ARTÍCULOS CRÍTICA, Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofıa Vol. XXVIII, No. 84 (diciembre 1996): 3–39 THE NATURE OF EXTERNALISM: A SURVEY PROMPTED BY JOHN PERRY'S THE PROBLEM OF THE ESSENTIAL INDEXICAL AND OTHER ESSAYS∗ MANUEL GARCÍA-CARPINTERO Departament de Lògica, Història y Filosofia de la Ciència Universitat de Barcelona John Perry's recent compilation of his work (Perry (1993)) helpfully collects most of his paper-length contributions (two of them written in collaboration with other authors) to the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind over the past fifteen years, beginning with his two highly influential papers published at the end of the seventies -"Frege on Demonstratives", and the paper which gives this book its title. Some of the papers are provided with new postscripts; the postscripts include very illuminating reflections by Perry on different criticisms raised against his views. Reading the papers again with hindsight and with the useful clues provided by the postscripts gives a ∗ I would like to express my gratitude to Ramón Cirera, Genoveva Martí, Manuel Pérez, Begoña Navarrete, David Pineda, Ignacio Vicario and an anonymous referee for this journal, for their careful reading and useful comments on previous versions of this paper. Research for the paper has been partially funded by the DGICYT, Spanish Department of Education, as part of the research project PB93-1049-C03-01. 3 very fruitful perspective, not only on the evolution of the author's thoughts on some of the deepest problems that have engaged philosophers whose research deals with those two fields over the past two decades, but also on what the present writer perceives as the recent rapprochement between philosophers with Fregean inclinations and philosophers attracted by the picture of thought and meaning brought out by Direct Reference theorists like Donnellan, Kaplan, Kripke, Putnam, and, of course, Perry himself.1 Given that most of the papers are already well-known, the present notice is mainly devoted to surveying the path leading towards this rapprochement and making explicit its nature, by taking advantage of the suggestions in the postscripts. My main purpose is to make explicit a way of expressing the contentions of the theory of Direct Reference, clearly articulated by Perry in those postscripts, which incorporates the Fregean intuitions of writers such as G. Evans and J. McDowell. Once so expressed, however, the tenets of the theory of Direct Reference still contradict views which have many rights to be called Fregean, and which probably should be associated with those of Frege himself. In the first section I shall first present in a certain light the orthodox Fregean theory of reference, so that I can later present the contrast between it and the theory of Direct Reference as I see it. Although Perry's views are not explicitly discussed in this section, the main themes and the broad picture have been strongly influenced by his work. I shall explain in the second section the nature of the rapprochement that I perceive in recent work by Perry and by others relative to that way of tracing the contrast. 1 Representative publications are Donnellan (1966), Kaplan (1989), Kripke (1980) and Putnam (1975). 4 1. Direct Reference versus Fregean Reference The loose set of critical and positive proposals on the reference of proper names, pure indexicals and demonstratives, natural-kind terms and definite and indefinite descriptions known as the Theory of Direct Reference or the New Theory of Reference ('DR' henceforth for short) is sometimes presented by means of a metaphor: while Fregean reference is mediated by Fregean senses, reference is unmediated by them according to DR theorists. However, DR is more usefully approached as a package of theoretical claims set forth against the background of a particular interpretation of competing theories in the same field. (We will be mostly concerned with the reference of singular terms -proper names, indexicals and definite descriptions.) Both DR and Fregean theorists agree on the theoretical setting relative to which the phenomena for which an account is needed are presented. The most important shared aspect is this: the reference of singular terms is a semantic property that must be understood relative to the semantic role they play in sentences. Sentences, or utterances thereof, are the primary bearers of semantic properties. One of the semantic properties of utterances is force; because reference is not a contribution to this property we need to put it aside. Let us therefore focus on utterances whose conventional point is to make an assertion. Assertions are true or false, and their truth or falsity depends on a second semantic property of the utterances whereby they are made: what they say, the utterance's representational content. Representational contents encode the utterance's truth-condition: the specific condition that must obtain in the world for the assertion made with it to be true. This representational content, or truth-condition, of an utterance is systematically determined in a compositional way 5 by the semantic properties of the subsentential expressions and modes of combination which the utterance comprises. The reference of singular terms is precisely its having this truth-conditional contribution they make to the sentences where they occur.2 This is an abstract characterization of reference, but it is sufficient to suggest concrete ways of fleshing it out in particular cases. Take, thus, an ordinary statement like 'Hesperus is visible in the evening' not including direct or indirect quotation in any form as our (familiar) example. The use of 'Hesperus' in sentences like our example has systematically a purpose, and that is the goal of, as it were, bringing into the discourse a certain entity, with respect to which is to be evaluated the correctness of what is said. The reference of 'Hesperus' is its being semantically related with the planet Venus, because it is Venus, intuitively, that relative to which the truth value of 'Hesperus is a planet', 'Hesperus is a star', 'an American landed in Hesperus in 1968', and so on, is to be evaluated. It is relatively to how things are with Venus that those sentences are to be evaluated as true or false. The Fregean accepts these intuitions, which flesh out the abstract picture of reference given before, as correct. The reference or signification of a singular term is thus its semantic association to that extralinguistic object (the term's referent) relative to which the truth-value of assertoric utterances of sentences where the term occurs is to be evaluated. 2 Frege uses the German word 'Bedeutung'. This is usually translated into English as reference, and we will generally keep with this tradition. But, as Kurt Gödel, among others, has indicated, something like 'signification' would have preserved better the connotations of the German word; I will use both terms interchangeably. The suggestion which is of interest for us is that the Bedeutung of a singular term is its relation with that entity which it is the purpose of the singular term to introduce in the discourse. 6 Now, on the basis of a compelling argument, the Fregean argues for the necessity of attributing to singular terms, in any full account of reference (and truth-conditions), a further semantic property. I shall call this argument 'the Fregean Paradox', because I shall present it as having the structure of a paradox, which the introduction of senses solves. The argument depends on an intuitive connection between the semantic properties of expressions and psychological facts: the knowledge of those properties by competent users of the language. By definition of 'language mastery', a language-user who has mastered the use of a singular term knows (somehow) its semantic features; in particular, he knows the term's reference. However, Frege forcefully argued that a competent speaker's knowledge of reference must depend on his knowledge of a further semantic feature of any singular term, namely, the term's sense. The reason is this: there are pairs of assertoric utterances of sentences which (i) differ only in containing singular terms standing in the referential relation with the same extra-linguistic entities; but (ii) might still convey different cognitive imports to a competent speaker, as shown by the fact that such a competent speaker might sincerely accept one as true and reject the other, or be given information with one but not with the other; while (iii) such differences as those indicated in (ii) can only be accounted in terms of differences related to the significations of the expressions (as opposed, say, to being explained in terms of differences in the types they instantiate or in their more pragmatic "colouring"). Of course, if the fact -mentioned in the third proposition- that the differences established in the second proposition are related to the significations of the expressions were understood as entailing that the referents themselves had to be different, we would have a plain inconsistency with the first proposition. The point of the