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I am indebted to students and colleagues for comments and suggestions, in particular Professor John Perry and Mr. Theodore Budlong. I believe also that some departure from the traditional alternatives in theories about reference and proper names is ‘in the air’ and that views along some of the lines I take in this paper I may share with others, although the view I attack is still the dominant one. I believe that Saul Kripke has a very similar position, at least insofar as denial of the prevalent theories go. And, indeed, I think I may owe one of my counter-examples to him through a secondhand source (although I did not understand the relevance until much later). David Kaplan's paper, ‘Quantifying In’, Synthese 19 (1969) 178–214, also seems to me to be in the same vein, though I am not sure I agree with a variety of details and the main purpose of the paper is not to mount an assault on theories of proper names.
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Donnellan, K.S. Proper names and identifying descriptions. Synthese 21, 335–358 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00484804
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00484804