Referential Mechanics Direct Reference And The Foundations Of Semantics

the long version

This volume is focused on understanding a key idea in modern semantics - direct reference - and its integration into a general semantics for natural language. In the first three chapters, foundational analyses from three philosophers - Saul Kripke, David Kaplan and Keith Donnellan - are dissected in detail. The differences between their respective ideas lead to varying consequences in the philosophy of mind, the metaphysics of necessity, and the epistemological idea of a priori knowledge. In the last chapter, two central puzzles said to threaten direct reference are raised.