third propo7 sition is that the examples in (ii) show that a competent user of the relevant expressions can, compatibly with his linguistic competence, take their referents to be different, although they are in fact the same. The Fregean makes the three propositions consistent with each other by claiming that the semantic association between singular terms and referents mentioned in the first proposition could not be established except through the mediating intervention of a related semantic association of the expressions with other entities with semantic import, senses. The metaphoric suggestion of directing towards is relevant here. Senses are said to be ways of thinking, or modes of presentation semantically associated with the expression, which identify its referent for its users. The argument proves that they are necessary for any singular term to have a signification. Notice that, for the Fregean solution of the apparent paradox through the introduction of senses to work, it is crucial that senses and significations be precisely related: otherwise, it would not be possible to maintain the truth -in the presence of the disambiguation that the introduction of senses allows of the third proposition. Indeed, the different cognitive attitudes that a competent speaker can take towards 'Hesperus is visible in the evening' and 'Phosphorus is visible in the evening' have to do with the significations of 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus', as the third proposition requires, even though they are relations with one and the same entity; this is so because objective referents are necessarily linked to expressions as that standing in a certain relation to the senses of those singular terms, which are different.3 Therefore, the Fregean Paradox forces us to complicate our account of the contribution made by singular terms to 3 The summary in the last few paragraphs is very much influenced by the work of Dummett. See Dummett (1978). See also Evans (1982), ch. 1. 8 the representational content of the utterances where they occur. What we called before the representational content of utterances has in general, therefore, two components: sense (cognitive significance) and reference. The important point for our purposes is to become clear about the nature of senses, and the relations between senses and references. For DR theorists do not need to deny that, in some sense, reference is semantically 'mediated' by other properties of expressions: to be sure, the reference of indexicals is semantically mediated by general facts about their use, as for instance the fact that 'I' refers to the utterer; and the reference of proper names is mediated by a chain of communication, which may or may not be a semantic property depending on how we classify properties as semantic or otherwise.4 Nor do DR theorists need to deny that there are 4 The chain of communication determining the reference of a given utterance of a proper name will not be a semantic property of the utterance if semantic properties are understood to be conventional, in the sense explained by David Lewis. The general properties of indexicals mentioned before are conventional in this sense: competent speakers have mutual knowledge of them, which gives them a reason to use indexicals in agreement with them and contributes to sustain the practice. Conventional properties in this sense are essentially properties of reproducible entities, i.e., of types. However, to know the conventional properties of the type that a given token-indexical instantiates is still not sufficient to understand it; for tokens with different truth-conditional imports (say, instances of 'I am hungry' uttered by different speakers) may instantiate the same types. To fully understand a token-indexical, therefore, it is necessary to know certain non-conventional properties which that particular token has (say, who in particular has uttered it). The semantic information conventionally associated with the type guides the speakers to single out this further information, this non-conventional property of the token. Still, both pieces of information, both properties of the token (the general being an instance of an expression-type conventionally used to refer to its utterer, and the applied being uttered by S) cannot be conflated, and both are required to fully determine the truth-conditional import of the token. If, as I believe, linguistic acts consist essentially of the presentation of a specific propositional content with a given force, then 9 cognitive properties associated with expressions which are relevant to understand situations like the one in our illustration. (Although some DR theorists may have denied both propositions.) The crux of the matter -to obtain a theoretically perspicuous way of distinguishing the Fregean and DR pictures of reference- is as follows. According to the picture motivated by the Fregean Paradox, meanings have two components, senses and references; they are related so that the former determine the latter. Senses, given their theoretical role, should be cognitively diaphanous: they, in their turn, cannot be individuated in terms of entities (particular or general) that might have different 'cognitive aspects' or be presented in different guises. This is why Frege insists that the ordinary references of expressions cannot be senses, or 'parts of' senses: "a class cannot be the sense of a sign, but only its signification, as Sirius can only be the signification of a sign, but not its sense" (Frege (1980), p. 157; I have substituted 'signification' for the translators' 'meaning', to avoid confusions). However, I think that there is more to this mereological metaphor we have here the beginning of a compelling case for the claim that both the conventional properties of indexical-types and the "applied" properties of their tokens are semantic. I present that case in a paper in preparation, "The Frege-Mill Theory of Proper Names", and then I extend similar points to proper names. According to the view I develop there, all proper names share a certain conventional semantic property; this property (less specific than the properties conventionally associated with indexicals) guides speakers to identify something like a chain of communication, an applied semantic relational property of tokens. I also show how the knowledge of those semantic properties can be attributed to competent users of proper names (in the only relevant way in which speakers are supposed to know the senses of expressions, namely, somehow tacitly) and also how the theory escapes Kripke's objections of circularity in Kripke (1980) to analogous theories (theories such that the sense of a proper name N is something like being called 'N'). 10 than anything that can be derived solely from the argument I have described as the Fregean Paradox. In my view, Frege's mereological metaphor is mainly intended to make a point about the individuation of senses; in fact, the same point I take Dummett to be making in the following quotations: "Reference, as Frege understands it, is not an ingredient in meaning at all: someone who does not know the reference of an expression does not show thereby that he does not understand, or only partially understands, the expression." (Dummett (1973), p. 84.) "A theory of meaning is a theory of understanding. What we have to give an account of is what a person knows when he knows what a word or expression means, that is, when he understands it. [ . . . ] Thus what we are going to understand as a possible ingredient in meaning will be something which it is plausible to say constitutes part of what someone who understands the word or expression implicitly grasps, and in his grasp of which his understanding in part consists. [ . . . ] To claim that reference is not an ingredient in meaning is, therefore, to claim that our understanding a word or a expression never consists, even in part, merely in our associating something in the world with that word or expression." (Dummett (1973), pp. 92–93.) "Reference is not part of the meaning it is not part of whatever is known by anyone who understands the expression" (Dummett (1991), p. 123). "Frege's first argument says that we must ascribe more to a speaker than just a knowledge of the reference of a word; the second says that we cannot ascribe to him as much" (Dummett (1978), p. 130). To make sense of these remarks, I propose to present the full picture of pure Fregean reference in this way: singular terms contribute their cognitively diaphanous senses to the representational contents of utterances, properly known by competent speakers; senses then lead to references, which can thus be said also to be known, in a certain sense, by the 11 speakers; and this is how (as far as singular terms are concerned) representational contents encode truth-conditions. Having thus acknowledged that the orthodox Fregean truly accommodates reference in his theoretical view, we have immediately to acknowledge that, according to the Fregean view of reference, although both senses and references are semantic properties of expressions with important semantic roles, only senses