Russell on the semantics and pragmatics of indexicals

RUSSELL ON THE SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF INDEXICALS

LAWRENCE ROBERTS

Russell says a great deal about indexicals over many years of writing. Much of what he has to say is epistemic in nature, concerning the sorts of beliefs and experiences associated with indexicals. However, much of it is also semantic, concerning the relation between indexical terms and their denotata, and pragmatic, concerning the circumstances of the particular uses of indexicals which affect their denotation. In this paper I propose to discuss mainly the semantic and pragmatic aspects of his discussion, especially as these appear in two relatively late works of his, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, and Human Knowledge. These later treatments of indexicals by Russell are generally ignored in recent literature on indexicals, where references are made instead to his early papers o n denoting and on acquaintance and logical atomism, and his theory of descriptions is taken to be explanatory of indexicals. 1 There are serious problems about how to relate Russell's doctrine of indexicals to his doctrine of proper names and descriptions: Russell says apparently inconsistent things about these doctrines. But before the relation of these doctrines can be sorted out, Russell's doctrine of indexicals must be clarified. This clarification is at- tempted in the present paper. 2 My discussion is not intended as a merely historical exercise: one fundamental point in Russell's theory is, in my opinion, both correct and generally ignored in recent discussions of indexicals.

I. Ego-centricity In An Inquiry tnto Meaning and Truth, Russell (1940: 134)

introduces indexical terms by describing them as terms whose denotation is relative to the speaker, and by a list of samples of them. After a brief discussion of the ways in which indexicals differ from ordinary proper names and descriptions, he concludes that index-

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icals are neither ordinary proper names nor descriptions, though they involve a general predicate, "object of attention" (1940: 138). He reasons that something in addition to this general predicate is needed "in order to secure the temporary uniqueness of 'this' " (1940: 138). This further determinative factor, on Russell's view, is a relation of the user of the indexical term to the designatum 3 of the term. Since the basis of this relation is the speaker of the term, Russell calls indexicals "ego-centric." In the present section of the paper, I will discuss the use of the speaker as the basis for the relation that determines the designatum, and in the next section I will discuss the precise nature of this relation between the speaker and the designatum.

Because Russell's doctrine that indexicals are ego-centric is similar to Reichenbach's doctrine that they are token-reflexive, I propose to discuss Reichenbach's treatment of indexicals, and in particular, a problem in it that casts light on a parallel problem in Russell's view. Reichenbach (1947: 257,284) holds that most descriptions that designate an individual are formed by reference to another individual within the description, e.g., 'Napoleon's mother. ' In the case of indexicals, Reichenbach (1947: 284) suggests that they designate an individual on the basis of a reference to themselves: indexicals "refer to the corresponding token used in an individual act of speech" and thus may be "called token-reflexive words." Note that Reichenbach picks as the basis of the relation that determines the designatum the token used in the act of speech rather than the act o f speech that uses the token. The former is the shape or sounds that constitute the word as a particular physical object, and the latter is the act of using the word to make a speech act of reference or designation. These two aspects of the use of a token usually go together, so that in speaking or writing a person usually both produces certain sounds or marks, and uses those sounds or marks to designate something. However, these aspects can occur separately, and the possibility of this separation renders token-reflexivity an insufficiently lbrecise basis for the determination of indexical designation. For instance, suppose that a tourist in the U.S.A. who knows no English uses a card on which is printed

1. How much does this cost?

Each time he uses the card by showing the card and a piece of merchandise to a salesperson in a store, he is making a different particular speech act of designation even though the token is exactly

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the same. Since the token is the same in each case, mere token- reflexivity will not account for the difference in designation; rather, the basis of the relation to the designatum must be the particular use of the term. Reichenbach's doctrine of token-reflexivity ought to be replaced by a doctrine of particular-use-reflexivity.4

Parallel to the problem in Reichenbach's doctrine of token- reflexivity is a problem in Russell's doctrine of ego-centricity. Suppose that a speaker asserts the following while making aprop- riate gestures:

