Indexical Realism by Inter-Agentic Reference

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

I happen to believe that although human experiences are to be characterized as pluralistic, they are all rooted in one reality. I would assume the thesis of pluralism but how could I maintain my belief in realism? There are various discussions in favor of realism but they appear to stay within a particular paradigm and so to be called ‘internal realism.’ In this paper, I try to justify my belief in reality by discussing a special use of indexicals. I argue for my indexical realism by advancing the thesis that indexicals can be used as an inter-agentic referential term. Three arguments for the thesis are presented. The first argument derives from a revision of Kaplan-Kvart’s notion of exportation. The notions of exportation of singular terms can be analyzed as intra-agentic exportation in the context of a single speaker. This may be revised to be an inter-agentic exportation in the context of two speakers who use the same indexicals. The second argument is from the notion of causation, which is specifically characterized in the context of inter-theoretic reference. I argue that any two theories may each say “this” in order to refer to what is beyond its own theory. Two theories may address themselves to “this” same thing although what “this” represents in each theory can turn out to be different objects all together. The third argument is based on a possibility of natural reference. Reference is used to be taken mostly as a 3-place predicate: Abe refers an object oi with an expression ej. The traditional notion of reference has been constructive and anthropocentric. However, I argue that natural reference is a reference that we humans come to recognize among denumerably many objects in natural states: at moment mi in a natural state, there is a referential relation among objects o₁, o₂, o₃, …, oj, oj+1, … which interact with each other as agents of information processors. Natural reference is an original reference, which is given independently of a human language and to which humans are passive as they derivatively refer to it by using “this.”

목차 (Table of Contents)

• ABSTRACT
• Ⅰ. Indexicals: A Foundation for Realism
• Ⅱ. Inter-Personal Co-Referentiality
• Ⅲ. Inter-Theoretic Co-Referentiality
• Ⅳ. Natural Reference
• References