referential practice

[WORK IN PROGRESS]

There is just one occurence of the phrase “referential practice” in T&W, but there are many occurrences in HN.

T&W Ch. 3 What Might Have Been.

5. What’s the Point of Analyticity, Then?

“Meaning” for this purpose can be taken narrowly for linguistic meaning, as usage that varies with discourse, or as that, plus some of the known overflow conditions presupposed in common referential practice. So, sometimes “human” means “rational animal” and sometimes also means “male or female,”“born as an infant,” and “certain to die,” or the like. Whether broadly or narrowly used, the word “human” signifies, but does not “mean,” all the other unexpressed, overflow de re necessities like having blood pressure and adrenal glands, and the hidden de re necessities, say, the species-wide genetic assembly conditions we don’t know yet.