Reference and Beyond

In Reference and Beyond, Michael Devitt explores philosophy of language from a naturalistic approach. A dominant theme of this book is the semantics of proper names, definite descriptions, and demonstratives. It shows that these terms have conventional "e;referential"e; uses to express "e;singular"e; thoughts. Those uses are explained by a unified "e;causal"e; 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, Devitt argues that a term's meaning is its largely causal mode of reference. So, a related theme is the rejection of the "e;direct reference"e; view that the meaning of a name is its bearer. Another theme in Reference and Beyond concerns thoughts and their ascriptions, including "e;de se"e; thoughts and Kripke's Paderewski puzzle. Devitt approaches the semantics of ascriptions from a perspective on thoughts, thus according with the slogan, "e;Put Metaphysics First,"e; that governs the author's approach to all philosophical problems. A further framework is naturalism. Languages are parts of the spatio-temporal world playing causal roles in virtue of certain properties, "e;meanings."e; The task of a theory of language is then to explain the nature of those causally significant properties. The book takes a very dim view of the popular idea that "e;propositions"e; have a place in explanations of meanings. The 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.