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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.
"This is a book about how certain referring expressions in a natural language (English) manage to refer to objects in the world when used by speakers. Within the philosophy of language, the problem of reference has never been adequately solved. When viewed as a work in the philosophy of language, this book offers an interesting approach (if not a solution) to the problem of reference. However, the book's appeal is much broader than the philosophy of language. The problem of reference is also important to the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. This is probably why philosophers of language never developed a theory of reference in the first place: they were looking at words only. Roberts, on the other hand, looks not only at words (referring expressions), but also at minds.
"The book's approach to the philosophy of mind and cognitive science is novel, and has something important to say to philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists as well as philosophers of language. Both perception and context have been concerns of philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists for years, but not much progress has been made. This book is definitely progress." — Eric Dietrich, State University of New York at Binghamton
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.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Chapter 1 An Introduction to Methodology: Explanation, Specification, and Two Paradigms for Theorizing about Language
Chapter 2 Indexicals and Two Models for the Determination of Reference
Chapter 3 The Figure-Ground Model: Varieties of Contexts
Chapter 4 The Referential-Attributive Distinction in Definite Descriptions
Chapter 5 Specific and Non-Specific Reference by Means of Indefinite Descriptions
Chapter 6 Attention-Directing Models for the Basic Nature of Reference
Chapter 7 Applications of the Models to Existence and Identity Contexts and to Opacity
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index