Abstract

Kaplan’s influential (1989) makes a connection between the mode of reference of indexical expressions and the impossibility of a certain sentential operators, which he calls monsters. The impossibility of monsters has recently come under attack from several quarters, both theoretical and empirical. In this paper I consider monsters from a different perspective. I motivate the prohibition on monsters independently of intensional notions altogether, and understand it not as an empirical hypothesis, but as an adequacy criterion on formal systems intended to capture the philosophical notion of direct reference. I show that Kaplan's formalism doesn't live up to this criterion, and sketch in preliminary fashion a formalism that does.