. I look critically at Braun’s explanationist defense, and Soames’ pragmatic defense, of DR. Finally, I argue, again, that DR faces an insurmountable difficulty: the problem of identity statements. The magnitude of this problem is demonstrated by Soames’ own discussion.

The theory of direct reference for names is a combination of three distinct but related theories: primarily, the ‘Fido’-Fido theory, according to which there is nothing more to a name’s meaning than its referent; but also the Nondescription theory, and the Rigid Designation theory. The paper traces the origins of those theories in the works of Donnellan, Kaplan, and Kripke. It argues that the causal theory of names does not support the ‘Fido’-Fido theory, contrary to received opinion, and that the strategies of Salmon and others for avoiding traditional Fregean objections to the ‘Fido’-Fido theory fail. This argument emphasizes our purposes in attributing semantic properties to linguistic symbols, those of explaining behavior and learning about reality. The very same considerations that make the reference of a name semantically significant show that more than reference is significant: a name’s meaning is its causal mode of reference.

The paper is concerned with the general problem of determining reference and with Putnam’s model-theoretic argument in particular. There are two parts to this problem: explaining reference in a way that distinguishes it from other word–world relations; and demonstrating that reference so distinguished is special in some way. Causal theories of reference promise a solution to the first part of the problem. The paper claims to have solved the second part by giving reference a certain place in the causal nexus: reference is special in that it is partly in virtue of their referential relations that thoughts cause intentional behaviors and are caused by the world. There is no good reason to accept that the constraints on reference are as meager as those of Putnam’s model-theoretic argument or of Quine’s indeterminacy argument. Hence there is no good reason to accept the conclusion of these arguments that reference is indeterminate.

The paper starts from two theses: a Putnamian externalist thesis that some words, including names and natural kind words, refer in virtue of causal reference-borrowing relations that are partly external to the head; and a Fregean thesis that meanings are modes of reference. Combining these two theses yields the idea that the meanings of some words, particularly proper names and natural kind terms, are partly external causal modes of reference. This idea clashes shockingly with four widely held views: “the direct-reference dogma” that a name’s meaning is its referent; “the Cartesian dogma” that competence yields knowledge about meanings; “the narrow dogma” that favors “narrow” meanings over “wide” ones; “the rich dogma” that insists on cognitively rich and fine-grained meanings. The paper argues that all these dogmas are false. The postscript argues against “use theories” of meaning in general, and Horwich’s theory in particular.

This book is a selection of published papers in philosophy of language by Michael Devitt, accompanied by many new footnotes and postscripts. A dominant theme is the semantics of proper names, definite descriptions, and demonstratives. The book argues that these terms have conventional “referential” uses to express “singular” thoughts. Those uses are explained by a unified “causal” theory: a term’s reference is largely fixed in an object by a causal link between the person and the object when it is, or was, the focus of that person’s perception. Furthermore, the book argues that a term’s meaning is its largely causal mode of reference. So, a related theme is the rejection of the “direct reference” view that the meaning of a name is its bearer. A governing idea is naturalism. Languages are parts of the spatio-temporal world playing causal roles in virtue of certain properties, “meanings”. The task of a theory of language is then to explain the nature of those causally significant properties. Naturalism leads to a rejection of the received view that theories of language must rest on an evidential base of speakers’ intuitions and to a search for a respectable empirical base. Another major theme concerns thoughts and their ascriptions. The book has chapters on Putnam’s problem of determining reference; on the application of Kripke’s idea of “rigidity” to general terms; on the vexed question of distinguishing linguistic phenomena that are “semantic” from those that are “pragmatic”.

