Reference is set by the speaker. — frank

I don't think it's that simple.

In cases where the speaker is mistaken, memory being what it is, it is possible for them to learn what they are trying to refer to.

(Example:
"When Maddux was pitching the last game of the World Series --"
"Maddux didn't pitch the last game; Glavine did."
"Okay then Glavine. No, wait, I know I was thinking of Maddux, so maybe it wasn't the last game I was thinking of ..."
And this can go on. It might turn out the speaker was remembering yet another pitcher he had mixed up with Maddux. It might or might not have been a World Series game.)

The other problem is that even if we say the reference is whatever the speaker intended, besides the problems already suggested above, intention not always being perfectly determined, we have the additional problem that words don't just mean whatever you want them to. The speaker has no choice but to engage in the grubby business of negotiating with the audience to achieve successful reference.

Grice noted the complexity of our intentions when we speak to each other, even in the absence of confounding factors: not only do I intend you to understand that I mean X by saying Y, I also intend you to recognize that I so intend, and I also intend you to recognize that I intend you to recognize that I intend you to understand I mean X by saying Y, and on and on.

So, no, I can't agree that it's just a matter of the speaker "setting" the reference, as if the audience were superfluous.

Reference is set by the speaker. — frank

Set, maybe. There's more.

The example is set at a party, presumably with many men and various drinks. The speaker says "The man over there with champaign in his glass..."; it's water, not champaign, but enough for the hearer to understand that the speaker does not mean any of the other blokes with a beer.

Pretty obviously, the reference is a success if the hearer and the speaker are in agreement as to who is being talked about.

Champaign or water, we have enough to move the conversation on.

And we can conclude that the reference was a success, despite the description being wrong.

I see you made the same point.

And we can conclude that the reference was a success, despite the description being wrong. — Banno

That's why I was suggesting that maybe a better way to understand this is "The man over there who I think has a glass of champagne in his hand." That way, the description is not wrong -- he's being identified as being the object of a thought of the speaker.

EDIT: Or no, better to say, "He's being identified using a thought of the speaker." He's the guy I think has a glass of champagne.

he's being identified as being the object of a thought of the speaker. — J

All sorts of problems with meaning as speaker intent. The most significant one is that we do not have access to what you intend, only to what you say. So we can't use your intent to fix the referent.

Pretty obviously, the reference is a success if the hearer and the speaker are in agreement as to who is being talked about. — Banno

So if no one understands what's being referenced, the reference failed? That doesn't make much sense to me. Referring is something done by fiat.

So we can't use your intent to fix the referent. — Banno

We do it all the time.

This raises the question, Could there be a private language of reference? — J

If you're using "private" the way Wittgenstein did, the answer depends on the extent to which meaning arises from rule following. If it's mostly rule following, then you couldn't establish rules by yourself.

If you're just asking if you can keep some information to yourself, yes.

@Pierre-Normand Do you agree with that?

So if no one understands what's being referenced, the reference failed? — frank

Well, yes.

We do it all the time. — frank

No. You use what is said or shown. We do not have access to intent. We might infer it, but...

Well, yes. — Banno

I disagree. The act of referencing does not succeed or fail. It's just done by fiat. Communication can succeed or fail.

No. You use what is said or shown. We do not have access to intent. We might infer it, but... — Banno

You do have access to intent by observation. If you have any questions about it you can ask.

maybe a better way to understand this is "The man over there who I think has a glass of champagne in his hand." That way, the description is not wrong — J

Unless it is. This is such a great example because the reference of the word "champagne" is regularly disputed. Are you using the word "champagne" "correctly"? Are you sure? Is there definitely a correct way?

Referring is something done by fiat. — frank

Tell us what you mean by that, and why you think so.

All sorts of problems with meaning as speaker intent. The most significant one is that we do not have access to what you intend, only to what you say. — Banno

But couldn't we get around that in the way I suggested earlier?:

We could rewrite "The man over there who I think has champagne in his glass" as follows: "The man over there about whom I say, 'He has champagne in his glass'." — J

This way, it's a behavior, not a mental intention, and the speaker still can't be "wrong about the reference", because it doesn't depend on whether the man really has champagne, only on whether the speaker says he does. The man is being identified as the subject of a statement, not as a person with a drink in his glass.