2. The depth of the fish tank ranges from here to here.

In this use of (2), the term 'here' will have a different designatum for each of its uses, despite the fact that the same speaker at the same spatial location makes the two designations. Of course, there is a difference in the temporal location of the speaker in relation to the two uses of 'here.' Nevertheless, in this use of (2), more than a relation to the speaker, or even to the speaker at particular space- time location, is needed to account for the difference in the two designations of 'here': it is the speaker as making a particular speech act of designating that is fundamental to the identification of the des~matum. This difference in particular speech acts of designation provides the basis for the determination of the designatum in the present case because different gestures accompany each particular act of designation and indicate the different designata. This argument based on the use of (2) shows that ego~entricity does not provide a sufficiently precise basis for determining the designatum. Next I will argue that ego-centricity might be totally absent in some cases of indexical designation. For instance, suppose that the following is printed on a sign that is posted on a lawn:

3. Keep off the grass.

When people read this sign, acts of designation are made by means of 'the grass' and the understood subject of the verb, even though the ego who made the sign (or who posted it or who authorized its being posted) is not present. Thus the determination for (3) of the context relevant to the designatum of 'the grass' (and that of the understood subject) cannot depend on the speaker and his space-time location, sifice no speaker is present. Rather, file basis for determining the designaturn of 'the grass' (and that of the understood subject) is the particular act of designation made by means of the use of the terms.

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My conclusion is that the basis for a relation to the designatum that identifies the designatum is the particular act of using the indexical to designate something, and that ego-centricity and token- reflexivity, although usually, but not always, associated with particular-use-centricity, provide inadequate bases for determining the designaturn. I consider my view that indexicals are particular-use- centered to be a tidying up of Russell's view and a small alteration in Reichenbach's view rather than a sharp disagreement with them. Russell, on occasion, describes ego-centric words exactly as particular-use-centered: "what they [ego-centric words] indicate is something having a given relation to the particular use of the words" (1948: 92). The change that I recommend in Reichenbach's view from taking the token used in the act of reference as the basis for determining designation to taking the act of designation which uses the token as the basis for determining designation is a change that is small but needed to handle cases like that of (1). However, if we grant that it is the particular use of an indexical that provides the basis for a relation that determines the designation of an indexical, the question of the nature of this relation still remains. This question is the topic of the next section.

II. The Determining Relation between the Use of an Indexical and its Designatura

A. The Causal-Cain View of the Determination of Indexical Designation.

Since many things other than the designatum are in close relations with the speaker when an indexical term is used, Russell needs to specify the precise nature of the relation of the use of an indexical by a speaker to its designatum. In specifying the nature of this relation, Russell often speaks of the 'object of attention,' but he points out that "something more than this general concept is required in order to secure the t~mporary uniqueness of 'this' " (1940: 138). Though he calls 'object of attention' a general concept and a predicate, his explications of its role in the determination of indexical designation involve perception by the speaker rather than predication. In An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth he attempts to specify the "relation of the user of a word to the object with which the word is concerned" (1940: 138) by means of a causal chain. He introduces this theory by a parallel to a machine that says 'this' and "that': "It says 'this' when the external cause (red light falling on it) first operates upon it, and it says 'that' when the

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first effect has led to certain further occurrences in the machine" (1940: 139). For humans the relation of indexicals to their designata is similarly explained:

A minimal causal chain, in this connection, is the shortest possible chain from a stimulus outside the brain to a verbal response. Other causal chains always involve some additional stimulus, causing the stored effect of the previous stimulus to be released and to produce a delayed verbal response. In the case of a minimal causal chain we say '`this is," and in the case of a longer one we say "that was. ' 's (1940: 139).

Thus the connection between a speaker's use of an indexical and its designatum is a perceptual relation which Russell explicates in terms of stimulus-response psychology: the causal chain from the stimulus produces a response (the use of the indexical) which in virtue of being so produced takes the stimulus as its designatum.

