Reference

5. Indexicals

To answer our central question for indexicals – terms like ‘I’, ‘now’, ‘here’, ‘you’, ‘she’, ‘that’ and ‘this table’ – we need to consider how the context of their utterance determines their reference.

Both Russell (1918) and Hans Reichenbach (1947) explain the reference of all indexicals (called ‘egocentric particulars’ by Russell and ‘token-reflexive words’ by Reichenbach) in terms of the reference of ‘this’. Thus, Reichenbach claims that ‘“I” means the same as “the person who utters this token”; “now” means the same as “the time at which this token is uttered”; “this table” means the same as “the table pointed to by a gesture accompanying this token”’ (1947: 284). This amounts to a description theory of reference for all indexicals except ‘this token’ in terms of the reference of ‘this token’.

Any description theory of an indexical may face arguments of the usual three sorts: unwanted necessities, rigidity, and ignorance and error. The theory is particularly vulnerable to the argument from rigidity, as David Kaplan (1989) showed. (Kaplan prefers to talk of the closely related notion of ‘direct reference’ rather than ‘rigidity’.) Thus, compare:

and Reichenbach’s interpretation of it:

Suppose that the table referred to is in fact green, so that (5) and (6) both assert true propositions. Consider now a situation in which that table was still green but the furniture had been moved around so that a different table, a brown one, would be the subject of the gesture. Would those propositions asserted by (5) and (6) still be true? (Note that this question concerns the propositions actually asserted by (5) and (6), not the propositions that would have been asserted by the sentences in that non-actual situation.) Kaplan argues that whereas what (6) asserts would be false, what (5) asserts would still be true. The indexical ‘this table’ is rigid, referring to the same table in each possible world, whereas the description ‘the table pointed to by a gesture accompanying this token’ is nonrigid, referring to whatever table fits that description in the possible world. So the demonstrative is not synonymous with the description.

Apart from this, a general theoretical consideration counts against a description theory of indexicals. We have noted the essential incompleteness of description theories (see §3): even if a description theory is right for some word, the theory’s explanation must rest ultimately on the reference of some other words which must be explained nondescriptively. Indexicals seem to be the most plausible candidates for nondescriptive explanation, more so even than proper names or natural-kind words: indexicals seem to be the place where language stands in its most direct relationship to the world.

In seeking a nondescriptive theory, it helps to follow Kaplan in dividing indexicals into two groups: ‘pure indexicals’ like ‘I’, ‘here’ and ‘now’, and ‘demonstratives’ like ‘she’, ‘that’ and ‘this table’. The nondescriptive explanations of pure indexicals are fairly simple: ‘I’ designates the speaker of the utterance, ‘here’ the place of the utterance, ‘now’ the time of the utterance, and so on. (These explanations may seem to be description theories once again, but they are crucially different. For example, the last explanation is not that ‘now’ designates the time of the utterance because it is synonymous with an associated description ‘the time of this utterance’, but rather, because it is governed by the rule that it designates that time.) Demonstratives are more difficult to explain.

There are three basic ideas for a nondescriptive explanation of demonstratives. According to the first, a demonstrative designates the object demonstrated by the speaker. One problem with this idea is that a demonstration is often so vague that it alone would not distinguish one object from many others in the environment. A more serious problem is that demonstratives are not always accompanied by a demonstration. Thus, where only one table is prominent in the environment, the speaker may use ‘this table’ without a demonstration. And reference is often to an object that is not around to be demonstrated: for example, ‘That drunk at the party last night was offensive’.

According to the second idea for a nondescriptive explanation, a demonstrative designates the object that the speaker intends to refer to. Even if this is so, it does not take us far because it raises the question: in virtue of what does the speaker intend to refer to that object? This is very similar to the original problem.

According to the third idea – urged, for example, by Edmund Husserl (1900–1) – a demonstrative designates the object in which it is based perceptually (compare the perceptually based grounding of a name according to the historical–causal theory). So ‘this table’ designates a certain table in virtue of the fact that it was perception of that table that led to the utterance; similarly ‘that drunk at the party’ designates the person that caused the remark (see Demonstratives and indexicals).