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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Gareth Evans argued in 'The Varieties of Reference' that genuine singular thought requires a robust information-preserving causal link to the object itself, not merely to its sensory effects.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.We successfully think about historical figures and distant stars despite severely degraded or indirect causal links to them.
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    • 2.The distinction between robust and weak causal links is vague; no principled threshold separates genuine reference from its absence.
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    • 3.Indexical thoughts about 'this' or 'that' may require only recognitional capacities and de re mental content, not metaphysical causal purity.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Hallucinations and illusions show we can have identical sensory experiences of different objects, so reference requires direct causal contact.
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    • 2.Without information-preservation through the causal chain, we cannot explain why thoughts about absent objects still concern those specific objects.
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    • 3.Mediated causal links (through descriptions or intermediaries) fail to ground singular thought because they remain compatible with object misidentification.
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