B. Criticism of the Causal Chain View of the Determination of Indexical Designation:

There are a number of problems in Russell's causal chain view of 'this' and 'that. ' First, there is the problem of imprecision: how long is the chain to be for 'this,' and how long for ' that '? Secondly, there is the problem of which item in the causal chain is to be picked out as the designatum of the indexical: since there are inter- mediary causes between the designatum and the saying of 'this,' how do we decide which thing on the causal chain is the designatum? Also, since the causal chain can be extended further back beyond the designatum, how do we know that we are to end the chain at a certain thing as the designatum? Thirdly, the stimulus-response psychology involved in the causal chain view is too simple for obvious facts of indexical reference. There is no stimulus that is by itself a sufficient condition for the saying of `this'; one might be silent despite the pres- ence of the stimulus. Therefore, some intervening factors between the stimulus and the response must play a role in the saying of 'this'; these intervening factors would include the speaker's knowledge, interests, and choices, consideration of which will produce a more com- plicated theory of indexicals. Fourthly, the causal chain view makes the determination of designation an affair that is private to the speaker: the causal chain from a stimulus, through the nerves to the brain, through other nerves to the muscles controlling speech, cannot be observed from the outside without special equipment, and even the speaker is aware of the ends of the chain rather than

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the chain itself. Since it is difficult if not impossible for the hearer to know what is at the start of causal chains that are inside the speaker's nervous system and produce the words, Russell's view is deficient in accounting for the heater's ability to discern the designata of indexicals used by another person. There are other problems in Russell's causal chain view of the determination of indexical designation, but they can be conveniently considered later with the objections to his later explication of indexicals.

C. The Center-of-Attention View of the Determination of Index- ical Designation.

In his later discussion 6 of indexicals in Human Knowledge, Russell removed the stimulus-response psychology of his earlier view, but retained his emphasis on the role of sense perception:

It is to be observed that 'here' and 'now' depend upon perception; in a purely material universe there would be no 'here' and 'now'. Perception is not impartial, but proceeds from a center (1948: 92).

This center is the speaker: "Whenever the word [~this'] is used, the person using it is attending to something, and the word indicates this something" ((my underlining) 1948: 92). Russell (1948: 92) holds that-ego-centric words indicate something having a certain relation to the particular use of the words. He explicates this rela- ion for 'this' as follows: " 'This' denotes whatever, at the moment when the word is used, occupies the center of attention." Note "that it is not the description (or predicate or property) 'center of the speaker's attention at time TI ' that determines the designation of 'this,' but rather the actual perceptual relation between the speaker and the object occupying the center of his attention that determines the designation. Thus Russell has retained a perceptual explication of the relation between:a speaker's use of an indexical and its designatum, even though he has removed his earlier explication of that perceptual relation by the causal chain doctrine. The result is that his later doctrine uses the speaker's perception to explain the determination of indexical denotation, but offers no explanation of the functioning of the speaker's perception. 7 This omission is reasonable, since in a discussion of linguistic matters one cannot be expected to undertake a discussion of the theory of perception as well.

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D. Criticism of the Center-of-Attention View of the Determina- tion of Indexical Designation:

Although Russell's later doctrine of indexicals, in which the perceptual attention of the speaker determines the linguistic designation of the indexical term, is important for its assignment of a major role to perception in the determination of designation and for avoiding the problems of his earlier stimulus-response view, it is vulnerable to counter-examples. Consider first an example, that shows that it is at least an open empirical question whether the speaker focuses his perceptual attention on the designata of indexicals that he uses. Suppose that a speaker says to one of two children near him,

4. I want you to give her that innertube.

This sentence contains four indexicals. It is unlikely that the speaker focuses his perceptual attention on each of the four denotata just as he says each of the indexicals; it may well happen that his eyes focus only on the addressee as he says (4).

Even if exactly one thing occupies the center of the speaker's perceptual attention when he uses 'this', it need not be the referent of 'this': thus being the center of the speaker's perceptual attention is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being the referent of 'this'. Consider a situation in which I am riding on an elevator at my university with a colleague, and a gorilla gets on the elevator and begins menacing us: I then say

5. This university should do something about its admission standards.

In this situation the gorilla occupies the center of my (and my hearer's) perceptual attention: if this were not true, then (5)would not work as a joke, since the joke works on some sort of supposition that this gorilla has been admitted to the university. Thus it is obvious that in the situation described, the indexical noun phrase 'this university' deisgnates something that is not at the center of his perceptual attention at the time he uses the word 'this.'

