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2002, Philosophical Writings 19 & 20, 51-68
According to the New Theory of Reference, proper names (and indexicals) and natural kind terms are semantically similar to each other but crucially different from definite descriptions and “ordinary” predicates, respectively. New Theorists say that a name, unlike a definite description, is a directly referential nondescriptional rigid designator, which refers “without a mediation of the content” and is not functional (i.e. lacks a Carnapian intension). Natural kind terms, such as ‘horse’ and ‘water’, are held to have similar distinctions, in contrast to other predicates. However, the New Theory contains some problems related to reference, descriptionality, content and meaning. In view of these problems, it will be argued that the distinctive shared feature of proper names and natural kind terms, while technically corresponding to nonfunctionality, is to be explicated in terms of independence of possible worlds, rather than in terms of reference and content: natural kind terms are world-independent predicates, making “worldless” predications. Just as, say, ‘Elvis’ names Elvis even with respect to “Elvisless” worlds, or, rather, names Elvis independently of worlds, natural kind terms are in an important sense “worldless” as well: to talk about Elvis is to talk about him irrespective of moments of time and possible worlds, and is to talk about a human, also irrespective of moments and worlds, while it is not to talk about, say, a drug-addict irrespective of moments, nor about a singer irrespective of worlds. There is no genuinely timeless and worldless predication of the sort “Elvis is (was) bald”, but there is, it seems, such a predication “Elvis is (was) human”. This notion of independence of times and worlds is detached from those of descriptionality and content mediation.
There are two problematic assumptions in Kripke's semantic argument against descriptivism. Assumption 1 is that the referential relation of a name to an object is only an objective or metaphysical relation between language and the world; it has nothing to do with the understanding of the name by our linguistic community. Assumption 2 is that descrip-tivism has to hold that, if name α has its meaning and the meaning is given by one description or a cluster of descriptions, the description(s) should supply a set of necessary and suffi cient conditions for determining what α designates; and that it is possible for us to fi nd out such a set of conditions. Emphasizing the sociality, intentionality, conventionality and historicity of language and meaning, this paper rejects Assumption 1, and argues that Assumption 2 is an unfair interpretation of descrip-tivism, and it is not necessary for descriptivists to hold Assumption 2. This paper fi nally concludes that Kripke's semantic argument against descriptivism fails. Keywords: Kripke, the semantic argument, Assumption 1, Assumption 2, the sociality, intentionality, conventionality and historicity of language and meaning.
2012 •
Joseph LaPorte, Genoveva Martí and Nathan Salmon have argued that general terms, natural kind terms in particular, are semantically akin to proper names. They have singular reference, they designate individuals. The most plausible candidates for these designata are abstract universals. So the “designation theory” of general terms favours the doctrine of abstract universals. However, in this paper we argue that this preference involves serious metaphysical problems. Both contemporary doctrines of abstract universals, the Russellian and Neo-Aristotelian, suffer from the problem that they cannot give a theoretically satisfactory account of instantiation of universals by particulars. Hence we conclude that notwithstanding its theoretical appeal owing to its elegant simplicity, the designation theory of general terms ought to be reconsidered.
2022 •
Contributing to the debate between referentialist and predicativist accounts of the semantics of proper names, this paper partly endorses a recent trend to reject unitary accounts of their semantics. It does so by restoring a Fregean version of the variety of use account. It criticizes alternative variety of use accounts for not clearly distinguishing pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic issues and argues that, once these are distinguished, the necessity of accepting that names have a variety of uses, and are sometimes logical singular terms and at others logical predicates shows that Frege’s claim, that we should recognize that names have both reference and sense, is vindicated.
