Bad Practices: Unintended Consequences of Practice-Based Theories of Reference

Practice theories are a genus of causal theories of reference. They claim that the semantic referent of an utterance of a name is determined by features of a practice of using that name to speaker-refer to, or coordinate actions around, a certain object. Practices might extend beyond the utterance, so the reference of some utterances is determined by future events. This entails no commitment on when facts about these future events are themselves determined; one might say they are determined as they happen (and are indeterminate beforehand) or that they are determinate at all times (including beforehand). The practice theory entails unacceptable consequences on either view. On the first, some utterances will have their referent determined once after some future events, then determined again, differently after further events: one utterance may have different semantic referents at different times. This entails similar, unacceptable, consequences for truth and epistemic status. On the second, there are cases of systematic and consistent semantic error which are indistinguishable from cases of systematic success. These are common and imperceptible enough that for all we know, this phenomenon may be very widespread, suggesting we should be skeptical of our knowledge of the semantics of our utterances.