One might reply to my objection against Russell by suggesting that the use of 'this university' in (5) shifted the speaker's center of attention from the gorilla to the university, so that 'this' does designate what is at the speaker's center of attention. This reply would be misguided for three reasons. First, though demonstratives

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may be used to shift attention, it is for the hearer that they do so rather than for the speaker. The speaker must choose his words to convey what he wants to convey, and in his wanting to designate a certain thing, he thinks of it either before or simultaneously with his use of the demonstrative; he would not first use the demonstrative NP (noun phrase) and then later, for the first time, think of what it designates.

Secondly, although the reply provides for a connection between the demonstrative NP and the speaker's center of attention, this connection is in reverse order compared to the one Russell ad- vocated. In the reply, the linguistic fact of designation is said to determine the speaker's attention, whereas Russell claimed that the speaker's attention determined the designation. This brings up the third problem in the reply: on Russell's view, it was not just any type of speaker's attention that determined the speaker's referent, but rather the speaker's perceptual attention. However, the reply makes no mention of perceptual attention, and instead talks only of attention in general. My conclusion is that (5) provides a case in which an indexical designates something other than what is at the center of the speaker's perceptual attention.

E. The Positive Value of Russell's Doctrine of the Connection between the Use of Indexicals and their Designata.

Despite the fact that Russell's doctrine of the relation between the use of indexicals and their designata is incorrect in both versions, it contains an insight that is, in my opinion, both valuable and little noticed in recent literature. Not ignored in the recent literature on indexicals is Russell's doctrine of ego-centricity, which appears in the guise of context-dependence, but his doctrine that perception determines indexical designation appears in only two recent authors, s Yet this latter doctrine has at least three considerations in its favor. First, common experience shows us that perception normally plays a key role in the use of indexicals. We look to see who says T to find out its designatum, and ~'or 'here' and 'now' we observe where and when they are used. When 'this' or ' that ' is used we usually look to see what, if anything, the speaker is pointing at, and for 'you' we look to see whom the speaker is looking at. My intent here is not to show that perception must underlie indexical use, but only to show that perception does play an important role in many uses of indexicals. Although there are cases in which the designatum of an indexical is not an object of sense perception (e.g., the subject

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of (5)), any theory of indexical reference must take into account the common cases in which perception plays an important role in the communication of what is denoted by indexicals. However, in these common cases in which sense perception plays an important role in indexical reference, the hearer's perception, which Russell neglected, plays at least as important a role as that of the speaker. Nevertheless, Russell emphasized perception in indexical reference even if his emphasis was misplaced in being on the speaker's rather than the hearer's perception.

It is a common view that indexicals have either wide scope or are scopeless (i.e., indifferent to wide or narrow scope). In either case, they are not subordinated to propositional attitudes or modal operators. A second advantage of Russell's use of sense perception to provide the relation that determines the designatum of an index. ical is that it renders indexicals scopeless in a non-ad-hoc way. Because the perceptual relation between speaker and designatum is not the same as quantifying over a description that is true of the designatum, wide scope, which requires quantification, does not result. Rather, the result is scopelessness, because the perception of the speaker which determines the designatum is independent of and thus not subordinated to any propositional attitudes or modal operators which might appear in the sentence, e.g.,

6. I would like to believe that this gorilla is tame.

7. It is possible that this cave contains the treasure.

The NP 'this gorilla' in (6) is not subordinated to the propositional attitude of liking or liking to believe because the perception of the gorilla, which lies at the basis of the designation, is not subject to this attitude. Similarly, in (7), the perception lying at the basis of the designation of the cave is not subordinated to the possibility operator. Therefore, Russell's use of sense perception to determine indexical designation explains the scopelessness of indexicals.

