Table Of ContentTHE VARIETIEOSF
REFERENCE
GareEtvha ns
EDITED BY
JOHN McDOWELL
CLARENDPORNE S·OS X FORD
OXFORUDN IVERSPIRTEYS· NS E WY ORK
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© Antonia Phillips 1y82
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Evans, Gareth
The varieties ofreference.
1. Reference (Philosophy)
I. Title II. McDowell,John
149'.946 B105.R25
ISBN o-19-824685-4
ISBN o-19-824686-2 Pbk
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Evans, Gareth.
The varieties of reference.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Reference (Philosophy) I. McDowell,John Henry. II. Title.
B105.R25E9 1982 160 82-8052
ISBN o-19-824685-4 AACR2
ISBN o-19-824686-2 (pbk.)
Typeset by
Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome and London
Printed in Great Britain
at the University Press, Oxford
by Eric Buckl
ey
Printer to the University
Editor's Preface
Gareth Evans, who died, aged 34, in August 1980, had been
working for years on a book about reference. But he was con
stantly rethinking both his ideas on the subject and his strategies
of exposition; each successive draft is not so much a polishing of
its predecessors as a first version of a substantially new work. In
his last months he undertook an attempt to prepare his book for
publication, and he managed to write or dictate new versions of
the Introduction and chapters 1, 2, and (in part) 3. For the rest
of the book he left drafts from various earlier dates (very occa
sionally only in note form); these were more or less heavily
annotated, with indications of footnotes, intended additions,
and criticisms of the material as it stood. In the case of chapter
7, and, to a lesser extent, chapter 6, the later material is more
substantial: in the Trinity Term of 1980 Evans offered a course
of graduate classes on self-identification and self-reference, and
in his preparation for this he arrived at improved formulations
of many of the arguments of those chapters, and some thoughts
that were altogether new. It is clear that he intended a radical
revision of those two chapters.
It would have been possible simply to transcribe Evans's
words as they stood. But even with a quite extensive commen
tary, the result would have been very difficult reading, except
perhaps for people already partly familiar with Evans's ideas
through hearing his lectures. It seemed clear that the overriding
aim of this publication should be to make his thoughts as ac
cessible as possible, and that this aim would not be best served
by an excessively reverent approach to the draft. Accordingly,
where his intention seems clearly expressed in notes, I have
worked them up into prose. Similarly, where there is a sub
sequent expression of dissatisfaction with the original draft, and
amendment is possible without disruption to the flow of the
argument, I have simply recast the material to reflect the later
VI Editor's Preface
view. In chapters 6 and 7, I have added extensively to the basic
drafts, and sometimes replaced parts of them, with material
taken from. the lectures. (Much of 4.3 is from this source too,
replacing a version Evans was dissatisfied with.) Throughout
bearing in mind that what we have is essentially a first draft
I have recast some sentences and paragraphs in the interest of
clarity. When it seemed to help the exposition, I have incorpor
ated material from lecture-notes or earlier drafts into the text or
the footnotes. I have corrected anything that seemed to be a
mere slip. In all this, it seemed best to effect changes without
remarking on them, rather than to burden the text with a
complex apparatus of brackets and editorial footnotes.
The Appendices contain material which for various reasons
resisted this silent incorporation into the book. The Appendix
to chapter 3 stands in for a planned final section for which there
are only brief notes; although the material is all taken from
writings by Evans, its conformity to his plan for the section is to
some extent a matter of guesswork, and it seemed best not to
pretend otherwise by including it in the body of the chapter. In
assimilating material into chapters 6 and 7, I have adhered (as
everywhere) to Evans's own articulation of the chapters into
sections: the Appendices to those chapters preserve some rele
vant material which does not readily fit into those frames.
Elsewhere in the Appendices, I have tried to convey the charac
ter of some doubts and afterthoughts which could not be dealt
with by minor emendations of the chapters. The substance of
all the Appendices, and most of the writing, are due to Evans.
But in some places he clearly has to figure in the third person
rather than the first; and I have adopted the convention that
that is so throughout the Appendices. Square brackets round
footnotes and parts of footnotes, elsewhere in the book, mark off
either references to the Appendices or comments of mine on the
arguments.
The latest draft contains no indication of an intended title.
However, in notes for a lecture course on the theory ofreference,
Evans remarked that whereas some years previously he would
have been tempted to call such a course 'The Essence of Refer
ence', now he would prefer to call it 'The Varieties of Reference';
and this idea appears also in some notes for a Preface to an
earlier version of the book. What he meant in the lectures was
Editor's Preface vu
probably connected with his having become convinced that
'descriptive names' are a perfectly good category of referring
expressions. Earlier he would have insisted that al} genuine
singular reference is, in the terminology of this book, Russellian.
Now that struck him as unwarrantedly essentialistic: a theoreti
cally well founded conception of genuine singular terms could
embrace both Russellian and non-Russellian varieties. But the
title is appropriate to this book in another way as well. It fits
the conviction-manifested especially in chapters 6, 7, and 8-
that a simple general theory even of one of those two varieties,
the Russellian, is no substitute for a detailed and specific inves
tigation of how each of its sub-varieties functions.