are intrinsically associated with them. Senses are semantically essential properties of expressions: if we individuated expressions by their semantic properties (as in David Lewis's explication of languages in Lewis (1983b)), expressions with different senses should count as different expressions. It is altogether different with references: reference is, semantically, an extrinsic matter, depending on the intrinsic semantic properties of the expressions and also on semantically irrelevant facts (which objects actually instantiate which properties). A correct semantic theory cannot afford to leave references out of the picture, and the Fregean does not leave them out (references are determined by senses, which are semantically associated with expressions). Still, only senses are semantically intrinsic: from the viewpoint of the explanatory goals of the semantic undertaking, only senses are constitutive properties of expressions. To conceive of a counterfactual situation such that an expression has a different sense, is to conceive of a situation such that the expression might play a different linguistic role; to conceive of a counterfactual situation such that an expression merely has a different reference does not require ascribing such a different linguistic role to it. This Fregean contraposition between the semantically intrinsic character of senses and the semantically extrinsic nature of reference is ultimately to be traced back to views on the epistemology of meanings, mainly motivated by considerations regarding terms without reference. Thus, 12 Dummett again considers a view that takes "objects as constituents of thoughts", a standpoint from which "it is an internal, not an external, feature of the thought that it is about an object; it must be for that reason that there cannot be a thought that purports, but fails, to be about one" (Dummett (1981), pp. 138–139). After a long and very interesting discussion he concludes, from the claim that this is close "to adopt a conception of sense which renders it impossible for a name lacking a referent to have a sense" (ibid.), that "the temptation to make a mystery of senses without corresponding referents vanishes: it no longer appears to be constitutive of any thought that it is really about a particular object" (Dummett (1981), p. 244). This crucial Fregean contention cannot be merely justified on the basis of the argument we have called the Fregean Paradox. It is compatible with this argument a view like the one which Dummett contemplates and rejects, to the extent that it is not a Millian view; that is to say, to the extent that it does not identify the constitutive semantic property of a singular term just with its referent, but acknowledges senses also. The Fregean Paradox does require, as we saw, that senses determine references; it also requires that senses be known by competent users of the language, and in fact better known (in some sense) than references -that they be "closer" to speakers than references. But words like 'determine' and 'know' have a plurality of meanings, as recent discussion has made clear. The following claims are compatible with the Fregean Paradox: firstly, that an adequate explicit or theoretical or fully reflective grasp of senses (as opposed to the merely tacit knowledge that ordinary competent speakers have of them) can only be given by relating them to references; and, secondly, that senses can only be said to be (tacitly) known by ordinary non-reflective speakers in virtue of the role that they play in allowing them to 13 have access (in normal circumstances) to references. These considerations can be used to sustain the anti-Fregean (or perhaps merely neo-Fregean) view that references too are semantically intrinsic, at least for some singular terms (indexicals, proper names, perhaps descriptions referentially used). (I should perhaps remind the reader at this point that considerations analogous to the ones we are making about singular terms and the particular objects they normally refer to could also be made regarding predicates and the objective properties and relations they in some cases refer to.) Following Perry, I shall present later the main theoretical disagreement between DR and orthodox Fregean accounts of reference as turning on precisely this issue: in DR, properties of expressions which from Fregean viewpoints can only be semantically extrinsic are instead semantically intrinsic. Although a sensible DR theorist should be prepared to accept entities similar to Fregean senses, he is not prepared to accept the orthodox Fregean views on the relation between senses and references. This is what makes DR an externalist theory of content. The semantically intrinsic character that only senses have in the Fregean picture (in contrast with the semantically extrinsic nature of references) is further confirmed by the Fregean theory of indirect reference. The fact that, according to Fregean views, expressions in indirect discourse do not have their ordinary references, but refer to their senses, confirms the point that only senses and not references are intrinsic semantic properties of expressions; for senses (as opposed to references) are the entities we refer to, according to those views, when we want to report the content of someone's utterance, what the utterance says.5 5 I have tried to present the Fregean picture the way I think is theoretically most accurate for the purpose of perspicuously showing 14 The Fregean picture extends naturally to cover attributions of propositional attitudes. The Fregean psychosemantical theory of the representational content of intentional states closely mirrors the Fregean theory of the representational content of natural language's utterances. There is a coincidence in the crucial aspect we attributed before to Fregean views. Let us refer to a psychosemantical theory as a theory of intentionality -the term has a more classical flavour. Then, from the viewpoint of a Fregean theory of intentionality, the senses of mental vehicles are intrinsic properties while their references are extrinsic. Semantic properties are ascribed to mental states in theories of intentionality relative to the role mental states play in explaining and predicting behaviour. However, familiar Fregean examples analogous to the one previously considered for the linguistic case allegedly show that it is senses and not references that have a role in explaining and predicting action. To understand a subject's behaviour or to predict it, knowing the reference of the singular terms in his "mental vehicles" is irrelevant: for vehicles with the same reference might play entirely different roles in leading to action, the differences between DR and it. To have recourse to metaphors ('according to DR, reference is unmediated') can be very misleading -as I said, reference is mediated too according to the DR picture, at least for indexicals. Just to say that DR differs from Fregeanism in that it has objects as truth-conditional or propositional constituents, without further explaining what is meant by 'truth-condition' or 'proposition', is not illuminating and can also be misleading for, as I have also indicated, the true Fregean (like Frege himself) is quite adamant that there is something objective semantically associated with utterances and relative to which their truth-value is evaluated, and such that the contribution to that of singular terms are the objects they refer to. Indeed, as many Fregeans have pointed out, expressions having senses could well behave as "rigid designators" -as witnessed by the semantic behaviour of "referentially used" definite descriptions in intensional contexts. See, for instance, Dummett's discussion in Dummett (1973), pp. 110–151, and Dummett (1981), pp. 557–600. 