Abstract
The central theme of this volume, the evolution of semantic systems, raises issues about the general idea of a system, what differentiates semantic systems from other systems, and about the two key topics of semantics: meaning and reference. The paper focuses on the emergence of reference and how this is connected with individuation, reification and the notion of an object. Objects have three features that are crucial for reference: First: They are the bearers of a (usually) large number of properties and relations. Normally we know only a small number of these, but the object is conceived of as having numerous further properties that we do not know yet, but which are there to be explored. Secondly: Objects, except mathematical ones and a few others, change over time. One and the same object can have a property at one time and lack it at another time. The object remains identical through changes. Modalities come in at this point; not only are there the actual changes, but there are also possible ones, there are accidents and there are necessities. Or, at least, so we say. Finally: There is our fallibility. We may have false beliefs about objects. We may seek to correct these beliefs, but all the while our beliefs, true or false, are of the objects in question. A belief, or set of beliefs, is not about whichever object happens best to satisfy our beliefs ([1]). A semantics that just would seek to maximize our set of true beliefs would reflect poorly the role that objects play in epistemology. These three important features of objects are reflected in the way names and other referring expressions function in language. Objects are crucially important for our daily lives, our cognition and our semantic theory, and keeping track of objects is an important feature of language. How this happens is a major theme of the paper.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Quine used the famous phrase in his presidential address to the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in December 1957, printed in the Association’s Proceedings and Addresses for 1958, reprinted in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays 1969 [12, p. 23]. The idea is clearly there much earlier. Thus in “On what there is” (1948), he writes: “But what sense can be found in talking of entities which cannot meaningfully be said to be identical with themselves and distinct from one another?” [10, p. 4] He used it again in many later writings, for example, in [12, p. 23], [13, p. 102] and [15, pp. 40, 75].
- 3.
This section and the next are a summary of some sections in my dissertation [3].
- 4.
This section and the next are a summary of some sections in my dissertation [3]
- 5.
The italics are Quine’s.
- 6.
My italics.
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Føllesdal, D. (2013). The Emergence of Reference. In: Küppers, BO., Hahn, U., Artmann, S. (eds) Evolution of Semantic Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34997-3_1
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