Reference and Reflexivity

In this volume, author John Perry develops a reflexive-referential account of indexicals, demonstratives and proper names. On these issues the philosophy of language in the 20th century was shaped by two competing traditions, descriptivist and referentialist. Referentialist tradition is portrayed as holding that indexicals contribute content that involves individuals without identifying conditions on them. Descriptivist tradition is portrayed as holding that referential content does not explain all of the identifying conditions conveyed by names and indexicals. This text reveals a coherent and structured family of contents - from reflexive contents that place conditions on their actual utterance to the fully incremental contents that place conditions only on the objects of reference - reconciling the insights of both traditions.