A third advantage of Russell's perceptual explication of indexicals concerns rigidity of designation. Kripke (1980: 48) defined a rigid designator as an expression that designates the same object in every possible world (but he does not require that the object exist in every possible world). Although this definition appears to treat rigidity as a property of expressions, Kripke (cf. 1980: 9) intends it to be instead a property of expressions as used in a particular context. The latter treatment enables Kripke to avoid the obvious objection that a name like 'Aristotle' is not a rigid designator because more

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than one individual has the name. Despite his pointing out that he intended indexicality to be a property of expressions as used in a particular context, Kripke (1980: 8) persists in saying that his original definition in which rigidity was said to be a property of expressions was not objectionable because when speaking of the truth conditions of sentences containing a name he assumed a particular reading for the name and the sentence containing it. This assumption, however, does not salvage his definition of rigidity as a property of expressions; rather it shows that the reason why bad results in interpreting examples did not follow from his definition was that he supposed in discussing examples that rigidity was a property of uses of expressions rather than of expressions themselves. My conclusion, then, is that Kripke's definition of rigidity should be altered to fit his practice in applying it to examples, so that rigid designation is then defined as a property of a use of an expression by which the expression refers to the same object in all possible worlds. This change is also reasonable on general grounds of theory of language because rigidity is a matter of reference and not of meaning; since reference occurs only in particular uses of expressions and does not pertain to expressions in isolation from such uses, rigidity as a property of reference must pertain to particular uses of expressions and not to expressions in themselves. 9 Another advantage of defining rigidity as a property of particular uses of expressions rather than of expressions themselves is that the definition then is obviously applicable to indexicals, whereas his original definition did not seem to be applicable since the same indexical expression obviously has different referents on most of its uses.

Now that rigidity has been suitably defined for application to indexicals, the third advantage of Russell's perceptual theory of indexicals can be stated: the perceptual account of indexicals provides a non-ad-hoc explanation of why indexicals are rigid designators. Kripke has suggested his causal chain theory of proper names as an account that allowed proper names to be rigid designators, but he did not explain the precise nature of the chain or how it provided for rigidity. Formal treatments of indexicals do not offer in themselves an account of how the rigidity of indexical$ arises from the psychological functioning of indexicals in natural language; for instance, to say that indexicals are to be represented by a free variable is not to say how its designation is fixed. Some formalists do offer accounts of the psychological functioning of

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indexicals as a side issue; however, these accounts are usually either variations of Russell's theory of definite descriptions or some variety of appeal to context. 1~ Russell's perceptual account of indexicals is more detailed than those of the formalist appeal to contexts or of Kripke's causal chain view, and Russell's view avoids obvious objections against the assimilation of indexicals to Russellian definite descriptions. On Russell's account, since the designatum of an indexical and the sense perceptions which determine it are in the same possible world as that in which the indexical is used (normally the actual worldtl), the determination of the desig- nature will occur in that one world also. Therefore, statements about that designatum in relation to other possible worlds (i.e., in circumstances different than the actual ones) do not involve picking the designatum out of these other possible worlds. Rather, the same designatum is designated throughout all possible worlds, and this occurs whether or not the designatum exists in the world in question. 12 Consider some examples of uses of 'this dog' as a rigid designator:

8. If this dog were owned by John or by Bill, it would be better trained.

9. If an atomic bomb went off here a minute ago, this dog would not exist.

10.If I were an animal, I would like to be this dog because it is so pampered.

The question of how in (8 -10) one can pick out the designaturn of 'this dog" from the possible world involved in each example is a pseudo-question in that it rests on the false supposition that the designatum is to be picked out from the possible world established by the contrary-to-fact condition. Rather, the designatum of 'this dog' is in each case picked out from the same world as that in which the indexical is used; this point is most clearly seen in (9) since in the possible world established by its contrary-to-fact condition there is no entity to be picked out by 'this dog.' My conclusion is that Russell's perceptual account has the advantage of providing a non-ad-hoc explanation of the rigidity of indexicals in such a way that indexicals refer to the same thing in all possible worlds, even those in which that thing fails to exist.

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F. A Criticism of Russell's Questions about the Connection of Indexicals and their Designata.

