Sense dependence vs reference

Two meanings of ”$X$ depends on $Y$” that are easily conflated.

Kind of reference	Sense	Reference
Meaning of ”$X$ depends on $Y$”	you can’t understand $X$ unless you understand $Y$	you can’t have $X$ existing without $Y$ existing
Flavor of dependence	Epistemological	Ontological

Robert Brandom points out that we can have sense dependence without having reference dependence.

Response-dependent properties, e.g. a toy concept of beauty: ”$X$ is beautiful if looking at it elicits pleasure in people.”

• This is asserting a sense dependence of beauty on people, but not a reference dependence.
• It is intelligible that there could exist beautiful sunsets before there ever were people in the world, or if people never existed.

Examples §

“Parent” and “child” are both reciprocally sense- and reference- dependent.

Historical relevance §

This is the difference between Berkeley’s idealism and Kant’s transcendental idealism. When someone claims the lawfulness of a relation between two properties is a feature of our cognitive faculties, it makes a big difference whether this is a sense or reference dependence claim.

• Without understanding what it is for you to follow a rule / to infer $B$ from $A$, you can’t understand the lawfulness that you’re taking the world to have.
• This does not entail a reference dependence.