Files, Indexicals and Descriptivism

Abstract

Recanati’s book contains stimulating discussions of a great many interesting problems and repays careful reading. My comments focus on some questions about indexicals and descriptions. Recanati defends Singularism against Descriptivism. The Singularist claims (i) the semantic contribution of a referring term to the proposition expressed by an utterance in which it figures is its referent; (ii) one needs acquaintance with, or more generally an epistemically rewarding (ER) relation to the referent, if one is to think a singular thought about it. On Recanati’s view, Singularists can better defend these two theses by including mental files in their account, using files to play the roles usually assigned to modes of presentation. Descriptivism denies (i), holding that referring terms contribute descriptive content to the proposition expressed, where this content in turn determines reference. Descriptivism runs into trouble, according to Recanati, because it neglects the ‘relational character of reference determination’ (22). He makes a good point here — this neglect is arguably the root of Descriptivism’s vulnerability to the socalled ‘modal argument.’1 But of course Descriptivism can be modified to address the problem by injecting relational properties into the descriptive content associated with a referring term.2 For example, one sees Mt. Blanc and thinks ‘that peak is dramatic.’ The amended