The criticism in sections (II B) and (II D) attacked only Russell's answers to questions about indexicals, but a more fundamental level of criticism can be developed concerning his questions about indexicals. Three versions of questions about indexicals either appear or are answered in Russell's discussions:

QI. What is the meaning of an indexical term? ~a

Q2. How is the use of an indexical term connected with its designatum ?

Q2A. How is the use of an indexical term connected with its designatum by the speaker?

The replacement of (Q1) by (Q2) is a change from a question about meaning to a question about designation: since meaning includes in addition to the semantic question of designation certain syntactic-semantic questions about the relation of the designatum to other factors in the proposition, this is an important restriction of the question. However, the question of the designation of indexicals can, in my opinion, be discussed profitably in abstraction from questions about other aspects of meaning. (Q2) also shifts the discussion from indexicals in general to particular uses of indexicals: this shift is justified because of the importance of the context of the use of indexicals in determining their designation. In contrast, Russell's change from (Q2) to (Q2A) has a large and deleterious effect on his discussion. There appear to be two reasons for this change. First is Russell's emphasis on ego-centricity: since a relation to the speaker himself rather than to the speaker's use of the indexical is fundamental on his view to the determination of its designatum, it apparently appeared to Russell that the relation to the designatum is entirely or primarily the doing of the speaker. Second is Russell's neglect of communication: he makes no mention either of the hearer of indexical~, or of conventions governing communication by means of which the hearer might discern the referential intent of the speaker. Because of these reasons, Russell believed that (Q2) was a single question whose answer was the same as the answer to (Q2A). However, if communication of indexical reference is considered, (Q2) contains, in addition to (Q2A), two other questions:

Q2B. How is the use of an indexical connected with its destgna- turn by the hearer?

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Q2C. How is the use of an indexical connected with its designaturn according to linguistic conventions governing the use of indexicals?

Once communication in indexical reference is taken as important, the central question is (Q2C). If communication is taken as important in understanding indexical designation, the speaker cannot be taken to connect the use of the indexical and its designatum by purely private means because then the hearer would have no access for discerning the connection. Some public connection between the use of the indexical and its designatum must exist so that the hearer can discern the connection, and the speaker must work to achieve this public connection. Conventions for the connection of indexicals and their designata provide a needed means for establishing this public connection: for the speaker they provide a means for making his referential intention publicly accessible, and for the hearer they provide a means by which he can discern the speaker's referential intention. Two stages are present in the speaker's referential activity, first, having the referential intention, and second, encoding it according to the appropriate conventions, so that the use of the indexical has the intended referent as its designatum. The first stage is private in nature, but the second makes this private intention public by means of the publicly known conventions for indexical designation. Russell's answers to (Q2A) by the causal-chain and center-of-attention views fail to distinguish these two stages, and offer a connection between the use of an indexical and its designatum that is basically private. A corresponding pair of stages are present in reverse order in the hearer's discerning of the referential intention: the hearer first decodes according to the appropriate conventions the connectiota between the use of the indexical and its designatum, and then infers the speaker's intended referent on this basis plus other knowledge about the speaker. Thus the linguistic conventions covering indexical use are intermediating devices con- necting the speaker's referential intentions with the hearer's discern- ment of these intentions.

Despite Russell's neglect of communication in his discussion of indexicals, his doctrines of ego-centricity and of the perceptual determination of indexical designation were close to" correct. If communication were emphasized, his theory would be modified so that ego-centricity would be replaced by particular-use-centricity because all the circumstances (not just the speaker, but his actions, gestures, descriptions, and the context) of the particular use contri-

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bute to communica t ion . An emphasis on c o m m u n i c a t i o n would also lead to modi fy ing the perceptual basis for the de te rmina t ion o f indexical designation so that percept ion would be involved in a way that is publicly assessible. How this might be done is ma t t e r for another paper.

