Reference Book

John Hawthorne and David Manley present an original treatment of the semantic phenomenon of reference and the cognitive phenomenon of singular thought. In Part I, they argue against the idea that either is tied to a special relation of causal or epistemic acquaintance. Part II challenges the alleged semantic rift between definite and indefinite descriptions on the one hand, and names and demonstratives on the other—a division that has been motivated in part byappeals to considerations of acquaintance. Drawing on recent work in linguistics and philosophical semantics, Hawthorne and Manley explore a more unified account of all four types of expression according to which none of them paradigmatically fits the profile of a referential term. On the preferredframework put forward in The Reference Book, all four types of expression involve existential quantification but admit of uses that exhibit many of the traits associated with reference—a phenomenon that is due to the presence of what Hawthorne and Manley call a 'singular restriction' on the existentially quantified domain. The book concludes by drawing out some implications of the proposed semantic picture for the traditional categories of reference and singular thought.

All in all, The Reference Book is one of the most important contributions to the philosophy of language of the past few years. Acquaintance theorists will have to engage with the criticisms of their views offered in the first part of the book. The unified account of noun phrases defended in the second part will be a central contestant in the debate over the semantics of noun phrases. And the wealth of examples discussed throughout will provide an invaluable source for semanticists and philosophers of language. There is no doubt in my mind that The Reference Book is to become a standard reference for future work on singular thought and the semantics of noun phrases., ...a wonderful book. The authors' writing style is lively...readable, and clear, and their very careful consideration of all sides of every issue should leave readers with a whole new appreciation of the complexity of those issues, and a sense that many of their automatic assumptions about the functioning of NPs in English (and most likely other languages as well) need to be revised., [an] excellent book ...exemplifies today's philosophy of language at its best.

John Hawthorne is Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford, having previously been Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. His books include Knowledge and Lotteries, Metaphysical Essays, and Relativism and Monadic Truth.David Manley is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His papers have appeared in such journals as Mind, The Journal of Philosophy, Noûs, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.