Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (1):56-68 (2012)
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Abstract |
In “Against Arguments from Reference” (Mallon et al., 2009), Ron Mallon, Edouard Machery, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich (hereafter, MMNS) argue that recent experiments concerning reference undermine various philosophical arguments that presuppose the correctness of the causal-historical theory of reference. We will argue three things in reply. First, the experiments in question—concerning Kripke’s Gödel/Schmidt example—don’t really speak to the dispute between descriptivism and the causal-historical theory; though the two theories are empirically testable, we need to look at quite different data than MMNS do to decide between them. Second, the Gödel/Schmidt example plays a different, and much smaller, role in Kripke’s argument for the causal-historical theory than MMNS assume. Finally, and relatedly, even if Kripke is wrong about the Gödel/Schmidt example—indeed, even if the causal-historical theory is not the correct theory of names for some human languages—that does not, contrary to MMNS’s claim, undermine uses of the causalhistorical theory in philosophical research projects.
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Keywords | Analytic Philosophy Contemporary Philosophy Philosophy of Mind |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
ISBN(s) | 0031-8205 |
DOI | 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00478.x |
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References found in this work BETA
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - In Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel (eds.), Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 431-433.
View all 21 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Thought Experiments and Philosophical Knowledge.Edouard Machery - 2011 - Metaphilosophy 42 (3):191-214.
Reference in the Land of the Rising Sun: A Cross-Cultural Study on the Reference of Proper Names.Justin Sytsma, Jonathan Livengood, Ryoji Sato & Mineki Oguchi - 2015 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (2):213-230.
Whither Experimental Semantics?Michael Devitt - 2012 - Theoria : An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science 27 (1):5-36.
If Folk Intuitions Vary, Then What?Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols & Stephen P. Stich - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (3):618-635.
View all 27 citations / Add more citations
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