this and that


How does reference ever get off the ground? Only by convention, which is to say, sterotypical behavior.

I guess I'm obsessed with signs for some reason...anyway,

..A sign on a lawn says "keep off the grass". We know that it means someone wants us to keep off the grass on which the sign is placed, and not for example the grass across the street. We don't have to have that spelled out for us. But I will argue that we couldn't possibly spell "it all" out in any case. There will always be a residue of convention that enters into the picture, as we will see..
It would be a more precise, if strange, way of putting it if the sign read "Keep off this grass". But it's still only by convention that we know this refers to the grass under the sign. Even more precision could be gained, it would seem, by putting a downward-pointing arrow underneath the words. But this just exploits more convention; that arrows refer to the things they point to, which direction you are meant to follow the arrow in, etc. So let's get completely erudite and put on the sign: "Keep off of any grass-covered earth contiguous with the ground that touches this sign." Now the grass seems to be specified well, but we've moved the problem to referring to the sign. "Keep off of any grass-covered earth contiguous with the part that touches the sign on which this sentence is written" won't do either, since we've moved the problem from referencing the sign to referencing the sentence. We can try a different tack and specify the lawn through its geographical coordinates, but this only moves the problem to referencing the origin and metric of that coordinate system.

There is a problem here, akin to the one Lewis Carroll pointed out in logic. We can go on and on pushing the question back, or requiring more premises, but at some point we simply act. When these actions are the right sort of actions, we have used reference correctly - and nothing else can ultimately explain it. When we speak of the correct use of words like "this" and "that", we are really speaking of our behavior not surprising people when these words are used.

Posted: Fri - August 20, 2004 at 11:07 AM | | | |

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