Singular Reference: A Descriptivist Perspective

Francesco Orilia studied philosophy at the university of Palermo (M.A., 1979) and then, after being granted a Fulbright grant, at Indiana University, Bloomington (Ph.D., 1986), where he was a student of Hector-Neri Castañeda, Nino B. Cocchiarella and J. M. Dunn. From 1987 to 1994 he was a researcher in artificial intelligence at the Olivetti research lab in Pisa and from July 1994 to July 1997 a researcher/lecturer in theoretical philosophy at the University of Cagliari. Since August 1997 he has been with the university of Macerata where he is currently professor of philosophy of language. He also had visiting positions at Indiana University, Bloomington (1986), University of Paris IV (2005), University of Iowa at Iowa City (2006), Cambridge University (2008). In the period 2000-2003 he was a member of the selection committee of the E. W. Beth Dissertation Prize for logic, language, and information and he is now in the editorial board of Metaphysica. He has written or co-edited a few books and published many papers in international journals such as Dialectica, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Journal of Symbolic Logic, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Minds and Machines, Synthese, Topoi.

Introduction: Referentialism vs. Descriptivism.- Background Notions.- Why Descriptivism Was So Successful.- Why Referentialism Is So Successful.- Definite Descriptions and Proper Names.- Indexicals.- Tense, Temporal Indexicals and Other Miscellaneous Issues.- Conclusion: Accounting for the Referentialist DataReferentialist data .

“Orilia’s volume, which for the detailed analysis of the problems and for the originality and the insights of the advanced solutions represents one of the most recommended texts for those who are interested in the debate between Descriptivism and Direct Reference Theory about singular reference devices.” (Aldo Frigerio, Axiomathes, Vol. 27, 2017)