Experiments have led some philosophers to conclude that the reference determination of natural kind terms is neither simply descriptive nor simply causal-historical. Various theories have been aired to account for this, including ambiguity, hybrid, and different-idiolects theories. Devitt and Porter (2021) hypothesized that some terms are covered by one theory, some another, with a place for all the proposed theories. The present paper tests hypotheses that the term 'Rio de Janeiro Myrtle' is simply causal-historical but the term 'rice' is hybrid. For, whereas the former term is of scientific but little practical interest, the latter is not: rice is a significant part of the human diet. So, we predicted there would be two factors to the reference determination of 'rice': a superficial-descriptive one and a deep-causal one. Our experiments confirmed these hypotheses using the methods of elicited production and truth value judgments. We take our results to support the hybrid Theory of 'rice' rather than the ambiguity or different-idiolects theory. We were not testing 'myrtle' but, surprisingly, our results implied that 'myrtle' was partly descriptive and so like 'rice' but not 'Rio de Janeiro Myrtle'. A follow-up experiment confirmed these puzzling results. More investigation is needed.

Journal Article Changing Our Logic: A Quinean Perspective Get access Michael Devitt, Michael Devitt The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, United States Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jillian Rose Roberts Jillian Rose Roberts Princeton University, United States jillianroberts@princeton.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Mind, Volume 133, Issue 529, January 2024, Pages 61–85, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzad010 Published: 26 April 2023

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.

Abstract §I concerns two questions: To what extent are linguistic tokens in utterances accidental relative to linguistic rules, and hence “r-lucky”? To what extent are linguistic rules, hence expressions governed by them, accidental relative to human nature and, thus “i-lucky”? Linguistic pragmatists (contextualists) have argued, in effect, that there is a lot more r-luck around than has customarily been thought. This chapter presents a case, drawing on more detailed presentations elsewhere, that the pragmatists are wrong about this. Devitt agrees with Chomsky that there is a lot less i-luck than used to be thought. §II, considers Rey and Collins’ (RC’s) critique (Chapter 5, this volume) of Devitt’s views of language and linguistics, views that underlie its theses about linguistic luck. They are particularly concerned to rebut Devitt’s alternative view to the Chomskians’ of “the explanatory scope of linguistics.” That alternative is the “linguistic conception” of grammars according to which a grammar is about a non-psychological realm of linguistic expressions, physical entities forming a representational system. This contrasts with the received Chomskian psychological conception according to which a grammar is about a speaker’s linguistic competence and hence about mental states. RC’s critique revolves around a mantra charging Devitt with “common-sense conventionalism.” With one half of the mantra, RC conflate the linguistic conception with Devitt’s alleged “conventionalism.” The other half of RC’s mantra charges Devitt with an awful methodology and uses this to discredit his position. Both charges are baseless.

Abstract The consensus in the philosophy of biology is that a taxon’s essence or nature is not intrinsic but wholly relational, particularly historical. (A) Why believe this? (B) What precisely is this essence? In answer to (A), the chapter argues that historical/evolutionary explanations demand that there be an historical component to the essence, at least. A good answer to (B) must be complete in that it distinguishes one taxon from another and plausible in that posits an essence that can bear the explanatory burden. Answers found in the literature do not pass this test. The chapter argues that the relevant history of a taxon is of organisms of a certain intrinsic kind evolving into organisms of a certain other intrinsic kind, until we reach the taxon in question. The historical component to the essence requires an intrinsic component.

Concerns with cultural variation and epistemic perspectives have played major roles in experimental semantics. They dominate Li's book (2023). Li's own experimental work provides two promising explanations of the cultural variation: Chinese, but not Americans, tend to agree with a character's false statement because they think it is not her fault that she is wrong or because they are socially conforming. So, the notice argues, the cultural variation is a red herring to the theory of reference. Li preferred explanation is that Chinese and Americans take different epistemic perspectives. The notice argues that this is misguided and another red herring.

Talk of higher categories (ranks) like Genus and Family is ubiquitous in biology. Yet there is widespread skepticism about these categories. We can locate the source of this skepticism in the lack of “robust concepts” for these categories, robust theories of what it is to be in a certain category. A common defense of category talk is that its virtues are “just pragmatic and not theoretic”. But this strains credulity. We should suppose rather that talk of the higher categories does theoretical work. What work? The paper proposes a “minimal concept” for a category, according to which the category is at least explanatory in marking out, in a rough and ready way , a level in the hierarchy of explanatory taxa. The skepticism is exaggerated.