15 if they were associated with different senses. A theory of intentionality should essentially care about the senses of mental vehicles; their references depend in part on factors irrelevant for the explanatory aims of such a theory. Senses are thus intrinsic or essential properties of mental vehicles, constitutive of their very identity as such; references are a more extrinsic matter, which are still included in the picture on account of the fact that, given external conditions, senses lead to references. This is ultimately why, the Fregean explains, expressions inside contexts of attitudeascription refer to senses instead of having their ordinary references. It is undeniable that the Fregean theory of reference seems to account well for the facts. Besides, like good scientific theories, it brings out empirical data that had been previously overlooked (the anomalous behaviour regarding substitutivity of indirect discourse and propositional attitudes reports); and it is able to accommodate these data smoothly inside its theoretical framework. We will review now its weaknesses. To the extent that the Fregean theory of indirect discourse is an integral part of the Fregean theory of reference, so-called de re attitude-reports present the first difficulty for this theory. W.V.O. Quine, the philosopher who directed the attention of the community to the problem -himself a Fregean believer of sorts- suggested an acceptable solution in Quine (1966), and Kaplan (1969) elegantly improved on it.6 The important point is that this so6 Consider a clear case of de re attribution, like 'John believes that Jane is clever; and she is clever'. This is clearly de re because 'she', which is anaphoric on 'Jane' and therefore inherits its reference, is inside an ordinary context, and therefore refers to an ordinary referent (a person); 'Jane', thus, must also refer to a person and not to a sense. As is well known, Kaplan's proposal is to regiment such a sentence by means of something like 'there is a sense α such that John is in 16 lution is fully Fregean in preserving the crucial contention that the intrinsic properties of the representational content of a natural language's utterance or a mental occurrence can only be indicated by expressions that, instead of having their ordinary references, refer to senses. The really difficult challenge for the orthodox Fregean view came from DR theorists. This is the main problem for the Fregean picture. As we have seen, the Fregean concedes that, even though extrinsic, the truth-conditional contributions of singular terms in assertions and beliefs must be included in the picture: beliefs and assertions are essentially vehicles of information, which are evaluated as true or false relative to how things are in the world. To account for this the Fregean theory contends that the truthconditional imports of singular terms are systematically determined by their cognitive significances. However, the foundational contributions to DR show convincingly that Fregean-like, cognitively diaphanous modes of presentation cannot in general determine references in the required way. One way of putting the criticism is this: the cognitively diaphanous senses that can reasonably be ascribed to some referential expressions seem to be insufficient to account for the expressions to have a definite signification, if and in so far as the relation of determination between senses and references is conceived as the Fregean takes it to be, so that only senses are intrinsic; while, intuitively, the referthe belief-relation with a proposition constituted by α and the sense of 'is clever', α represents Jane to John, and she is clever', with the representing relation analyzed in terms of being of, vividness and denoting. Quine, of course, dislikes senses and intensional entities in general for metaphysical reasons. However, he clearly favoured the Fregean account of indirect discourse. Like other philosophers (such as Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, Carnap and Davidson, all in slightly different ways) he tried to accommodate the Fregean treatment of indirect discourse in the framework of a Fregean treatment of direct discourse. 17 ential expressions at stake have a definite reference. (Kripke's arguments show this for proper names and natural kind terms, Kaplan (1989) for indexicals and demonstratives in general, Putnam (1975) for natural kind terms and Perry's "Frege on Demonstratives" and "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" for the 'essential indexicals', 'I', 'now', and 'here'. Compare Perry's example of Heimson and Hume, Kripke's story of Gödel, Schmidt, and the discovery of Gödel's theorem, and Putnam's Twin-Earth thought-experiments about 'water'.) Against the Fregean paradigm, the examples discussed in the different criticisms from DR theorists show that there are cases where the Fregean senses associated with singular terms (if they are relevant at all) do not suffice to encode the terms' truth-conditional contribution. That must be because the reference of an utterance of the expression is not just determined by Fregean senses; there must be something additionally contributing to the full encoding of the term's truth-conditional import. The foundational contributions to DR I mentioned earlier suggest different possibilities here. The first, at first sight wellsuited for indexical expressions, preserves elements from the Fregean picture: what encodes reference would be a mixture of Fregean and non-Fregean elements, what some philosophers have called 'de re senses'.7 The second, better 7 See Evans (1985), p. 316, for the sort of "de re senses" which I am assuming here. McDowell (1984), p. 104, takes Evans to task for representing de re senses so that significations are parts of them, because that contradicts a claim frequently made by Frege -McDowell shares with Evans the view that de re senses are compatible with Frege's texts. He thus presumes that de re senses can be explained so that significations are not "part" of them. Evidently, he must be interpreting Frege's metaphor in a different way from the one adopted in the main text, for he also accepts existence-dependence on external objects as an essential property of de re senses; however, I have not been able to find out what his interpretation is. I think that both 18 adapted to proper names, is more radical. I shall present the two approaches without dwelling for the time being on the reasons for choosing one or the other in a general account of reference -or for keeping both- as accounts of the way expressions of different sorts work. Indexicals have been carefully studied by Kaplan (see Kaplan (1989)) and Perry. The truth-conditional import of an indexical is determined by two factors; only the first can be adapted as part of an orthodox Fregean sense, but it is not sufficient to determine the expression's reference, and a non-Fregean second factor must also be included. The first factor includes, at least, a general rule conventionally associated with the indexical's type (Kaplan's character or Perry's role), like the rule that an utterance of 'this' refers to something contextually salient and 'near' the utterer. Additionally, the first factor could include other features relevant to determine the reference in any particular case -not conventionally associated with the indexical's type but with the particular utterance. No matter how much we include, the examples given in the works indicated above show that this first factor is not sufficient to determine the reference. Something additional must be included: for instance, the utterance itself would do. Reichenbach said that indexicals are token-reflexive expressions, and this view adopts the idea: the truth-conditional import of indexicals is not only determined by a general rule, but the concrete act whereby they are uttered plays also a crucial role.8 It is clear, however, that the second factor cannot be McDowell and Evans are mistaken in their interpretation of Frege; they do not take seriously enough Frege's internalism. 8 Strictly speaking, indexicals are not "token-reflexive" but (preserving, however, the essentials of Reichenbach's idea) case-reflexive. A case, or occurrence, of an indexical sentence is an event: the change produced in producing sounds or marks, or electrical configurations in a computer, etc. (To counter the consideration in Kaplan (1989), 19 a part of orthodox Fregean senses; it cannot contribute to the individuation of a Fregean sense without violating the requirement that senses be cognitively diaphanous, for it is an entity belonging to the 'realm' of ordinary references an objective event, which can be presented in different guises sec. XIII, we should be prepared to admit idealizations, like contemplating different cases occurring at the same place and time.) A token is an object. Objects endure; the same tokens, thus, can be used as long as they exist: I use the same token many times when I leave my office for a short while, to say that I will be back soon. (John Perry used to give similar examples in a seminar I attended in Stanford during the year 1990–1991.) This fact would have as a result an intuitively inexistent indeterminacy, if we specified the truth-conditional contribution of indexicals so that truth-conditions were ascribed to tokens. The point is not that truth conditions should be held to be possessed by entities which are guaranteed to be free, no matter what, from such indeterminacies; for there are none which can be so guaranteed. An utterance can be used to make two or more acts of meaning: imagine that I write 'I will meet you later at the usual spot' in producing an e-mail document so that, according to my specifications, one copy of it is to be sent to my wife and another to my lover; meaning, of course, two different commitments with the very same utterance. In this case, there is no indeterminacy, for the rules for the indexicals instantiated in it are satisfied: the utterance has only one producer and a specific time of production (as required for the interpretation of the instances of 'I' and 'later'), and -in view of the fact that the reference of 'you' is determined by the utterer's intentions, which in this case conveniently give us two different referents- it has a specific referent for 'you' in each different act of meaning. However, analogous far-fetched examples could be imagined, where these conditions do not obtain: perhaps an utterance consisting in the inscription in the screen of my computer of 'I'll meet you at your office' has in fact been produced by a mysterious electrical merge of two different signals sent by two different persons. The point is, simply, that such situations do not as a matter of fact occur for ordinary utterances, so that the prediction that the truth-conditions of ordinary utterances are determined in accordance with rules as the one previously given is borne by the facts. A similar claim made under the assumption that it is tokens that have truth-conditions, and with respect to the semantic rules that would in that case have to be presumed, would however be falsified by ordinary facts (like those regarding my strategy to report the duration of my absence from my office). 