Author: Mario Gomez-Torrente
Publisher:
Published: 2019-11
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 0198846274
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow is it that words come to stand for the things they stand for? Is the thing that a word stands for - its reference - fully identified or described by conventions known to the users of the word? Or is there a more roundabout relation between the reference of a word and the conventions thatdetermine or fix it? Do words like "water", "three", and "red" refer to appropriate things, just as the word "Aristotle" refers to Aristotle? If so, which things are these, and how do they come to be referred to by those words?In Roads to Reference, Mario Gomez-Torrente provides novel answers to these and other questions that have been of traditional interest in the theory of reference. The book introduces a number of cases of apparent indeterminacy of reference for proper names, demonstratives, and natural kind terms,which suggest that reference-fixing conventions for them adopt the form of lists of merely sufficient conditions for reference and reference failure. He then provides arguments for a new anti-descriptivist picture of those kinds of words, according to which the reference-fixing conventions for themdo not describe their reference. This book also defends realist and objectivist accounts of the reference of ordinary natural kind nouns, numerals, and adjectives for sensible qualities. According to these accounts these words refer, respectively, to "ordinary kinds", cardinality properties, andproperties of membership in intervals of sensible dimensions, and these things are fixed in subtle ways by associated reference-fixing conventions.
Book Synopsis Roads to Reference by : Mario Gomez-Torrente
Download or read book Roads to Reference written by Mario Gomez-Torrente and published by . This book was released on 2019-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is it that words come to stand for the things they stand for? Is the thing that a word stands for - its reference - fully identified or described by conventions known to the users of the word? Or is there a more roundabout relation between the reference of a word and the conventions thatdetermine or fix it? Do words like "water", "three", and "red" refer to appropriate things, just as the word "Aristotle" refers to Aristotle? If so, which things are these, and how do they come to be referred to by those words?In Roads to Reference, Mario Gomez-Torrente provides novel answers to these and other questions that have been of traditional interest in the theory of reference. The book introduces a number of cases of apparent indeterminacy of reference for proper names, demonstratives, and natural kind terms,which suggest that reference-fixing conventions for them adopt the form of lists of merely sufficient conditions for reference and reference failure. He then provides arguments for a new anti-descriptivist picture of those kinds of words, according to which the reference-fixing conventions for themdo not describe their reference. This book also defends realist and objectivist accounts of the reference of ordinary natural kind nouns, numerals, and adjectives for sensible qualities. According to these accounts these words refer, respectively, to "ordinary kinds", cardinality properties, andproperties of membership in intervals of sensible dimensions, and these things are fixed in subtle ways by associated reference-fixing conventions.
