Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style

Abstract

Abstract Theories of meaning and reference have been at the heart of analytic philosophy since the beginning of the twentieth century. Two views, the descriptivist view of reference and the causal-historical view of reference, have dominated the field. The reference of names has been a key issue in this controversy. Despite numerous disagreements, philosophers agree that theories of reference for names have to be consistent with our intuitions regarding who or what the names refer to. Thus, the common wisdom in philosophy is that Kripke (1972/1980) has refuted the traditional descriptivist theories of reference by producing some famous stories which elicit intuitions that are inconsistent with these theories. In light of recent work in cultural psychology (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001; Weinberg, Nichols, & Stich, 2001), we came to suspect that the intuitions that guide theorizing in this domain might well differ between members of East Asian and Western cultures. In this essay, we present evidence that probes closely modeled on Kripke’s stories elicit significantly different responses from East Asians (EAs) (Hong Kong undergraduates) and Westerners (Ws) (American undergraduates), and we discuss the significance of this finding for the philosophical pursuit of a theory of reference.