 This brings us to a third possibility for how the impure indexicals refer: perhaps, as Kaplan (1989a) suggests, token uses of the impure indexicals, like demonstratives and deictic uses of pronouns, refer to whoever or whatever the speaker intends for them to refer to. Kaplan sees some continuity here with his earlier pointing-based approach, since he takes it that such intentions (what he calls ‘directing intentions’) might well be thought of as the internal analogue of an externalized pointing. Still, the suggestion is more durable than this earlier one; no explicit gesture is necessary for reference to succeed. Indeed, not only can we now account for uses of impure indexicals with no accompanying ostensive gesture, this sort of intentionalist theory can also allow for uses of impure indexicals to refer to objects that aren’t physically present in the context—as  there is no block to speakers having intentions directed at such objects. Since we do indeed use impure indexicals to refer to physically and temporally distant objects, this looks like a significant advantage for Kaplan’s ‘intentionalist’ theory of reference.