What Is This Thing Called Philosophy of Language? by Kemp Gary

Author:Kemp, Gary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

• Primary Reading

Kaplan, D. (1989) ‘Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology of Demonstratives and Other Indexicals’, in Themes from Kaplan, pp. 481–564.

Perry, J. (1979) ‘The Problem of the Essential Indexical’.

Putnam, H. (1975) ‘The Meaning of “Meaning”’.

• Notes

1 Although it is debateable that a thing’s necessarily being thus-and-so does not establish that it’s being thus-and-so is part of the thing’s essence. For example, it is a necessary property of each object that it be a member of its own unit class – of e.g. Madonna that she be a member of the class {Madonna}. But it is not part of her essence, the argument runs. See Fine (1994) ‘Essence and Modality’.

2 Some natural kind terms are not indexicals. For example, elements such as Berkelium were defined before any examples had been found or synthesised.

3 We are exploring Kaplan’s celebrated theory of indexicals, but with a simplifying change: we are pretending as if the theory is one of utterances, but actually Kaplan’s theory assigns what he calls ‘contents’ – objects, extensions and propositions – to expressions-relative-to-contexts.

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