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    Carmelics

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

    It is not the case that Perceptual contact with an object is not necessary for thinking of that object directly, even without appeal to the dthat-operator.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Gareth Evans's 'Russellian' constraint holds that a genuine singular thought requires an information-preserving causal link to its object.
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    • 2.Without perceptual or quasi-perceptual contact, no such causal link is established, rendering the purported 'direct' thought indistinguishable from descriptive thought.
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    • 3.A thought that cannot be distinguished in its cognitive content from a description fails to meet the Russellian criterion for being genuinely object-dependent.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Tyler Burge's anti-individualism entails that singular perceptual demonstratives derive their referential force from the subject's embeddedness in a causal-perceptual environment.
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    • 2.Any non-perceptual, non-dthat grounding for direct reference must still invoke some analogous anchoring relation to the object; absent this, reference becomes indeterminate by Quinean lights.
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    • 3.Quine's inscrutability of reference argument shows that without a determinate anchoring relation, no unique object is singled out, undermining the very directness the claim asserts.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • Direct thought about an object can be grounded by means other than perceptual contact or Kaplan's dthat-operator.
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