Vehicles of meaning: Essays on referential context-dependence in speech and thought

Vehicles of Meaning examines the problem of referential context-dependence: the phenomenon whereby the reference of a linguistic or mental symbol varies with the circumstances of its use. The dissertation investigates a thesis that referential context dependence is characteristic of a wide range of predicative elements in speech and thought, which bear extensions rather than denoting individuals.;The first chapter, "Predicates in Context," assesses a line of argument purporting to show that linguistic predicates manifest contentual context-dependence: their contribution to the propositional contents of utterances containing them varies with, and depends upon, the circumstances in which those utterances are made. The core of the response advocated in the chapter is the thesis that a predicate's extension may differ across contexts while bearing an invariant content. A predicate may express an invariant property; but a particular context of use may privilege one particular way of instantiating the property, which delimits the extension of the predicate as so used.;The next chapter, "Concepts and their Tokens," argues that different deployments of a predicative concept may determine different extensions compatibly with its expressing an invariant content. The chapter argues that at least some of the rational norms and semantic properties that apply to many ordinary concepts are token-specific: they vary from one particular use, or deployment, of a concept to another. A proper understanding of the nature of a concept as a mental device of classification and representation must, therefore, make ineliminable reference to differences among its particular uses.;The final chapter, "How do Concepts Refer?", buttresses the arguments of the first and second chapters by investigating the two-level theory of predicative reference lying at the heart of the account of context-dependence proposed in the dissertation. The chapter argues that reference plays two roles in the theory of concepts: an invariant, presentational role and a variable, procedural role. The chapter argues that the difference between the invariant content and variable extension of a concept type may be elucidated by reference to the distinction between these two roles of reference.