Accommodating Demonstratives

Generally speaking, there are three different ways theorists have considered accommo- dating demonstratives within a character-based semantic framework. According to

8 _{Stokke defines ‘narrow context’ as “those aspects of context that determine reference” and ‘wide}

context’ as “those aspects that the audience uses in reasoning about the speaker’s intentions” (p. 385). We return to both notions below.

9 _{Before both King and Stokke, Bianchi (2003) proposed an account according to which the speaker’s}

intention must be “communicated or made available” to the actual (as opposed to an idealized) addressee (p. 61-62). However, the exact status of speaker intentions vis-á-vis the context is unclear on her account.

Kaplan’s early theory, demonstratives “must be associated with a demonstration in order to determine a referent” (1989a, p. 524). Whereas pure indexicals are incomplete in the absence of a context, true demonstratives in the absence of a demonstration are incomplete even when paired with a context. On the first method, which we’ll call (following Caplan (2003)) Kaplan’s Theory, a demonstrative paired with a demonstra-

tion is what is assigned a character and thereby fixes the content of the demonstrative, relative to a context.10

Kaplan also considers another method, which he calls the Indexical Theory of Demonstratives, according to which the context is expanded to include a sequence of

demonstrata, the objects picked out by demonstrations. Here’s what Kaplan says, Thus just as we can speak of agent, time, place, and possible world history as features of a context, we may also speak of first demonstratum, second demonstratum, (some of which may be null) as features of a context. We then attach subscripts to our demonstratives and regard the n-th demonstrative, when set in a context, as rigid designator of the n-th demonstratum of the context. Such a rule associates a character with each demonstrative (1989a, p. 528).

On this second method, which we’ll call (again following Caplan) the Bare Bones Theory, demonstratives are still incomplete in the absence of a context but unlike on Kaplan’s Theory, they are assigned characters, i.e., rules that determine a referent in

every context. According to Kaplan’s Theory, only demonstrative-demonstration pairs

have characters, but according to the Bare Bones Theory, a demonstrative pared with

a context determines a content just like with pure indexicals, while demonstrations are absent altogether.11

A third method, not considered by Kaplan (1989a), expands the context to include demonstrations rather than demonstrata, and is defended in Salmon (2002):

10 _{OnKaplan’s Theory, the “something else” required is really something else, neither an expression}

nor a context (which remains a quadruple of parameters). In particular, Kaplan adopts what he calls theFregean Theory of Demonstrationsaccording to which we “regard each demonstration as presenting its demonstratum in a particular manner, which we may regard as the sense of the demonstration” (p. 514). By providing a sense, and thereby making it “appropriate to ask of a given demonstration [. . . ] what would it have demonstrated under various counterfactual circumstances” (p. 515), Kaplan sees a satisfying solution to Frege’s problem of how, for example, ‘That is that’ (demonstrating Hesperus and Phosphorus, respectively) can be informative.

11 _{“In providing no role for demonstrations as separable ‘manners of presentation’,” Kaplan notes,}

“this theory eliminates the interesting distinction between demonstratives and other indexicals” (p. 528), adding that, “the Fregean idea that that very demonstration might have picked out a different demonstratum seems to me to capture more of the epistemological situation than the Indexicalist’s idea that in some contexts the first and second demonstrata differ” (p. 529).

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My proposal is that a context of use be regarded as sometimes including a demonstration among its features, along with an agent, a time, a place, and a possible world. Not the bare demonstratum, but the demonstration with all its representational content. [. . . ] since the same demonstrative may recur within a single sentence or stretch of discourse, each time accompanied by a different demonstration (‘That one goes between that one and that one’), the context should include anassignment of a demonstration for each

syntactic occurrence of a demonstrative in a sentence – the first occurrence, the second, and so on (p. 518; original emphasis).

Following Salmon and Caplan, we’ll call the third method the Indexical Theory.

As Salmon notes, on the Indexical Theory, “the distinction between so-called pure

indexicals and demonstratives is a matter of incompleteness not in the expressions, but in their contexts. Demonstratives and “pure” indexicals alike are full-fledged indexicals, complete expressions unto themselves.” (p. 519). Thus, like the Bare Bones Theory,

characters are assigned to demonstratives, rather than to demonstrative-demonstration pairs as on Kaplan’s Theory.

It will be instructive to consider Salmon’s (2002) reasons for preferring theIndexical Theory to the Bare Bones Theory, as well as Caplan’s (2003) rebuttal in favour

of the latter, since the dialectic bears on the present discussion. Kaplan’s (1989b) suggestion that speaker intentions rather than demonstrations fix the content of demonstratives is accompanied by remarks that seem to align with the Bare Bones Theory by incorporating demonstrata into the context. King and Stokke, however,

propose to develop Kaplan’s later suggestion along the lines Indexical Theory by

incorporating speaker intentions into the context. Moreover, Stokke defends his account against that of Predelli (2005), who accepts the role of speaker intentions in determining the reference of demonstratives, but opts for the Bare Bones Theory.