Abstract:

Recent philosophical work inspired by Gareth Evans has tried to develop a notion of a "demonstrative thought" in order to draw an illuminating connection between perception and the semantics of demonstratives (e.g. "this" and "that"). Furthermore, this connection often hinges on the role of space as being simultaneously that which the perceptual system uses to isolate its accusatives, and that which houses the referents of demonstrative expressions. I will argue that this approach is wrong-headed on all fronts. First, I will show that perception does not depend on space to isolate its accusatives. Second, I will illustrative that demonstrative reference need not involve spatial accusatives (even in uses that are clearly exophoric). And finally, I will briefly present some in-progress work (done in collaboration with Amanda Brovold, and Kensy Cooperrider) that provides a very different positive account of demonstrative semantics. The theory provides a unified account of both exophoric ("That's my new car", "This package is for you") and endophoric ("That's irrelevant", "This is what I was trying to say") demonstrative anaphora, and also provides a better account of the factors that influence proximal (e.g. "this") vs. non-proximal (e.g. "that") than extant accounts in the linguistics literature.