Descriptivism Without Quotation

Topoi 39 (2):367-379 (2020)
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Abstract

Current descriptivist accounts of proper names entail two claims: that the expressions we know as different proper names are the bearers of different meanings and that the descriptions corresponding to these meanings contain quotations of the expressions whose meanings they are taken to be. While is the source of a number of intractable problems, descriptivists feel committed to it because it is the only available option to adhere to, 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 by rejecting. 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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Dirk Franken
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

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References found in this work

Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics and Epistemology of Demonstratives and other Indexicals.David Kaplan - 1989 - In Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan. Oxford University Press. pp. 481-563.
Naming and Necessity.S. Kripke - 1972 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 45 (4):665-666.
Naming and Necessity.Saul Kripke - 1980 - Critica 17 (49):69-71.

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