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NOTES

, For instance, Salmon (1981:22-23) and Saarinen (1982:263 and 276, note 13) take Russell ultimately to explain indexicals by descriptions; Smith (1982: 206, note 3) correctly cites Russell as having a percpetual theory of indexicals, but he (1982: 187) simply brushes aside Russell's theory of descriptions and the problem of how it relates to ordinary proper names.and to indexicals. Also, none of these three authors include in their references or bibliography either of Russell's late works (1940 and 1948) on indexicals. In recent collections of articles on indexicals reference and of articles on the philosophy of Russell, no articles take up Russell's theory of indexicals as a primary topic. There have been two excellent recent articles (Pears (1981) and Clark (1981)) on Russell's doctrine of acquaintance, which is closely associated with his doctrine of indexicals, but both articles emphasize epistemic issues, and do not attempt to explain his doctrine of indexicals.

= In another paper ("Russell on the Relation of Indexicals and Definite Descriptions"), I discuss the relation of his doctrine of indexicals both to his doctrines of descriptions and of proper names and to certain of his epistemic doctrines.

s I am using the terms 'designatum' and 'designation' rather than either Russell's usual terms, 'denotatum' ~_nd 'denotation', or Reichenbach's usual term, .reference', to avoid theoretical baggage sometimes associated with 'denotation' and .reference': 'denotation' sometimes brings along a presupposition that the denoting term functions in virtue of Russell's theory of descriptions, and 'reference' sometimes carries the presupposition that reference is made only by speakers and not by words.

4 John Searle (1979: 120) also comments on this problem in Reichen- bach's doctrine of toekn-reflexivity.

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s In this text it appears that the stimulus is the action of the physical object on us, but Russell (1940: 142) later states that the word 'this' applies to something that we directly experience, and thus cannot apply to a cat as an object in the outer world, but only to our percept of a cat. In his later treatment of indexieals in Human Knowledge (1948: 89-92), Russell distinguishes between subjective and objective meanings for indexicals: a percept of a cat is an example of the former and the real eat is an example of the latter. These problems about the real cat vs. the percept of the cat are epistemological ones which I am putting aside In order to concentrate on semantic anctpragmatic ones: the relation of these epistemologieal issues to semantic ones is discussed In the paper men- tioned in note (2).

s Also Included in the later treatment are lengthy eplstemologteal dis- cusstons of acquaintance and of the contrast of objective and subjective meaning. Since my interests in this paper He in Russell's semantic and pragmatic doctrines rather than his epistemology, I omit discussion of these epistemological topics. This later doctrine is in fact close to being a return to his earliest view of Indexieals as they were treated in relation to his doctrine of acquaintance. In this treatment indexicals were said to function In virtue of the speaker's acquaintance with their designata; though acquaintance included in addition to sense perception other Wpes of knowledge (1912: 48-51), in one place Russell (1918: 201) says that 'this' stands for an object of sense and in other places he presupposes that indexicals work by perception (e.g., 1914: 164). However, this early work does not include the point from Human Knowledge that it is the center of the speaker's attention that determines the designatum of an indexical; moreover, the emphasis of the early (1910-1918) treatments is on the doctrine of acquaintance, whereas the emphasis of the treatments of the 1940 's is on how indexieals function.

s The two are Smith (1982) and Castafieda (1977 and 1980), and neither of these appear to have derived their views from Russell. Several other recent philosophers have held views that are just a step away from a perceptual analysis of the functioning of Indexicals, but none of these have taken that step. Howard K. Wettstein (1981) takes Indexieals to work in virtue of pointing, a view that is, In my opinion, on the right track and yet generally ignored despite the obvious etymology of 'indexical'. But Wettstein does not make the likely next step to' a doctrine of the perceptual functioning of indexieais. David Kaplan (1978: 233) also suggests that definite descriptions be assimilated to pointing rather than vice versa, but when he develops his doctrine In the following pages, he offers unique satisfaction analyses rather than a model based on pointing. John Searle (1979: 136) suggests that linguistic phenomena must be understood as developments on basic mental phenomena, including sense perception, but when he explicitly discusses index-

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icals in various places he assimilates them to Russelllan descriptions. Tyler Burge (1974) mentions a role for perception in indexical reference, but then assimilates it to the context, and offers no theory of the work- ings of perception or context in determining indexical designation.

