Good Cases, Bad Cases

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter claims that many philosophers employ a confusion-driven methodology, namely, they describe a case in which a speaker is confused about the identity of something and wonder what they could be referring to by making some utterance or other. The chapter argues that this methodology is suspect and goes through two case studies: Kripke on semantic reference, and Reimer on demonstratives. It shows how their arguments fail precisely in virtue of being based on cases of confusion. The author amplifies this result further by stressing that many well-known examples of near-confusion in the philosophical literature do not in fact support the same conclusion. The author has in mind Putnam on beeches and elms, and Donnellan on the distinction between attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions. The author concludes, thus, that his argument does not count against the so-called method of cases, only its confusion-driven incarnation.