Proper Names and their Fictional Uses
Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (4):707 - 726 (2011)
Abstract
Fictional names present unique challenges for semantic theories of proper names, challenges strong enough to warrant an account of names different from the standard treatment. The theory developed in this paper is motivated by a puzzle that depends on four assumptions: our intuitive assessment of the truth values of certain sentences, the most straightforward treatment of their syntactic structure, semantic compositionality, and metaphysical scruples strong enough to rule out fictional entities, at least. It is shown that these four assumptions, taken together, are inconsistent with referentialism, the common view that names are uniformly associated with ordinary individuals as their semantic value. Instead, the view presented here interprets names as context-sensitive expressions, associated in a context of utterance with a particular act of introduction, or dubbing, which is then used to determine their semantic value. Some dubbings are referential, which associate names with ordinary individuals as their semantic values; others are fictional, which associate names, instead, with sets of properties. Since the semantic values of names can be of different sorts, the semantic rule interpreting predication must be complex as well. In the body of the paper, I show how this new treatment of names allows us to solve our original puzzle. I defend the complexity of the semantic predication rule, and address additional worries about ontological commitmentAuthor's Profile
DOI
10.1080/00048402.2010.514930
My notes
Similar books and articles
Description, Disagreement, and Fictional Names.Peter Alward - 2011 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (3):423-448.
Some Remarks on an Implementation of the Burgean View of Proper Names.Yu Izumi - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 39:79-88.
Recovering What Is Said With Empty Names.Gualtiero Piccinini & Sam Scott - 2010 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (2):239-273.
Fictional Reports A Study on the Semantics of Fictional Names.Fiora Salis - 2010 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 25 (2):175-185.
Causality, referring, and proper names.David S. Schwarz - 1978 - Linguistics and Philosophy 2 (2):225 - 233.
On the linguistic complexity of proper names.Ora Matushansky - 2008 - Linguistics and Philosophy 31 (5):573-627.
The semantics of fictional names.Fred Adams, Gary Fuller & Robert Stecker - 1997 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (2):128–148.
Proper names and persons: Peirce's semiotic consideration of proper names.Eric Thomas Weber - 2008 - Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 44 (2):pp. 346-362.
Analytics
Added to PP
2010-10-17
Downloads
319 (#37,159)
6 months
8 (#105,188)
2010-10-17
Downloads
319 (#37,159)
6 months
8 (#105,188)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Co‐Identification and Fictional Names.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (1):3-34.
The use-conditional indexical conception of proper names.Dolf Rami - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (1):119-150.
Semantics of fictional terms.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2019 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 38 (2):73-100.
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.