In his final attempt on the book, Evans contracted its plan,
in the hope of being able to work through the whole in the time
that was left to him. Earlier plans had involved a more complex
treatment of the different kinds of demonstrative expressions, to
be interwoven with the discussions of different modes of identi
fication which form the bulk of the present Part Two. And he
had intended to reinforce the chapter on proper names with a
partly parallel chapter on natural-kind terms; and to discuss
testimony at much greater length. Even discounting the con
traction, moreover, this volume obviously constitutes at best a
remote approximation to what would have resulted from a
complete revision by its author. Nevertheless, I believe that the
brilliance and depth of his thinking about reference emerge
from these pages with sufficient clarity to make generally ac
cessible a lively appreciation of how much philosophy has lost
by his early death.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Antonia Phillips for entrusting to me the
task of preparing this book for publication, and for much help
and encouragement in its execution. I have to thank the Master
and Fellows of University College, Oxford, for granting me a
leave of absence to work on the book. I am most grateful to the
British Academy for a grant, originally to Evans and then to
me, which made the work possible; thanks are due to Richard
Wollheim for his good offices in securing this beneficence. I have
J.
had help and advice from Ronald Dworkin, A. Gray, I. L.
Humberstone, Christopher Peacocke, Galen Strawson, P. F.
Strawson, and David Wiggins. Andrea McDowell prepared a
beautiful typescript from what became a very messy original,
and helped in many other ways too. I should like to acknow
ledge also the helpfulness of the staff of the Oxford University
Press.
Chapter I draws on Evans's article 'Understanding Demon
stratives', in Herman Parret and Jacques Bouveresse, eds.,
Meaning and Understanding (De Gruyter, Berlin and New York,
1981 ), pp. 280-303. He seems also to have intended some of this
material to appear in chapter 6, and I have incorporated the
relevant part of the article, slightly amended, into the Appendix
to that chapter. Chapter 2 draws on Evans's article 'Reference
and Contingency', The Monist lxii (1979), 161-89. Thanks are
due to the original editors and publishers for permission to use
this material.
J.McD.
Many people have helped to bring this book to publication,
with advice, practical assistance and encouragement. I want to
take this opportunity to express gratitude to all of them, on
Gareth's behalf as well as my own: Katherine Backhouse, Ar
nold Cragg, Ronald Dworkin, Andrea McDowell, David Pears,
X Acknowledgements
Galen Strawson, Sir Peter Strawson, David Wiggins and
Richard Wollheim; Peter Brown and the British Academy for
their speedy and flexible support; University College, Oxford,
for the use of its photocopying facilities and for releasing John
McDowell from his teaching duties; and, of course, John
McDowell himself.
Antonia Phillips
Contents
Introduction
PART ONE: Historical Preliminaries 5
Chapter 1: FREGE 7
1.1 Introductory 7
1.2 Meaning (Bedeutung) 8
1.3 Empty singular terms: preliminary remarks 10
I .4 Sense: preliminary remarks 14
1 .5 Sense and thought 18
1.6 Empty singular terms: sense without Meaning? 22
1. 7 Empty singular terms: sense without referent 30
1.8 lnterpretational semantics and truth theories 33
1. g Conclusions 38
Chapter 2: RUSSELL 42
2.1 Introductory: Russell's criterion 42
2.2 Radical reference-failure 44
2.3 Russellian singular terms and descriptive names 46
2.4 Definite descriptions 51
2.5 'Rigid designation' and Fregean sense 60
Chapter 3: RECENT WORK 64
3.1 Going beyond Russell: singular thoughts 64
3.2 Russellian sayings: the two strategies 67
3.3 Kripke: singular thought without discriminating
knowledge? 73
3.4 The Photograph Model 76
Appendix 80
Xll Contents
PART TWO: Thought
Chapter 4: RUSSELL'S PRINCIPLE 89
4. 1 Its meaning and importance 89
4.2 Verificationism and ideal verificationism 93
4.3 The Generality Constraint 100
4.4 The fundamental level of thought 105
4.5 Comparison with verificationism 112
4.6 The counter-examples 1 14
Chapter 5: INFORMATION, BELIEF, AND
THOUGHT 121
5. 1 Information-based thoughts: introductory 121
5.2 The informational system 122
5.3 Interpretation and psychological attributions 129
5.4 The risk ofill-groundedness 132
5.5 Preview 135
Appendix 138
Chapter 6: DEMONSTRATIVE IDENTIFICATION 143
6. 1 Demonstrative identification and perception 143
6.2 Information-links are not sufficient 145
6.3 Egocentric spatial thinking: 'here' 151
6.4 Demonstrative identification of material objects 170
6.5 Some consequences 176
6.6 Immunity to error through misidentification 179
Appendix 192
Chapter 7: SELF-IDENTIFICATION 205
7.1 Introductory 205
7.2 Immunity to error through misidentification 215
7.3 Bodily self-ascription 220
7 .4 Mental self-ascription 224
7.5 Memory 225
7 .6 The possibility of reference-failure 249
7. 7 Conclusions 2 55
Appendix 258
Chapter 8: RECOGNITION-BASED IDENTIFICA-
TION 267
8. 1 Introductory 267