20 to a thinker. (This point is made by Perry in different places; cf. the postscript to "The Problem of the Essential Indexical", p. 52.) Let us call this the indexical model for direct reference. Consider now the proper name model. The problem in accommodating proper names in the indexical model is that, to the extent that there is a general rule conventionally governing their use, it must be something wholly unspecific. Using a happy phrase which is due, I believe, to Ruth Barcan Marcus, proper names are simply tags. They are expressions we have recourse to when we cannot trust either contextually available factors or identifying information shared with our audience to conveniently secure the reference. Thus, if they have a character at all (a general rule conventionally associated with any proper name's type and contributing to determine the reference of its utterances), they all have the same: something to the effect that an utterance of a proper name of type N refers to whatever originated (and sustains) the naming practice associated with the type to which the utterance belongs.9 Even so, of course, we could maintain the two-factor indexical model (the second factor could be, again, the particular utterance of the name), especially if we included as part of the first factor more specific elements non-conventionally associated with particular utterances (or information mutually known by the speaker and his audience to be associated with the name). However, perhaps on account of the non-specificity of the proper names' 'character', DR theorists have preferred a bolder anti-Fregean move: to take as the represen9 In the paper mentioned in footnote 4, I develop a view along these lines. A similar view is advanced in Recanati (1993). For the notion of a naming practice, see Evans (1982), ch. 11. Evans also explains the rationale for the expression 'sustains', with his examples regarding 'Turnip' and 'Madagascar'. 21 tational content's 'encoder' of the name's truth-conditional import the truth-conditional import itself. In fact, most DR theorists (including Kaplan) have defended this proper name model for indexicals also (relegating the semantic work of the character to a different role than that of encoder of the truth-conditional import in the representational content). The argument for this view generally proceeds from intuitions about what is said: it is claimed that statements including indexicals or proper names do not involve, as part of their truth-conditional determining representational content, the indication that the reference is an object contextually salient and relatively close to the speaker (in the first case), or that the reference is related to the utterance by a naming practice (in the second). With Perry, I do not think that these intuitions carry much weight: see Perry's discussion, and his examples, in pp. 295–296; see also Perry's comments on Blackburn in the postscript to "Thought without Representation", particularly pp. 223–225.10 But I will not develop this point further here. Presupposing the view that intrinsic semantic properties of utterances, no matter what they are, must determine the truth-conditions of utterances, let us give the name proposition to that semantically intrinsic aspect of the representational content of an utterance (of a sentence of natural language or of the language of thought) which encodes the utterance's truth-conditions. What we have just seen is that entities belonging to the realm of ordinary Fregean references (say, particular events like utterances in the indexical model or fully-fledged commonsense objects in the proper name model) must be taken themselves as propositional constituents. (Similar points 10 See also Stalnaker (1981), p. 150, fn. 16, and the corresponding text, where essentially the same point is made. 22 could be made about the semantic properties of predicates, a discussion of which we are avoiding in this paper.) For convenient reference, let us give the name 'Russellian propositions' or 'de re contents' to the peculiar, non-Fregean breed motivated by the DR considerations. Russellian propositions, partially individuated by entities which are -from the orthodox Fregean view- only extrinsically related with expressions (for purposes of semantic theorizing), are according to DR intrinsically related to them. This is, in my view, the outstanding difference between Fregean and New theories of references. DR, to put it in a different way, is a genuinely externalist semantic theory. The essential semantic properties that an account of natural language's semantics or a theory of intentionality ought to countenance to further its explanatory aims are, according to DR, individuated in terms of objective extralinguistic entities. The opposite is true of the orthodox Fregean picture, which is an internalist theory. Not because orthodox Fregeans disregard the importance of extralinguistic entities for the determination of truth-conditions, or of truth-conditions themselves; but rather because they try to have them, as it were, as a byproduct of truly essential semantic properties that are not externally individuated. This is, I think, what Perry says in "Cognitive Significance and New Theories of Reference": according to new theories of reference, "the references of the singular terms do not depend on Fregean senses, or identifying descriptions in the mind of the speaker. The expressions used do not have such senses attached to them by the conventions of language. The beliefs of the speaker need not supply conditions that single out a unique individual. Even if the speaker has such beliefs, the reference is not determined by those beliefs." (op. cit., p. 227; my emphasis). It is not that there are not cognitively diaphanous Fregean senses 23 that any semantic theory or any theory of intentionality should contemplate, to explain what it is for terms to have the significations they have; it is that they do not suffice to determine reference in the way that Fregean internalism requires, and thus significations cannot depend on them. 2. A Middle Ground? There are two sides to the intuitions supporting the Fregean Paradox, and with it the Fregean picture. One is internalism: the Cartesian notion that objects, classes of objects or 'mind-independent' properties cannot play a role in the individuation, in their constitutive aspects, of mental or linguistic meaning. A logically unrelated intuition is what we could call cognitivism: the idea that the meanings of linguistic and mental items are, vaguely put, tightly constrained by cognitive facts about their users or holders. (It is on the basis of cognitivism, for instance, that it is in my view rightly contended that not every causal relation between an utterance of a proper name -or a related mental occurrence- is sufficient to give it a reference: some 'identifying information' should be appropriately associated with the utterance or the mental occurrence, and take part in the causal link.) The work of the late Gareth Evans (Evans (1982)) exemplifies well how it is possible to abandon the first intuition, while remaining unyieldingly Fregean regarding the second.11 In this section I shall argue that the Fregean Paradox gives support only to cognitivism, not to internalism. Some radical versions of DR 11 Evans himself, as I said in a previous footnote, claimed that the first intuition was not truly Fregean: he argued (with great ingenuity, but to my mind without success) that Frege's actual views were closer to his own very sophisticated ones than the views usually (certainly not only by DR theorists) attributed to him. See Evans (1982), ch. 1, and Evans (1985). 