(Informal study group)
In Mind and World (1994) John McDowell wrote of Gareth
Evans' ground-breaking The Varieties of Reference: "That
such work can be so little appreciated is a mark of degeneracy
in our philosophical culture."
Pete Mandik and I will make a careful study of The Varieties of Reference this fall, and all who would like to join us are welcome. But be forewarned, this book is one of the most difficult that analytic philosophy has to offer. My guess that covering VR in one semester will involve at least 5 hours of work (to get through around 25 - 30 pages) per week (which includes 1.5 hours of discussion).
For anyone who would like to join us, and who may not have a very strong background in analytic philosophy of language in general, or singular reference in particular, I would suggest reading the following, at a minumum, before attempting VR (hence the appearance of this announcement before summer vacation!):
Frege, G. (1952) On sense and reference. In Geach and Black eds. Translations from the philosophical writings of Gottlob Frege Blackwell. (also found in many other places)
Russell, B. (1905) On Denoting. Mind 14. (Also to be found in many anthologies.)
McDowell, J. (1977) On the sense and reference of a proper name. Mind 86:159-185.
Evans, G. (1973) The Causal Theory of Names. (reprinted in The Collected Papers of Gareth Evans Oxford 1985)
Strawson, P. (1959) Individuals: An essay in descriptive metaphysics. Routledge. (Especially chapters 1 and 2, but the entire book is terrific and worth reading.)
Evans, G. (1980) Things without the mind: A commentary on Chapter Two of Strawson's Individuals. (reprinted in The Collected Papers of Gareth Evans Oxford 1985)
Dummett, M. (1975) Frege's distinction between sense and reference. In Dummett (1978) Truth and Other Enigmas. Harvard.
Perry, J. (1979) The problem of the essential indexical. Nous 13:3-21
Donnellan, K. (1966) Reference and definite descriptions. Phil. Review 75:281-304
(The first, third, fourth and seventh of these are conveniently available in the terrific collection Meaning and Reference, A.W. Moore, ed. 1993 Oxford. Also, a very accesssible introduction to analytic philosophy of language is Gregory McCulloch's The Game of the Name.)
If you think you might be interested in participating, please let me know. Keep in mind that we will only be studying VR, not the bibliography above. Also, I will order a number of copies of VR, as well as Strawson's Individuals (and maybe even the Moore collection) from Library Ltd. So please let me know if you'd like copies, of any or all, so I know about how many to order. I'll place the order around May 17th, so try to let me know by then.
Last updated: May 5, 1996.