Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-d5ftd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-18T01:02:24.463Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The New Theory of Reference Entails Absolute Time and Space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Quentin Smith
Quentin Smith*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Antioch College
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH 45387.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The New Theory of Reference (NTR) of Marcus, Kripke, Kaplan, Putnam and others is a theory in the philosophy of language and there has been much debate about whether it entails the metaphysical theory of essentialism. But there has been no discussion about whether the NTR entails another metaphysical theory, the absolutist theory of time and space. It is argued in this paper that the NTR carries this entailment; the theory of time is the main focus of the paper and it is argued that the NTR entails the absolutist theory that times are event-independent moments.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 411 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

I am grateful to a referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References

Almog, J. (1981), “Dthis and Dthat: Indexicality Goes Beyond That”, Philosophical Studies 39: 347–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arthur, R. (1985), “Leibniz's Theory of Time”, in K. Okruhlik and J. R. Brown (eds.), The Natural Philosophy of Leibniz. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 263–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunge, M. (1968), “Physical Time: The Objective and Relational Theory”, Philosophy of Science 35: 355–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chisholm, R. M. (1981), The First Person, an Essay on Reference and Intensionality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Coppock, P. (1984), “Review of Nathan U. Salmon's Reference and Essence”, The Journal of Philosophy 81: 261–270.Google Scholar
Kaplan, D. (1977), Demonstratives. Mimeograph. Los Angeles: University of California in Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Kripke, S. A. (1980), Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Leplin, J. (1988), “Is Essentialism Unscientific?”, Philosophy of Science 55: 493–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, R. B. (1961), “Modalities and Intensional Languages”, Synthese 130 303–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. (1984), Faraday to Einstein: Constructing Meaning in Scientific Theories. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newton-Smith, W. H. (1980), The Structure of Time. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Perry, J. (1977), “Frege on Demonstratives”, The Philosophical Review 86: 474–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plantinga, A. (1974), The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. (1975), Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1948), Human Knowledge; Its Scope and Limits. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Salmon, N. (1981), Reference and Essence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, N. (1986), Frege's Puzzle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Shapere, D. (1984), Reason and the Search for Knowledge: Investigations in the Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Wettstein, H. K. (1979), “Indexical Reference and Propositonal Content”, Philosophical Studies 36: 91–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitrow, G. J. (1980), The Natural Philosophy of Time. 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Winnie, J. A. (1977), “The Causal Theory of Space-Time”, in J. Earman, C. Glymour and J. Stachel (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 8, Foundations of Space-Time Theories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 134–205.Google Scholar