But then there's Srap's problem:

This is such a great example because the reference of the word "champagne" is regularly disputed. Are you using the word "champagne" "correctly"? Are you sure? Is there definitely a correct way? — Srap Tasmaner

In this case, I don't think the ambiguity of "champagne" matters. We know what the speaker is saying: "The man over there about whom I say, 'He has champagne in his glass' is . . . " and then presumably he fills it out with whatever he wants to claim about the guy ("is happy," "is an asshole" etc.). Whether the speaker knows what champagne is, and is conforming to an ostensibly correct usage, is surely beside the point of using the statement about the guy to pick him out.

Compare "The man over there about whom I say, 'He likes glunk' is . . . " We don't need to know a single thing about glunk in order to use the speaker's statement to successfully and incorrigibly fix the reference. All that matters is what he says. Turns out he's wrong about glunk? Turns out there's no such thing as glunk? The guy is still the same guy about whom the speaker made his statement.

I'm a little unconvinced by the "about whom I say..." locution, precisely because we're lacking a guarantee that the sentence the speaker utters means what he thinks it means (or "what he intends it to mean" or "what he means by it").

I know the tendency of this analysis is to brush off mistakes, but suppose you point out to the speaker -- for easy examples, imagine the speaker isn't quite fluent in the language he's using -- that the words used mean the person is a prostitute: you might end up with a speaker insisting that they wouldn't say that! You'll probably want to cover by changing your description to something like "about whom I mistakenly said ..." but that's no help. What, so you *thought* the person was a prostitute and now realize they aren't?! Doubt the speaker will agree to that. Keep trying. (See " A Plea for Excuses".)

And in the meantime, the speaker has still failed to refer, because once words are in the mix, you're stuck with them; either you trust them to faithfully carry your meaning, as your ambassadors, so to speak, or you allow that there must be negotiation between you and the audience.

"You know what I mean?" isn't always a rhetorical question, even when intended to be.

It's as if, what we need to say is that when you attempt to refer, you "hope" the words you utter will do the trick -- you could also hope you're using the "right" words but I think that's secondary. Now what is the audience to do with your hope? How does that help them know what you mean?

((There's a reason sitcoms are full of this sort of stuff.))

Tell us what you mean by that, — Srap Tasmaner

What I mean by what?

Referring is something done by fiat. — frank

I can't tell if you mean the whole thing, or the individual parts. How can I know?

The act of referencing does not succeed or fail. — frank

Well, seems to me that referring to something can fail in a few different ways, and that it might be worth paying them some attention. I treat them as speech acts, and so bring on board the sort of analysis found in Austin and Searle.

The intent can only ever be inferred.

I think I know what you're saying, but I can't be certain. It would be better to just stop trying to communicate.

I think I know what you're saying, but I can't be certain. — frank

So you don't get my intent?

That's fine, we could keep chatting and see if we can reach some agreement, or at least some point form which we might move on. That strikes me as more important than sorting out the Gavagai.

These are all good examples of what might go wrong, if the issue were one of meaning. But I don't think it is.

I was using "glunk" to try to de-fang the meaning question entirely, but perhaps I didn't go far enough. How about this: "The man over there who I make this noise [hideous shriek] when I see is . . . " Now are we outside of possible mistakes and ambiguities of meaning? All that matters is that the shriek fixes the reference.

Well, I'm not even sure what we're talking about now, but it looks like you are trying to create one of Wittgenstein's private languages. You want to have in hand an association between an object and something, a name, a referring expression, or a bit of behavior, and for that association to be something you can't be wrong about.

I think there are a couple layers to this. One is the apparent incorrigibility of attention: when I think of something, perceived or recalled or imagined, even if I am making important mistakes about the properties of that thing, even if I misidentify it, I cannot be wrong about it being the object of my thought (or intention). In my pitching example, the guy is remembering something someone did, even if it wasn't who he thinks it was or in the circumstances he thinks it was. There is, we want to say, a pure, original, and unimpeachable phenomenal experience underlying the stories we tell about it, even if those stories are all wrong. Even if it turns out the thing you're thinking about, that you think you remember, never happened, it's still what you are thinking about.

It's a compelling vision, but I suspect it is fundamentally mistaken.

