Gricean Theories of Reference

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Gricean theories of reference define what it is for a speaker to refer to an item in terms of the speaker meaning something about that item. This raises a question posed by Stephen Schiffer. “What could be the point of trading in facts about meaning for facts about the content of beliefs if one ends up with nothing to say about the latter?” In the case of reference in particular, what do we gain when we explain a speaker’s referring to a particular thing by appealing to beliefs that in some unexplained way refer to that thing? Building on the work of Stephen Neale and Schiffer, I offer a Gricean account of reference and then show what the account explains, even though it assumes referential beliefs.