Reference and reflexivity /
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| Author / Creator: | Perry, John, 1943- |
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| Imprint: | Stanford, Calif. : CSLI, c2001. |
| Description: | xiii, 208 p. ; 23 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/4515946 |
| Summary: | Following his recently expanded The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays, John Perry develops a ``reflexive-referential'' account of indexicals, demonstratives and proper names. On these issues the philosophy of language in the twentieth century was shaped by two competing traditions, descriptivist and referentialist.<br> <br> Oddly, the classic referentialist texts of the 1970s by Kripke, Donnellan, Kaplan and others were seemingly refuted almost a century earlier by co-reference and no-reference problems raised by Russell and Frege. Perry's theory, borrowing ideas from both traditions as well as from Burks and Reichenbach, diagnoses the problems as stemming from a fixation on a certain kind of content, coined referential or fully incremental.<br> <br> Referentialist tradition is portrayed as holding that indexicals contribute content that involves individuals without identifying conditions on them; descriptivist tradition is portrayed as holding that referential content does not explain all of the identifying conditions conveyed by names and indexicals. Perry reveals a coherent and structured family of contents -- from reflexive contents that place conditions on their actual utterance to fully incremental contents that place conditions only on the objects of reference -- reconciling the legitimate insights of both traditions. |
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| Physical Description: | xiii, 208 p. ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-204) and index. |
| ISBN: | 157586309X 1575863103 |