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Descriptivism Without Quotation

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Abstract

Current descriptivist accounts of proper names entail two claims: (i) that the expressions we know as different proper names are the bearers of different meanings and (ii) that the descriptions corresponding to these meanings contain quotations of the expressions whose meanings they are taken to be. While (ii) is the source of a number of intractable problems, descriptivists feel committed to it because it is the only available option to adhere to (i), which they use to take as a matter of course. In the present paper I will bring up for discussion a, to my knowledge, new descriptivist account, inter-nominal descriptivism, which avoids the commitment to (ii) by rejecting (i). According to this account, all tokens of the expressions known as different proper names express the same descriptive mode of presentation and this descriptive mode of presentation is akin to the character of an indexical. I will try to show that, contrary to first appearance, this idea can be developed in a consistent and plausible manner.

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Notes

  1. See Jackson (2010), 17.

  2. Kripke (1980).

  3. See e.g. Soames (2002) for careful reconstruction and extensive discussion.

  4. See Dummett (1981), 110 ff.

  5. Among them are Lewis (see 1997), Kroon (see 1987, 2009), Jackson (see 1998b, 2010) or Chalmers (see 2002).

  6. Thanks to Tim henning and an anonymous referee for making me aware of the need to add this section.

  7. For more on this point see Jackson (2010), pp. 17–24.

  8. The reason for this is not far to seek. In Millianism, which they themselves defend (Devitt and Sterelny 1999, Ch. 4), a name’s causal-historical connection with its referent plays just this role. It determines the semantic content of the name, whereas this content is the referent itself. But, as will become clear below (see Sect. 4) this view cannot be planted on the descriptivist.

  9. See Kroon (1987).

  10. To prevent confusion, ‘NAME’ is not the word, but the name of the word.

  11. It is crucial not to misunderstand this claim. The speaker’s and the hearer’s mode of presentation are—and need to be—related in the following way: In any context, they have to provide the same referent. If this were not the case, it could no longer be said that the hearer understands the speaker. Given this, there is even a sense in which both modes of presentation are the same. Both can be represented via the same intensions (i.e. via the same function from possible worlds or centered possible worlds to extensions). So, both modes of presentation differ only according to a structured or fine-grained conception of meaning.

  12. An example in point is Kroon’s case of A, B and A’s French poodle Dumas which I have presented in Sect. 3 in another connection.

  13. Such a reference can be done via a simple demonstrative (‘this token’). No further specification via a sortal—be it NAME or a quotation of a name-word—is necessary since, when the interpretational character is exploited by the hearer, she already has to have identified the token she means to interpret via this exploitation.

  14. I leave it to the reader to get this through her head.

  15. See also Jackson (2010), 144 f.

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Acknowledgements

I thank two anonymous referees and, in particular, Tim Henning for numerous very helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.

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  1. Soest, Germany

    Dirk Franken

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Franken, D. Descriptivism Without Quotation. Topoi 39, 367–379 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9555-3

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