The Same Name

Erkenntnis 80 (2):195-214 (2015)
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Abstract

When are two tokens of a name tokens of the same name? According to this paper, the answer is a matter of the historical connections between the tokens. For each name, there is a unique originating event, and subsequent tokens are tokens of that name only if they derive in an appropriate way from that originating event. The conditions for a token being a token of a given name are distinct from the conditions for preservation of the reference of a name. Hence a name may change its reference. Defending the theory requires considerations about the identity of acts, and about empty names and disagreement. The upshot is a causal theory of the identity of names, but not what would normally be counted as a causal theory of the reference of names. Although reference is often transmitted causally, what determines semantic reference is conventionalized speaker-reference.

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Mark Sainsbury
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

Co‐Identification and Fictional Names.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (1):3-34.
Names in strange places.Aidan Gray - 2017 - Linguistics and Philosophy 40 (5):429-472.
The use-conditional indexical conception of proper names.Dolf Rami - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (1):119-150.
A pluralistic theory of wordhood.Luca Gasparri - 2020 - Mind and Language 36 (4):592-609.

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References found in this work

Naming and Necessity: Lectures Given to the Princeton University Philosophy Colloquium.Saul A. Kripke - 1980 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edited by Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
The meaning of 'meaning'.Hilary Putnam - 1975 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7:131-193.
Individualism and the mental.Tyler Burge - 1979 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (1):73-122.

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