When we come to language, the act of referring seems somehow to share in the unimpeachability of attention. The additional problem here is that "refer" is one of Ryle's "success words", so when we attempt to describe reference we describe successful reference. The downsides here are that (a) what is genuinely interesting, impressive, or mysterious is the element of "success" rather than something specific to referring; (b) our vocabulary blocks a proper comparison of successful and unsuccessful attempts at reference; (c) by being defined as successful, reference seems to take on the color of incorrigibility we associate (I think mistakenly) with attention.

You want to have in hand an association between an object and something, a name, a referring expression, or a bit of behavior, and for that association to be something you can't be wrong about. — Srap Tasmaner

even if I am making important mistakes about the properties of that thing, even if I misidentify it, I cannot be wrong about it being the object of my thought (or intention). — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. Both of these are what I'm aiming at.

Moreover, I want to take this out of "private reference," which would apply only to me, and make it what you're calling a successful reference -- one that I can use with others.

At this point I'm fairly sure I'm not grasping what you see as problematic here. Probably something simple I'm rushing past. Would you mind explaining a bit more? Perhaps using the shriek example? If I teach others that my shriek refers to Mr. Champagne, in what way could this reference fail for others, or be mistaken on my part? What could go wrong in a statement like "The man who I shriek when I see is a really nice guy"? (other than doubts about my sanity) The identifier is my behavior, not anything about him, and I can scarcely be wrong about whether I'm shrieking.

If I teach others that my shriek refers to Mr. Champagne, in what way could this reference fail for others, or be mistaken on my part? — J

This question is a non-starter. You're presuming the entire system of conceptualization and language usage is at your disposal, and then all you're doing is in effect introducing a word by stipulation. It is interesting that we can do this, but it doesn't get anywhere near addressing the questions you're interested in.

We're actually covering similar territory to the memory discussion. My position is that rather than the pure phenomenal experience we overlay with narrative, which we can then strip away, all we've got is narrative. The process you imagine of "stripping away" is real, but creative, it's making a new thought out of the thoughts that came to you not just enmeshed in context, but constituted by our systems of understanding and communicating. I don't think you really have the option to just set those aside and recover some original underlying experience ― you never had access to any such experience.

The idea, as I conceive it, is similar to Sellars's argument in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind": he allows that there must be some sort of raw inputs to our thinking processes, but denies that they have any cognitive status whatsoever. In particular, they cannot serve the Janus-faced role thrust upon them, linking on the one side to purely causal processes of sensation, and on the other side to our conceptual apparatus of knowledge and reason. Nothing can fill that role.

As it is vain to seek the primordial unconceptualized experience, it is vain to seek the originary act of referring within a mind that knows no other minds.

You're presuming the entire system of conceptualization and language usage is at your disposal, and then all you're doing is in effect introducing a word by stipulation. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, yes, but isn't that what Kripke is interested in too? He wants to know how we fix the reference of a new term -- a proper name, say. The baby's name is a stipulation, if anything is. And with a proper name, no less than with a shriek, we find ourselves in the middle of a "conceptualization and language system." Don't we have to presume that?

Again, I feel I must be missing something very obvious. Why is the question about teaching others the meaning of my shriek a non-starter? Words of one syllable, please, I'm floundering here! :wink:

I'm sure it's my fault. Of course it should be possible to provide an account of what makes names names, what makes them special, what their role in language is, what makes them different, and this is the sort of thing Kripke is up to. Sure.

But we were also talking about reference as such, and it's clear to me that an account of names in terms of baptism, or words in terms of stipulation, can't also serve as an account of reference but presumes it. If you want to teach someone "blork" means that thing, you have to already be able to successfully refer to that thing. (I think Wittgenstein raises similar objections to theories of demonstrative teaching, as if pointing "just worked".)

So talk about stipulation and teaching all you like, but it doesn't get you to that level of originary reference you're chasing, the intentionality you cannot be mistaken about. It relies on that; it doesn't explain it or even describe it.

If you want to teach someone "blork" means that thing, you have to already be able to successfully refer to that thing. — Srap Tasmaner

Consider "Let's agree that this thing is Blork". Who teaches who here? Isn't the choice to use "blork" an agreement, if not a commitment?

