Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

The central theme of semanticsW is (contingent) truth, and consequently reference (for reference is what is needed to compositionally yield truth).

Quine (1960) documented that if there were a relation of reference connecting expressions with objects of the world, then there would not be a possibility of determining it; and Davidson (1977) used this result to show that in such a case the whole concept of reference lacks sense.

If we can distinguish the two objects by means of what can be said about them, then the different names can possibly be formed as definite descriptions, otherwise not. This is Quine's inscrutability of reference.

For in order to know the nature of God (whose existence has been established by the preceding reasonings), as far as my own nature permitted, I had only to consider in reference to all the properties of which I found in my mind some idea, whether their possession was a mark of perfection; and I was assured that no one which indicated any imperfection was in him, and that none of the rest was awanting.

We must observe to begin with that meaning is not to be identified with naming or reference.

Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.

A felt need for meant entities may derive from an earlier failure to appreciate that meaning and reference are distinct.

Once the theory of meaning is sharply separated from the theory of reference, it is a short step to recognizing as the business of the theory of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of statements; meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities, may well be abandoned.

These statements are felt, therefore, to have a sharper empirical reference than highly theoretical statements of physics or logic or ontology.

For language is social and so depends for its development upon intersubjective reference.