This paper develops a new account of reference-fixing for proper names. The account is built around an intuitive claim about reference fixing: the claim that I am a participant in a practice of using α to refer to o only if my uses of α are constrained by the representationally relevant ways it is possible for o to behave. §I raises examples that suggest that a right account of how proper names refer should incorporate this claim. §II provides such an (...) account. (shrink)

What are the conditions for fixing the reference of a proper name? Debate on this point has recently been rekindled by Scott Soames, Robin Jeshion, and others. In this paper, I sketch a new pragmatic approach to the justification of reference-fixing procedures, in opposition to accounts that insist on an invariant set of conditions for fixing reference across environments and linguistic communities. Comparing reference to other relations whose instances are introduced through "initiation" procedures, I outline a picture in which the (...) procedures that are successful for fixing the reference of proper names depend in part on regularities in the actual environment. (shrink)

In this paper I trace Quine's early development of his treatment of names, first as abbreviations for definite descriptions with "Frege-Rusell" style substantive content, then as abbreviations for definite descriptions containing simple predicative content, through to a treatment of names themselves as predicates rather than as abbreviations for this or that type of more complex expression. Along the way, I explain why—despite ubiquitous claims and suggestions to the contrary—Quine never actually uses the verbized name "Socratizes".

This article explores the ethics of pseudonymous publication of nonfiction by examining what and why an author might hide behind the veil of pseudonymity, when this is and is not appropriate, and when it /is/ deemed appropriate what measures should be taken to ensure accountability despite the veil. The argument begins by assuming that the sole duty an author has /qua/ author is to his audience and centers on issues in both ethics and philosophy of language.

This paper offers an interpretation of Plato's Cratylus 427d1-431c3 that supports a reading of the dialogue as a whole as concluding in favour of a conventionalist account of naming. While many previous interpretations note the value of this passage as evidence for Platonic investigations of false propositions, this paper argues that its demonstration that there can be false (or incorrect) naming in turn refutes the naturalist account of naming; that is, it shows that a natural relation between name and nominatum (...) is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for reference. Socrates secures this outcome by using demonstratives and their concomitants to show how any putative natural imitative link between name and object may be overridden. Furthermore, Socrates' employment of demonstratives and context-dependent statements in his case-studies of false naming speaks in favour of a reading of this passage as primarily focussing on naming rather than on propositions in general. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that Mill’s classification of names as nonconnotative terms is incompatible with Frege’s thesis that names have senses. However, Milldescribed the senses of nonconnotative terms—without being aware that he was doing so. These are the senses for names that were sought in vain by Frege. When Mill’s and Frege’s doctrines are understood as complementary, they constitute a fully satisfactory theory of names.

On the basis of arguments put forth by (Kripke, 1977a) and (Kripke, 1980), it is widely held that one can sometimes rationally accept propositions of the form P and not-P and also that there are necessary a posteriori truths. We will find that Kripke's arguments for these views appear probative only so long as one fails to distinguish between semantics and presemantics—between the literal meanings of sentences, on the one hand, and the information on the basis of which one identifies (...) those literal meanings, on the other. This same failure, it will be argued, underlies the popular thesis that intersubstituting co-referring terms sometimes turns true sentences into false ones and vice versa. Though seemingly plausible, this thesis has a number of counterintuitive consequences, among them that the occurrence of “snow” in “it is true that snow is white” doesn’t refer to snow. An understanding of the distinction between semantics and presemantics suggests a way to develop a semantic system that doesn’t have these consequences and that, moreover, reconciles our intuitions concerning cognitive content with some powerfully argued theses of contemporary philosophy of language. Some of this paper's main contentions are anticipated by Andrzej Boguslawski in his 1994 paper “Sentential Complementation and Truth.”. (shrink)

In an article entitled "You can call me 'stupid',...just don't call me stupid," Fara claims that distinguishing between meta-linguistic and non-meta-linguistic notions of calling can allow for a response to Kripke's circularity objection to theories of proper names that rely on a notion of calling to elucidate their meaning. Fara naturally suggests that in giving a theory of a name's meaning, we rely on the non-meta-linguistic calling relation, since it is not subject to the circularity objection. To fully address Kripke's (...) worry, however, two things must hold (a) the theory must yield a criterion that determines a name's reference, and (b) it must be informative. I argue that if Fara's theory of names is to give an answer to (a), understanding names as predicates would require understanding them as predicates that apply uniquely to individuals or alternatively as predicates with some kind of tacit determiner when they occur in argument position. I claim this interpretation is implausible because taken at face value it would require massive ambiguity or it is syntactically controversial. I also argue that whether Fara’s application criterion for names is truly informative depends on whether the schema is falsifiable when applied to names not just when applied to other kinds of expressions. I suspect that only one kind of case could show this, one in which we substitute a synonymous name from another language into the left hand side of her schema. However, other expressions, expressions like adjectives fail the test not only inter-linguistically, but also intra-linguistically, suggesting a difference between names and other expressions. Since Fara's schema for names is not falsifiable intra-linguistically, I suggest that Fara's schema for the calling relation with respect to names, at least, is not truly informative and that Kripke’s objection to such accounts stands. (shrink)

This is review essay of Mark Sainsbury's Reference without Referents. Its main part is a critical discussion of Sainsbury's proposal for the individuation of proper name using practices.