A BUMP IN THE ROAD

A BUMP IN THE ROAD _________ RICARDO MENA https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1185-9510 UNAM – Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas Department of Philosophy Coyoacan – Ciudad de México México Article info CDD: 401 Received: 17.08.2020; Revised: 10.09.2020; Accepted: 16.09.2020 https://doi.org/10.1590/0100-6045.2020.V43N4.RM Keywords Reference Bump in the Road Abstract: Roads to Reference offers a highly valuable contribution to the theory of reference. The arguments in this book are quite convincing and the overall picture presented in it is quite attractive. In what follows I would like to present some critical comments regarding the first chapter of the book, Demonstratives and Conflicting Intentions. In this contribution I would like to focus on what the book has to say about demonstrative reference. In Roads to Reference Gomez-Torrente criticises theories according to which the semantic conventions of demonstratives determine necessary and sufficient conditions for reference. Needless to say, most theories in the market are targeted by Gomez-Torrente’s criticisms. Once the terrain is clear, the book puts forward a novel theory of demonstrative reference. The key feature of this theory is that, according to it, the semantic conventions governing demonstrative reference only provide sufficient conditions for reference Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 43, n. 4, pp. 177-188, Oct.-Dec. 2020. Ricardo Mena 178 and reference failure. Given this feature, Gomez-Torrente’s theory manages to avoid the kind of problem had by rival theories while still being able to provide a robust theory of demonstrative reference. In what follows I will briefly present Gomez-Torrente’s criticism of theories that attempt to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for demonstrative reference. Then I will sketch Gomez-Torrente’s novel view and explain in what sense it’s an improvement over other theories in the market: only offering sufficient conditions can be fruitful. Finally, I will put forward a theory that offers necessary and sufficient conditions for demonstrative reference and that it’s not subject to Gomez-Torrente’s criticism. The point of this is to suggest that there is a bump in the road: perhaps the theory of demonstrative reference offered in Roads to Reference was a bit hasty in departing from an attempt to specify necessary and sufficient conditions for demonstrative reference. Here’s a simple and suggestive theory of demonstrative reference:1 (Simple Intention) A use of a demonstrative refers to an object o iff o is the thing that the utterer intends to refer to with his/her use. (RR, p…) Simple Intention works very well in simple cases. If I intend to refer to Nina with my use of “that”, then my use of “that” refers to Nina. If I don’t intend to refer to Rulfo 1 One could argue that Kaplan (1989, p.582) held, or at the very least he seriously considered, something along the lines of this theory. Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 43, n. 4, pp. 177-188, Oct.-Dec. 2020. A Bump in the Road 179 with my use of “that”, my use of “that” doesn’t refer to Rulfo. All this seems to be in order. However, things aren’t always that simple. As Gomez-Torrente and others have pointed out, there are conflicting intentions cases: these are cases where the speaker has two (or more) referential intentions that, unfortunately, pick out different things. These cases can be problematic for Simple Intention because in them there is no single o that is the o that the speaker intends to refer to with her use of the demonstrative and intuition doesn’t always predict that’s the right result. Consider the following Gomez-Torrente case. At a distance you can see some students playing football. One of them, the one wearing a yellow t-shirt, stands out as a particularly good player. You think, wrongly, that he is your philosophy of language student. Pointing at him you say, “That’s a really good player”. You have the intention to refer to the player with the yellow shirt and also you have the intention to refer to your philosophy of language student. You have conflicting referential intentions. Simple Intention predicts that in this case you didn’t manage to secure a referent for your demonstrative use. However, GómezTorrente’s intuition is that you managed to refer to the player with the yellow shirt: the one you pointed at. I think GomezTorrente’s intuition is correct. Now consider Kaplan’s (1978) example. For many years Kaplan has had a picture of Carnap behind his office chair. Unbeknownst to him that picture has been switched for a picture of Spiro Agnew. Kaplan is sitting at his office chair and, without turning around, he points at the picture behind him and says: “That is the picture of one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century”. With his use of the demonstrative he intends to refer to the picture of Carnap, but he also intends to refer to the picture that is behind him. He has two conflicting referential intentions: the picture of Carnap and the picture that’s behind him are two different Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 43, n. 4, pp. 177-188, Oct.-Dec. 2020. Ricardo Mena 180 things. Simple Intention predicts that in this case there is no reference, since there is no o that is the thing that Kaplan intends to refer to with his use of the demonstrative. According to Gómez-Torrente, it is far from clear that this is the correct prediction. [M]y impression is that it is unclear whether that use refers to the picture of Agnew, to the picture of Carnap, or else lacks a reference: as far as I can tell, it is unclear whether the conventions determining reference or reference failure for uses of “that” imply that that use has a particular picture as its reference, or that it lacks a reference. I also take this unclarity to be a prima facie indicator that the matter may be left indeterminate by the conventions fixing the reference of demonstratives or determining when they fail to refer. (Gómez-Torrente, 2019, p.40) And later on he adds: And again, more importantly, I don’t think that we would judge incompetent a speaker who did not judge it appropriate to issue a definite verdict of reference or reference failure in this case.(Gómez-Torrente, 2019, p.43) There are two points I would like to focus on from these passages. (a), there is the unclarity intuition: it is unclear whether the use of the demonstrative refers to the picture of Carnap or Agnew, and (b), if we wouldn’t judge as incompetent a speaker who didn’t judge it appropriate to issue a definite verdict of reference or reference failure, that’s a good tell, according to Gómez-Torrente, that the semantic Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 43, n. 4, pp. 177-188, Oct.-Dec. 2020. A Bump in the Road 181 conventions of demonstratives do not determine a particular referent in this kind of case: if they did, we would judge such a speaker as incompetent. Gomez-Torrente’s observations apply, a (...truncated)