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Indexicality and semantic externalism

par Leclercq, Bruno;De Brabanter, Philippe
Référence "Indexicals and Demonstratives III" (3: 12 et 13 janvier 2023: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw (online))
Publication Non publié, 2023-01-13

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

Kripke (1972) notoriously claimed that, unlike descriptive terms whose defining features (intension) can be satisfied by different objects (have different extensions) in different worlds, proper names are rigid designators because their reference is fixed indexically rather than descriptively. Now, Kripke also claimed that this is also the case of some general terms, namely natural-kind terms, such as “gold” or “tiger”. This, as is well-known, has led to semantic externalist views according to which the meaning of (at least) some words is not fixed by their intension, which can “be in the speakers’ head”, but is fixed by the very nature of their referent, i.e. by the world itself.Building on the literature on semantic externalism (Wittgenstein 1953, Putnam 1975, Burge 1979, Wikforss 2001, Liu 2002, Sawyer 2003, Gertler 2012, Wikforss 2017), we will start by distinguishing this kind of semantic externalism, which we name “indexical externalism”, from two further kinds of semantic externalism. The first, which we name “conventional externalism”, takes the meaning of a word to rest in a definition conventionally fixed by certain experts – to which lay speakers defer even though they do not master it and “do not have it in their head; the second, which we name “usage-dependent externalism”, takes the meaning of a word to rest in the whole community practice so that it cannot be captured in a definition – so that speakers cannot “have it in their head”.We will then show that these three kinds of semantic externalism rest on three different kinds of semantic deference (Recanati 1997), and focus on the very specific kind of semantic deference that is at work in indexical externalism. Here semantic deference is somehow directed at the nature itself of the referent. However, it takes as a “proxy” semantic deference to the speakers who took part in the baptismal ceremony that fixed the meaning of the word by ostension, and subsequently to those who kept track of the referent up to the current scientific experts on the nature of this referent and then on to future scientific experts – unlike conventional externalism, indexical externalism is a temporal externalism (Jackman 2005).Finally, we will suggest that such an indexical externalism is not restricted to natural-kind terms that refer to phenomena studied by the natural sciences, but can also be extended to terms that belong to the social sciences or even to the common language, as is shown by empirical investigations we have conducted on semantic deference among lay speakers (Leclercq & De Brabanter 2019).