24 advanced by some DR theorists are in contradiction with the Fregean Paradox, and should be abandoned. More sophisticated versions, like the one defended by Perry in the postscripts and in recent papers, are consistent with it. The rapprochement I mentioned at the beginning of this survey will be substantiated on the basis of the affinities to be found between externalist neo-Fregeans like Evans and this sophisticated version of DR -notwithstanding the differences still existing between these views. I shall present this 'middle ground' view by contrasting it with a different one, equally developed as a reaction to the arguments favouring DR, the 'dual-aspect' theory. The indexical model is an important source of inspiration for the dual-aspect theory. According to it, there are intrinsic aspects of meaning ('narrow contents') which are properly internal, and there are extrinsic, external aspects which constitute truth-conditions. The former alone certainly do not determine the latter -as the examples by DR theorists well prove; rather, they do it with the help of context. (To account for the facts regarding proper names and natural kind terms, context must be broadly conceived, including not only immediate facts about the utterance but also facts about how 'experts' use or have used proper names and natural kind terms in paradigm cases in the broader actual world where the utterance takes place.) The model is Kaplan's distinction (in Kaplan (1989), and elsewhere) between 'character' and 'content', which we have already mentioned. This is the picture suggested by McGinn (1982), Fodor (1980) and (1987), ch. 2, and many others. A version of it is most elegantly argued for and articulated, in terms of his modal realism, in Lewis (1983a). This same view seems to be the one suggested by Perry's positive proposals at the end of "Frege on Demonstratives" and "The Problem of the Essential Indexical". My uncertainty as to whether Perry in fact defended a dual-aspect theo25 ry in these papers is explained in part by the fact that he seems to deny having done so in the 'Postscript' to "Cognitive Significance and New Theories of Reference" (Perry (1993), pp. 245–246), and in part also by his clear evolution afterwards towards the 'middle ground' stance, much closer to the 'externalistic' Fregeanism of Evans, in more recent papers like "Individuals in Informational and Intentional Content" and "Fodor and Psychological Explanation" (written with David Israel). At the very least, it is clear that Perry's early contributions suggest the dual-aspect theory. In "Frege on Demonstratives", Perry contends: "We use senses to individuate psychological states, in explaining and predicting action. It is the sense entertained and not the thought apprehended that is tied to human action." 'Sense' is here used, roughly, with the meaning Kaplan gives to character, and 'thought' with the meaning Kaplan gives to content. To apprehend a thought is to be in a state whose semantic nature is representable by a 'Russellian proposition'; to entertain a sense is to be in a state whose semantic nature is representable by a function from contexts to Russellian propositions. Perry's is also the main reason that David Lewis offers for the related claim that the true objects of propositional attitudes are 'de se', properties which the subject (or better, a temporal stage of the subject) self-ascribes (Lewis (1983a), p. 143). With the help of the conceptual link between linguistic meaning and the psychological states of competent speakers, similar considerations would lead to a 'dual-role' unorthodox Fregean theory of the semantic properties (other than force) of linguistic utterances. It is important to see to what extent this dual-aspect theory is unorthodox as a Fregean picture (Perry emphasized this fact in "Frege on Demonstratives"). The orthodox Fregean whose views we have presented in the first section agrees that whatever semantic properties a semantic 26 theory of natural language ascribes to utterances or a theory of intentionality ascribes to mental vehicles, they have to determine truth-conditions. For the orthodox Fregean, there are not two theoretical projects here, one dealing with normative concerns (characterizing the role of utterances and mental occurrences as, say, information-carriers) regarding which truth-conditions are important, and another one (characterizing the function of expressions as involved in explanations of action) regarding which cognitive significance is important: for the orthodox Fregean, both projects are one and the same. It is just that the internalism of the orthodox Fregean can (he thinks) be reconciled with this view given the Fregean model of reference. The 'dualaspect' theorist tries to salvage internalism, at the cost of abandoning the integrity of the two projects; it is in this that he is unorthodox. It has been objected that this 'dual-aspect' theory is all very well when we think of expressions like 'I', which have a well-differentiated Kaplanian character, but runs into trouble in attempting to account for the contribution to cognitive significance of proper names and other indexicals like 'he' or 'this' -the conventional rule governing the use of which is less informative than that for 'I' (see Wettstein (1986)). I think that a dual-aspect theorist can resist this criticism, following the general strategy set up by Lewis (Lewis (1983a), sec. XIII). The cognitive significance of a given utterance of 'he' could be accounted for by an 'acquaintance relation' with a male that the competent speaker self-ascribes through perceptual or any other appropriate kind of contextual salience. The cognitive significance of an utterance of a proper name could be given by another relation of acquaintance which the utterer selfascribes, maybe with an entity belonging to a contextually given sort, in this case through her knowledge of a 'nam27 ing practice' -a practice only partly, and with nuances, individuated by the expression-type. The real objection to the dual-aspect picture is not that it is false, for it is not. Whenever an utterance or mental occurrence could be truly said to signify a given Russellian proposition, there is also a cognitive significance or narrow content to be correctly assigned to it. The reason for this is the truth behind the second Fregean intuition, cognitivism, which is, indeed, strongly supported by the Fregean Paradox. No thinker can be thought to entertain, say, a Russellian proposition involving Venus (with all its craters) if he does not have identifying information about that planet. Even if the identifying information is simply that the intended reference is a celestial body accounting for a certain specific naming practice -one of which the speaker's use of a word of a certain type partakes- it is still identifying unless all participants in it are very misguided about the facts. Just a causal relation will not do; the most important reason being that to leave matters to causal relations is to leave matters wholly indeterminate: all sorts of things are causally related to utterances of expressions or occurrences of mental vehicles. Only if we take into consideration some of the intentional relations of an expression (belonging to a mental or public "language") with other expressions, themselves with intentional contents, can we properly narrow down the possibilities.12 The real objection to the dual-aspect picture is, in short, that to insist that only narrow contents can be put to the services that contents are designed to provide is theoretically unmotivated, conceptually misguided and, in many cases, conducive to net explanatory losses. Says Lewis: "[ . . . ] 12 As these remarks suggest, cognitive significances or modes of presentation are better approached as functional or conceptual roles. See Schiffer (1990). 28 attributions of beliefs enter into a systematic commonsense psychology, and [ . . . ] for that purpose beliefs had better be in the head. [ . . . ] but [ . . . ] beliefs de re, in general, are not. Beliefs de re are not really beliefs. They are states of affairs that obtain in virtue of the relations of the subject's beliefs to the res in question." (Lewis (1983a), pp. 151–152.) However, something like this is also the case, even if to a lesser extent, for beliefs de se. Beliefs de se are (in normal human beings) states of affairs which obtain in virtue of relations of those states with other neurological or otherwise physical state of affairs. It worries Lewis that, if a de re psychological state explains, it is only because an "external" condition relating the "internal" states of the agent and the res is satisfied; the condition is "external" in that a subject in the same "internal" circumstances could be disposed to initiate the same course of action, even if the relation with the res did not obtain and, as a result, the de re state could not be ascribed to him. Being in a certain de re psychological state explains action only relative to the obtaining of non-psychological conditions. Similarly, two subjects might be in the same de re psychological state, and only one be prepared to initiate a certain action (the one in the relevant "internal" state). However, something parallel is true about de se psychological states: two subjects could be in the same de se psychological state, and only one be prepared to initiate a certain action (the other has a brain tumor, or has had the relevant connections with the muscles severed). The demand for non-relational states playing causal roles in the production of behaviour will ultimately lead to neurology, or even further down, if motivated along Lewis's lines. What I am suggesting here (for reductio) is an analogy between the considerations of dual-aspect theorists (the considerations in the quote from Lewis before) and the sort of argument some philosophers (Lewis himself and