T
reatments of proper names in the philosophical literature tend to characterize either their semantics, or their referential mechanisms— if indeed the treatment deems them to be referential—or both. Most accounts of proper name reference in the last fifty or more years state that it is determined by semantics. Thus their characterizations of referential mechanisms can be considered as dealing in meta-semantics. Such accounts hold that there is something in the semantic contribution a particular name makes to a sentence or utterance containing it that either wholly or partially determines, fixes, or specifies to what that name, or use of the name, refers. They frequently, therefore, provide a story both about the semantics of names, and about their referential mechanisms. It is characteristic of these semantic accounts that they attempt to specify, in some way, necessary and sufficient conditions for proper name reference, or at least imply that such conditions are, in principle, available. I will call views that some semantic account of proper name reference is correct semantic views.There are five broad groups of accounts of proper names in the contem- porary literature. Not all are mutually incompatible, and each is subject to substantial internal variation. Some provide characterizations of both the semantics and the referential mechanisms of names, and some provide char- acterizations of only one. The five groups of accounts are causal-homophonism; indexicalism; classical descriptivism; predicativism; and variablism.
Causal-homophonism20
is a group of accounts of both the semantics and meta-semantics of names. It holds that names refer to their referents tout court
20
See, for example, Corazza (2004); Jeshion (2015); Justice (2001); Kaplan (1990); Kripke (1981); Mercier (1998); Sainsbury (2005, 2015); Salmon (2005); Soames (2002).
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in virtue of causal chains (or trees) of uses from the name to the referent, and the semantics of a name is just constituted by its reference. Names are individuated according to reference or baptismal-origin such that no name can have more than one referent at a time (within one name-using community).
Indexicalism21
is primarily a position on the semantics of proper names, however, that semantic position entails a particular kind of meta-semantics. Indexicalism holds that names behave somewhat like indexicals, in that they do not refer tout court, but have a Kaplanian character (Kaplan 1989b) which specifies that certain determinate contextual parameters determine the reference of a use of a name in a particular way.
Classical Descriptivism22
can be either an account just of how the reference of a name is determined, or an account both of its reference and its semantics. It holds that names (or name-using practices) are associated in some way with a definite description, or a cluster or collection of descriptions, the satisfier of which is the referent of the name.
Predicativism23
is a group of accounts just of the semantics of names. It holds that proper names have the same basic semantic type as predicates, rather than being basically referring terms. (In the jargon of traditional formal semantics, they are terms of type he, ti rather than type e.) When names are used to refer, they are proceeded by a determiner, almost always unpronounced in English. On many views the determiner is a definite article, forming a definite description with the name predicate, on other views it is a demonstrative such as ‘that’, forming a complex demonstrative.
Variablism24
is also a group of accounts of name semantics. It holds that names have the semantic form of variables, as has been proposed for certain occurrences of pronouns, such that referential uses of names behave like free variables.
As stated, of these five groups of account, only the first two—causal- homophonism, and indexicalism—are essentially committed to positions on reference determination for proper names, and both of these positions fall within the semantic view: causal-homophonism takes reference to be constitutive of a name’s semantics; and indexicalism, although it takes the reference of a name to be partially determined by contextual factors, states that the manner in which this occurs is stipulated by the semantics of the name. Predicativism is not, in and of itself, committed to any particular view on how
21
See, for example, Burks (1951); Cohen (1980); Pelczar (2001); Pelczar and Rainsbury (1998); Rami (2014, 2015); Recanati (1993); Tiedke (2011); Zimmermann and Lerner (1991).
22
See, for example, Ahmed (2007); Jackson (1998); Searle (1958).
23
See, for example, Bach (1987, 2002); Burge (1973); Elbourne (2005); Fara (2015); Geurts (1997); Gray (2014, forthcoming); Katz (2001); Matushansky (2008); Sawyer (2010).
24
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the reference of names is determined, since this would depend on how the reference of the complex referring terms claimed to explain referential uses of names is determined. This holds similarly for variablism: if referential uses of names are free variables, then the way the variable assignment is determined will determine the reference of the name.25
Classical descriptivism is a broad church, and so whether or not it falls within the semantic view will depend both on how names are taken to interact with their reference-fixing descriptions, and on what the semantics of those descriptions is taken to be. I will not discuss classical descriptivism at any length in this thesis, as it is has not played any major part in the literature on names in the last thirty years.26 There is a comparison to be drawn between the two types of account constituting the semantic view of proper name reference, causal-homophonism and indexicalism, and the two main positions opposing the (pragmatic explanation of the) occasion sensitivity of predicates, discussed in Travis (1997) and Davies (2014). Homophonist views about names are analogous to ambiguity views about predicates, which attempt to account for Travis cases (and polysemy) by claiming that each predicate can refer to multiple distinct properties, e.g. green1, . . . ,green367, . . . ,greenn (Bosch 2007). Indexicalist views about names (and other ‘moderate’ contextualist views about name reference, such as might be added to predicativist or variablist accounts) are analogous to contextualist views about predicates that suggest that predicates as well as indexicals have complex Kaplanian characters (or similar parameter- based structures) such that, given enough contextual parameters, the right content will be forthcoming for every utterance (Hansen 2011; Rothschild and Segal 2009; Szabo 2001).
In the following two chapters I discuss these two versions of the semantic view, and offer arguments against each. I begin with causal-homophonism, which I believe to be the more egregious of the two, since it treats names, for the most part, as terms which refer essentially to particular objects, and maintains that they are completely context-insensitive. However, it is also the harder view to argue against because it shares fewer of my background assumptions about what constitutes an adequate and plausible account of proper name reference.
There is another group of views about proper name reference that are not, or need not be, semantic views, but I include discussion of all of them
25
In fact, Dever (1998) does have a view on how reference is determined, though this is secondary to his view about the semantics of names.
26
A significant anomaly to this claim is Jackson (1998). However, this paper did not spark any particular resurgence of descriptivism, and I understand Jackson himself subsequently abandoned the view. There may also be psychological evidence that suggests that classical descriptivism is mistaken. See Garcia Ramirez (2011) for a survey.
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amongst the genuinely semantic views because they also do not treat names as context-sensitive in the way that the pragmatic view I propose in part III does. These are intention-based or intentionalist views that maintain that a speaker’s intention to refer to a particular object with a use of a name determines the reference of the name, or contributes to that determination in a significant way. I discuss two types of intention-based view in chapter 5. Firstly, constraint-based intentionalism, which could be considered a semantic view, and maintains that the referent of a proper name upon a particular use is whatever the speaker intends it to be, but within a constrained domain of objects, for example, bearers of the name used. Intentions to refer to other objects do not produce reference. Secondly, a variety of neo-Gricean view that maintains that the reference of a use of a name is determined by a particular kind of structured intention to communicate about a particular object. In this case it is the intention itself that is constrained—one can only intend to refer to certain objects with each name in particular situations. I will argue against the first kind of view on the basis that it fails to result in a convincing account of name reference. However, I will argue against the second kind of view much more generally, by claiming that the kind of general view that would be required to accommodate such a view of reference is incompatible with certain empirical psychological data.