Without Judgements

It is possible that, even with the greatest care in experimental methodology, the judgements of ordinary speakers about constructed referential cases are simply hopelessly lacking in consistency. If this were the case, I would have to admit that the value of appealing to speaker judgements as data about reference, or of using referential cases and examples as a way of motivating or illustrating theoretical points, would be extremely limited. Whilst I will write this thesis assuming that there is at least some value in these activities11 it is instructive to consider the alternative. As it is, I am extremely suspicious of the conception of reference as an objective, metaphysical relation that connects names and objects in a string-like fashion. This conception is, I think, present in much of the work on names in the causal-historical tradition that followed Kripke (1981), and possibly much of the thought about proper names that preceded it. I prefer to think of referring as something that people (are able to) do with names (and other referential terms) in order to talk to other people about specific things in a dynamic and circumstance-specific way. The idea of the referent of a name, or even of a use or utterance of a name, that we can point to as its objective content becomes problematic on this way of thinking about things. It would be particularly problematic if there were no consensus available about what reasonable and competent users of the language took the reference of a (use of a) name to be. Lack of consistency of judgement amongst speakers about the kinds of referential cases discussed above would not, of course, entail that there would be eternal confusion about what is being referred to any time a name is used. However, it does call into question the plausibility of a theoretical device that can be useful to reference theorists. In cases in which there is disagreement between a speaker and their audience about what has been referred to with a name, something like a

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Indeed, given my lack of capacity for collecting data in any kind of rigorous manner, I tend simply to provide cases that I find convincing, and that I have found others to be similarly convinced by.

2.2. Data on Reference

partially-idealized reasonable, competent language-user might be appealed to to play the part of theoretical adjudicator (see, e.g. Cohen 1980; King 2014; Neale 2004). Deciding what is ideal or reasonable, if there is no consensus amongst real language-users, is a problem.

In a situation in which there is no broad consensus on referential judge- ments or idealized language-use, there seem to be two things left that we can appeal to when it comes to proper name reference. One is what the speaker was trying to refer to when they used a name. In most cases, it seems that a speaker is trying to refer to something, even if they have only the haziest idea of what it is. The second is what the hearer took the speaker to have referred to. Again, this can be a very hazy notion, and need amount only to the hearer’s recognition that the speaker referred to something and their being willing to engage on that basis. The hearer can also fail to appreciate anything having been referred to, and request clarification or revision. These two aspects of reference can be thought of as what the speaker wants to refer to (we might also say ‘intends’ or ‘means to refer to’, though these terms come with more theoretical baggage), and what referential information actually gets communicated to an audience. When all goes right—and presumably much or most of the time this is the case—a speaker succeeds in communicating what they wanted to their audience. In such cases it is easy to say what has been referred to: it is what speaker and audience agree upon.12

In cases in which a speaker does not succeed in communicating about the thing they wanted to, we might generally want to ask, was this the fault of the speaker or the audience, or was it beyond the control of either? One interlocutor might be at fault because they failed to fully appreciate the context of utterance, which might include appreciating certain things about their interlocutor that they could be expected to appreciate, such as their communicative interests (see also, §2.4). However, without the notion of what it is reasonable to take the reference of a name to have been, given the context, it is difficult to motivate the idea that one party or the other is at fault. Given all this, I suggest that, if it were to turn out that there is widespread lack of consistency amongst speakers of a language in their judgements about the reference of proper names, as is suggested by Machery et al. (2004), and this lack of consistency extended beyond philosopher’s hypothetical thought- experiments into real life cases, then we would likely have to give up on the idea of objective reference in the case in which there is no agreement between speaker and hearer about what is being referred to.

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Note that neither using a name referentially, nor accepting a speaker’s referential use of a name seem to entail being able to provide further information about the referent, so agreement upon reference may simply consist in deferring to one’s interlocutor.