Talking about: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference

Combining new insights from cognitive science and speech art theory, Unnsteinsson develops a compelling theory of singular reference which avoids well-known puzzles and objections. The theory, called Edenic intentionalism, is grounded in a mechanistic perspective on explanation in cognitive science and a new Gricean account of speaker meaning and speaker reference. Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference develops an account of the mental state of identity confusion and separates questions about the nature of representational acts and representational states. Unnsteinsson proposes a division of labour, but Edenic intentionalism is strictly a theory of intentional, mind-directed representational acts, taking speech acts as its paradigm case.

Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference argues that mental mechanisms ought to be postulated to explain human cognitive capacities. Pragmatic competence is the capacity to successfully produce utterances with a communicative intention. By examining the characteristic function and malfunction of the mechanism for referential competence, the study shows that confused reference should be understood as a type of malfunction. This is the core thesis of Edenic intentionalism: that the identity confusion disrupts the normal function of the speech art of reference.