It's the case that even the words ‘this’ and ‘that’ must rely on some kind of descriptive content - at least for the speaker or "reference-fixer". Even if the reference-fixer doesn’t have a proper name or even an explicit description, he must still have individuated the this or the that otherwise how would he know what it is that he's in fact referring to? Which this or which that? This is certainly the case for the hearers.
How
does the speaker himself distinguish various x's from various
y's? After all, in an act of ostensive definition one could be
pointing at, say, the brown on the table, the cup on the table, or
whatever. Ostension alone can't individuate a this from a
that. And if it’s all a question of sense-data (as it was
for Bertrand Russell, see
Kripke, 1971), how does the speaker know that the hearer will have
the same kinds of sense-data? Even sense-data for the speaker
can't in and of itself individuate a this or a that.
Sense-data presuppose individuation; otherwise they wouldn’t be the
data of something. However, according to traditional
sense-data theorists, we move - or ‘infer’ - from sense-data to
the objects in the external world. But without prior individuation, how would the sense-data theorist distinguish between relevant and
irrelevant bits of sense-data? Presumably when the theorist has
sense-data of, say, a table, he'll also have sense-data of the things on the table, the colour of the table and the objects in
his general field of vision.
One
can see one reason why Saul Kripke (1971) was concerned to argue that
proper names have no descriptive content because the definite
descriptions of, say, Hesperus and Phosphorus don't coincide. It
followed, to Kripke, that proper names mustn't rely on their
descriptive content. Indeed they have no descriptive content at all,
otherwise how could they be deemed identical? And, similarly, how
could we know that they are one and the same thing? Therefore proper
names, Kripke argued, can't rely or depend on any descriptive
content.
We
name or ‘baptise’ what is at the end (as it were) of the ostended
point. But what is at the end of an ostended point? Take this view:
“… demonstrative reference, one has reference without any description. But this is merely a myth. Suppose I point to a brown table, and say, ‘This is brown.’ It is not my pointing alone which fixes the reference of the occurrence of ‘this’, for my finger will also be pointing at the edge of the table, or a small brown patch on the table.”
“Rather,
a factor in fixing the reference of my demonstrative is that I intend
to be demonstrating some object whose identity criteria are those of
tables, rather than those of small brown patches or edges…[so we
have] the massive indeterminacy of ostensive definition.” [Stanley,
1997]
The
above may be derived from Quine’s points about ostension:
“There is the question how wide an environment of the ostended point is meant to be covered by the term that is being ostensively explained…the question where one of its objects leaves off and another begins…It is meaningless to ask whether, in general, our terms ‘rabbit’, ‘rabbit part’, ‘number’, etc. really refer respectively to rabbits, rabbit parts, numbers, etc., rather than to some ingeniously permuted denotations. It is meaningless to ask this absolutely; we can meaningfully ask it only relative to some background language…Querying reference in any more absolute way would be like asking absolute position, or absolute velocity, rather than position or velocity relative to a given frame of reference.” [1969]
The
very reference to an ‘object’ (even an object qua object)
requires concepts to distinguish or individuate it. What is an object
and how do we identify it? What is that object? In order to know and
identify the object, don’t we need to know the object and be able to
identify it?
References
References
Kripke,
Saul. (1971) 'Identity
and Necessity'.
Quine,
W.V.O. (1969) 'Ontological
Relativity'. Stanley, Jason. (1997) 'Names and Rigid Designation'.
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