Kim 29 outstandingly) have advanced to exclude from any proper explanatory pursuit macro-properties in general which cannot be properly reduced to or identified with 'basic' microphysical properties.13 The goal of the analogy is to support the point that the same sort of reply valid against these more general 'explanatory exclusion' considerations can also be given to dual-aspect theorists. The philosopher in the grip of the explanatory exclusion consideration asks, 'why should a macro-property say, -having gen X- be explanatory if (i) this property is multiply realized by basic physical properties, therefore not reducible to them, and (ii) description involving the particular physical realizer allows for more precise prediction and more accurate explanation?' (The justification for (ii) has to do with the fact that the laws allowing explanation and prediction involving macro-properties usually have exceptions, which can only be properly dealt with 'going down' in the level of description.) The proper rejoinder to this is as follows. A property is genuinely explanatory when it plays a role in distinctive generalizations with a nomic character (generalizations that support counterfactuals and are confirmed by their instances). Both these conditions obtain regarding having gen X, so far as we know, and the explanatory exclusion considerations do not touch that fact. Even if the laws involving that property have exceptions as indicated in (ii) -they still hold ceteris paribus and thus can be nomic (counterfactuals should only obtain in 'close enough' possible worlds); and as (i) makes clear, those same generalizations cannot be captured at lower levels. Moreover, lower-level properties are both known to us and individuated in part by their explanatory links (valid at least in 'close 13 Compare Kim (1989) for this sort of consideration. 30 enough' possible worlds) with macro-properties: we do not want to saw off the branch on which we are sitting.14 Now, when the conditions obtain relative to which de se contents lead to the sort of behaviour they are posited to account for (no brain tumor is present, the connections between brain and muscles are not severed, and so on), exactly for the same reasons, it is correct and it could even be explanatorily more appropriate to invoke them in accounting for behaviour, than to consider the lower-level neurological facts -even if only taking into account particular neurological realizers can we explain exceptions produced when those conditions do not obtain. Still more, if neurological states are to be properly known and individuated by reference to their explanatory relations with intentional states, in particular de se thoughts. Now, exactly for the same kind of reasons, when the conditions obtain relative to which de re contents lead to the sort of behaviour they are posited to account for, it is arguably correct and it could be explanatorily more appropriate to invoke them in accounting for behaviour than to consider the subvenient de se thoughts.15 (Stalnaker (1981), pp. 146–148, argues against Lewis's and Perry's dual-aspect pictures by giving examples of explanatory goals which are best served by de re thoughts.) 14 Considerations like these are advanced at the end of Stalnaker (1989), applied to the case which is of interest to us -namely, "broad" contents. 15 Evans (1982) and several recent papers by Stalnaker, of which Stalnaker (1989) is a good representative, make this point against 'narrow contents'. Incidently, it is not so clear that narrow contents are really contents -to the extent that they are really narrow. The significations of singular terms have been eliminated from their specification, but the predicates themselves should be carefully investigated before we are prepared to concede that they are contents and that they are narrow. Stalnaker also correctly insists that 'narrow contents' do not seem to be individuable except by reference to 'broad contents'. 31 If Lewis's reason for privileging narrow contents is soundly disposed of by this argument -if de re contents have the same sort of explanatory role that narrower contents might be thought as having, and, indeed, we cannot afford to forgo them when pursuing those very same explanatory undertakings where narrow contents play their role- then it turns out that the dual-aspect theory is utterly unmotivated by the intuitions supporting DR. We can then maintain the crucial point regarding which there was agreement between DR theorists and orthodox Fregeans: namely, that the intrinsic representational content of utterances (and thoughts) determines truth-conditions. What emerges as alternative to the dual-aspect view is a fully externalistic picture such that an utterance or mental vehicle can be correctly associated with coarse-grained broad Russellian contents when it can also be associated with finergrained, narrower but equally external contents. These narrower contents are external in that they are partly individuated by an entity, the utterance or mental occurrence itself, which stands in fully objective causal-explanatory relations with the relevant constituent of the broad Russellian content. This is ultimately why, as we said before, even though utterances and mental occurrences are cognitively more accessible than planets, they can be presented to us through different modes of presentation no less than planets can, and cannot therefore belong to the realm of purely internal, orthodox Fregean senses. (As Perry explains in the postscript to "The Problem of the Essential Indexical", p. 52.) Thus, two utterances or mental occurrences might have different fine-grained contents while sharing the same coarse-grained content. More importantly, as against the explanatory monism which ultimately motivates the dualaspect theory, this picture is explanatorily pluralistic: both sorts of content have equally important explanatory roles. 32 I said before that Perry seems to suggest a dual-aspect view in the final pages of both "Frege on Demonstratives" and "The Problem of the Essential Indexical", but I indicated also that he himself casts doubt on this interpretation in one of the postscripts added in the book on which I am basing this survey. Be that as it may, what following Perry's evolution and reading the new postscripts makes plain is that Perry's thoughts pointed also in a different direction. With hindsight (and with the guidance provided by its postscript), "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" can be read as advancing the picture just outlined. Perry emphasizes then that the classification of mental occurrences (and, I gather, linguistic utterances) both by broader Russellian propositions and by narrower but equally external ones satisfies different explanatory purposes, equally legitimate for psychological or semantic concerns. The view is developed and argued for in more recent material, like "Individuals in Informational and Intentional Content" and "Fodor and Psychological Explanation". Besides, an (admittedly obscure) argument which I take to be along the lines of the one advanced before against Lewis's reason for privileging narrow contents is given in "Circumstantial Attitudes and Benevolent Cognition" (compare pp. 201– 204). On this view, we retain what I called 'cognitivism' -as sustained by the Fregean Paradox- but abandon wholeheartedly what I called 'internalism'. Both a semantic account of natural language and a theory of intentionality are fully justified in positing (indeed, cannot do without), as intrinsic properties of utterances and mental occurrences, the sort of coarse-grained Russellian propositions contemplated earlier. The intuitions favouring DR show that the Fregean temptation to get them, as it were, as byproducts of 'cognitively diaphanous' purely internal propositions are misguided at least regarding utterances whose truth-conditions 33 concern material entities and their properties. And there does not appear to be any good reason for, in view of this, attaching only explanatory value to some ill-specified 'narrow contents' acknowledgedly unable, by themselves, to determine truth-conditions. What is generally correct in the remarks making up the Fregean Paradox is the point that, whenever the representational content of an utterance or mental occurrence can be correctly characterized with a coarse Russellian proposition, it can also be characterized with finer-grained even if equally external propositions. Nothing, thus, is wrong with the Fregean Paradox in itself. It is correct to infer from it that a singular term (either in natural language or in thought-vehicles) has not only a reference, but also a cognitive significance. But there is nothing in the argument to force us to conclude that cognitive significances have some sort of primacy or exclusiveness. We need the invidious epistemic concerns of the explanatory uniformitarian to obtain that conclusion; and there is a prima facie very strong consideration against the legitimacy of such concerns. Where are we to find cognitive significances with the epistemic properties that the explanatory monist wants, while still able