9 This general point is the same as Strawson's distinction in "On Denoting" between the meaning of an expression and the use of an expression to refer.

1o E.g., Kaplan (1978) and Brinton (1977) use varieties of the Russellian definite description view; Burge (1974) ends up with an appeal to context; McGinn (1982) speaks of stipulation as establishing what is the designatum of a rigid designator, as does Kripke also on occasion (1980: note 21). Because Kripke (1980: 21, note 21) and McGirm (1982) distinguish between de lure and de facto varieties of rigid designation, with essential descriptions as the only examples of de facto rigidity, it is incongruous that they should call the relation between de /ure rigid designator and its designatum a matter of stipulation. Stipulation connotes arbitrariness rather than what is de/ure. Russell in contrast by his perceptual theory of indexicals provides a reason why indexicals must be rigid, namely, they determine theiz designata in relation to one possible world only.

11 In non-fictional uses of indexicals, perceptions of actual people are directed to designata in the actual world. Indexieals functioning in a fictional use direct perceptions or imagination to designata in the possible world established by the fiction.

i~ The property of a rigid designator by means of which it designates its designatum in every possible world whether or not it exists in a world is called obstinacy of designation by Salmon (1982: 34). Obstinacy of designation is an important property for rigid designators to have because it allows them to escape the argument raised by Joel Friedman (1980) that the necessity arising from rigid designation does not obey the law of modal distribution.

13 Russell (1940: 135) asks about the meaning of a particular example of an indexical term, 'this', but his concern, like mine, is with indexicais in general.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Brinton, Alan, "Definite Descriptions and Context Deper~dence," Nous 11 (1977) 397-407.

2. Burge, Tyler, "Demonstrative Constructions, Reference, and Truth," lournal o f Philosophy, 71 (1974) 205-223.

3. Castafieda, Hector-Neri, "Perception, Belief, and the Structure of Phys- ical Objects and Consciousness," Synthese 35 (1977) 285-351 .

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4. CastaJ3eda, Hector-Neri, "Reference, Reality and Perceptual Fields," Pro- ceedings of the American Philosophical Association, 53 (1980) 763-823.

5. Clark, Romane, "Acquaintance," Synthese 46 (1981) 231-246. 6. Friedman, Joel, "Bare Kripkean Necessity," (unpublished manuscript,

Univ. of California, Davis, 1980). 7. Kaplan, David, "Dthat," Syntax and Semantics 9 (1978) 221-243. 8. Kripke, Saul, Naming and Necessity, Cambridge, 1980. 9. McGinn, Colin, "Rigid Designation and Semantic Value," Philosophical

Quarterly 32 (1982) 97-115. 10. Pears, David, "The Function of Acquaintance in Russell's Philosophy,"

Synthese 46 (1981) 149-166. 11. Reichenbach, Hans, Elements of Symbolic Logic, New York, 1947. 12. Russell, Bertrand,Human Knowledge, New York, 1948. 13. Russell, Bertrand, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, New York, 1940. 14. Russell, Bertrand, "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by

Description," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1910-11, in Mysticism and Logic, London, 1963.

15. Russell, Bertrand, "On the Nature of Acquaintance," 1914, Logic and Knowledge, London, 1956.

16. Russell, Bertrand, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism," 1918, in Logic and Knowledge, London, 1956.

17. Russell, Bertrand, The Problems of Philosophy, ch. 5, "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description," 1912, New York, 1959.

18. Saarinen, Esa, "How to Frege a Russell-Kaplan," Nous 16 (1982) 253- 276.

19. Salmon, Nathan U., Reference and Meaning, Princeton, 1981. 20. Seafle~ John, "Literal Meaning," Expression and Meaning, Cambridge,

1979, 117-136. 21. Smith, David Woodruff, '~/hat's the Meaning of `This',"Nous 16 (1982)

181-208. 22. Wettstein, Howard K., "Demonstrative Reference and Definite Descrip-

tions," Philosophical Studies, 40 (1981) 241-257.

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Documents

Russell on the semantics and pragmatics of indexicals