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Evans on Identification-freedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rick Grush*
Affiliation:
UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0119, USA

Extract

Gareth Evans’ account of Identification-freedom (IF), which he develops in Chapters 6 and 7 of The Varieties of Reference (henceforth VR) is almost universally misunderstood. Howell is guilty of this same misunderstanding, and as a result claims to have mounted a criticism of Evans, when in fact he has not. I will take the occasion of Howell's otherwise insightful article to clarify Evans’ position. Note that the bulk of Howell's analysis is targeted at the phenomenon known as immunity to error through misidentification (IEM), which is related to but not (necessarily) identical to IF. Therefore, the accuracy of Howell's treatment of Evans in particular is tangential to the main thrust of his article. My exegesis of Evans’ account — like any non-trivial exegesis — goes somewhat beyond anything Evans overtly says. That Evans did not explicitly put the pieces together in the way I suggest they fit no doubt contributes to the widespread misunderstanding of his views.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007

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References

Bar-On, Dorit (2004). Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Gareth (1980). The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar