Reference and reflexivity /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Perry, John, 1943-
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
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ISBN:157586309X (alk. paper)
1575863103 (pbk.)
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-204) and index.
Description
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.
Physical Description:xiii, 208 p. ; 23 cm.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-204) and index.
ISBN:157586309X
1575863103