There's an indexical built in: "this". Indeed, can we have a language without such an ability? It would be a mere syntax, a string of letters or sounds.

Reference goes all the way down.

I think the ability to pick out a part of the world is there in potential in an infant. That potential is realized through interaction with others. As Kripke points out, none of us has access to the baptisms of common words. Humans have probably been speaking for at least 100,000 years. That's a long causal chain.

I don't think what happens between people in a moment of communication is about a new ceremonious confirmation of that chain, as in "Yes, you successfully referred to the tree because I agree that that is called a tree." None of that is necessary because a whole section of the brain has been configured to handle a particular language by the time a child is 2 years old. A child can literally talk to herself at that age. She doesn't need anyone else, and the Private Language argument isn't suggesting otherwise. Do you agree with that?

So talk about stipulation and teaching all you like, but it doesn't get you to that level of originary reference you're chasing, the intentionality you cannot be mistaken about. It relies on that; it doesn't explain it or even describe it. — Srap Tasmaner

This is good stuff. A couple of points.

The type of stipulation used would be a status function, a "counts as" Statement. There is a mutuality in the stipulation - we think of it as the adult teaching the child, but it's more like a joining in to a conversation - consider how we each learn a name. Sometimes a definite description is available, sometimes - often - not. Always, involves a community.

And there need be no "intentionality you cannot be mistaken about'. Back to the derangement of epitaphs. We can set rules up, as needed, but then they will fall, or be pushed.

Non of which detracts from what you said.

"Yes, you successfully referred to the tree because I agree that that is called a tree." — frank

On the other hand, if we do not have some such agreement, we might not be able to continue. There's adequacy between certainty and incomprehension.

On the other hand, if we do not have some such agreement, we might not be able to continue. — Banno

True. But I still referred to the tree. I don't need your buy-in for that.

So talk about stipulation and teaching all you like, but it doesn't get you to that level of originary reference you're chasing, the intentionality you cannot be mistaken about. It relies on that; it doesn't explain it or even describe it. — Srap Tasmaner

This is helpful, and I think you're right, except I wan't really looking for such a level of reference. My chain of thought was mainly an attempt to do better than "That man over there with champagne in his glass", which has all the problems of mistaken reference that you and Kripke and many others have pointed out. And I think there's a valid distinction to be made between a property that we use to designate something rigidly, and a statement we use to do so. Or perhaps I should back up and ask whether the statement-type designation -- "He is the person about whom I say . . ." -- is rigid.

Consider "Let's agree that this thing is Blork". Who teaches who here? Isn't the choice to use "blork" an agreement, if not a commitment? — Banno

Well, yes, but it's fair to say that, in many cases, there is an originator, a teacher, and one who learns. If I wish us to refer to a certain tree outside my window, I have to do the pointing. Then, of course, we can agree.

True. But I still referred to the tree. I don't need your buy-in for that. — frank

This is getting to some crucial questions about the "game" of reference. (OK, sometimes "game" is the right word! :smile: ) Like you, I'm holding out for reference as a potentially private game. Talking, so often, is talking to ourselves, and we need all the apparatus of talking-with-others to do it. Now it may be that a criterion for successful private reference would be that, if challenged, the person could introduce others to the game. Arguably, if you can't make it clear to someone else, you aren't clear about it yourself. But that's a different point. If there's a pile of papers on my floor and I say to myself, "Right, that's the pile I need to file tomorrow," I have performed a very common and useful act of reference. I can now think of the pile that way, compare it with other piles, etc. We could, I suppose, deny that this is an act of reference, and argue for using "reference" in a different way, one that must involve others, but what would be the warrant for that?

Like you, I'm holding out for reference as a potentially private game. Talking, so often, is talking to ourselves, and we need all the apparatus of talking-with-others to do it. Now it may be that a criterion for successful private reference would be that, if challenged, the person could introduce others to the game. — J

I wonder if people assess the situation according to their own experience of thinking and speaking. I think Srap Tasmaner is basically saying he doesn't think at all when he's not engaging another person. I think he's saying he's not even conscious of the world around him until he discusses it, at which point a sort of negotiated narrative comes into being. I can't connect with that at all. I have no idea how a person would even become conscious that this was happening.

My experience is more that speech has a metaphoric connection with things my nervous system is doing automatically.