Nicolò D'Agruma

In this paper, we present an experiment that shows conflicting findings from truth-value judgments and eye-tracking data for testing reference assignment of proper names. We argue that if eye-tracking is a more reliable method than truth-value judgment tasks, then our eye-tracking data provide stronger empirical support for Kripke’s causal-historical theory of reference for proper names. We also argue that eye-tracking and truth-value judgments cannot both be reliable techniques for resolving the debate. If they were, they should yield convergent results. Instead, we find that the truth-value judgment data align with the descriptivist prediction, while the eye-tracking results conform to the Kripkean pattern.

Some analyses of lying establish a necessary connection between lies and semantics: the content of a lie needs to be semantically expressed by the liar’s utterance. This necessary connection between lying and semantic holds the potential to strengthen and improve Michaelson’s (2016) proposal of using studies on lying as a supplemental source of data for theorising in semantics. However, several surveys on laypeople’s application of the concept of lying appear to preclude this possibility. Such surveys suggest that laypeople judge deceptive additive particularised conversational implicatures—definitely not a semantic phenomenon—as lies. If those surveys are reliable, they disrupt the necessary connection between lying and semantics and, with it, a promising methodological avenue for semantics. We present the results of a survey that counters the trend of those experiments. Our findings show that laypeople do not classify additive particularised conversational implicatures as lies. Moreover, we provide a diagnosis of why the results of previous empirical surveys yield the opposite conclusion. Our results provide a partial but significant defence of the possibility to overcome the limitation of Michaelson’s proposal to use studies on lying as a source of data for semantics.

This paper offers a critical analysis of Ding and Liu’s (2022) contribution to the ongoing debate stemming from Machery et al.’s (2004) experimental investigation of Kripke’s Gödel Case. Machery et al. test referential intuitions on proper names among laypeople from American and Chinese backgrounds and contend that their results challenge Kripke’s refutation of descriptivism. Ding and Liu argue that descriptions in Gödel-style scenarios are ambiguous between a brute-fact and a social-fact interpretation, and Machery et al. overlook the latter. Building upon this ambiguity, Ding and Liu conduct several studies, maintaining that the results reveal that Machery et al. misclassify some descriptivist answers as causal-historical. If that is the case, the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to Kripke’s refutation of descriptivism is even more substantial than Machery et al. claim. In this paper, I argue that, even granting some specific points that Ding and Liu endorse, their main experiment (Study 3) fails to provide the intended evidence. Despite the authors’ attempted rejoinders, the social-fact interpretation of the description in the Gödel Case is either circular or implicitly presupposes a referential role for the name’s causal-historical chain. Hence, in contrast to Ding and Liu’s interpretation, from their premises, they can only conclude that their main experiment’s results do not bolster Machery et al.’s (2004) challenge against Kripke’s refutation of descriptivism, but rather diminish it.

Questo articolo fornisce una panoramica sul dibattito sui lavori sperimentali sul riferimento dei nomi propri. Nella prima sezione, espongo i casi che Kripke porta a sostegno della teoria storico-causale e contro la teoria descrittivista. Nella seconda sezione, presento l’esperimento che ha originato questo dibattito (Machery et al., 2004). Gli autori sostengono che le intuizioni referenziali variano sia tra soggetti appartenenti a culture diverse sia tra soggetti appartenenti alla stessa cultura. Nella terza e quarta sezione, illustro il dibattito che si è originato dalle critiche alla struttura interna dell’esperimento e agli assunti teorici su cui esso si fonda. Nell’ultima sezione, delineo alcune prospettive per il futuro lavoro sperimentale in teoria del riferimento.

Proper names—expressions such as “Barack Obama” or “New York”—play a crucial role in the philosophical debate on reference, that is, the relation that allows words to stand for entities of the world. In an elicited production test, Devitt and Porot prompt participants to use proper names to compare the Descriptivist Theory and the Causal‐Historical Theory on proper names’ reference. According to the Descriptivist Theory, names refer to the entity that fulfills the description that speakers associate with them. In contrast, the Causal‐Historical Theory holds that names refer to the entity at the origin of the causal‐historical chain of uses, regardless of any description. Devitt and Porot consider a criticism of their work, which they call “New‐Meaning objection”: upon reading the vignette, the participant gains access to some facts unknown to the people within the fictional scenario. As a consequence, the descriptivist participant may undertake the elicited production test by relying upon a new meaning that is in force within a linguistic community “in the know.” In that case, the Descriptivist Theory predicts the same name usage as the Causal‐Historical Theory. While Devitt and Porot address the objection also with a follow‐up experiment, they consider the criticism theoretically flawed, arguing that names do not change meaning any time speakers acquire new information about the world. In this article, I argue that, contrary to Devitt and Porot's claim, their vignette inclines the descriptivist participant to assume that the name has acquired a new meaning.

In her engaging book, The referential mechanism of proper names, Li presents empirical studies involving American and Chinese laypeople. Li interprets her results as supporting an epistemic‐perspective reading of the variability in referential intuitions on proper names. Building upon this thesis, Li defends the ambiguity view, claiming that names are ambiguous between a descriptivist and a causal‐historical meaning. I argue that either Li's data do not enable a comparison of the two theories of reference, or support for the ambiguity view is limited to the Chinese sample at most and does not rely upon the inference that Li employs.