to determine, as the references of the terms to which they are attached, material objects (objects which, by definition, are independent of our thought)? The pluralistic attitude leaves us free to put the primacy where we feel we should. It leaves open, for instance, the already suggested possibility of conceiving of senses as epistemically subordinated to significations, and related to them through ordinary causal-explanatory relations. An important virtue of Perry's more pluralistic and pragmatic view is that it helps to sustain a more plausible account of attitude-reports than the 'bite the bullet' strategy pursued by such Direct Reference theorists as Scott Soames, Nathan Salmon, and previously by Perry him34 self, in his work on situation semantics with Jon Barwise. According to the 'hidden-indexical' theory (the name was coined, I believe, by Stephen Schiffer), the utterance 'John believes (said) that Tully is an orator' could be literally false (and not merely pragmatically inappropriate), even though, in the same context, the utterance 'John believes (said) that Cicero is an orator' were true. In context, 'Cicero' and 'Tully' may contribute more than their common reference: they can contribute a partial characterization of the cognitive significance attached by John to the mental or linguistic part of the occurrence whose content is being reported. This theory (nicely argued for also in Richard (1990)) is expounded and defended by Perry in the paper with Mark Crimmins "The Prince and the Phone Booth: Reporting Puzzling Beliefs". This is where I see the rapprochement I mentioned at the beginning of this review. Fregeans like Gareth Evans have tried to honour the second Fregean intuition, what I called cognitivism, while granting the facts leading to DR; and we have indicated important reasons for attending to it, the most important of which is to keep semantic indeterminacy at bay. Perry's fully developed thoughts show how DR is compatible with some sensible cognitivism. To be sure, there are still differences between the proposals of enlighted Fregeans like Evans and Perry's own views. They differ in an important respect, and, regarding it, I think Perry's views are to be preferred, for reasons suggested by him in the postscript to "Frege on Demonstratives": Evans (1985) seems to require that semantics itself determine the cognitive significance contributed by expressions, while, in many cases, only contextual factors could do so. At least in that paper, Evans apparently wants a fully determinate cognitive significance to be specified once and for all by semantic rules alone; it is difficult to see how he could be 35 right about this. (Compare Perry (1993), pp. 222–225 and pp. 295–296, and see also Stalnaker (1981), p. 150, fn. 16.) There is much more to Perry 1993 than can be highlighted here. This paper has been mostly concerned with surveying issues relating to externalism, to the proper formulation of the differences between DR and Fregean theories of reference and its consequences for the semantics of attitude-reports and indirect-speech reports. Perry's work, however, is not only associated with this. A very influential aspect of it is devoted to argue for the essential character of indexicals in the characterization of most fine-grained contents. Evans (1985) complains that we have not done very much to illuminate the nature of self-knowledge just by contending that the cognitive significances of utterances with 'I' could be similar to the linguistic character of the expression. Perry accepts that charge. But it is only fair to say that his reflections on unarticulated constituents of propositions in "Thought without Representation" and on the dynamics of beliefs in "A Problem about Continued Belief" do make some contribution to the issue. Two other papers compiled in the book develop interesting ideas on possible worlds that I cannot even start to summarize. As with other theoretical pursuits, philosophy has always been a collective undertaking. However, it is a characteristic feature of the philosophy produced since the Second World War in the 'analytic' sphere that this aspect has been greatly intensified following sociological trends well established in more 'scientific' concerns. One or two papers in a compilation is what most philosophers might hope future libraries will keep of their work. The book on which I have based my discussion will help to preserve one of the few contemporary contributions by just one philosopher which undoubtedly should be preserved. 36 REFERENCES Donnellan, K., 1966, "Reference and Definite Descriptions", Philosophical Review, 75, pp. 281–304. Dummett, M., 1973, Frege: Philosophy of Language, 2nd. edition, 1981 (from where I quote), Duckworth, London. --, 1978, "Frege's Distinction between Sense and Reference", in his Truth and Other Enigmas, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), pp. 116–144. --, 1981, The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy, Duckworth, London. --, 1991, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.). Evans, G., 1982, The Varieties of Reference, Clarendon Press, Oxford. --, 1985, "Understanding Demonstratives", in G. Evans, Collected Papers, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Fodor, J., 1980, "Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology", in J. Fodor, Representation, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.). --, 1987, Psychosemantics, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.). Frege, G., 1980, Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence, in G. Gabriel, H. Hermes, F. Kambartel, C. Thiel & A. Veraat (eds.), Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Kaplan, D., 1969, "Quantifying In", in D. Davidson and J. Hintikka (eds.), Words and Objections, D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht. --, 1989, "Demonstratives", in J. Almog, J. Perry and H. Wettstein (eds.), Themes from Kaplan, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kim, J., 1989, "Mechanism, Purpose, and Explanatory Exclusion", in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, 3: Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory, Ridgeview Pub. Co., Atascadero, California, pp. 77–108. Kripke, S., 1980, Naming and Necessity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.). Lewis, D., 1983a, "Attitudes De Dicto and De Se", in D. Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 37 --, 1983b, "Languages and Language", in D. Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford. McDowell, J., 1984, "De Re Senses", in C. Wright (ed.), Frege: Tradition and Influence, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 98– 109. McGinn, C., 1982, "The Structure of Content", in Woodfield, Andrew (ed.), Thought and Object, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 207–258. Perry, J., 1993, The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Putnam, H., 1975, "The Meaning of 'Meaning' ", in H. Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Quine, W.V.O., 1966, "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes", in W.V.O. Quine, The Ways of Paradox, Random House, New York. Recanati, F., 1993, Direct Reference, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Richard, M., 1990, Propositional Attitudes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Schiffer, S., 1990, "The Mode-of-Presentation Problem", in C.A. Anderson and J. Owens (eds.), Propositional Attitudes. The Role of Content in Logic, Language and Mind, CSLI, Stanford. Stalnaker, R., 1981, "Indexical Belief", Synthèse, 49, pp. 129– 151. --, 1989, "On What is in the Head", in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, 3: Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory, Ridgeview Pub. Co., Atascadero, California, pp. 287–316. Wettstein, H., 1986, "Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?", Journal of Philosophy, LXXXIII, pp. 185–209. Recibido: 12 de noviembre de 1996 38 RESUMEN Bajo la inspiración de la evolución que presentan los artículos de John Perry recogidos en su reciente compilación, "The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays", así como los "postscripts" de Perry a algunos de sus más conocidos trabajos, el presente artículo busca cumplir dos objetivos. En primer lugar, hacer patente la aproximación habida en la última década entre las ideas de algunos de los partidarios de la llamada "teoría de la referencia directa", como el propio Perry, y las de los "neofregeanos" como Gareth Evans. En segundo lugar, el artículo pretende caracterizar la naturaleza de la diferencia que separa aún a ese punto de vista común a los filósofos indicados de las ideas de fregeanos tradicionales (como quizás el propio Frege y M. Dummett). Esta diferencia consiste en que las teorías del contenido mental y lingüístico como las de Perry y Evans, pese a conceder a los "sentidos" un papel teórico análogo al que les concede el fregeanismo tradicional, defienden una individuación externista de los sentidos. Con el fin de trazar adecuadamente esta diferencia, el artículo trata también de ofrecer una elucidación apropiada de 'externismo'.