指示・会話・対象

Abstract

The theory of reference discusses how words hook onto the world and how they pick out their referents. This essay deals with the topic viewed from communication between a speaker and a hearer. This article, first, compares Searle's theory of reference with Donnellan's. Considering both of them, said to be opposed to each other, it will be shown that in a conversation, both the speaker and the hearer communicate and identify a referent; that the descriptions used to do so are their understandings, i.e., their beliefs about that object; and that, furthermore, to identify the referent is to understand mutually what the speaker is saying. If what has been said is correct, it follows that referents are objects that we know, and that it is beside the point to pick out an object beyond our beliefs, i.e. an object which may not satisfy descriptions but is, in fact, the referent of a referring expression, which is said to be referred by it. Moreover, considering Rorty's argument, it follows that whether the referent exists or not is a matter of our believing in its existence or nonexistence. From the above, then, the difficulty arises in how we decide whether the statement about that object is true or false; it becomes impossible to compare the object and the statement. This difficulty is solved through the mutual understanding of what the speaker says; descriptions used are the speaker's beliefs about that object and that the hearer understands them means he is approving of them. The issue of what the relationship is between the beliefs and the objects is not considered here; that is to be further explained.