Reference: do we agree?

Bill offers us some distinctions for our consideration.

A. Referring terms versus non-referring terms. 'London' is presumably a referring term as is 'Scollay Square.' 'And,' 'or' and other logical words are presumably not referring terms. Surely not every bit of language plays a referential role. Some terms are syncategorematical or synsemantic.

OK.

B. Purported reference versus successful reference. Asserting 'Scollay Square is in Boston,' I purport to refer to Scollay Square. But I fail: the square no longer exists. But if I say 'Trafalgar Square is in London,' I succeed in referring to Trafalgar Square.

I think there is room for some notion of unsuccessful reference but it isn't what Bill is getting at here.  If I say to you out of the blue, 'I am having dinner with Jane tonight', and you have no idea who Jane is because I haven't introduced the name 'Jane' into the conversation, then I think I have made an unsuccessful reference (or maybe no reference at all).  But Scollay Square was a well-known square that used to be in Boston, so the name 'Scollay Square' hardly fails to refer in this sense. 

C. Guaranteed successful reference versus contingent successful reference. It is not obvious that the first-personal singular pronoun is a referring term. Elizabeth Anscombe, following Wittgenstein, denies that it is. But I say that 'I' is a referring term. Suppose it is. Then it is guaranteed against reference failure: a correct use of 'I' cannot fail to have a referent and it cannot fail to have the right referent. The cooperation of the world is not needed for success in this instance. If I try to make a reference using 'I' I will succeed every time. But the cooperation of the world is needed for successful reference via proper names such as 'Scollay Square.' If I try to make a reference using a proper name I can fail if the name has no (existing) bearer, or if I get hold of the wrong (existing) bearer.

Consider: 'I am Ozymandias, King of Kings.  Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair.'  Is this a case of guaranteed successful reference?

D. Reference versus referents. The referent of a term is not to be confused with its reference. 'Scollay Square' is a referring term and it has a reference, but it has no referent. Not all reference is successful reference.

I don't get the distinction Bill is making here.

E. Mental reference versus linguistic reference. Necessarily, to think is to think of or about. Thinking is object-directed. Thinking is essentially and intrinsically referential. It can occur wordlessly. It is arguably at the basis of all reference, including reference via language. Just as guns don't kill people, but people kill people using guns; words don't refer to things, but people refer to things using words.

Agree with the last clause.  Disagree with the rest, which I think is back to front.

F. Extralinguistic versus purely intralinguistic reference. Consider the following sentence from a piece of pure fiction: 'Tom's wife left him.' The antecedent of the pronoun 'him' is Tom.' This back reference is purely intralinguistic. It is plausible to maintain that the only reference exhibited by 'him' is back reference, and that 'him' does not pick up the extralinguistic reference of 'Tom,' there being no such reference to pick up. Then we would have case of purely intralinguistic reference.

Yes, but 'Tom' could be an intra-linguistic back reference to the indefinite 'a chap' in 'I met a chap called Tom in the pub last night.  Tom's wife has left him'.  And this could all be made up.  Then what?  We need to clarify what extra-linguistic reference is.

G. Extralinguistic per se reference versus extralinguistic per alium reference. 'Max' names (is the name of) one of my two black cats; 'Manny' names (is the name of) the other. These are cases of extralinguistic per se reference. But 'he' in the following sentence, while it refers extralinguistically, refers per alium, 'through another':

Max is sick because he ate too much.

The extralinguistic reference of the pronoun piggy-backs on the the extralinguistic reference of its antecedent. The pronoun has no extralinguistic referential contribution of its own to make.

Leave out 'extralinguistic' and it still makes sense.  'Max' links back to the indefinite 'one of my cats' in the second sentence where the name is introduced.

H. Grammatical pronouns can function pronominally, indexically, and quantificationally. Consider first a sentence featuring a pronoun that has an antecedent:

Peter always calls before he visits.

In this sentence, 'Peter' is the antecedent of the third-person singular pronoun 'he.' It is worth noting that an antecedent needn't come before the term for which it is the antecedent:

After he got home, Peter poured himself a drink.

In this sentence 'Peter' is the antecedent of 'he' despite occurring after 'he' in the order of reading. The antecedency is referential rather than temporal. In both of these cases, the reference of 'he' is supplied by the antecedent. The burden of reference is borne by the antecedent. So there is a clear sense in which the reference of 'he' in both cases is not direct, but mediated by the antecedent. The antecedent is referentially prior to to the pronoun for which it is the antecedent. But suppose I point to Peter and say

He smokes cigarettes.

This is an indexical use of 'he.' Part of what makes it an indexical use is that its reference depends on the context of utterance: I utter a token of 'he' while pointing at Peter, or nodding in his direction. Another part of what makes it an indexical is that it refers directly, not just in the sense that the reference is not routed through a description or sense associated with the use of the pronoun, but also in that there is no need for an antecedent to secure the reference. Now suppose I say

I smoke cigars.

This use of 'I' is clearly indexical, although it is a purely indexical (D. Kaplan) inasmuch as there is no need for a demonstration: I don't need to point to myself when I say 'I smoke cigars.' And like the immediately preceding example, there is no need for an antecedent to nail down the reference of 'I.' Not every pronoun needs an antecedent to do a referential job.

In fact, it seems that no indexical expression, used indexically, has or could have an antecedent. Hector-Neri Castaneda puts it like this:

Whether in oratio recta or in oratio obliqua, (genuine) indicators have no antecedents. ("Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" reprinted in The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, p. 67)

For a quantificational use of a grammatical pronoun, consider

He who hesitates is lost.

(One can imagine Yogi Berra asking, 'You mean Peter?') Clearly, 'he' does not function here pronominally -- there is no antecedent -- not does it function indexically. It functions like the bound variable in

For any person x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.

I am tempted to say that indexical uses have implicit antecedents.  If Bill points to Peter in my presence and says, 'This is Peter. He smokes', then I can perform for myself the introduction, 'There is a man called Peter'. More needs to be said on this.

I. Reference via names, via definite descriptions, via indefinite descriptions. 'Socrates,' 'the wisest Greek philosopher,' 'a famous Greek philosopher of antiquity.' Do they all refer? Or only the first two? Or only the first?

As words none of them refers in Bill's 'extralinguistic' sense.  But I think Bill's distinction between words and uses of words may be useful.  For we could say that Bill refers to Socrates by using these words in certain contexts. I'd like to see this idea developed more.  The key point is that BIll's 'extra-linguistic reference' is something that we can achieve by using words in the real world.  It's not something inherent in the words themselves.

J. Successful reference to the nonexistent versus failed reference to the existent. Does 'Pegasus' fail to refer to something that exists or succeed in referring to what does not exist? Meinongian semantics cannot be dismissed out of hand!

I reject Bill's notion of 'successful/failed reference' and hence the question too.

K. Speaker's reference versus semantic reference. 'The man in the corner drinking champagne is the new dean.' Suppose there is exactly one man in the corner drinking water out of a champagne glass. Has the speaker of the mentioned sentence succeeded in referring to the man in the corner? Presumably yes despite the man's not satisfying the definite description in subject position. Here speaker's reference and semantic reference come apart. This connects up with distinction (E) above. 

I think it connects up with (I).