On referring to the same thing

This dissertation addresses foundational issues concerning a theory of meaning for natural languages as well as foundational issues concerning the a priori status of logical inferences. I defend the existence of a relation, "Linking" which is a primitive notion from the perspective of a theory of meaning. The relation holds between occurrences of symbols only if appropriately situated competent users of the language in question know that the occurrences refer to the same thing if they refer at all. The basic idea is that linking is the relation that is operant when participants in a conversation manage to know that they are continuing to talk about the same thing as the conversation progresses.; One might think that the linking effect is largely explained by a very simple mechanism. The mechanism is that when the same symbol is used in a discourse, speakers thereby know that they are talking about the same object. Chapter two argues that the right way of individuating words, and names in particular, shows that the mechanism mentioned fails. There are many interesting cases (beyond pronouns) in which the same symbol may be used in a discourse to refer to different things.; Now, the logical validity of certain arguments is often explained by appealing to the pattern of symbols in that argument. The result from chapter two calls this classical explanation into doubt. For an argument of the simple surface form P therefore P may not be logically valid when the P occurrences bear distinct semantic properties. Chapter three articulates a puzzle concerning the notion of logical validity.; Chapter four tries to gain headway on the puzzle. It argues against trying to explain linking by way of co-reference, intentions to refer, or pragmatic presuppositions. It also contains a discussion concerning the role of syntax in explaining linking. The final chapter discusses how linking is to be embedded in a fully compositional semantic theory. I give a novel account of logical validity in terms of linking. I end with a formal account.