2017 •
The object of this book is to present a radical novel conception of the ontological categories, their nature and epistemic importance. A conception that constitutes a challenge to the prevailing tenets, if not paradigms, of ontology today. The arguments and observations are given without addressing nor directly contesting the current theories on the subject. However, its author emphasises some of the main conclusions that entail from the new perspective, in particular regarding the role of philosophy among the sciences. Departing from the novelty of considering distinctions to be the subject matter of thought and language -that is, of reference and meaning- it is observed that there are certain concepts, encompassed under the notion of “Being”, that are each “all” comprising categories. It is explained that these categories are conformed by certain ontological relations, which seem to stand for the structure of reality in-itself, and cannot be, in any manner, denied cognitive content nor objective existence in any possible world. Following this, it is argued that they constitute the primary premises of judgment and ultimate explanatory resources, and, thus, the fundaments of logic and mathematics. Moreover, language is shown to be structured according to them, and it is likewise explained that, as primary premises of all our judgments, they cannot be but determined a priori, standing for aspects of mind objective reality of a non-sensible nature, which are essential elements of cognition. It is shown, that it is they that enable to bridge the gap between the mind and the world, but set a limit to our possible knowledge of reality, which forces to presuppose the existence of higher or hyper-orders of reality. The importance of this work is, that from a naturalist stance, its observations and arguments constitute a strong case against established and well-rooted tenets in contemporary philosophy, while point to the need of focussing the field of the discipline to the study of the cognitive content of our innately determined a priori concepts.
In the paper I argue that the being-called condition (BCC) advanced by Delia Fara and its variant the being-named condition (BNC) provided by Roberta Ballarin cannot account for the apparently predicative occurrences of individual names. Both assume that a name N is true of the bearers of 'N'. Yet, no expression can be true of what it refers to. If so, the 'N' that is true of individuals cannot be the 'N' that individuals bear. While the latter is an individual name, the former is not an individual name but a common noun homophonous to it.
Studia Linguistica: A Journal of General Linguistics
NO NAME: THE ALLOSEMY VIEWAccording to certain versions of predicativism, names denote metalinguistic predicates of a certain type, e.g. the name Perón as it occurs in the sentence Perón died in 1974 denotes a predicate more or less paraphrasable as "being called Perón" (Burge 1973, Matushansky 2008 and Fara 2011, among others). The metalinguistic theory of names is claimed to be superior in nontrivial ways to direct reference theories, according to which names contribute an individual without the mediation of descriptions (Kripke 1980). The alleged triumph of predicativism is that by assuming the "being called N" property as basic, both referential and non-referential uses of proper names can be given a uniform semantic analysis. By contrast, the referentialist needs to resort to homonymy or semantic ambiguity. In addition, there are some systematic connections between referential and predicative uses of names that at first glance also seem to favor predicativism. The goal of this paper is to present an alternative syntax, semantics and pragmatics of proper names. We assume that grammatical categories and the associated meanings that they are * For helpful comments and discussion on previous versions of this article, we thank Paolo Acquaviva, David Embick, Heidi Harley, Phoevos Panagiotidis, Stefano Predelli, one anonymous reviewer, and the people at The Philosophy of Language Group (at Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico), in particular, Ramiro Caso, Eduardo García-Ramírez and Eleonora Orlando. Our acknowledgment extends to the audience of the ICSO III workshop (Issues in Contemporary Semantics and Ontology workshop) held in Buenos Aires, 2016. Usual disclaimers apply. supposed to encode are not grammatical primitives, but epiphenomena that result from the particular way in which syntax combines functional material and lexical Roots. Before syntax, lexical Roots have no detectable meanings. On this account, there are no names before syntax, as there are no nouns, verbs or adjectives. Names are thus seen as the result of a particular syntactic configuration whose semantic realization is that of contributing an individual. Metalinguistic uses of names, and other derived uses, are involved in a different syntactic scheme, one that makes a name Root a predicate of a certain type. Besides their different syntactic basis, we argue that metalinguistic inferences in both referential and predicative uses of names have a pragmatic source. According to the theory we propose, then, the so-called Being Called Condition is neither a syntactic nor a semantic primitive. Under this conception of proper names the uniformity argument does not hold and the adduced linguistic evidence cannot lead to any (meta-)semantic consideration.
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