A communicative chain can sustain reference to an object only if each link preserves the object-dependence, but testimonial transmission routinely severs this dependency by substituting stable descriptive surrogates.

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Descriptive surrogates(as used in philosophy of language): Descriptions or stand-ins that represent something without actually being that thing—like a wanted poster that describes a criminal but isn't the criminal themselves.
Object-dependence(describes whether aesthetic pleasure needs something outside your mind): The idea that something requires an actual external thing to exist or function—for example, a painting requires a canvas and paint to be a painting.
Testimonial transmission(as used in epistemology): Sharing information by telling someone else about it, rather than them experiencing it directly themselves.
communicative chain(Neo-Russellian account of singular thought without personal perception): A sequence of communicative acts linking a present agent back through other agents to an original perceptual encounter with an object, grounding the present agent's ability to refer to or think about that object.
reference(Distinguished from intension in the context of possible worlds semantics): The actual-world referent of an expression; what the expression picks out in the actual world.

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