Abstract
Obsessed by the cases where things go wrong, we pay too little attention to the vastly more numerous cases where they go right, and where it is perhaps easier to see that the descriptive content of the expression concerned is wholly at the service of this function [of identifying reference], a function which is complementary to that of predication and contains no element of predication in itself (Strawson [1974], p. 66).
An earlier version of the paper was written during an enjoyable year spent as a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
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Many of the ideas in this paper were picked up from lectures, seminars, and conversations involving Tyler Burge, Gareth Evans, Lloyd Humberstone, David Kaplan, Brian Loar, Christopher Peacocke, John Perry, Stephen Schiffer, and Barry Taylor. My debts to the papers by Peacocke [1981] and Taylor [1980] are enormous.
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Davies, M. Individuation and the semantics of demonstratives. J Philos Logic 11, 287–310 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00293432
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00293432