In a comment, the Ostrich writes,
Some early analytic types, including Russell, tried to analyse proper names as disguised descriptions, but Kripke put a lid on that. Thus, on what Devitt calls the Semantic Presupposition, namely that there are no other possible candidates for a name’s meaning other than a descriptive meaning, or the bearer of the name itself, the mainstream analytic position is that the meaning of a proper name is the bearer of the name. The target of Reference and Identity is the Semantic Presupposition.
So far, so good. I agree that with respect to proper names, demonstratives, and indexicals, both description theories and direct reference theories fail. So it makes sense to investigate whether the Semantic Presupposition is a false alternative. But the Third Way of the Ostrich raises questions of its own and they incline me to think that it too leads to an impasse and is in the end No Way, a-poria.
Consider the proper name, 'Moses.' It does not refer to the expression 'the man who led the Israelites out of Egypt.' It refers to a man, not an expression. (9) Thus "'Moses' refers to a man" is true. But what makes it true? One might think that it is true in virtue of a relation that connects the name to a particular man, and thus to something extra-linguistic. But the Ostrich denies that there is an "external reference relation" that relates the name to something extra-linguistic. (9) What makes true the reference statement — "'Moses' refers to a man" — is "an internal relation between the reference statement and some textual or uttered antecedent." (9) It is not clear what this means since it is not clear how the reference statement can have an antecedent. I know what the antecedent of a pronoun is, but what is the antecedent of a sentence or statement? I also know that a statement can be the antecedent of a term. For example, "Snow is white. This everyone agrees to." In this example, the demonstrative 'this' has a statement as an antecedent. What I don't understand is how a statement can have an antecedent. But let that pass.
It is clear what the Ostrich wants to say: there is reference but all reference is intra-linguistic. That contrasts with what I am inclined to say, namely, that while some reference is intra-linguistic, not all reference is. The reference of 'he' is parasitic on the reference of 'Tom' in 'Tom enjoyed the massage he received' and so there is a sense in which the reference of 'he' is intra-linguistic; but 'Tom,' if it refers at all, refers extra-linguistically. In which precise sense is the reference of 'he' in our sample sentence intra-linguistic? Surely the pronoun 'he' does not refer to the name 'Tom'; the pronoun refers to the same item to which 'Tom' refers. So to say that the reference of 'he' is intra-linguistic is just to say that it picks up the reference of its antecedent and would not refer otherwise. Pronoun and noun are co-referential which is to say that they refer to the same item if they refer to anything. But the burden of objective reference is shouldered by the noun, not the pronoun. Or so say I.
The Ostrich's idea here is that "the semantic value of a proper name consists SOLELY in its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." (8, my emphasis)* Interpreting, one could say that reference is constituted by co-reference which is always an intra-linguistic matter. This would seem to issue in an objectionable linguistic idealism.
'Asmodeus,' we are told, refers to Asmodeus, so the name refers to something. It refers to a demon, not an expression, similarly as 'Moses' refers to a man, not an expression. But from the fact that 'Asmodeus' refers to something it does not follow that something exists which is the referent of 'Asmodeus.' (10) That is surely true. But it is also true that from the fact that 'Asmodeus' refers to something it does not follow that nothing exists which is the referent of 'Asmodeus.' So the referent of 'Asmodeus' may or may not exist.
I now put the question to the Ostrich: what is it for the referent to exist? We are assuming that there is no such demon as Asmodeus. And yet 'Asmodeus' refers to something. There is a difference between referring to something that does not exist and not referring to anything. Now the Ostrich told us that 'Asmodeus' refers to something. But then something is such that it does not exist, and we are in Meinongian precincts — which is precisely where an ostrich will not stray if he can help it.
So the Ostrich cannot mean that 'Asmodeus' refers to something that does not exist; he must mean that 'Asmodeus' is an empty/vacuous name, i.e., one that does not refer at all, one without a referent. Again, there is a plain difference between a term's having a non-existing referent and a term's having no referent at all.
The trouble with saying that 'Asmodeus' is an empty name, however, is that it conflicts with his theory according to which "the semantic value of a proper name consists SOLELY in its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." (8, my emphasis)* There is a conflict with the theory because 'Asmodeus' is a member of a chain of co-referring terms, which implies that 'Asmodeus' has a semantic value, an object, an object which exists simply in virtue of being an object. So Asmodeus exists after all.
The demon cannot both exist and not exist. One might say that that the demon does not exist in reality (outside language) but that it does exist in a language-immanent, 'internal' way as an object constituted by "its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." But if the demon does not exist in reality, then Moses does, in which case the reference statement — "'Moses' refers to a man" — must have an external reference relation as part of its truth maker.
If that is denied and reference is intra-linguistic only, then how account for the difference between the existent Moses and the nonexistent Asmodeus? After all, both names belong to chains of co-referring terms. Each name belongs to a narrative.
Is our Ostrich a POMO bird in the end?
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*I suspect that the Ostrich is using 'semantic value' in the way Gareth Evans uses it, namely, as equivalent to Frege's Bedeutung. Accordingly, the semantic value of a proper name is an object, that of a concept-word (Begriffswort) is a function, and that of a sentence (Satz) is a truth value (Wahrheitswert).
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