How do thoughts and words connect to the things we think and talk about?

According to John Dewey, “the implication of the thinking situation is of some ‘correspondence’ or ‘agreement’ between two sets of distinguished relations; the problem of its nature and valid determination remains the central question of any theory of thinking” (1907: 200). This is the problem for the module.

Topics characteristic of this module include the following:

Russell's theory of reference, the role of acquaintance for Russellian reference; Russell's theory of descriptions; Frege's distinction between sense and reference: his account of how the sentences ‘Superman is Superman’ and ‘Superman is Clark Kent’ express different thoughts, even though Clark Kent is Superman; Kripke's view of proper names: his view that the way proper names are used to talk about things is not to be accounted for by appeal to descriptions that we associate with those names, but rather by appeal to our causal relations to those things; the nature of demonstrative reference.