How Reference Works: Explanatory Models for Indexicals, Descriptions, and Opacity (SUNY series, Scientific Studies in Natural and Artificial Intelligence) - Hardcover

Roberts, Lawrence D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0791415759 ISBN 13: 9780791415757

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1993

Synopsis

Reveals how language and mind together anchor words to the world through context, attention, and meaning.

In How Reference Works, Lawrence D. Roberts tackles one of the most persistent problems in the philosophy of language: how referring expressions in natural language succeed―or fail―in picking out objects in the world. Moving beyond word-centered theories, Roberts offers a unified framework that connects language, mind, and context in a way that reshapes how reference itself is understood.

At the heart of this work is a series of explanatory models―ranging from indexicals and definite descriptions to attention-directing mechanisms and figure–ground structures―that illuminate how reference is determined in real communicative situations. Roberts extends these models into domains often left underexplored, including perception, identity, existence contexts, and opacity.

This is not only a contribution to the philosophy of language, but also a provocative intervention in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. By treating reference as a joint product of linguistic structure and cognitive processes, Roberts opens new pathways for understanding perception, context, and meaning.

About this title

About the Author

Lawrence D. Roberts is Associate Professor in the Program in Philosophy, Computers, and System Science in the Department of Philosophy at State University of New York at Binghamton.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791415759
• ISBN 13: 9780791415757
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192