Online research in philosophy

It is well known that Husserl’s Logical Investigations contain the beginnings of an account of the meanings of indexical expressions, expressions whose meanings depend essentially on some sort of explicit or implicit pointing or indication [Anzeigen], and therefore on some contribution by the surroundings of speaker and hearer. Husserl in fact speaks explicitly of ‘occasional expressions’, that is of expressions like ‘this’ and ‘that’ whose meanings depend on features of the occasion of use, but it is possible to gauge the full implications of his explicit remarks on the problem of indexical or occasional meanings only if these are read in conjunction with what he says elsewhere in the Investigations, especially on the subject of perceptual judgments and proper names.

In A Puzzle About Belief, Saul Kripke tells the story of a person caught in a classic Frege case. Peter is unaware that Paderewski the famous Polish politician, and Paderewski the famous Polish musician, are one and the same person. What is supposed to distinguish this Frege case from many others is that Peter associates a single name, 'Paderewski' with both of his conceptions. But not everyone may agree with this description. Richard Larson and Peter Ludlow, and Robert Fiengo and Robert May have suggested that Peter's idiolect contains two 'Paderewski' names (or syntactic expressions). Just as ordinary English speakers may have two 'bank' words each with its own meaning, Peter has two homophonic names each corresponding to one of his conceptions of Paderewski. I will call this position, which will be subject to further clarification, 'the two-name view'. According to the two-name view, the syntactic facts concerning an agent's language should reflect, in this peculiar way, her own perspective on the world. In this sense then, the two-name view is a symptom of an individualistic conception of the words that make up a person's language.

It has been persuasively argued by David Kaplan and others that the proposition expressed by statements like (1) is a singular proposition, true in just those worlds in which a certain person, David Israel, is a computer scientist. Call this proposition P . The truth of this proposition does not require that the utterance (1) occur, or even that Israel has ever said anything at all. Marcus, Donnellan, Kripke and others have persuasively argued for a view of proper names that, put in Kaplan’s terms and applied to this example, implies that the proposition expressed by (2) is also simply P .1 The thesis that expressions of a certain category (names, indexicals, demonstratives, pronouns, descriptions, etc.) are referential 2holds that these expressions contribute the object to which they refer, rather than a mode of presentation of that object, to the propositions expressed by statements containing them. The thesis that indexicals and names are referential creates the challenge of explaining the difference in cognitive significance between statements like (1) and (2), that express the same proposition[Wettstein, 1986]. The problem has two parts, which..

Saul Kripke’s thesis that ordinary proper names are rigid designators is supported by widely shared intuitions about the occurrence of names in ordinary modal contexts. By those intuitions names are scopeless with respect to the modal expressions. That is, sentences in a pair like (a) Aristotle might have been fond of dogs, (b) Concerning Aristotle, it is true that he might have been fond of dogs will have the same truth value. The same does not in general hold for definite descriptions. If one, like Kripke, accounts for this difference by means of the intensions of the names and the descriptions, the conclusion is that names do not in general have the same intension as any normal, identifying description. However, this difference can be accounted for alternatively by appeal to the semantics of the modal expressions. On the account we suggest, dubbed ‘relational modality’, simple singular terms, like proper names, contribute to modal contexts simply by their actual world reference, not by their descriptive content. That account turns out to be fully equivalent with the rigidity account when it comes to truth of modal and non-modal sentence (with respect to the actual world), and hence supports the same basic intuitions. Here we present the relational modality account and compare it with others, in particular Kripke’s own.

Conventions in the use of names are discussed, particularly names of linguistic expressions. Also the reference of measure terms like ‘kg’ is discussed, and it is found analogous in important respects to expression names. Some new light is shed on the token-type distinction. Applications to versions of the liar paradox are shown. The use of quotation marks is critically examined.

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.

Saul Kripke’s thesis that ordinary proper names are rigid designators is supported by widely shared intuitions about the occurrence of names in ordinary modal contexts. By those intuitions names are scopeless with respect to the modal expressions. That is, sentences in a pair like..

This article explores Gareth Evans’s idea that there are such things as descriptive names, i.e. referring expressions introduced by a definite description which have, unlike ordinary names, a descriptive content. Several ignored semantic and modal aspects of this idea are spelled out, including a hitherto little explored notion of rigidity, super-rigidity. The claim that descriptive names are (rigidified) descriptions, or abbreviations thereof, is rejected. It is then shown that Evans’s theory leads to certain puzzles concerning the referential status of descriptive names and the evaluation of identity statements containing them. A tentative solution to these puzzles is suggested, which centres on the treatment of definite descriptions as referring expressions.

It is argued that, contrary to appearances, description-names (e.g.: The Roman Empire, The Beatles, The Holy Virgin,...) do conform to Millianism, i.e. the view that proper names are directly referential expressions, referring regardless of whether the relevant individual satisfies some associated description or not. However, description-names name and describe. Some arguments supporting this peculiarity and a logic to handle description-names are proposed. It will be shown that the best framework with which to accommodate description-names is a multiple-proposition theory, according to which a given utterance may express several propositions.