Arguments from Reference and the Worry about Dependence Many Thanks To

1 Arguments from Reference and the Worry About Dependence "Arguments from reference" are arguments that employ the assertion of a substantive theory of reference as a premise in an argument with a philosophically significant conclusion. Recent work has challenged the viability of these arguments on the basis of empirical evidence of variation in the intuitions that substantive theories of reference are usually taken to be responsible to (Mallon et al. ms, Machery et al. 2004). My present aim is to raise a distinct (though complementary) sort of concern with the use of theories of reference in philosophical discourse and then to consider the possibility of empirically validating this concern by reference to a novel sort of "quantitative" empirical approach suggested recently by Shaun Nichols (forthcoming). The concern I raise is whether the particular theories of reference or reference relations (I use these terms interchangeably in what follows) that are employed in particular philosophical discussions are actually chosen with a view to entailing or accommodating a desired philosophical outcome. I argue below that such dependent selections of assumptions about reference give us little reason to think the assumptions are true. I go on to argue that if we became convinced that such assumptions really are chosen simply to ensure a desired outcome, it would give us reason for skepticism about arguments from reference since it would undermine our sense that such arguments tracked any independent truth about the reference of our words or concepts.