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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that If 'this' and 'that' referred purely directly with no descriptive content, two uses referring to the same object would be cognitively interchangeable, which they demonstrably are not.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Cognitive non-interchangeability may reflect speaker psychology rather than semantic content—demonstrating epistemic asymmetry, not referential non-directness.
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    • 2.Indexicals succeed as direct references precisely because context supplies reference-fixing content, not because the reference itself is descriptive.
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    • 3.The claim conflates what speakers must do to use indexicals with what indexicals semantically contribute—conflating pragmatics with semantics.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Demonstrably, 'the morning star' and 'the evening star' refer to Venus yet have different cognitive significance to users unaware of the identity.
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    • 2.Pure direct reference would collapse the distinction between knowing what object is referred to and understanding how it's being characterized.
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    • 3.Indexicals like 'this' and 'that' require contextual descriptive content (location, salience, temporal frame) to determine their referent.
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