Fake gnus! (Or: there is no experimental evidence for the lazy person’s approach to philosophy)

ABSTRACT

According to the ambiguity theory of reference for names and natural kind terms (AT), every name or natural kind term can be used (on separate occasions) both descriptively and causal-historically. In this paper we assess the experimental evidence for AT and its theoretical viability, given standard, well-known arguments in the literature. On both counts we find AT to be substantially lacking: the experiments claimed to favour it simply do not, and the standard, well-known arguments against descriptivism work equally well against it.

KEYWORDS:

• Reference
• experimental philosophy
• causal-historical theory
• descriptivism
• metasemantics
• ambiguity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Nichols, Pinillos, and Mallon (2016) cite several other papers as important precedents to their experimental work, including Jylkkä, Railo, and Haukioja (2009) and Genone and Lombrozo (2012). These papers, however, do not present any different or further supposed experimental evidence for AT. Jylkkä, Railo, and Haukioja (2009) presents evidence appearing to favour a causal-historical theory of reference for natural kind terms. And, while Genone and Lombrozo (2012) is sometimes cited (by Martí 2015, e.g.) as presenting experimental evidence for AT, we disagree. As we interpret them, Genone and Lambrozo are concerned with an epistemological question in their 2012, namely the question of how speakers decide or find out which kinds are the referents of their kind terms. This question is different from the question of how reference for such terms is metasemantically determined, which is the question relevant to the assessment of AT.

2 These are characterisations of theories of reference determination, not theories of content. Sometimes this is put by saying that the relevant theories are metasemantic, as opposed to semantic, theories.

3 Nichols et al. mention Kripke’s anti-laziness precept on p. 161 of their 2016.

4 Actually, Donnellan is notoriously cagey about whether his distinction is semantically significant. As Kripke correctly observes, however, the distinction poses a threat to Russell’s theory only if it is semantically significant; that is, only if the referential/attributive distinction amounts to a semantic ambiguity in definite descriptions.

5 Nichols et al.’s other mention of Kitcher is on p. 149 of Nichols, Pinillos, and Mallon (2016).

6 Nichols et al. themselves credit Michael Devitt and Genoveva Martı with this objection (p. 497, n. 17) and that’s why they conduct Study 4, but see our discussion of that study below.

7 For one statement of this problem, as it applies to results reported in Machery et al. (2004). For Nichols et al.’s discussion of the way they think they have avoided this problem, see their 2016, p. 150.

8 Pinillos (2015): ‘Why do we think that ‘bank’ is ambiguous? Here’s one important consideration. We can use the word to mean financial institution and we can also use it to mean riverside’ (144; Emphasis added). Plenty of similar examples exist throughout Nichols, Pinillos, and Mallon (2016) and Pinillos (2015).

9 The reason why ‘catoblepas exist’ doesn’t also have this presupposition, we’re told, is that sentences can’t presuppose their at issue contents.

10 Our reference is to the same article as Nichols et al.’s Strawson (1971), just to a separate volume in which it was collected.

11 The order of the examples and the labels for the contexts are modeled on examples (5a-f) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, ‘Presupposition.’ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presupposition/.

12 https://advocatusatheist.blogspot.hk/2013/07/unicorns-are-biblical.html.

13 Comment by unknown at https://laserturbinepower.blogspot.com/2010/01/maxfelaser-uses-thorium.html.

14 Comment by ‘patent litigation’ https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110310/13141713432/is-fda-helping-hindering-medical-innovation.shtml.

15 https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/08/are-flying-cars-the-future-of-transportation-or-an-inflated-expectation/.

16 Comment from Redditor TetrisTennisTriangle https://www.reddit.com/r/tennis/comments/3wmwtd/question_about_nadals_doping_rumors_in_2013/.

17 Fumerton (2016).

18 Comment by user madmigs at https://forum.skyscraperpage.com/archive/index.php/t-182206-p-3.html.

19 We realise that Pinillos is presuming that ‘Benjamin Smith’ has a referent on the descriptivist reading, but it’s important to expose when descriptivism is pretending that it is sensible and has sensible things to say about cases. It never is and it never does.

20 Compare Kripke (1977): ‘“Bank” is ambiguous; we would expect the ambiguity to be disambiguated by separate and unrelated words in some other languages. Why should the two separate senses be reproduced in languages unrelated to English? First, then, we can consult our linguistic intuitions, independently of any empirical investigation. Would we be surprised to find languages that used two separate words for the two alleged senses of a given word? If so, then, to that extent our linguistic intuitions are really intuitions of a unitary concept, rather than of a word that expresses two distinct and unrelated senses. Second, we can ask empirically whether languages are in fact found that contain distinct words expressing the allegedly distinct senses. If no such language is found, once again this is evidence that a unitary account of the word or phrase in question should be sought’ (268). Later, Kripke adds that it would be quite surprising to find languages with separate lexicalizations for the referential and attributive ‘senses’ of English definite descriptions.

21 They don’t seem to realise that the same old arguments apply to their views, for example: Pinillos says ‘The debate between the two camps [DT and CHT] has been intense, but in my view, it has obscured the possibility that both sides could be right’ (139). This is not true, as we shall argue.

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